Researchers Peter Majewski and Chiu Ping ‘Candace’ Chan in South Australia “have discovered a simple way to remove bacteria and other contaminants from water using tiny particles of pure silica coated with an active nano-material.” Here’s the news story.

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Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) came under fire for making a ruling that many consider outside its authority. Without levying a fine, it charged that Comcast violated federal policy when it interfered with a file-sharing application used by consumers. This new plot twist in the Net neutrality story should remind everyone that when [...]

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This article says it could happen. I doubt it (for a variety of reasons: technology being one of them), but it’s definitely a wake up call. So, stop surfing the Internet and GO WORK OUT NOW!

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This is nice to see, especially given his recent comments about Internet use…

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The Salk Institute’s Ron Evans just released a study where certain drugs trick a mouse’s body into thinking it exercised. Sounds a bit matrix-like to me, but if it could work on humans without side effects, the demand would be overwhelming.
From USA Today:
“Sedentary mice that took the drug for four weeks burned [...]

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Now, this is quite disturbing. As if going through airport security weren’t bad enough, but now officials are authorized to take AND COPY your data. Increase in identity theft, anyone?

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“The 16-hour operation was carried out last Friday on a farm worker who lost both arms in an accident.” Read more here.

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This is a great article by Gregory Pence at the University of Alabama. He argues that:
“Wholly unintentionally, the U.S. ban on federal funding jump-started innovation in assisted reproduction. One byproduct of the ban was that the National Institutes of Health and ethics committees had no mechanism for regulating research in these private clinics. In [...]

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When it comes to the Internet, Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently said that he’s “an illiterate who has to rely on his wife for any assistance he can get.” In an era where the Internet is playing an ever greater role, does such an admission matter, and does it say anything important about the [...]

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Well, this is a headline we don’t see very often, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone. As older people become healthier, why wouldn’t they continue to have sex?

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Researchers at UCLA have teamed up with Singapore-based company AWAK Technologies Pte. Ltd. to develop a commercial wearable kidney based on the design by Martin Roberts, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at UCLA. Here’s the press release.

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More than 200 scientists and longevity activists gathered at UCLA recently to discuss advancements in repairing humans. New technology is making it possible to imagine a world with ever greater life spans, but old world issues pervaded the discussions.
The Methuselah Foundation’s Aubrey de Grey organized the event and kicked it off with a theoretical explanation [...]

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Today was the first day of the science part of the M Foundation’s aging conference at UCLA. There were many impressive speakers and academics, but the most impressive was Zheng Cui from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has discovered that white blood cells in cancer resistant mice can be used to [...]

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The Methuselah Foundation is hosting a conference on aging in LA this weekend. Most of it is scientific, but they will have one small session on policy issues. I’ll be there, and will report back on developments as they happen.

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Personalized medicine is touted as the wave of the future, but recent government action points to problems for Americans looking to join the health revolution. Last week, California’s Department of Public Health issued cease-and-desist letters to 13 genetic testing startups, threatening to deny service to consumers curious about their DNA.
“Any laboratory offering genetic tests to [...]

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This is a great article by Gordy Slack. He argues that we shouldn’t be so quick to write off creationists, as they do make some good points.

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Dr. Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA, and his team showed that changing diet and exercise led to changes in what genes were switched on or off. Reuters reports that “the activity of disease-preventing genes increased while a number of disease-promoting genes, including those involved in prostate cancer [...]

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In case you haven’t noticed, life expectancy is growing. According to the US National Center for Health Statistics, “Life expectancy at birth hit a new record high in 2006 of 78.1 years, a 0.3 increase from 2005.” Here is their press release. AP also did a story on it, which can be found [...]

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The United States Federal Trade Commission recently began a formal antitrust investigation into Intel’s business practices. This action is not simply a problem for Intel, but should serve as a wake-up call for the entire technology industry and anyone who values innovation.
Some of the drivers behind the Intel inquiry are complaints by its competitor, Advanced [...]

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From Resveratrol Partners’ press release:
“Once mega-doses of resveratrol (more than 500 mg) began to be employed, side effects like anemia, Achilles heel tendonitis, anxiety reactions, numbness in the fingers, began to be reported,” says Bill Sardi, spokesperson for Longevinex® (long-jev-in-ex), a leading brand resveratrol dietary supplement. “This is probably because resveratrol is a copper chelator [...]

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