Small steps towards infinity

move along...

2014-02-02T21:45:00.004+01:00

I now post stuff mainly at the google+ page. In case you are curious check out Healthy Life Extension over there.

Introducing hourglass, a blog carnival

2008-07-08T22:29:00.002+02:00

With the ever expanding horizon of the blogosphere it becomes more and more difficult to find and appreciate the vast amount of excellent posts pertinent to your favorite topic. Blog carnivals are a possibility to aggregate and distribute noteworthy postings and also bring less well known blogs into the light. As a commemoration of already two years of engaged blogging on biogerontology topics Ouroboros brings us a brand new carnival... the hourglass. Highly recommended reading.

Oh, one small thing...

2008-07-08T22:08:00.003+02:00

If you should be so inclined i propose to browse my public recommended (i.e. shared) blog posts list where everything i mark as interesting gets posted.

Burnout?

2008-07-08T21:54:00.002+02:00

After so few posts? Nah, it's just that while i was on vacation someone felt like a little arson. So, well. My home went up in flames... Well, a week ago the resided plans for the reconstruction were approved and now work is in progress. The thing complicating work is that it is a sort of historically valuable building so lot's of considerations go into how one rebuilds it and what is allowed to do. The good part is that when i will take over the building from my parents it'll be redone for approximately 1.5 million dollars. Nothing to sneeze at. Yeah well, so you know why i have been posting a whole lot less. Can't promise much for the future since i am lazy and and housebuilding plus heavy workload at my day job keep me quite busy. anyone wants nice pictures of the house burning etc? I got some on flickr :-).

What will be the next steps in medicine lenghtening your life?

2008-01-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

(apologies for not posting... real life took it's toll. Oh and i'll be a way a few weeks on vacation so not mucho posts to come soon either).

Work is in progress on various fronts related to life extension and some work looks rather promising. What would be the first to come to clinical use and what will be the impact?

Certainly there is a big push and rapid development in the field of regenerative medicine. Already beating heart tissue has been grown in the lab and using a heart as scaffold a full heart has been grown. Vascularisation is in my view the leading problem in this area but clearly progress is well afoot. Say 15 more years and many applications should be at least very close to market in my educated guess.

Also using patient derived stem cells either by apharesis, skin stem cells or possibly soon enough by dedifferentiating cells from a biopsy plenty of clinical applications become possible resulting in vast improvements in cardiovascular disease, dystrophie or ataxia to name but a few. First commercializations are in progress and applications are close to market.

So life extension without touching the underlying processes of aging in a systemic and systematic way is plausible. Many will interject that these steps that at are in progress of being made available regardless of what biogerontology brings to the table will maybe up the life expectancy by another decade but then everyone will develop Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other failure modes of the brain. Well, fortunately we seems to make a lot of progress in these domains too so maybe the most apparent ways in which the brain goes will be treatable in the same time frame? Certainly there is reason for hope.

Living Forever: The Longevity Revolution

2008-01-12T16:55:00.000+01:00

Consider that in labs we can get yeast to live 10x as long. Next we will be able to make mice live longer and then people will realize aging is malleable and will demand tackling this next level in medicine.

Matching challange at the Methuselah Foundation

2008-01-02T23:33:00.000+01:00

If you have been considering donating for research in the Methuselah Foundation's Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) research program then now is an excellent opportunity. Ryan Scott has set up a $100,000 matching fund for all research donations made in 2008, together with Peter Thiel's $3 million matching fund this means means that all your SENS research donations will be tripled - a $100 donation becomes $300 for new research into longevity medicine.

Add to that the free book everyone who donates more then 100$ receives. The book by itself is a recommended read if you are interested in why we age and what might be done to avoid it or rather what can and in my view should be done to enable us to repair the damage that accumulates in our bodies.

So go ahead, donate and help making this world a better place. I have.

So i'm a slightly left leaning libertarian

2007-12-28T22:24:00.000+01:00

Well at least according to this online test. somehow doesn't surprise me. I guess i'm on a long term trend toward more libertarian and approaching more the middle ground between left and right but time will tell...

why don't you take the test yourself and see if you agree with the results?

Dependency on hydrocarbon fuels

2007-12-25T16:12:00.000+01:00

People fear peak oil and certainly whether or or not a nation has oil affects foreign policy towards that country. However more recently the public at large is concerned about hydrocarbons because of suspected influences on the climate and the impact of price on the economy. Even though the influence of the oil price on the economy at least of Europe and the US has sunken it still is a major factor. So clearly if we want to limit our negative influence on the ecology of our planet and reduce the unhealthy influence on politics and thus ultimately the wellbeing of a large number of people we need to reduce our dependency on hydrocarbon fuels.

Fortunately progress in science offers tantalizing hope for amelioration and indeed there are many developments that combined will help overcome this addiction.

Breakthroughs on the horizon like room temperature superconductors allow transporting electricity over large distances without the loss of todays technology. Also with the advent of less then 1$ per watt and better photovoltaics energy production is less expensive then coal.
Combined with 10 times better energy storage in batteries used for instance in plugin hybrid cars or buffering stations enabling local distribution of electric power in microgrids make vast loses of power in maintaining the local power grid stability a thing of the past and thus allow to reduce standby power from coal power plants or make then altogether unnecessary.
Power sources like wind power for instance in the form of the maglev turbine can be combined with all these advances.

What about other uses for oil etc in producing fertilizer and plastic? Well, for fertilizing soil there exist even better techniques we still need to figure out but at least we think there are a lot better ways just look at terra preta soil and if all fails why not take co2 and turn it into fuel?

