Monthly Archives: July 2017

Zurich-Based Bank Offers Bitcoin And Crypto Asset Management Services – CryptoCoinsNews

Posted: July 30, 2017 at 1:52 pm

Falcon Private Bank has become the first Swiss bank to offer customers bitcoin and crypto asset management services, in cooperation with Bitcoin Suisse AG, an asset manager and financial service provider specializing in crypto-assets. The bank allows customers to buy, hold and sell bitcoin.

Bank customers will be able to buy and liquidate bitcoin through the banks e-banking platform or their account manager. They will be able to monitor their holdings in custody directly in their online portfolio and on their account statements.

A bitcoin ATM will be available in the lobby of the banks Zurich branch.

The Swiss Financial Markets Regulatory Authority has approved the product.Bitcoin Suisse AG will provide the infrastructure and serve as the AML-regulated broker for the bank.

Falcon Private Bank, based in Zurich, has 14.6 billion CHF of client assets (31.12.2016) and has locations in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, London and Luxembourg.

As the banks crypto-asset broker and infrastructure partner, Bitcoin Suisse AG has assisted in providing a full suite of services to acquire, safeguard, track and trade crypto-assets for both institutional and individual clients.

Bitcoin Suisse AG, launched in 2013, offers a range of services for individuals, companies and institutions in the crypto-financial market, including brokerage, trading, asset management, ICO services, software integrations and consulting solutions.

Nicolas Nikolajsen, CEO of Bitcoin Suisse AG, said:

A bank offering crypto-assets is a game changer, as it gives institutional clients and high net worth individuals a counterparty in regard to crypto-assets upon which they can rely: a regulated Swiss bank.

Bitcoin Suisse AG also provides the crypto-payment solution infrastructure for the town of Zug, which in July 2016 became the first public entity worldwide to accept bitcoin and other crypto-assets as payment for public services.

Also read: Bitcoin Suisse founder: European banks will soon offer bitcoin wallets

With the recent growth in market capitalization and liquidity, bitcoin and the other major crypto-assets offer a way to diversify cash holdings. While the volatility of crypto-assets has historically been very high, the trend in the past few years has been very positive, as adaption has grown, with the Falcon Private Bank offering now definitively bridging the gap between crypto- and traditional finance, Nikolajsensaid.

This past year, high net worth individuals and institutions have increasingly demanded access to directly invest and diversify into bitcoin through a trustworthy and regulated financial institution, and we are excited to be a part of realizing this demand through our collaboration with Falcon Private Bank.

Switzerland is not only historically one of the most important and trustworthy financial markets in the world, it is also currently at the forefront of fintech development, and has probably the most progressive regulatory framework for crypto-finance anywhere in the world, he added. That is particularly interesting for both established companies and start-ups engaging in the crypto-financial space, since the transparent and progressive regulatory approach of the Swiss financial market supervising authority, the FINMA, has created clear rules of engagement for dealing with digital finance.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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Anticipating upgraded spaceships, SpaceX builds final first-generation Dragon cargo craft – Spaceflight Now

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File photo of a Dragon spacecraft at SpaceXs headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX

The Dragon supply ship set for liftoff from Florida next month was the last of SpaceXs first-generation cargo capsules off the production line, meaning future logistics deliveries to the International Space Station will fly on recycled spacecraft until a new Dragon variant is ready.

SpaceX launched a reused Dragon cargo craft on its last commercial supply shipment to the space station in June, and officials said then that the next Dragon mission now scheduled for launch next month will use a newly-manufactured capsule. Plans for subsequent resupply missions were still under review, NASA and SpaceX officials said at the time.

But a presentation to the NASA Advisory Councils human exploration and operations committee Monday by Sam Scimemi, director of the space station program at NASA Headquarters, suggested SpaceXs next Dragon spacecraft would be the last one to be built.

SpaceX clarified Friday that the company expects the upcoming automated logistics mission will be the last to fly with a newly-manufactured Dragon 1 spacecraft. SpaceX has a contract with NASA for 20 commercial resupply launches through 2019, followed by at least six more Dragon cargo missions through 2024 under a separate follow-on agreement.

NASA has also contracted with Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada Corp. for the stations cargo needs.

