Lifeboat Foundation

“The undisputed queen of personalized prosthetics.”

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While exploring which biological processes might predict successful in centenarians, a team from Newcastle and Tokyo have identified two prominent factors that facilitate health longevity — low level inflammation and telomere length.

“Centenarians and supercentenarians are different — put simply, they age slower. They can ward off diseases for much longer than the general population.”

After measuring a number of health markers in 1,554 people including: those over 105, between 100 and 105 and a group near their 100th birthday along with their offspring, these two elements emerged as consistent longevity predictors.

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This is an interesting story in one of Italy’s top 3 papers/sites about life extension science and millennials living beyond 100 years of age. It also features transhumanism: http://numerus.corriere.it/2015/08/06/i-millennials-camperan…ermettere/ and the English: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://…rev=search

Le tendenze della statistica ci dicono che chi oggi ha vent’anni ha ottime probabilità di arrivare ai cento in buona salute. Forse anche molto di più, se avranno successo le battaglie del Partito Transumanista che si presenta alle elezioni americane del 2016 con l’obiettivo di puntare più risorse sulla lotta all’invecchiamento. Ma come si configura un mondo di persone tanto longeve? L’allungamento della vita potrà beneficiare tutte le popolazioni o soltanto una fascia di privilegiati? Già oggi la speranza di vita nei Paesi più poveri è mediamente inferiore di 18 anni rispetto ai Paesi più ricchi e anche in Italia ci sono tre anni di differenza tra Milano e Napoli. E come si ridisegna un sistema sociale nel quale le persone vivranno venti o trent’anni più di oggi?

Un autobus rosso a forma di bara, con tanto di fiori finti sul tetto, percorre le strade degli Stati Uniti. Lo ha voluto il leader del Partito transumanista Zoltan Istvan, candidato alle elezioni presidenziali del 2016. Istvan non diventerà presidente, ma il suo messaggio non è banale: con il suo tour elettorale, vuole attirare l’attenzione sulla battaglia contro l’invecchiamento. Chiede più fondi per la ricerca e per le cure sanitarie, più carriere nelle attività tecnologiche, nell’intelligenza artificiale e nella medicina.

Continue reading “I Millennials camperanno cent’anni o anche più. Ma se lo potranno permettere?” »

Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.

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Wyss Institute scientists believe that synthetic gene drives, if researched responsibly, might be used in the future to render mosquito populations unable to transmit malaria (credit: CDC)

An international group of 26 experts, including prominent genetic engineers and fruit fly geneticists, has unanimously recommended a series of preemptive measures to safeguard gene drive research from accidental (or intentional) release from laboratories.

RNA-guided gene drives are genetic elements — found naturally in the genomes of most of the world’s organisms — that increase the chance of the gene they carry being passed on to all offspring. So they can quickly spread through populations if not controlled.

Continue reading “Move over, autonomous AI weapons, there’s a new risk in town: ‘gene drives’” »

Leukocyte (white blood cell) telomere length in study participants up to 115 years of age. Statistical regression lines belonging to these groups are indicated by the same color as the data. (credit: Yasumichi Arai et al./EBioMedicine)

Scientists say they have cracked the secret of why some people live a healthy and physically independent life over the age of 100: keeping inflammation down and telomeres long.

Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing in the U.K. and Keio University School of Medicine note that severe inflammation is part of many diseases in the old, such as diabetes or diseases attacking the bones or the body’s joints, and chronic inflammation can develop from any of them.

Continue reading “Scientists reveal secrets for reaching age 100 (or more)” »

Eating a group of specific foods — known as the MIND diet — may slow cognitive decline among aging adults, even when the person is not at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center.

This finding supplements a previous study by the research team, reported by KurzweiliAI in March, that found that the MIND diet may reduce a person’s risk in developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers’ new study shows that older adults who followed the MIND diet more rigorously showed an equivalent of being 7.5 years younger cognitively than those who followed the diet least. Results of the study were recently published online in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

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A human rejuvenation trial is set to go ahead in October, in which victims
of Alzheimer’s disease will be given a transfusion of young blood.

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Study uncovers a role for a protein that works as a master regulator of regeneration in the skin.

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