Lifeboat Foundation

In March 2023, MIT Technology Review revealed that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (ChatGPT), was the mystery investor behind the $180 million investment into stealth startup Retro Biosciences, a biotech company with the ambition of “adding 10 years to the human lifespan.” This investment marks the latest tech entrepreneur expressing their interest in longevity science and a new connection with innovative AI technology.

According to February 2023 reports, AI is continuing to gain traction in healthcare applications. Currently, the market is estimated at $14.6 billion (USD) with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.6%, with solutions spread across various healthcare fields, such as patient data and risk analysis, precision medicine, cybersecurity, lifestyle management, and drug discovery.

The increasing convergence of AI technology and longevity science is sparking advancements in the sector, with established businesses, start-ups, and researchers utilizing the technology. Most recently, scientists explored how ChatGPT, an AI-based language model, was able to predict Alzheimer’s in 80% of cases when analyzing speech. However, it is not the only implementation.

Stem cells (SCs) are undifferentiated cells which can proliferate indefinitely or differentiate into progenitor cells and end-phase differentiated cells (becoming pluripotent) (Mayo, 2021; Slack, 2022). Human embryonic SCs (hE-SCs) are found in the inner cell mass of the blastocyst; h E-SC research raises ethical concerns (Lo and Parham, 2009), and h E-SC transplantation in vivo can lead to the formation of large tumors called teratomas (Blum and Benvenisty, 2008).

Small numbers of adult SCs are found in some organ “niches”, including the bone marrow, where hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPC) replenish blood and immune cells. In 1958, Mathe et al. (1959) successfully performed the first adult SC therapy on five workers who had received high-dose accidental irradiation at the Vinca Nuclear Institute in Yugoslavia. After transfusions and grafts of homologous adult bone marrow, all workers survived (Mathe et al., 1959).

For years, the human umbilical cord was a waste material and, unlike h E-SCs, its use does not raise ethical concerns. In 1988, Gluckman et al. (1989) successfully performed the first human cord blood transplant in a child with Fanconi’s anemia. Since then, numerous public and private cord blood banks have been established worldwide for the cryopreservation of cord blood in view of its transplantation (Gluckman, 2011).

In a recent study published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, researchers provide an overview of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) in treating recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (rCDI).

Study: Fecal microbiota transplantation for the treatment of recurrent Clostridioides difficile (Clostridium difficile). Image Credit: Prrrettty / Shutterstock.com.

The robotic dog is officially named Bergh, after Henry Bergh, who founded the ASPCA.

Bergh weighs 70 pounds and can go up stairs. It can fall or get knocked over and get back up. It can even open doors.

Last week, Bergh was put into action for the first time at the building collapse. Officials say there was no way to know if other people were trapped. Bergh entered the first floor and second floor, going about 25 feet into the building and stopping so the operator could use a thermal camera to detect heat. One of the robotic dogs was able to find the garage’s general manager, 59-year-old Willis Moore, who was killed.

In Big Tech’s AI chatbot race, Meta may be up to the task.

OpenAI started the chatbot trend with ChatGPT, Microsoft brought it to search with the Bing chatbot, and Google is following suit with Bard and Project Magi.

Wow. Spoiler, quasars are galaxies colliding and part of the gases reacting with black holes in the middle of the galaxies. Does that mean we’re all doomed though we could galaxy hop in the distant future I suppose. And the rest of the dispersed gases will take millions or was it billions of years to make new stars again. Kinda reminds me of human life. We are born only to return to the Earth.

Scientists have unlocked one of the biggest mysteries of quasars—the brightest, most powerful objects in the universe—by discovering that they are ignited by galaxies colliding.

First discovered 60 years ago, quasars can shine as brightly as a trillion stars packed into a volume the size of our solar system. In the decades since they were first observed, what could trigger such powerful activity has remained a mystery. New work led by scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire has now revealed that it is a consequence of galaxies crashing together.

Continue reading “Astronomers solve the 60-year mystery of quasars, the most powerful objects in the universe” »

You can only read this with chrome or a browser that translates to English unless you speak Portuguese. Fascinating read about artificial uteruses in the possible future bought to bring peace to the abortion debate or not, and as a safety measure for an apocalyptic event. This was shared by Zoltan, I think that’s his name, a transhumanist that at one time was hoping to be the first transhumanist elected as president and to base decisions on science or something like that. It’s been a while but he wanted equality and ethics through science/transhumanists goals.

O útero artificial está chegando, para o bem e para o mal. Feministas radicais já lutam pelo direito de matar seus fetos.

Continue reading “‘A gravidez fora do corpo está perto de se tornar realidade’, por Dagomir Marquezi” »

Machines that consist of two coupled biomolecules trade thermodynamic efficiency for operating speed.

Liquid-crystal elastomers (LCEs) are shape-shifting materials that stretch or squeeze when stimulated by an external input such as heat, light, or a voltage. Designing these materials to produce desired shapes is a challenging math problem, but Daniel Castro and Hillel Aharoni from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, have now provided an analytical solution for flat materials that shape-shift within a single plane—like font-changing letters on a page [1]. Such “planar” designs could help in producing rods that change their cross section (from, say, round to square) without buckling.

LCEs consist of networks of polymer fibers containing liquid-crystal molecules. When exposed to a stimulus, the molecules align in a way that causes the material to shrink or extend in a predefined direction—called the director. Researchers can design an LCE by choosing the director orientation at each point in the material. However, calculating the “director field” for an arbitrary shape change is difficult, so approximate methods are typically used.

Castro and Aharoni focused on a specific design problem: how to create an LCE that stretches only in two dimensions. These planar LCEs often suffer from residual stress that causes the material to wrinkle or buckle out of the plane. The researchers showed that finding a buckle-free design is similar to a well-known mathematical problem that has been studied in other contexts, such as minimizing the mass of load-carrying structures. Taking inspiration from these previous studies, Castro and Aharoni provided a method for exactly deriving the director field for any desired planar LCE. “Our results could be readily implemented by a wide range of experimentalists, as well as by engineers and designers,” Aharoni says.