Another iteration of the Dragon spaceship, with a different shape and other significant changes, is under development at SpaceX. NASA confirmed last week that the first unpiloted orbital demonstration flight of the Dragon 2, also known as the Crew Dragon in its human-rated configuration, would slip from late 2017 until at least February 2018.

A second test flight scheduled for June 2018 will carry two astronauts to the space station and back to Earth. NASA and SpaceX intend to have the Crew Dragon ready and certified for regular crew rotations to and from the orbiting research complex by the end of next year.

Meanwhile, a simpler version of the Dragon 2 capsule will also take over SpaceXs cargo delivery duties. Officials have not identified when the resupply runs will switch to the new spacecraft type, but the changeover could happen when SpaceX begins flying missions under its second cargo contract in late 2019 or early 2020, or sooner.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said July 19 that there was little difference between the cost of a new Dragon capsule and the cost to refurbish the Dragon that launched to the space station June 3 and returned to Earth a month later.

The SpaceX internal accounting said that it cost us almost as much as building a Dragon 1 from scratch, but I expect our internal accounting wasnt counting certain things, Musk said at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington.

The Dragon that flew the last mission to the space station spent 34 days in orbit in 2014. Engineers replaced the ships heat shield and batteries, which were vulnerable to salt water damage when it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.But the hull, thrusters, harnessing, propellant tanks, and some avionics boxes were original, officials said.

This had a lot of rework, Musk said. The next one, we think theres a decent shot of maybe being 50 percent of the cost of a new one.

SpaceX hopes to launch the its next supply ship on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as Aug. 13 or 14, ahead of an Aug. 17 spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts that will release several small satellites from the space station. The deployments will prevent the Dragon cargo craft from approaching the space station for several days as a safety precaution until station managers have good tracking of the Russian satellites.

Technicians at Cape Canaveral will load more than 7,000 pounds (about 3,300 kilograms) of hardware, crew provisions and experiments into the Dragon spacecraft in the coming weeks, including a NASA-funded instrument to investigate the origins of cosmic rays.

If the SpaceX launch is not off the ground by the middle of August, it could be grounded several days until officials ensure the Russian satellites are well away from the station. Two other launches from Cape Canaveral in the second half of August an Atlas 5 flight set for around Aug. 20 and a Minotaur 4 rocket mission Aug. 25 could complicate SpaceXs scheduling in the event of a delay.

The mid-August launch will be the 12th time SpaceX has sent equipment and experiments to the space station since regular Dragon resupply flights began in October 2012. Counting two Dragon test flights in December 2010 and May 2012, the reused capsule that launched twice, and next months mission, SpaceX built 13 capsules based on the first-generation Dragon design.

After the upcoming cargo flight, SpaceXs next Dragon mission is scheduled for launch in November with a previously-flown capsule.

SpaceX will continue building unpressurized trunk modules for space station deliveries. Those sections, which hold solar panels and carry large external experiment payloads, are disposed at the end of each Dragon mission to burn up in the atmosphere.

Musk confirmed SpaceX will eventually use the Dragon 2 spacecraft for all crew and cargo missions to the space station.

The only thing cargo Dragon wont have is the launch escape system, Musk said, noting that the capsule will still be able to separate from a failing rocket. I think, most likely, even cargo Dragon 2 will be able to survive a booster anomaly. It will have everything the crew Dragon 2 has, except the (abort) thrusters, but I think, in most cases actually, it will be able to survive re-entry and keep the cargo safe.

Dragon 2 being used for both cargo and crew allows us to iterate with just a little more risk on the cargo version and prove it out before theres crew on-board, Musk said.

The SpaceX founder said the next-generation Dragon will not have the capability for propulsive returns to land as originally intended, instead returning to splashdowns at sea.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Scientists, theologians ponder if biology and religion go together – Crux: Covering all things Catholic

Posted: at 1:49 pm

OXFORD, England When Charles Darwin published his landmark theory of evolution by natural selection in the 19th century, religious leaders were confronted with a powerful challenge to some of their oldest beliefs about the origins of life.

Then evolutionary theory was expanded with the insights of genetics, which gave further support for a scientific and secular view of how humans evolved.

Faith and tradition were forced further onto the defensive.

