Lifeboat Foundation

We probably cannot slow the rate at which we get older because of biological constraints, an unprecedented study of lifespan statistics in human and non-human primates has confirmed.

The study set out to test the ‘invariant rate of aging’ hypothesis, which says that a species has a relatively fixed rate of aging from adulthood. An international collaboration of scientists from 14 countries, including José Manuel Aburto from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, analyzed age-specific birth and death data spanning centuries and continents. Led by Fernando Colchero, University of Southern Denmark and Susan Alberts, Duke University, North Carolina, the study was a huge endeavor requiring monitoring wild populations of primates over several decades.

Jose Manuel Aburto says, Our findings support the theory that, rather than slowing down death, more people are living much longer due to a reduction in mortality at younger ages. We compared birth and death data from humans and non-human primates and found this general pattern of mortality was the same in all of them. This suggests that biological, rather than environmental factors, ultimately control longevity.

AI has finally come full circle.

A new suite of algorithms by Google Brain can now design computer chips —those specifically tailored for running AI software —that vastly outperform those designed by human experts. And the system works in just a few hours, dramatically slashing the weeks-or months-long process that normally gums up digital innovation.

At the heart of these robotic chip designers is a type of machine learning called deep reinforcement learning. This family of algorithms, loosely based on the human brain’s workings, has triumphed over its biological neural inspirations in games such as Chess, Go, and nearly the entire Atari catalog.

“These are novel living machines. They are not a traditional robot or a known species of animals. It is a new class of artifacts: a living and programmable organism,” says Joshua Bongard, an expert in computer science and robotics at the University of Vermont (UVM) and one of the leaders of the find.

As the scientist explains, these living bots do not look like traditional robots : they do not have shiny gears or robotic arms. Rather, they look more like a tiny blob of pink meat in motion, a biological machine that researchers say can accomplish things traditional robots cannot.

Xenobots are synthetic organisms designed automatically by a supercomputer to perform a specific task, using a process of trial and error (an evolutionary algorithm), and are built by a combination of different biological tissues.

Plastic bottle becomes industrially useful product thanks to biosynthetic transformation.

For tens of thousands of years, a microscopic creature lay frozen and immobile underground in the Siberian permafrost.

Yet, when scientists thawed it out, the tiny multicellular animal didn’t just revive — it reproduced, suggesting that there is a mechanism whereby multicellular animals can avoid cell damage during the freezing process and wake up ready to rumble.

“Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism,” said biologist Stas Malavin of the Soil Cryology Laboratory at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia.

Bdelloid rotifers are multicellular animals so small you need a microscope to see them. Despite their size, they’re known for being tough, capable of surviving through drying, freezing, starvation, and low oxygen. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on June 7 have found that not only can they withstand being frozen, but they can also persist for at least 24000 years in the Siberian permafrost and survive.

“Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism,” says Stas Malavin of the Soil Cryology Laboratory at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Pushchino, Russia.

The Soil Cryology Lab specializes in isolating microscopic organisms from the ancient permafrost in Siberia. To collect samples, they use a drilling rig in some of the most remote Arctic locations.

The hard, magnetic teeth of a leathery red-brown mollusk nicknamed “the wandering meatloaf” possess a rare mineral previously seen only in rocks. The mineral may help the mollusk — the giant Pacific chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri) — meld its soft flesh to the hard teeth it uses for grazing on rocky coastlines, researchers report online May 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

C. stelleri is the world’s largest chiton, reaching up to roughly 35 centimeters long. It is equipped with several dozen rows of teeth on a slender, flexible, tonguelike appendage called a radula that it uses to scrape algae off rocks. Those teeth are covered in magnetite, the hardest, stiffest known biomineral to date: It’s as much as three times as hard as human enamel and mollusk shells.

Materials scientist Derk Joester and colleagues analyzed these teeth using high-energy X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. They discovered that the interface between the teeth and flesh contained nanoparticles of santabarbaraite, an iron-loaded mineral never seen before in a living organism’s body.

One of the spacecraft will probe the hellish planet’s clouds, which could potentially help settle the debate over whether they are habitable by floating microbes.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY • JUN 3, 2021
Culture drives human evolution more than genetics

I wonder about the thought that only humans do this, and perhaps that somehow culture is separate in some way from biological evolution enmeshed with the rest of the planet?
by University of Maine

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

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