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Feb 25, 2018

Harvard’s David Sinclair Treats Aging as a Disease and Plans to Launch a Clinical Trial to Prove It

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Harvard University’s David Sinclair, world renowned for his anti-aging research, sees no limit on human life span and is collaborating on a clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a new drug aimed at slowing the aging process…

“There is no maximum human life span,” says Sinclair, Ph.D., who is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. “Anyone who says that doesn’t know what they are talking about.”

Sinclair hopes to demonstrate what he has been researching, – and talking about, for the past 20 years – that aging is a disease, which can be treated.

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Feb 25, 2018

ICOs & Altcoins rise and fall—yet, Bitcoin endures

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, government

At the end of 2017 and the first months of 2018, we witnessed a surge of interest in Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. Perhaps the word “interest” gives too much credit to ICOs. Most are scams. ICOs are pushed through by vendor hype, rather than pulled through by investor research. They are almost all pump-and-dump schemes.

But what about Bitcoin? It is not a scam, but questions remain about regulation, intrinsic value* and its likelihood to be superseded by something better. Bitcoin skeptics point to two facts: (1) Bitcoin is open source, and so anyone can create an equally good altcoin. (2) Newer coins incorporate improvements that overcome governance and scaling issues: cost, transaction speed, the burgeoning electric needs of miners, or whatever…

While both statements are true, they miss the point. This is not a VHS-vs-Beta scenario. Bitcoin has achieved a 2-sided network and it is free to fold in every vetted improvement that comes along. For Bitcoin, all those other coins are simply beta tests.

Even the functional tokens will unwittingly feed their “improvements” into Bitcoin. For this reason, it is a safe bet that Bitcoin will reign supreme for years to come—perhaps even long enough for the dominos to fall.

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Feb 25, 2018

Super flexible TV display rolls up for storage

Posted by in category: electronics

Finally, a TV display you can roll up and take with you.

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Feb 25, 2018

Runoff pitting low-fat vs. low-carb to lose weight results in a tie

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Summary: A new study didn’t find much of a difference between healthy low-carb and low-fat diets. The people on both diets lost about the same amount of excess weight. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Is cutting carbs or cutting fat is better? A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest that it may not matter much.

A team of researchers led by Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, followed 609 overweight adults ages 18 to 50. The researchers put the study participants, consisting of equal numbers of men and women, on either a low-carb diet or low-fat diet for 12 months.

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Feb 25, 2018

Brain rejuvenating protein found in young blood

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

Summary: UCSF scientists discover a protein in young blood that rejuvenates an aging brain. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Scientists have long been searching for the factors in young blood that give it its rejuvenating powers to drug form for widespread public use.

A team of researchers led by Saul Villeda, Ph.D., an assistant professor of anatomy at UC San Francisco discovered a brain-rejuvenating enzyme that improved memory in adult mice when restored to youthful levels. The researchers say the new protein could lead to new therapies for maintaining the healthy brain function of humans.

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Feb 25, 2018

Sci-Hub’s Pirate Queen Sails On

Posted by in category: futurism

A summary of a Feb 2018 interview with Alexandra Elbakyan of the Sci-Hub pirate website battling the academic publishing establishment.

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Feb 25, 2018

Parents are buying these gadgets to protect their kids from school shooters

Posted by in category: education

Parents have been stocking up on bulletproof backpacks, tracking devices and doorstops… to give children a fighting chance at surviving a gunman’s attack at school,” the N.Y. Post reports:

“BulletBlocker, a company that sells bulletproof backpacks ranging in price from $199 for a girly pink one to $490, has seen sales jump 300 percent since the Florida shooting.”

A $95 metal device called “JustinKase,” which is placed under a door and latches to the door’s jamb to prevent entry, was invented by a 17-year-old Wisconsin high school student, Justin Rivard.

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Feb 25, 2018

Millennials disrupted the system. Gen Z is here to fix the mess

Posted by in category: futurism

Plurals are known to value compromise, he said, a byproduct of their diversity and comfort with working with peers from different backgrounds. They are also in line to be an “adaptive” generation. These cohorts tend to come right after disruptive generations that change society in significant ways, such as millennials. When adaptive groups come of age, they take the problems that were brought to light by their predecessors and try to work them out.


In their organized calls for action, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School could be defining the nation’s newest generation.

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Feb 25, 2018

Top A.I. experts warn of a ‘Black Mirror’-esque future with swarms of micro-drones and autonomous weapons

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

To better protect against the rise of ill-intended AI, policymakers ought to be working closely with technical specialists to be aware of potential applications of machine intelligence. Also, technical developers ought to be proactively reaching out to appropriate leaders when they understand the technology they are developing can have negative applications, the report says.


New report from 26 technology experts issues dire warning about the potential of malicious artificial intelligence.

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Feb 24, 2018

Trump’s ‘Back to the Moon’ Directive Leaves Some Scientists with Mixed Feelings

Posted by in category: space travel

While some planetary scientists are enthusiastic about Trump’s proposal to send astronauts to the moon before Mars, others are leery about what it could cost or if it will happen.

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