Now, exciting progress in biology in recent decades may be building up a third new phase in the scientific explanation of life, according to thinkers gathered at a University of Oxford conference last week (July 19-22).

Although this 21st-century wave has no single discovery to mark its arrival, new insights into developing technologies such as genetic engineering and human enhancement may end up giving another important boost to the belief that science has (or eventually will have) the answers to lifes mysteries.

Some scientists, theologians and philosophers see in this ever deeper knowledge of how genes work a possible alternative to the more reductive approach to evolution one that brings in a broader view that also considers the influence of the environment.

Dr. Donovan Schaefer. (Credit: Photo courtesy of University of Oxford.)

Unlike the earlier views, which seemed to lead toward either agnosticism or atheism, the theologians see this new biology or holistic biology as more compatible with religious belief.

Weve added definition to the picture of evolution that has deepened and enriched our understanding of biological processes, Donovan Schaefer, an Oxford lecturer in science and religion who co-organized the conference, told the opening session of the July 19-22 meeting.

But he added: It would be naive to imagine that the grander questions about biology, religion, the humanities and evolutionary theory generally have been put to death.

The achievements on their list include new fields like epigenetics, the science of how genes are turned on or off to influence our bodies, and advances in cognitive and social sciences that yield ever more detailed empirical research into how we behave.

Waiting in the wings are new technologies such as genome editing, which can modify human genes to repair, enhance or customize human beings. Scientists in China are believed to have already genetically modified human embryos and the first known attemptto do so in the United States was reported this week (July 26).

Schaefer compared todays deeper understanding of biology to the higher resolution that photographers enjoy now that photography has advanced from film to digital images.

Genes once thought to be fairly mechanical in influencing human development leading to the my genes made me do it kind of thinking have been found to be part of complex systems that can act in response to a persons environment.

The Radcliffe Camera, a reading room of the nearby Bodleian Library, at University of Oxford on July 22, 2017. The unique building originally housed the Radcliffe Science Library. All Souls College is in the background. (Credit: RNS photo by Tom Heneghan.)

Since scientists succeeded in sequencing the genome in the late 1990s, they have found that epigenetic markers that regulate patterns of gene expression can reflect outside influences on a body.

Even simpler living objects such as plants contain a complex internal genetic system that governs their growth according to information they receive from outside.

To theologians who see a new biology emerging, this knowledge points to a more holistic system than scientists have traditionally seen, one more open to some divine inspiration for life.

In this view, the fact that epigenetic markers can bring outside pressures to bear on the genome deep inside a human means genetics is not a closed system, but part of the wider sweep of nature in which they, as religious thinkers, also see Gods hand.

Professor Alister McGrath, director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion. (Credit: Photo courtesy of University of Oxford.)

Nature is so complex and rich and that prompts questions about why on earth is this the case? If youre an atheist, how do you explain a universe that seems to have the capacity to produce these things in the first place? asked Alister McGrath, an Oxford theologian who is director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion that hosted the conference.

This in turn opened a space for theologians to augment the discussion about the new biology, he said.

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at New Yorks City College with doctorates in genetics and evolutionary biology, also said scientism the idea that science can answer all lifes important questions was too limited.

Science informs and grounds certain philosophical positions; it doesnt determine them, he said. But the data cant settle ethical questions.

Pigliucci agrees with the trend to use the evolutionary paradigm to analyze fields outside of biology, including topics such as ethics and morality.

The life sciences tell us that the building blocks of what we call morality are actually found presumably they were selected for in nonhuman social primates, he said. Science gives you an account of what otherwise looks like magic: Why do we have a moral sense to begin with? How did we develop it?

Not all present agreed that science could explain religion.

Some suspect that biology has triggered some kind of devotion and there are too many people who practice this cult, said Lluis Oviedo, a theologian at the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome.

His own research has found at least 75 books and academic articles trying to explain religion through evolution and he knew of about 20 more on the way, he said.

Although he thinks, the time of explaining through radical reduction is over, he admitted few biologists seemed ready to accept the more holistic new biology.

Even some scientists at the conference, while ready to engage with the philosophers and theologians, showed less interest in discussions about whether a new biology was emerging.

A dawn fog on Christ Church Meadow obscures the view of the historic University of Oxord in England. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Creative Commons/Tejvan Pettinger.)

