In my last post, “Robots: The Next Generation” I presented three options to help with the depopulation problem Europe and Japan are facing. Option 1: encourage your population to have more kids (nothing draconian – use tax credits). Option 2: open up the gates to immigration hoping for a melting pot effect (this is not […]
I caught only the last few minutes of Aubrey de Grey on 60 minutes last night, with the “opposing view” guy making the case that since some phony-baloney life extension elixir sold to celebrities 50 years ago didn’t work, blah blah blah. Actually, he wasn’t so bad. His defense of Aubrey’s approach was right on […]
It’s important: Researcher John Schloendorn is still looking for soil samples from around the world to screen for useful bacterial enzymes as a part of his work on LysoSENS research. He, and other researchers, are looking for enzymes that can break down age-related by-products that accumulate in and around cells, leading to a range of […]
Yesterday I got word that my good friend Maynard Blake had died. Maynard had a brain tumor removed several months ago and had had clear MRIs ever since — the cancer was not coming back. However, the recovery was just too much for him. In the end, it was a host of little infections culminating […]
This is one of our worst, in action. The better we understand it, the more resourceful we will be in overcoming it. Via GeekPress.
This is interesting: Alzheimer’s disease may be a new, third type of diabetes that shares common features of type 1 and type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. Researchers found that insulin and the cells that process it in the brain drop sharply in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. They also found that […]
…I’m bummed: Predictors for exceptional human longevity may include birth order, place of birth and early-life living conditions, according to a recent Society of Actuaries (SOA) study that suggests there are several factors linked to one’s longevity. The data indicates that first-born daughters are three times more likely to survive to age 100 compared to […]
Our good friend Reason reports on an exciting development: $1 million donation just received by the Methuselah Mouse Prize: Yes, you read that right: Mprize, $1 million donation, and I have it from Dave Gobel that the cashier’s check just cleared today. Wow. This was somewhat out of the blue, and certainly far ahead of […]
The series finale for Six Feet Under aired earlier this week on HBO. SFU isn’t really the kind of TV show we talk about here at the Speculist. Not to say that it wasn’t a good show, or that it never got into speculist subject matter. As a matter of fact, it did. Twice. The […]
Randall Parker has obviously been busy lately, keeping his FuturePundit blog up to date with some very encouraging developments on the stem cell front. Earlier this week, Randall reported on how the notion that stem cells will play a major role in soon-to-come life extension efforts is gaining broad acceptance among researchers. He quotes at […]