This is just a cursory look at a few developments shaping our future. Let us strive to reduce our footprint and stop the destruction of our ecology with futile and counterproductive activities like bio-fuel.

Science's 'Breakthrough of the Year': Human genetic variation

2007-12-20T23:21:00.000+01:00

Further steps towards personalized treatment and incidentally also unblocking the stall in new drug development will in my view be facilitated and mediated largely by the rapidly advancing possibilities in personal genomics. Science recognizes the importance of us not all being alike and indeed significant hurdles hinder the market entry of promising drugs, simply because they only work in some and not all but such is the fate of many advanced treatments since they now grow vastly more targeted and thus have a not only a higher potential for positive patient outcomes but also for negative outcomes and without personal genomics it simply will be next to impossible to bring the next (well maybe a few steps more removed) generations of drugs to market. Fortunately where there is a market there is someone willing to sell. Among others 23andme offering basic scans for 1000$. Of course there are different offerings and competition and quality will grow at the same time that prices will erode. Ten years hence this will be far from uncommon i suppose, at least among people committed to their health.

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture 2007 - Craig Venter on BCC

2007-12-17T21:15:00.000+01:00

Craig Venter talks on how he sees genomics will shape the next century. He truly is one of the pioneers and more power to him and others working on improving the human condition.

Brake-by-wire electro car

2007-12-16T17:51:00.000+01:00

Michelin demoed a brake-by-wire electric car at Shanghai Challange Bibendum. Developed at the swiss Givisiez engineering site the Michelin Concept has some remarkable features.

The Michelin Concept takes this one step further and uses a brake-by-wire system in conjunction with the motor for both stopping and going. It has no conventional brakes, but can come to a halt from 100km/h in less than three seconds. To put things in perspective, most supercars like the Lamborghini Gallardo take at least six seconds to do the same!

What further sets apart the car demoed is that always keeps the fuselage upright by actively managing position etc however you can set it to work like a tilting train (think the italien Pendolino or the swiss ICN) so in a curve it would tilt up to 10 degrees to improve comfort for the passengers. All propulsion and braking is done in wheel with the electric drive which automatically enabled advanced features like anti -lock braking etc since it all boils down to controlling traction of the four individual wheels. It is not entirely new a concept since a smaller startup did a remodeled smart roadster demo a few years ago (would have loved to own *that* car) but now it is so much closer to market.

For me it should also be able to drive from start to finish unassisted but yeah.

More on Bussard style Fusion

2007-12-16T12:18:00.000+01:00

Thanks to M. Simon here a few links to more material on Bussard reactors

Mr. Fusion
Bussard Reactor Funded
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
Dr. Bussard's Final Interview
Dr. Robert W. Bussard Has Passed

Fusion costs billions of dollars to develop and will take another 50 years. NOT

2007-12-15T15:32:00.000+01:00

Apart from maybe ill named phenomena like "cold fusion" there still are other venues for achieving vastly safer, more powerfull and cheaper energy production.

Watch this 90 minutes Google TechTalk on achieving fusion power by the late Dr Robert Bussard.

Also this TechTalk by Eric J. Lerner actively developing this technology

"it's unfair...

2007-12-15T15:19:00.000+01:00

...they struggle all their life for their golden years and then they loose everything."
Michio Kaku on his parents dying of Alzheimer's disease.

Discover the potential of the biomedical revolution in the excellent BBC 4 Production "Visions of the future". Thankfully someone posted the three parts on youtube. Part 7 to 13 cover the episode on Biotech while Part 1-6 are about enhancing intelligence and part 14 to 19 cover nanotechnology.

On life extension

2007-12-12T22:42:00.000+01:00

Many would argue that we pursue life extension for so long and yet there has not been made any headway. They will conclude thus that there is no point in hoping for any results in our lifetime.

Now i personally am cautiously optimistic. That thus far nothing much has been produced is no indication of future progress. I see the advance of preconception shattering technologies as following a theme of emergence. Much like forces of nature man underestimates the at first slow and gradual progress in any field until finally a threshold is reached and the advance is so quick and the effect is so pervasive that no one can escape and the suddenness of events overwhelms the individual. This is in part due to the human mind being ill adapted at extrapolating close to exponential growth in a field of science or what ever and the effects.

I think we can feel already the subsonic rumble of the waves of change potentially leading to vastly improved medical abilities, enhanced intelligence, nano technology and the profound changes we will witness.

MagLev wind turbine as a alternative energy source.

2007-12-12T19:49:00.000+01:00

Already in construction the MagLev wind turbine offers markedly improved energy production compared to regular wind turbines. Combine this with the perspective on high efficiency lighting, improved solar cells and plugin-in hybrids the future looks bright. Even though i do not agree with much of the climate debate i still feel that we have to reduce our footprint on the environment, use renewable energy sources and protect the environment as much as is compatible with modern life.

Time on Top 10 Scientific Discoveries

2007-12-12T19:45:00.001+01:00

In the informative article the stem cell breakthroughs of late including Shinya Yamanaka and James Thomson's of late make it to number one in the list but there's more.

The beginning is a very delicate time.

2007-12-12T19:39:00.000+01:00

Hm, since i spend way too much time mailing links to interesting sites to plenty folks i guess it is smarter to just go ahead and collect interesting stuff from all ends and aggregate some here occasionally. Maybe this useful maybe not. At any rate, do as you please and read if you like. Oh and excuse my initial (i hope) ineptitude ad using blogger *g.

Oh, maybe you are familiar with the post's title...