Im pragmatic, explained Ottoline Leyser of the University of Cambridge, whose lecture on plant genetics was one of the conferences highlights.

Theologians in the decades long science and religion debate, which argues the two disciplines complement each other, have also become more pragmatic as their dialogue proceeds.

Oxfords McGrath said the theologians had become more modest in the claims they made about what religion could contribute to this debate. Unlike some more doctrinaire scientists, he said, they did not think they had all the answers.

They dont say These observations in nature prove or disprove God, he said. Our religious way of thinking gives you a framework which allows you to look at the scientific approach to the world and understand why it makes sense, but at the same time also to understand its limits.

Those things need to be in the picture if were going to lead meaningful lives.

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75% of the Human Genome Is Junk DNA, Claims New Research – Big Think (blog)

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How much of the human genome, our genetic blueprint, actually makes us who we are? New work by an evolutionary biologist at the University of Houston suggests that only up to 25% of the human genome is functional. The other 75% are so-called junk DNA - useless sequences that dont play a role in the important chemical reactions inside us. This conclusion goes sharply against the estimate of 80% functionality proposed by the ENCODE project, an international public research consortium that has led the way in human genome exploration.

Dan Graur, professor of biology and biochemistry, calculated that about 10 to 15 percent of the genome is actually functional, with the upper limit of 25 percent.

His reasoning stems from looking at how mutations affect a populations DNA. Graurs mathematical model allowed him to calculate the mutational load - the total genetic load of a population that results from the accumulation of bad or deleterious mutations. At some point the load can become too much and the population would go extinct.

Graurs work related how reproductive success, the ability of a species to replenish itself, was decreased by the deleteriousmutations. Over time, humans would have to reproduce at an impossible high rate to keep up with the mutations, Graur concluded.

The professor explained why he finds the 80% functionality of the genome proposed by the ENCODE scientists as unrealistic:

For 80 percent of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but two would have to die or fail to reproduce, writes Graur. If we use the upper bound for the deleterious mutation rate (2 108mutations per nucleotide per generation), then the number of children that each couple would have to have to maintain a constant population size would exceed the number of stars in the visible universe by ten orders of magnitude.

This is not the first time Graur fought against the 80% claim. In a 2014 interview with Science magazine, Graur even claimed its proponents are essentially pitching the idea of intelligent design. To Graur, asserting 80% usability implies that most of the genome exists to serve a purpose. Instead, he believes that everything is shaped by evolution, a slow process that weeds out useless features through genetic mutations - the drivers of evolution. This process also accumulates a lot of junk in the human genome.

Why is it important to know that only a quarter of the human genome may have functionality? Graur believes his work can shift the focus in the field of human genomics to what is useful from a medical standpoint:

We need to know the functional fraction of the human genome in order to focus biomedical research on the parts that can be used to prevent and cure disease, said Graur.There is no need to sequence everything under the sun. We need only to sequence the sections we know are functional.

You can read the studyhere in Genome Biology and Evolution.

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First draft of a genome-wide cancer ‘dependency map’ – Harvard Gazette

Posted: at 1:48 pm

Credit: Broad Institute/www.broadinstitute.org/research-highlights-cancer

Working with the genome-wide cancer "dependency map" (inset below) Broad Institute researchers identified 760 genes that cancer cells need for their growth and survival.

In one of the largest efforts to build a comprehensive catalog of genetic vulnerabilities in cancer, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified more than 760 genes upon which multiple types of cancer cells are strongly dependent for their growth and survival.

Many of these dependencies, the researchers report today in the journalCell, are specific to certain cancer types. However, about 10 percent of them are common across multiple cancers, suggesting that a relatively small number of therapies targeting these core dependencies might each hold promise for combating several tumors.

To generate these findings, the research team conducted genome-wide RNA interference (RNAi) screens on 501 cell lines representing more than 20 types of cancer, silencing more than 17,000 genes individually in each line to identify genetic dependencies unique to cancerous cells.

Cancer cells can harbor a broad variety of genetic errors, from small mutations to wholesale swaps of DNA between chromosomes. If an error shuts down a critical gene, a cancerous cell will compensate by adjusting other genes activity, frequently developing a dependence on such adaptations in order to persist.

