Tag Archives | life extension

Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?

By on November 29, 2012 in News 5

PSM V33 D765 TurritopsisSo there might just be something positive to say about jellyfish after all. Nathaniel reports for the New York Times:

After more than 4,000 years — almost since the dawn of recorded time, when Utnapishtim told Gilgamesh that the secret to immortality lay in a coral found on the ocean floor — man finally discovered eternal life in 1988. He found it, in fact, on the ocean floor. The discovery was made unwittingly by Christian Sommer, a German marine-biology student in his early 20s. He was spending the summer in Rapallo, a small city on the Italian Riviera, where exactly one century earlier Friedrich Nietzsche conceived “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”: “Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again. . . .”

Sommer was conducting research on hydrozoans, small invertebrates that, depending on their stage in the life cycle, resemble either a jellyfish or a soft coral.

… Read the rest

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“Joseph Campbell’s Vision for the Internet Age”

By on September 10, 2012 in News 5

Picture: Joan Halifax (CC)

Beams and Struts examines the Singularity in a Campbellian context. The results are fascinating, even if you’re of a mind that Ray Kurzweil’s vision of a Geek Rapture is more wishful thinking than likely future.

Joseph Campbell would have been the first to point out the dangers of reading such science fiction as literal truth. In Campbell’s work, mythologies are never reduced to mere prophecy, belief, or individual religious sect; instead, stories often point toward underlying psychological phenomena that have universal significance and arise from a universal source, despite manifesting in specific cultural contexts. In other words, the cast of characters may change, but the essential plot remains the same. Read in this context, The Singularity could simply be a contemporary expression of an ancient mythological motif: the quest to cheat death. This theme, central to the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic, has been around for at least 3,000 years in literature.

… Read the rest

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Bucky’s Balls Can Double Your Lifespan

By on August 8, 2012 in News 11

Photo: Jynto (CC)

Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) was the quintessential polymath: inventor, researcher, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, architect, teacher, archivist, author, social theorist, futurist, mystic & poet.

Best known for inventing (or more accurately ‘discovering’) the Geodesic Dome. *There were a few earlier domes built but no evidence the designers understood the engineering & mathematical implications of the shape*. He didn’t live to see the discovery of C-60, formally named Buckminsterfullerine in his honor, or the novel variant fullerines which, as minimum-case geometric shapes, are the essential building blocks of nanotechnology.

Fullerines were discovered in the lab, but quickly thereafter found to be ubiquitous in nature. These little 60-atom carbon soccer-balls are produced every time you strike a match or smoke a joint. They are also seen in deep space in large quantities (created in stellar explosions), and may have a cosmic function in kickstarting self-replicatory life processes.

Now the word is in … Buckyballs mixed in olive oil are like a super-mega antioxidant.… Read the rest

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On The Amazing Benefits Of Mind Uploading

By on May 17, 2012 in News 39
Photo: Kemitsv (CC)

Photo: Kemitsv (CC)

Music and paying the gas bill have been digitalized, so you knew this was next. How can we stop abusing the environment, give ourselves superintelligence, and live forever? H+ Magazine on the inevitable necessity of switching from spongy flesh brains to uploaded ones:

Universal mind uploading, or universal uploading for short, is the concept (I’m not sure who originated it –if you know, say so in the comments), that the technology of mind uploading will eventually become universally adopted by all who can afford it, similar to the adoption of modern agriculture, hygiene, and permanent dwellings. Some futurists, such as myself, see the eventuality as plausible by as early as 2050.

Mind uploading would involve simulating a human brain in a computer in enough detail that the “simulation” becomes, for all practical purposes, a perfect copy and experiences consciousness, just like protein-based human minds. If functionalism is true, as many cognitive scientists and philosophers believe, then all the features of human consciousness that we know and love — including all our memories, personality, and sexual quirks — would be preserved through the transition…

Read More: H+ Magazine… Read the rest

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How Our Terror Of Death Forms Our Beliefs

By on March 23, 2012 in News 75

stoppingVia New Humanist, Steve Cave on how an obsession with immortality shapes everything we do, believe, and create:

A group of American psychologists have discovered a simple way of turning ordinary people into fundamentalists and ideologues. It can be done anywhere and in a matter of minutes. It is just this: the researchers remind these ordinary folks that they will one day die.

The researchers behind this work were testing the hypothesis that most of what we do we do in order to protect us from the terror of death; what they call “Terror Management Theory”. Our sophisticated worldviews, they believe, exist primarily to convince us that we can defeat the Reaper.

Atheists and agnostics should not think that they are free from such comforting illusions of eternity. The psychologists, psychiatrists and anthropologists who developed Terror Management Theory have shown that almost all ideologies, from patriotism to communism to celebrity culture, function similarly in shielding us from death’s approach.

… Read the rest

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Easter Island May Hold Anti-Aging Miracle Drug

By on July 8, 2011 in News 13

easter-island-head-289121-swThe secret to slowing down aging is in the soil? Easter Island continues to grow spookier and spookier. The Independent reports:

A drug originating on Easter Island, the mysterious South Pacific home of a lost statue-building people, may become the first substance to slow down human aging, new research indicates.

Rapamycin, a pharmacological product used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, has been found to extend the lifespan of mice by up to 38 per cent, raising the possibility that it may delay ageing in people.

Rapamycin is a bacterial product originally found in a soil sample from Easter Island. Originally developed as an anti-fungal agent, rapamycin was soon found to have powerful immuno-suppressant properties and thus be valuable for preventing rejection of transplanted organs. Now, however, it has been shown to affect the ageing of mice – the first time that this has ever been shown with a mammal.

… Read the rest

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The Seven Essentials For Longer Life Spans

By on January 26, 2010 in News 3

From the Seattle Times/AP:

Here are the seven secrets to a long life: Stay away from cigarettes. Keep a slender physique. Get some exercise. Eat a healthful diet and keep your cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar in check.

Research shows that most 50-year-olds who do that can live an additional 40 years free of stroke and heart disease, two of the most common killers, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association. The heart association published the advice online Wednesday in the journal Circulation.

The group also introduced an online quiz to help people gauge how close they are to the ideal. Tips are offered for those who fall short.

“These seven factors — if you can keep them ideal or control them — end up being the fountain of youth for your heart,” said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, a cardiologist who was lead author of the statement.

… Read the rest

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Quest for a Long Life Gains Scientific Respect

By on September 29, 2009 in News 0

Lee Hoffman, our tech guru and CEO of the excellent content aggregator Veritocracy, alerted us to this New York Times article about anti-aging science becoming mainstream:

BOSTON — Who would have thought it? The quest for eternal life, or at least prolonged youthfulness, has now migrated from the outer fringes of alternative medicine to the halls of Harvard Medical School.

At a conference on aging held here last week, the medical school’s dean, Jeffrey Flier, was to be seen greeting participants who ranged from members of the 120 club (they intend to live at least that long) to devotees of very low calorie diets.

The heavyweight at the conference was Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. The company is developing drugs that mimic resveratrol, a chemical found in some red wines. Resveratrol has been found to activate proteins called sirtuins, from which the company derives its name. Activation of sirtuins is thought to help the body ride out famines.

… Read the rest

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