Newsweek looks at recent research on anti-aging drugs. It’s actually fairly exciting to think about. I’ve been interested in the field after reading Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. Also of interest on the subject is the work of Aubrey de Gray.
Link to Can We Slow Aging? – Newsweek: International Editions – MSNBC.com
Here’s some pics I took of the surrounding areas after the recent ice storms here in Missouri. All of these were taken in St. Francois County.
Hilarious. It’s an overview of WWII written as if it was an RTS game and you’re reading the in-game chat.
Airbags associated with increased probability of death in accidents, study finds
Interesting study shows that mandatory airbags in the US have actually increased death rate. And I quote the authors reasoning behind why the study contrasts so sharply with the NHTSA’s studies:
“Making everyone have airbags and then verifying the effectiveness using only fatal crashes in FARS is like making everyone get radiation and then estimating the lives saved by looking only at people who have cancer. Overall, there will be more deaths if everyone is given radiation, but in the cancer subset, radiation will be effective.”
For the past few days talk has been going fast and furious about an article in The Independent about a new way of translating the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.
In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.
It sounds amazing!
Unfortunately, it appears something not quite right is going on. Hannibal, of ArsTechnica, speaking from what appears to be a somewhat authritative position lays out some compelling reasons to doubt the claims made in The Independent, or at least reasons to not think the story is so amazing.
Hopefully we get some more concrete information in the weeks to come.