Identifying these dependencies provides opportunities for scientists to gain deeper insight into cancer biology and determine new therapeutic targets.

Much of what has been and continues to be done to characterize cancer has been based on genetics and sequencing. Thats given us the parts list, said study co-senior author William Hahn, an institute member in the Broad Cancer Program, chief of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Dana-Farber, and a leader in the Cancer Dependency Map initiative, a joint effort spanning the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber. Mapping dependencies ascribes function to the parts and shows you how to reverse-engineer the processes that underlie cancer.

RNAi silences genes using small pieces of RNA called small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). To run a genome-wide RNAi screen, researchers expose cells to pools of siRNAs and track the cells behavior.

The simplest thing one can do with perturbed cells is allow them to keep growing over time and see which ones thrive, explained study co-senior author David Root, an institute scientist and director of the Genetic Perturbation Platform at the Broad. If cells with a certain gene silenced disappear, for example, it means that gene is essential for proliferation.

The data revealed striking patterns in cancer cells dependencies. Many dependencies were cancer-specific, in that silencing each affected only a subset of the cell lines. However, more than 90 percent of the cell lines had a strong dependency on at least one of a set of 76 genes, suggesting that many cancers rely on a relatively few genes and pathways.

Using a set of molecular features (e.g., mutations, gene copy numbers, expression patterns) from each cell line, the team also generated biomarker-based models that helped explain the biology behind 426 of the 769 dependencies. Most of those biomarkers fell into four broad categories:

Surprisingly, more than 80 percent of the dependencies with biomarkers were associated with changes (up or down) in a genes expression. Mutations, often used as the grounds for pursuing a gene as a drug target, accounted for merely 16 percent of biomarker-associated dependencies.

Twenty percent of the dependencies the team discovered were associated with genes previously identified as potential drug targets.

We cant say weve found everything, but we can say that the genes were seeing fall into a relatively small number of bins, some of which are familiar, some less so, Hahn said. That initial taxonomy is a great starting point for building a full map.

Our results provide a starting point for therapeutic projects to decide where to focus their efforts, said study co-first author Francisca Vazquez, a Cancer Dependency Map project leader. She added that while there was still much to do to validate the list, Its becoming increasingly easier to triangulate data and generate hypotheses as more genome-scale systematic data sets, like those from the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, Genotype-Tissue Expression, and the Cancer Genome Atlas projects, become available.

Bringing of all the data together will help us generate a truly comprehensive cancer dependency map.

To eliminate false-positive results caused by seed effects a phenomenon by which siRNAs inadvertently silence irrelevant genes study co-first author Aviad Tsherniak led the development of a novel computational tool dubbed DEMETER.

People sometimes take a dim view of RNAi because seed effects make the data so noisy, said Tsherniak, leader of the Broad Cancer Programs Data Science group. DEMETER models gene knockdown and seed effects within the data, and computationally subtracts the seed effects. It cleans up the data and helps you find true dependencies.

According to Hahn, the data argue that the time is ripe to pay more attention to the broader landscape of functional aspects of cancer, in addition to focusing on protein-coding gene mutations and variations.

I think were close to the end of finding genes that are mutated or focally amplified in cancer, he said. To me, thats a huge opportunity, because it means we have many heretofore untapped avenues for understanding cancer.

Jesse Boehm, associate director of the Broad Cancer Program, and Todd Golub, director of the Cancer Program and chief scientific officer of the Broad Institute, were also co-senior authors on this study.

Complete results from the study are available through a dedicated portal.

This work was conducted as part of the Slim Initiative in Genomic Medicine for the Americas (SIGMA), a joint U.S.-Mexico project funded by the Carlos Slim Foundation. SIGMA focuses on several key diseases with particular relevance to public health in Mexico and Latin America, including type 2 diabetes and cancer. Additional funding was provided by the National Cancer Institute.

By Peter Reuell, Harvard Staff Writer | July 28, 2017

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The Human Life Span Defined – Verywell

Posted: at 1:48 pm

The human life span is the maximum number of years an individual from the human species can live based on observed examples. Though this definition of life span may seem simple enough, it is often confused for other common concepts in the study of the aging, life, and death of living organisms.

In order to better understand the human life span, let's dive a little deeper into the concept and its important distinctions from other commonly used terms.

