Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,709

President Donald Trump has signed a bill authorizing $19.5 billion in funding for NASA, which includes an increased focus on deep space exploration and a new goal of a manned mission to Mars.

The NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017, or S. 442, provides funding for fiscal year 2018, which begins October 1. It specifically appropriates money for NASA’s deep space exploration, including the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft, as well as for the ongoing medical monitoring and treatment of astronauts. It builds on the current public-private partnership for space, with commercial companies transporting American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and NASA focusing on deep space and the mission to Mars.

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“Yep, transforming health care and telepathy, those are the items on her to-do list. Jepsen plans to achieve both goals with a cheap wearable device that her engineers are now tinkering with in the lab. And then there’s the side benefit of reinvigorating the tired consumer electronics industry, which Jepsen thinks is due for the next big thing.

Jepsen was at SXSW to give a talk about Openwater, her new startup. While the company is still conducting R&D to decide on its first products, Jepsen feels the need to speak out now about what she’s building and how she thinks her technology could radically change society. She wants to give people fair warning and time to think about what’s coming. “I know it seems outlandish to be talking about telepathy, but it’s completely solid physics and mathematical principles—it’s in reach in the next three years,” she says.

Plus, she’s sick of stealth mode. “I haven’t been able to to talk about what I’ve been doing for five and half years while I was at Google and Facebook, and I don’t think secrecy is useful,” she says. She left Facebook in August, and in September she filed patents for her Openwater technology, which she expects to be issued any day now.

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Toronto-based eSight Corp. has launched a pair of electronic glasses that allow the legally blind to see. The eSight3 glasses use high-tech image processing to give those who are legally blind the chance to experience what it is like to have 20/20 vision.

Users can control a variety of functions that are important for vision, including magnification, contrast, brightness and focus. Videos projected onto two OLED screens in front of the eyes allow the user to see the different functions in action.

ESight glasses are ideal for a number of conditions, including for people who have optic nerve hypoplasia, ocular albanism, forms of glaucoma and more, according to the company.

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A popular science article discussing the imminent arrival of senescent cell removing therapies.

Imagine a world where you could take just a single pill for the treatment or prevention of several age-related diseases. Although still in the realms of science fiction, accumulating scientific data now suggests that despite their biological differences a variety of these diseases share a common cause: senescent cells. This has led scientists to find drugs that can destroy these cells.

When cells become damaged, they either self-destruct (apoptosis) or they lose their ability to grow and remain stuck within the body. These are the non-growing senescent cells that no longer carry out their tasks properly. They spew out chemicals that cause damage to cells nearby, sometimes turning them into “zombies” – hence why they are sometimes referred to as “zombie cells”. Eventually, the damage builds up so much that the function of bodily organs and tissues, such as skin and muscle, becomes impaired. At this point, we identify the changes as disease.

Depending on where these senescent cells gather within the body will determine which disease will develop. Senescent cells have now been shown to be linked to several diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis and cancer.

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Imagine a world where parents can give birth to superbabies with bones so strong they’re impervious to a surgical drill and a heart less prone to failure. A world where a child has DNA from three parents, not two. A world where it’s possible for a woman to have her favorite movie star’s child simply by collecting a few of his skin cells. Genetic technology is making it all a reality, horrifying some and heartening others.

Reproductive advances are arriving so rapidly, we’ve already entered the realm of science-fiction and are on the verge of making truly astounding leaps.

For more, look to the new book “The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids — and the Kids We Have” by Bonnie Rochman.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: For decades, researchers have worked to create a better and more direct connection between a human brain and a computer to improve the lives of people who are paralyzed or have severe limb weakness from diseases like ALS.

Those advances have been notable, but now the work is yielding groundbreaking results.

Special correspondent Cat Wise has the story.

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