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Category: health – Page 419

Crispr Fans Fight for Egalitarian Access to Gene Editing

A journalist, a soup exec, and an imam walk into a room. There’s no joke here. It’s just another day at CrisprCon.

On Monday and Tuesday, hundreds of scientists, industry folk, and public health officials from all over the world filled the amphitheater at the Boston World Trade Center to reckon with the power of biology’s favorite new DNA-tinkering tool: Crispr. The topics were thorny—from the ethics of self-experimenting biohackers to the feasibility of pan-global governance structures. And more than once you could feel the air rush right out of the room. But that was kind of the point. CrisprCon is designed to make people uncomfortable.

“I’m going to talk about the monkey in the room,” said Antonio Cosme, an urban farmer and community organizer in Detroit who appeared on a panel at the second annual conference devoted to Crispr’s big ethical questions to talk about equitable access to gene editing technologies. He referred to the results of an audience poll that had appeared moments before in a word cloud behind him, with one bigger than all the others: “eugenics.”

Can You Actually Hack Your DNA to Slow Down Aging? — Bioquark Inc. — Ira Pastor

http://www.thepathmag.com/can-you-actually-hack-your-dna-to-slow-down-aging/

Many technologies / interventions progressing down the development pathways in the coming years — but there are a lot of free, common sense adjustments you can make today:

Best of last week: Flux capacitor invented, a better 3D printer and the true benefits of vitamins

It was a good week for physics as a team with members from Australia and Switzerland invented a flux capacitor able to break time-reversal symmetry. They proposed a device based on quantum tunneling of magnetic flux around a capacitor. And another team with members from across the U.S. reported on a gravitational wave event that likely signaled the creation of a black hole—the merger of two neutron stars.

In biology news, a team of engineers led by Sinisa Vukelic invented a noninvasive technique to correct vision. Like LASIK, it uses lasers but is non-surgical and has few side-effects. And an international team of researchers found what they describe as the mother of all lizards in the Italian Alps, the oldest known lizard fossil, from approximately 240 million years ago. Also, a team at the University of Sydney found that walking faster could make you live longer. People do not even need to walk more, the team reported, they just need to pick up the pace of their normal stride to see an improvement in several health factors. And a team from Cal Poly Pomona discovered how microbes survive clean rooms and contaminate spacecraft—and it involved the cleaning agents themselves.

In other news, a team of researchers from the University of California and the University of Southern Queensland announced that they had identified 121 giant planets that may have habitable moons. And a team at Stanford University found that wars and clan structure might explain a strange biological event that occurred 7,000 years ago—male genetic diversity appeared to collapse for a time. Also, a team of researchers from MIT and Harvard University report the development of a 3D printer that can print data sets as physical objects—offering far more realistic, nearly true-color renderings.

News: SMAP, the spacecraft I once worked on, is providing relative moisture data from the Earth’s surface

It’s interesting to note that eastern Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas are experiencing much less soil moisture during the middle of May…

Data from the first NASA satellite mission dedicated to measuring the water content of soils is now being used operationally by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to monitor global croplands and make commodity forecasts.

The Soil Moisture Active Passive mission, or SMAP, launched in 2015 and has helped map the amount of water in soils worldwide. Now, with tools developed by a team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, SMAP soil moisture data are being incorporated into the Crop Explorer website of the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, which reports on regional droughts, floods and crop forecasts. Crop Explorer is a clearinghouse for global agricultural growing conditions, such as soil moisture, temperature, precipitation, vegetation health and more.

“There’s a lot of need for understanding, monitoring and forecasting crops globally,” said John Bolten, research scientist at Goddard. “SMAP is NASA’s first satellite mission devoted to soil moisture, and this is a very straightforward approach to applying that data.”

Dialing Up the Body’s Defenses Against Public Health and National Security Threats

Protection against many common pathogens and environmental stressors is written into our DNA. Our skin responds to sun exposure. Our immune system mounts defenses when we get the flu. Our bodies inherently work to mitigate the potential for harm caused by these health threats. However, these intrinsic responses are not always quick, robust, or appropriate enough to adequately defend us from harm, which is why many people experience sunburn after intense sun exposure or suffer severe symptoms, even death, following exposure to the flu.

Military service members, first responders, and civilian populations face threats far more severe than sunburn and respiratory infections. Pathogens with pandemic potential, toxic chemicals, and radioactive materials can all quickly and powerfully overwhelm the body’s innate defenses. And though significant public and private investment has been focused on the development of traditional medical countermeasures such as drugs, vaccines, and biologics to guard against the worst effects of these health threats, current countermeasures are often limited in their effectiveness and availability during emergencies.

DARPA is looking to make gains beyond the status quo. Inspired by recent advances in understanding of when and how genes express their traits, DARPA’s new PReemptive Expression of Protective Alleles and Response Elements (PREPARE) program will explore ways to better protect against biological, chemical, or radiological threats by temporarily and reversibly tuning gene expression to bolster the body’s defenses against – or directly neutralize – a given threat.

Investing in Brain Health for All (December 4–6th)

Amazing how quickly things are changing in brain health and mental health — see the news about Interaxon, Akili, NeuraMetrix, Apple, Calm, Halo Neuroscience, Mindstrong Health, Calm, Novartis, Pear Therapeutics, in the last 6 months alone, and consider joining the discussion in December smile (link opens 2-minute video)

Imagine a videogame cleared by the FDA to treat ADHD, depression, or substance abuse — how will doctors prescribe it, patients access it, and insurers pay for it?

Imagine a free “annual brain check-up” — what may it look like, and how can it lead into personalized interventions to improve function and prevent/ delay/ treat cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s Disease?

Imagine being responsible for the health & wellness of a million people — how will you educate them to navigate most-likely-to-help interventions, such as breathing/ exercise/ meditation/ apps/ biofeedback/ tDCS to regulate stress?

Imagine investing $100 million in startups developing noninvasive, digital neurotechnologies — where, and how, will you find great opportunities to generate financial and social returns?

Continue reading “Investing in Brain Health for All (December 4–6th)” | >

Why living near forests can benefit your mental health

It is rush hour and you are crammed inside a train carriage with a stranger’s armpit pressing against your face. Are you feeling relaxed?

Studies have shown that repeated infringement of personal space in cities can trigger the brain’s threat system, which makes us feel stressed.

Other factors such as constant contact with strangers and traffic noise all contribute to city dwellers being most likely to suffer from chronic stress.

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