The term life span is most commonly confused with another important concept: life expectancy. While both terms relate to the number of living years, they actually define very different concepts. While the term life span refers to the maximum number of years an individual can live, life expectancy refers to an estimate or an average number of years a person can expect to live. Most simply put, life expectancy can be attributed to and impacted by an individual and their personal health history, genetics, and lifestyle, whereas life span holds for all living humans.

For example, my life expectancy is affected by personal factors like my family history, my environment, my diet, and even my age and sex. My life expectancy might be different for your life expectancy and it may even change over time. Our life spans, however, are one in the same. We share it as members of the same species.

So what is the human life span?

Given that the human life span is defined by the longest observed human life from birth to death, it is a figure that has changed over the years. For humans, the current accepted maximum life span is 122 years. This age was achieved by Jeane Louise Calment of France.

Calment lived from February 21, 1875, to August 4, 1997, until she was exactly 122 years and 164 days old. Remarkably, Calment remained relatively healthy and mentally intact until her 122nd birthday.

Though there have certainly been claims of longer lives, none of the claims were acceptably documented and verified. Calment remains the first verified person to reach any age between 116 and 122 and the only verified person to reach the age of 122.

With the United State's average life expectancy currently hovering at around 78.88 years, the age to which most Americans can expect to live is still forty-four years younger than the human life span. So how do we close that gap and elongate our lives? There will always be factors that are out of our individual control like our inherited genes, but we shouldn't discount the impact of those that we can control. It is generally understood that closing the gap between life expectancy and life span can be done through healthier living, less exposure to toxins, the prevention of chronic illnesses, and a little bit of luck.

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Silicon Valley looking to extend life | News, Sports, Jobs – The … – Tiffin Advertiser Tribune

Posted: at 1:48 pm

So it was that Eos, goddess of the dawn, fell in love with Tithonus, a handsome young prince of Troy and, beguiling him with her beauty, brought him to her palace on Mount Olympus.

They lived happily for many years but, being mortal, age eventually overtook Tithonus. In her despair, Eos beseeched Zeus to grant her love immortality. Moved to pity, he granted her request but even the king of Olympus could not bestow eternal youth on a human for that would make him as one of the gods.

As one age passed into the next, Tithonus, withered and shrunken, cried incessantly for release from his torment but Zeus could not undo a wish once granted. It was Eos who eventually provided her poor lover a measure of relief by transforming him into a cicada. Now each summer he emerges from the ground with a fresh body to sing in eternal praise of his beauteous goddess. Or is it rather a lament over his crusted, hollow shell of a body?

Many of the myths and stories we have long told ourselves are cautionary tales against the dangers of hubris, our overconfident pride and arrogance before the gods. Divinity will mete out retribution to those who forget their place in the natural scheme of things. Chief among these absolutes of the human condition is our mortality; we all must die and woe betide any who would seek to have it otherwise.

But consider this statement from the website of the California Life Co. (Calico), a biotechnology firm established in 2013:

Calico is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan. We will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Executing on this mission will require an unprecedented level of interdisciplinary effort and a long-term focus for which funding is already in place.

The company is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., whose most famous other subsidiary goes by the name of Google. By 2016, Larry Page, Alphabets CEO (and co-founder of Google) had committed the company to contributing $240 million to Calico, with an additional $490 million should it be needed.

Calico is by no means the only Silicon Valley outfit investing big dollars in the life extension sciences field. SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation, founded in 2009, and Human Longevity Inc., founded in 2014, are two of its better-funded competitors but there are others.

Whats going on here? Lets start with some data. Since 1900, the average human life span has increased by 30 years. But with this, so have the rates of age-related health issues such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and dementia. In the U.S., up to age 44 the leading causes of death are accidents and violence. From there to age 65, its cancer and heart disease after that.

Medical advances are making significant inroads on each of these diseases and they may be conquered within your childrens lifetime. What then? Well, epidemiologists suggest a cure for cancer would only add 3.3 years to the average lifespan while the prevention of heart disease would tack on another four years. The elimination of all disease likely would only extend life into the mid-90s.

