Lifeboat Foundation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x615GSqicZE

Nearly two years ago, Chmielewski underwent a 10-hour brain surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore as part of a clinical trial originally spearheaded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and leveraging advanced prosthetic limbs developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Its goal was to allow participants to control [assistive devices](https://medicalxpress.com/tags/assistive+devices/), and enable perception of physical stimuli (touching the limbs) using neurosignals from the brain. Surgeons implanted six electrode arrays into both sides of his brain, and within months he was able to demonstrate, for the first time, simultaneous control of two of the [prosthetic limbs](https://medicalxpress.com/tags/prosthetic+limbs/) through a brain-machine interface developed by APL.

For more than 30 years—following an accident in his teens—Robert “Buz” Chmielewski has been a quadriplegic with minimal movement and feeling in his hands and fingers. But last month he was able to manipulate two prosthetic arms with his brain and feed himself dessert.

Continue reading “Quadriplegic patient uses brain signals to feed himself with two advanced prosthetic arms” »

University of rochester — working at the intersection of aging, DNA repair, and cancer.

Dr. Vera Gorbunova is the Doris Johns Cherry Professor, in the Department of Biology, and Co-director, Rochester Aging Research Center, at University of Rochester.

Continue reading “Dr. Vera Gorbunova — Working At The Intersection Of Aging, DNA Repair, And Cancer” »

😃 Well, at least fossil-fuel emissions went down.

Global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuel and industry are expected to drop by 7% in 2020, new analysis shows, as economies around the world feel the effects of Covid-19 lockdowns.

The latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) suggest that these emissions will clock in at 34bn tonnes of CO₂ (GtCO2) this year – a fall of 2.4GtCO2 compared to 2019.

Continue reading “Coronavirus causes ‘record fall’ in fossil-fuel emissions in 2020” »

A former independent presidential hopeful is vexed at the COVID-19 vaccine at the moment, and for multiple reasons. That would be Zoltan Istvan, a self-described transhumanist candidate who was billed as the “cyborg who is running against President Trump” in press reports throughout 2020. The California hopeful — who ran in the Republican primary — based his campaign on a futuristic message of fusing radical technology with daily life under the motto “Upgrade America.”

Mr. Istvan recently looked into how long it would be before he got a COVID-19 vaccine.

“I took the New York Times’ ‘Find your Place’ in the vaccine line report, and I was near the bottom 15% of the timeline for getting the vaccine — meaning I’ll be nearly last,” Mr. Istvan wrote in an email to Inside the Beltway.

Hello rejuvenation friends! Did you know that Heales, the Belgian entity led by Didier Coeurnelle, is financing two very interesting experiments with the great rejuvenation scientists Harold Katcher and Rodolfo Goya in order to test if Elixir (in the case of Katcher) and plasma of young rats (in the case of Goya) are capable to considerably extend the lifespan of rats? Today I found out on Google that six days ago, Didier published this article in Heales website: https://heales.org/wp-content/plugins/multisite-language-switcher/flags/. In the article, Didier explains in depth both experiments, and put the links to the detailed protocol of the experiments, in two Word files. It’s incredible the power of the collaboration of people who are enthusiastic of rejuvenation science, such as Didier, Harold and Rodolfo. I don’t know if the experiment will extend considerably the rats lives, but it seems that these two experiments deserve a close look from the rejuvenation field.

Today, in spite of the gigantic progress in medicine and research, we still do not know how to be healthy beyond about 85 years of age.

New methods enable scientists at IST Austria to take a look at the innermost of cells: High-resolution images of deep-frozen cells show structures that previously could only be guessed at.

The cells in our body are in motion. Some migrate from A to B to heal wounds or fight pathogens. They do so with the help of small “feet” at the leading edge of migrating cells, so-called lamellipodia. These thin extensions are pushed forward and bind to the surface while the rest of the cell is pulled along. Inside these feet is a dense network of interwoven protein threads, called actin filaments, which form the cell’s cytoskeleton. So far, it was unclear how the Arp2/3 complex, an assembly of seven proteins central for cell motility, sprouts off new actin filaments from pre-existing ones and thus generates dense, branched networks providing the required protrusive forces to the cell.

Until now, scientists had to decide when they wanted to analyze the structure of the Arp2/3 complex: One option was to study it in isolation, where the protein complex is in an inactive conformation and hence does not allow understanding of how the network is formed. In order to become fully activated, however, the Arp2/3 complex needs to be bound to actin filaments. This requires using a method called electron tomography, which comes at the cost of considerably lower resolution. “Previous electron tomography data of Arp2/3 complexes bound to actin filaments in a test-tube environment was too imprecise, making it impossible to unambiguously tell where the individual elements of the complex must be located,” explains Florian Fäßler, a postdoc in the group of IST Austria professor Florian Schur.

For those of us who don’t think that even our bowel movements will soon be inventoried, tracked and timestamped during every moment of existence, here is a just published white paper from the Rand Corporation, an influential think tank created in 1948 to offer research and analysis to the US military, which begs to differ.

The November 2020 whilte paper, published under the title “The Internet of Bodies,” focuses on the advantages and disadvantages, security and privacy risks, plus the ethical implications of what it calls a growing “Internet of Bodies (IoB).”

IoB tools are internet-connected “smart” devices increasingly available in the marketplace which promise to track and upload to the internet measurements related to individual heartbeat, blood pressure and other bodily functions in real time for purposes of health, exercise, security or other reasons.

CU Boulder researchers found a chemical compound that can break through cell membranes and potentially fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In October, threat actors hit the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn and the University of Vermont Health Network. The cyber attack took place on October 28 and disrupted services at the UVM Medical Center and affiliated facilities.

A month later, the University of Vermont Medical Center was continuing to recover from the cyber attack that paralyzed the systems at the Burlington hospital.

In early December, Hospital CEO Dr. Stephen Leffler announced that the attack that took place in late October on the computer systems of the University of Vermont Medical Center is costing the hospital about $1.5 million a day in lost revenue and recovery costs.