Lifeboat Foundation

I’m excited to see I’m the fourth most searched 3rd party presidential candidate. Thanks for your support of a science, longevity, and technology platform as an alternative to the establishment. If this continues a nonreligious transhumanist could end up #4 or #5 in the final elections, and even get enough votes (maybe a million or more) to push the US election one way or the other if it’s close.

So much about the 2016 presidential election is unprecedented. But perhaps nothing is more unusual than the electorate’s level of dissatisfaction with both major parties’ likely nominees.

An NBC News-SurveyMonkey poll released earlier this week found that, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton maintains her lead in a head-to-head match-up with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, neither candidate is popular with the public at large.

Continue reading “Majority of Americans dislike both Trump and Clinton as interest in third-party spikes online” »

A friend of mine shared this; very nice.

Designed by fashion icon Iris Apfel, the Wisewear Activity Tracker can count your steps taken, distance travelled, calories burned and more in style. You can even call for help in an emergency just by tapping the device.

Love this; Congrats to Michelle Simmons and her work on QC — Superstar females in STEM.

For her world-leading research in the fabrication of atomic-scale devices for quantum computing, UNSW Australia’s Scientia Professor Michelle Simmons has been awarded a prestigious Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.

Two international Feynman prizes, named in honour of the late Nobel Prize winning American physicist Richard Feynman, are awarded each year in the categories of theory and experiment to researchers whose work has most advanced Feynman’s nanotechnology goal of molecular manufacturing.

Continue reading “Top international award for UNSW Australia quantum computing chief” »

May turn out to be the “fountain-of-youth gene,” say researchers.

University of Virginia School of Medicine have discovered that a gene called Oct4 — which scientific dogma insists is inactive in adults — actually plays a vital role in preventing ruptured atherosclerotic plaques inside blood vessels, the underlying cause of most heart attacks and strokes.

Continue reading “Gene helps prevent heart attack, stroke; may also block effects of aging” »

The visible impacts of depression and stress that can be seen in a person’s face—and contribute to shorter lives—can also be found in alterations in genetic activity, according to newly published research.

In a series of studies involving both C. elegans worms and human cohorts, researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Scripps Research Institute have identified a series of genes that may modulate the effects of good or bad mood and response to stress on lifespan. In particular, the research pointed to a gene known as ANK3 as playing a key role in affecting longevity. The research was published May 24, 2016 in the Nature Publishing Group journal Molecular Psychiatry, the top ranked journal in the field of psychiatry.

“We were looking for genes that might be at the interface between mood, stress and longevity”, said Alexander B. Niculescu III, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and medical neuroscience at the IU School of Medicine. “We have found a series of genes involved in mood disorders and stress disorders which also seem to be involved in longevity.

Continue reading “Researchers identify genes linked to the effects of mood and stress on longevity” »

Are you an avid supporter of aging research and a keen longevity activist?
The Biogerontology Research Foundation is offering select summer internships for talented individuals. You’d join a passionate and supportive team in researching diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic strategies; advising a panel of investors in developing a roadmap to promote longevity science and related technologies across the globe.

The advertised positions are 3 month internships, with the possibility of continuing afterwards. Free accommodation will be provided for in London, alongside a negotiable salary.

The Biogerontology Research Foundation is a UK based think tank dedicated to aging research and accelerating its application worldwide.

Continue reading “Aging Research Internships Available” »

Make your own universe or mouse in a box?

“I can’t wait to see the art that people make with this.”

Those were the first words from my friend Ryan after spending ten minutes in virtual reality. He’d just tried Tilt Brush, an incredible experience which allows the user to paint in three dimensions. Tilt Brush is a deeply meditative and powerful experience, allowing us to turn the space around us into glowing and shimmering works of art.

Continue reading “A Virtual Reality Manifesto: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly” »

“European industry has begun assembling the “back end” of the Orion crewship that is due to make an important 2018 demonstration flight around the Moon.”

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Dark matter is a mysterious substance composing most of the material universe, now widely thought to be some form of massive exotic particle. An intriguing alternative view is that dark matter is made of black holes formed during the first second of our universe’s existence, known as primordial black holes. Now a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, suggests that this interpretation aligns with our knowledge of cosmic infrared and X-ray background glows and may explain the unexpectedly high masses of merging black holes detected last year.

“This study is an effort to bring together a broad set of ideas and observations to test how well they fit, and the fit is surprisingly good,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard. “If this is correct, then all galaxies, including our own, are embedded within a vast sphere of black holes each about 30 times the sun’s mass.”

In 2005, Kashlinsky led a team of astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to explore the background glow of infrared light in one part of the sky. The researchers reported excessive patchiness in the glow and concluded it was likely caused by the aggregate light of the first sources to illuminate the universe more than 13 billion years ago. Follow-up studies confirmed that this cosmic infrared background (CIB) showed similar unexpected structure in other parts of the sky.

Continue reading “Scientist suggests possible link between primordial black holes and dark matter” »