To go further, the aging process itself must be slowed. Even in the absence of disease, our bodies senesce as our organs, tissues, cells and macromolecules accumulate damage at an ever-increasing rate. Eric Verdin of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging has observed that if you just kept aging at the rate you age between 20-30, youd live to a thousand. But at 30, everything starts to change. Thereafter your risk of mortality doubles every seven years.

Most longevity scientists are health spanners, seeking a healthier life with a compressed morbidity (i.e., a quick and painless death). But immortalists like SENS Research founder Aubrey de Grey and futurist Ray Kurzwell believe science can carry us much further. If aging is encoded in the DNA of our genes, they argue, there should be no technological reason why we couldnt identify and address those parts of our genomes that are responsible for senescence.

Like so much else in modern biology, medical research is increasingly becoming an information science. To find the genetic correlates of aging will entail the compilation and analysis of an almost unthinkable mass of biotechnical data. Who has the big-data skillset and financial resources to back such an undertaking?

Silicon Valley.

But what about the economics, ethics and religious implications of an immortality united with youthful vigor? Should aging be viewed as a medical disease to be treated as any other or are we just asking for it with such hubristic thinking?

Ken Baker is a scientist and a retired biology professor. If you have a natural history topic youd like the author to consider for an upcoming column, email your idea to rweaver@advertiser-tribune.com.

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16 Biomarkers May Predict Human Lifespan – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Posted: at 1:48 pm

If you could use a molecular crystal ball and see which sets of genes and variants could predict how long youll live, would you want to know? Researchers at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) are defiantly interested in that information. So much so that they have just released data from a comprehensive study that used an innovative computational approach to analyze a dataset of over 116,000 individuals and probe 2.3 million human single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

Findings from the new studypublished recently in Nature Communications in an article entitled Bayesian Association Scan Reveals Loci Associated with Human Lifespan and Linked Biomarkersrevealed an unparalleled number of SNPs associated with lifespan (16), including 14 previously unknown variants. While the environment in which we live, including our socio-economic status and the food we eat, plays a considerable role in longevity, about 20% to 30% of the variation in human lifespan comes down to our genome. Changes in particular locations in our DNA sequence may hold some of the keys to human endurance.

In our approach, we prioritized changes in the DNA known to be linked to age-related diseases in order to scan the genome more efficiently," noted senior study investigator Zoltn Kutalik, Ph.D., group leader at SIB and assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (CHUV). This is the largest set of lifespan-associated genetic markers ever uncovered.

About 1 in 10 people carry some configurations of these markers that shorten their life by over a year compared with the population average. Moreover, the researchers found that a person inheriting a lifespan-shortening version of one of these SNPs may die up to seven months earlier.

...we developed a Mendelian randomization-based method combining 58 disease-related GWA [genome-wide association] studies to derive longevity priors for all HapMap SNPs, the authors wrote. A Bayesian association scan, informed by these priors, for parental age of death in the UK Biobank study (n=116,279) revealed 16 independent SNPs with significant Bayes factor at a 5% false discovery rate (FDR). Eleven of them replicate (5% FDR) in five independent longevity studies combined; all but three are depleted of the life-shortening alleles in older Biobank participants.

The SIB team found that most SNPs influenced lifespan by impacting more than a single disease or risk factorfor example, through being more addicted to smoking as well as being predisposed to schizophrenia. The discovered SNPs, combined with gene expression data, allowed the researchers to identify that lower brain expression of three genes neighboring the SNPs (involved in nicotine dependence) was causally linked to increased lifespan.

Further analysis revealed that brain expression levels of nearby genes (RBM6, SULT1A1 and CHRNA5) might be causally implicated in longevity. Gene expression and caloric restriction experiments in model organisms confirm the conserved role for RBM6 and SULT1A1 in modulating lifespan," the authors concluded.

These three genes could, therefore, act as biomarkers of longevity, i.e., survival beyond 85 to 100 years, commented study co-author Johan Auwerx, Ph.D., a professor at the EPFL. To support this hypothesis, we have shown that mice with a lower brain expression level of RBM6 lived substantially longer.

Study co-author Marc Robinson-Rechavi, Ph.D., a SIB group leader, and professor at the University of Lausanne, concluded that interestingly, the gene expression impact of some of these SNPs in humans is analogous to the consequence of a low-calorie diet in mice, which is known to have positive effects on lifespan.

