10.7.09

Muistilinkkejä

New clues in search for elixir of youth
Mice on rapamycin, which was first discovered in soil fungus from Easter Island, lived about 10 per cent longer than other mice. Kaeberlein says that the drug's ability to extend lifespan when taken late in life is "exactly what you'd want from an 'anti-ageing drug'". -- "It's set a high bar for the field," agrees David Sinclair, a molecular biologist at Harvard University Medical School in Boston. "It's also the first time that a drug has worked so late in life"
Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence
-- But then they changed the rules. Instead of giving P. polycephalum a fourth blast of cold air, they did nothing. The slime mould's reaction was remarkable: it slowed down again, in anticipation of a blast that never came. -- It's worth taking a moment to think about what this means. Somehow, this single-celled organism had memorised the pattern of events it was faced with and changed its behaviour to anticipate a future event. -- The Japanese paper rang a bell with Max Di Ventra, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego. He was one of the few who had followed Chua's work, and recognised that the slime mould was behaving like a memristive circuit.
My top 10 Frightening Scientific Papers

Positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience

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