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“Very dependent on volume, but I’m confident moving to Mars (return ticket is free) will one day cost less than $500k & maybe even below $100k,” he wrote. “Low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth & move to Mars if they want.”


The extraordinary ambition of Musk’s prediction wasn’t lost on some Twitter users. “Fyre Festival Part Deux,” one replied.

Maybe that skepticism is why, in a follow up reply, Musk seemed to hedge his bets.

“Just planning on keeping the public informed about progress & setbacks,” he wrote. “Will be some [Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies] along the way, but excitement is guaranteed!”

Researchers at Newcastle University have shown that clearing out senescent cardiac muscle cells from the hearts of aged mice restores heart health.

It seems that not a month goes by without a new study showing that senolytics, drugs that remove aged and damaged cells from the body, improve organ or tissue function by reversing some aspects of aging. A new study has shown that removing senescent cells from the hearts of old mice restores heart health and alleviates the detrimental effects of cardiac aging, including myocardial hypertrophy and fibrosis.

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Mars One is done.

“The company that aimed to put humanity on the red planet has met an unfortunate, but wholly-expected end. Mars One Ventures, the for-profit arm of the Mars One mission was declared bankrupt back in January but wasn’t reported until a keen-eyed Redditor found the listing.”


Fancied being part of a reality TV show about colonizing Mars? Sorry.

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This HPV cure comes at a time when cervical cancer cases are quickly becoming the leading cause for death among female cancer patients around the world, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement.

The researchers specialise in early detection and photodynamic therapy to fight HPV and have succeeded in winning the ultimate battle — a 100 percent cure — after twenty years of tweaking the treatment.

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As powerful as the human brain is, once it’s damaged it can’t really recover completely. Now researchers at Penn State may have found a way to boost the brain’s regenerative abilities, using certain molecules to convert neighboring cells into new neurons. The technique could eventually lead to pills that treat brain injuries, stroke or Alzheimer’s disease.

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Psychiatry as a field, meanwhile, quivers with theoretical uncertainty. It has not become a sub-speciality of neurology, as one might have expected if mental illness mapped directly to neural behaviour. And common genetic variations with large effects on mental disorders are elusive. The various incarnations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have enabled diagnostic consistency and the objectification of mental illnesses. But the DSM has resulted in overlapping diagnoses, and contrived symptom-cluster checklists. At times, it impinges on the territory of healthy mental function. Allen Frances, chair of the task force that wrote the manual’s fourth edition in 1994, revolted against out-of-control mental diagnosis in his 2013 book DSM: Saving Normal.


Adrian Woolfson weighs up a study on the role of evolution in conditions such as depression and anxiety.

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