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16 Biomarkers May Predict Human Lifespan - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science – amazon.com

Posted: at 1:46 pm

Science is neutral, right?

Of course its reliable, based on fact, unprejudiced, and trustworthy, isnt it? Well, guess again. A lot of what passes for science these days is pseudo-science, and a lot of scientific fact is hidden from public view because its not politically correct.

Science has been politicizednot by the Right, but by the Left, which sees global warming, Darwinism, stem cell research, and innumerable other issues as tools to advance its agenda (and in many cases expand the reach of government).

When liberals trot out scientists with white coats, debate is supposed to be silenced. But many of the high priests of science have something to hidefrom blind intolerance of religion to jealous guarding of their federally financed research budgets.

Luckily, science journalist Tom Bethell is here with the necessary and bracing antidote: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.

Heres a handy one-volume guide to some of the most contentious issues of our day, including:

Why fears of nuclear power arent science, but unscientific scaremongering Why species are increasing, not disappearing Why global warming (and other temperature changes) are not caused by humans (remember the Ice Age?) Why embryonic stem cell research is snake oil medicine (which is why it needs government subsidies) Why Darwinism is crumbling Why the story line of the brave scientist Galileo versus an ignorant Church is wrong And much, much more

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science busts myths, reveals hidden agendas, and lets you in on some of the little-known secrets about whats really going on in science. If youre tired of being hoodwinked by liberals who use science to justify all sorts of misbehavior, you need The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.

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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science - amazon.com

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BJP: Mehbooba’s words are politically incorrect – Daily Pioneer

Posted: at 1:46 pm

After J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday triggered a row with her observations over 'Indian flag' her alliance partners in the State, Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Saturday tried to set the record straight by claiming that the statement of the Chief Minister was not happily worded as bearing national flag in the State is an honour for all citizens.

"Statement of Chief Minister of J&K on Article 35 (A) doesn't depict true picture and is politically incorrect. Every person of the State is first an Indian and then a State subject and nationalism of the people of the State can't be understated or misstated by linking it with continuation of Art 35 A, the State unit of the BJP said in a written statement.

Participating in a discussion in New Delhi Understanding Kashmir a composite dialogue on peace, stability and a way forward, Mehbooba Mufti had warned that any change in Article 35(A) of the Constitution, which gives a special State provision to Jammu & Kashmir and is being debated in the Supreme Court would not be in favour of the people living in the Valley and would invite repercussions.

Article 35(A) of the Constitution empowers the state legislature to define permanent residents and accord special rights and privileges to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

"Any tampering with Article 35(A) won't be acceptable. I won't hesitate in saying that nobody will even carry the corpse of the National Flag in Kashmir, if it happens.

However, to avoid flare up of tensions between the alliance partners at this crucial juncture the State BJP spokesman said their party stands by Agenda of Alliance and won't seek alteration of existing Constitutional position, but it is equally true that Article 35(A) has created more harm to the State than any other provision of law.

At the same time the BJP spokesman while questioning the statement of the Chief Minister said that few thousands of terrorists and separatists who are raising a revolt against the country and causing disturbances in the Valley, at the behest of Pakistan, ISI and ISIS does constitute the Kashmir Valley and Jammu & Kashmir State is not Kashmir Valley alone; the State constitutes Jammu and Ladakh also and Kashmir merely constitutes its 16 per cent area.

"The majority of the population in Jammu & Kashmir are nationalists and committed to uphold the integrity of the country and believe that their interests and aspirations are safe as being Indians, the BJP spokesman said.

Meanwhile, reacting to the statement of Mehbooba Mufti Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee spokesman Ravinder Sharma said that no one has right to insult the National Flag as great sacrifices and nations honour and pride is attached to it.

Congress spokesman also questioned the BJP to explain what kind of freedom of idea is being advocated by their coalition partner and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and said that she has lost right to continue in office.

The National Panthers Party (NPP) said Jammu &Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's remark on the Indian flag is unacceptable and amounts to violation of the Indian Constitution. "Does she even know what 35 (A) is? It was not created by the Parliament. It was an amendment made in 1954 by the then President of India on the recommendation of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru," NPP leader Bhim Singh said.

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BJP: Mehbooba's words are politically incorrect - Daily Pioneer

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