Science and Technology links (February 2nd, 2018)

  1. Most mammals, including human beings, age according to a Gompertz curve. It is a fancy way of saying that your risk of death goes up exponential with age. Naked mole rats are mammals that do not age, in the following sense:

    unlike all other mammals studied to date, and regardless of sex or breeding-status, the age-specific hazard of mortality did not increase with age, even at ages 25-fold past their time to reproductive maturity

  2. It seems that the brain of male infants differs from that of female infants:

    We show that brain volumes undergo age-related changes during the first month of life, with the corresponding patterns of regional asymmetry and sexual dimorphism. Specifically, males have larger total brain volume and volumes differ by sex in regionally specific brain regions, after correcting for total brain volume.

  3. The American National Institutes of Health are launching a major research program in genome editing ($190 million over six years).
  4. It appears that many of us are deficient in magnesium, and that’s an important driver for cardiovascular diseases. Most of us will die of a cardiovascular disease (given current medical knowledge).

Published by

Daniel Lemire

A computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ).

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