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Aug 28, 2015
16 Things You Probably Never Knew About The Short Circuit Movies
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: entertainment, robotics/AI
Right now, we’re falling in love with BB-8 from Star Wars—and yet, there’s still a special place in our hearts for Johnny Five, the robot from the Short Circuit films. But how much do you actually know about these films? Check out this video, featuring 16 electrifying facts about the making of this duology.
Aug 28, 2015
Physics-Astronomy: NASA’s Warp-Drive Solution for Faster-Than-Light Space Travel
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: materials, space travel, time travel
Agreeing to state-of-the art theory, a warp drive might cut the travel time between stars from tens of thousands of years to only weeks or months. Harold G. White, a physicist and innovative propulsion engineer at NASA and other NASA engineers are working to regulate whether faster-than-light travel — warp drive — might soon be possible. The group is trying to some extent warp the course of a photon, altering the distance it travels in a definite area, and then detecting the change with a device called an interferometer.
In 1994, a Mexican physicist, Miguel Alcubierre, speculated that faster-than-light speeds were conceivable in a technique that did not deny Einstein by binding the growth and reduction of space itself. Under Dr. Alcubierre’s theory, a ship still couldn’t surpass light speed in a native region of space. But a theoretical thrust system he sketched out operated space-time by producing a so-called “warp bubble” that would inflate space on one side of a spacecraft and contract it on another.
Image source: With thanks to Shutterstock.com.
Aug 28, 2015
Meet The Anti-Death Presidential Candidate
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: geopolitics, life extension, transhumanism
My 4 min interview on transhumanism and longevity with BuzzFeed came out as a stand-alone video. About 800 comments under the YouTube video:
Because we all deserve a chance at immortality!
Aug 28, 2015
Messaging As the Interface to Everything | Andreessen Horowitz
Posted by Odette Bohr Dienel in category: big data
THE genome is written in an alphabet of just four letters. Being able to read, study and compare DNA sequences for humans, and thousands of other species, has become routine. A new technology promises to make it possible to edit genetic information quickly and cheaply. This could correct terrible genetic defects that blight lives. It also heralds the distant prospect of parents building their children to order.
The technology is known as CRISPR-Cas9, or just CRISPR. It involves a piece of RNA, a chemical messenger, designed to target a section of DNA; and an enzyme, called a nuclease, that can snip unwanted genes out and paste new ones in. Other ways of editing DNA exist, but CRISPR holds the promise of doing so with unprecedented simplicity, speed and precision.
Aug 28, 2015
Gene That Controls the Internal Clock Discovered
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: health
The circadian rhythm is a subject of many studies, yet it remains a mystery in many ways. While scientists have identified many of the cell proteins involved in circadian rhythm and several genes that contribute to a healthy rhythm, the ‘master clock’ gene remained elusive. However, a recent chronobiology study on rats indicates that the Zfhx3, or Zinc Finger Homeobox 3, gene may be the master gene that dictates this important biological rhythm.
Aug 27, 2015
US pushes pedal on car-to-car communication
Posted by Early Boykins III in category: transportation
V2V communication is a viable way to mitigate accidents amongst autonomous vehicles.
Engineers have known for some time that if cars could only “talk” to each other, they could avoid a lot of accidents.
Vehicles could be driven more safely with information about another car, obstacle or pedestrian around a blind curve, for example.
Continue reading “US pushes pedal on car-to-car communication” »
Aug 27, 2015
The 10 largest solar power projects in the world
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: solar power, sustainability
Aug 27, 2015
Telomere dysfunction induces metabolic and mitochondrial compromise. Nature
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
Dr DePinho released a paper in 2012, this builds on previous papers and his theory of the “telomere-p53-PGC axis”. This is a big reason along with the work of Dr Michael Fossel I believe telomerase therapy is probably the best chance of radical life extension in the near future. This is one of a number of papers that implicate dysfunctional telomeres in a cascade that causes mitochondrial dysfunction and various other aging consequences.
ABSTRACT Telomere dysfunction activates p53-mediated cellular growth arrest, senescence and apoptosis to drive progressive atrophy and functional decline in high-turnover tissues. The broader adverse impact of telomere dysfunction across many tissues including more quiescent systems prompted transcriptomic network analyses to identify common mechanisms operative in haematopoietic stem cells, heart and liver. These unbiased studies revealed profound repression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma, coactivator 1 alpha and beta (PGC-1α and PGC-1β, also known as Ppargc1a and Ppargc1b, respectively) and the downstream network in mice null for either telomerase reverse transcriptase (Tert) or telomerase RNA component (Terc) genes. Consistent with PGCs as master regulators of mitochondrial physiology and metabolism, telomere dysfunction is associated with impaired mitochondrial biogenesis and function, decreased gluconeogenesis, cardiomyopathy, and increased reactive oxygen species. In the setting of telomere dysfunction, enforced Tert or PGC-1α expression or germline deletion of p53 (also known as Trp53) substantially restores PGC network expression, mitochondrial respiration, cardiac function and gluconeogenesis. We demonstrate that telomere dysfunction activates p53 which in turn binds and represses PGC-1α and PGC-1β promoters, thereby forging a direct link between telomere and mitochondrial biology. We propose that this telomere-p53-PGC axis contributes to organ and metabolic failure and to diminishing organismal fitness in the setting of telomere dysfunction.
