Lifeboat Foundation

An Italian surgeon hopes to perform the first-ever head transplant. Is he a genius or a crank?

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London, UK, November, 19, 2015 (PRWEB UK) 19 November 2015.

What matters in beauty is perception. Perception is how you and other people see you, and this perception is almost always biased. Still, healthy people look more attractive despite their age and nationality.

This has enabled the team of biogerontologists and data scientists, who believe that in the near future machines will be able to get a lot of vital medical information about people’s health by just processing their photos, to develop a set of algorithms that can accurately evaluate the criteria linked to perception of human beauty and health where it is most important – the human face. But evaluating beauty and health is not enough. The team’s challenge is to find effective ways to slow down ageing and help people look healthy and beautiful.

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Just as the development of antibiotics revolutionized the treatment and prevention of bacterial infections in the mid-20th century, MIT’s Dr. Todd Rider has invented DRACOs, a novel broad-spectrum antiviral drug that has the potential to revolutionize the treatment and prevention of virtually all viral infections. Dr. Rider’s DRACOs approach and results have been called “visionary” by the White House (National Bioeconomy Blueprint, April 2012, p. 9), named one of the best inventions of the year by Time magazine (November 28, 2011, pp. 58, 78), and featured on the BBC Horizons TV program (2013).

However, research on DRACOs has entered the well-known “Valley of Death” in which a lack of funding prevents DRACOs, and many other promising new drugs, from being developed and advancing toward human medical trials. To progress DRACOs research it needs to be demonstrated against clinically relevant viruses (i.e; HSV). To that end an IndieGoGo campaign (http://igg.me/at/EndTheVirus) was started on October 13, 2015.

Donate and Learn More on IndieGoGo.http://igg.me/at/EndTheVirus

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Liz Parrish in another excellent interview. Bioviva is daring to push ahead and test telomerase therapy to see if it works.

Dr. Ed Park of Recharge Biomedical interviews LIz Parrish, CEO of BioViva and the first person to receive telomerase gene therapy. Clinical signs indicate this revolutionary therapy may be working.

Continue reading “PODCAST 50: Telomerase Gene Therapy” »

As advancements in technology continue at an ever-increasing pace, will there ever come a day when we’ll be able to use science to cheat death? Australian startup company Humai seems to think so; it claims to be working on a way to transfer a person’s consciousness into an artificial body after they’ve died.

“We want to bring you back to life after you die,” says Humai CEO Josh Bocanegra on the company’s website. “We’re using artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to store data of conversational styles, behavioral patterns, thought processes and information about how your body functions from the inside-out. This data will be coded into multiple sensor technologies, which will be built into an artificial body with the brain of a deceased human. Using cloning technology, we will restore the brain as it matures.”

In an interview with Australian Popular Science, Bocanegra said: “We’ll first collect extensive data on our members for years prior to their death via various apps we’re developing.” After death, the company will cryogenically freeze members’ brains until the technology is fully developed, at which point the brains will be implanted into an artificial body.

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Injecting billions of immune cells back into the body boosts insulin production, preventing the need for daily injections.

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By combining experiments with computer simulations, scientists have come up with a mathematical model that explains blood vessel formation.

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A Moscow laboratory has conducted the first successful organ translation using a unique Russian 3D-printing technology. The breakthrough could potentially help millions suffering from thyroid disorders – and paves the way for printing other human organs.

The thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland in the neck, can have a dramatic impact on a huge variety of human bodily functions. The groundbreaking operation, thus far only in rodents, was performed by a team from the 3D Bioprinting Solutions Laboratory in the Russian capital some three months ago.

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Scientists have sequenced the entire genome of the tardigrade, AKA the water bear, for the first time. And it turns out that this weird little creature has the most foreign genes of any animal studied so far – or to put it another way, roughly one-sixth of the tardigrade’s genome was stolen from other species. We have to admit, we’re kinda not surprised.

A little background here for those who aren’t familiar with the strangeness that is the tardigrade – the microscopic water creature grows to just over 1 mm on average, and is the only animal that can survive in the harsh environment of space. It can also withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, can cope with ridiculous amounts of pressure and radiation, and can live for more than 10 years without food or water. Basically, it’s nearly impossible to kill, and now scientists have shown that its DNA is just as bizarre as it is.

So what’s foreign DNA and why does it matter that tardigrades have so much of it? The term refers to genes that have come from another organism via a process known as horizontal gene transfer, as opposed to being passed down through traditional reproduction.

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