4 Scientifically Proven Ways to Help Reverse Aging

<h5>The Organoid</h5>
<p>Australian scientists were able to produce kidney tissue by turning stem cells from human skin into two of the main structures found in the kidney: the collecting ducts and nephrons. The team said that the cells clumped together into complex kidney organoids &#8220;spontaneously,&#8221; which then led to the discovery that connective tissue and blood vessels found normally in fetuses&#8217; kidneys were formed as well.</p>
<figure id="attachment_7462" style="width: 700px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/organoid.jpg"><img class="wp-image-7462 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/organoid.jpg" alt="organoid" width="700" height="741" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Kidney organoid in a dish generated from human pluripotent stem cells. The three colours show the presence of distinct cell types within the developing nephrons. Photograph: Fabian Fromling and Minoru Takasato</figcaption></figure>
<h5>The Breakthrough</h5>
<p>Until now, it has been a struggle for scientists to get stem cells to form into different cell types found in the kidney. While the current organoids produced are no where near ready for human transplant, they will still be incredibly useful for screening drugs for toxicity and recreating genetic kidney diseases for study.</p>
<p>This work comes after the news that other scientists have succeeded in using stem cells to produce pea-sized miniature stomachs and rudimentary eyes.</p>


Hard Science

Scientists have now used stem cells to recreate kidney tissue as well as miniature stomachs and rudimentary eyes, 

Scientists produce kidney tissue using stem cells from human skin

<h5>The Breakthrough</h5>
<p>Redwood City, Ca.-based company Impossible Foods has raised $108 million in its latest round of investor funding, led by UBS and Viking Investors Group. They join an earlier group of investors that include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures, and Horizon Ventures. They reportedly raised $75 billion in a previous round of financing.</p>
<p>Impossible Foods was founded by Patrick Brown, a former biochemistry professor. After spending 25 years teaching at Stanford University, he went on to co-found a company called Kite Hill, which specializes in nut-milk products.</p>
<p>With Impossible Foods, Brown is looking to develop a new generation of meats and cheeses that are made entirely from plants, and will start with a plant-based cheeseburger that tastes just as good as regular cheeseburgers.</p>
<h5>The Implications</h5>
<p>Impossible Foods seeks to feed an ever-increasing population of people on Earth, which will have gone from 3 billion in 1940 to what current forecasts estimate will be 9.5 billion by the year 2050. Plant-based foods would present a more sustainable way to feed that population, and with a plant-based cheeseburger, Impossible Foods is setting their sights on providing it to a mass market.</p>


Robots & Machines

The Silicon Valley-backed company Impossible Foods just raised $100 million to begin producing plant-based burgers that taste just like the real thing

Impossible Foods to launch plant-based cheeseburger by 2016

<h5>Machine learning</h5>
<p>A supercomputer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Mass. can decipher when your days are numbered. Patients are hooked up to the machine which processes all their available data, such as doctors visits, lab results, medications and vital signs, then comes up with a rapid diagnostic assessment. With an expanding database of patient data, the supercomputer applies machine learning by comparing current scenarios with previous results from over 250,000 individuals in the last 30 years. The program can determine the likelihood of present and future medical problems such as heart attacks, infections, cancers and, even death. “We can predict with almost a 96 percent confidence that a patient will have this probability of dying, so if the computer says you are going to die, you probably will die within the next 30 days,” says Beth Israel Project Lead Dr. Steve Horng</p>
<h5>Artificial intelligence</h5>
<p>A &#8220;death predicting machine&#8221; again brings out concerns on the ethical and societal consequences of artificial intelligence, concerns raised in the past by personalities like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking. Horng counters that the project&#8217;s purpose is to leverage big data to augment doctors’ abilities. He said: “Our goal is not to replace the clinician; this artificial intelligence is really about the doctor’s ability to take care of patients.”</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-7468 alignnone" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/percentageofdeath.jpg" alt="percentageofdeath" width="900" height="539" /></p>


Artificial Intelligence

This hospital supercomputer can accurately predict your probability of dying with 96% confidence


This supercomputer knows when you’ll die

<h5>Desynchronized Singing</h5>
<p>Specialists in the computing sector once again turned to nature to find solutions for optimization issues. They focused on the Japanese tree frog (Hyla japonica) where the males of the species sing to attract female counterparts. The problem is when males are too close together and sing at the same time, the female cannot differentiate and choose the best one. Hence, the males have learned desynchronized singing or not singing at the same time. On this basis, researchers from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) came up with a new computational algorithm to resolve computing issues associated with set of nodes joined together by links which represent their interrelationships (think metro networks, or friendship graphs). &#8220;This process is a great example of self-organization in nature, which has allowed us to develop bio-inspired algorithms,&#8221; says Christian Blum, Ikerbasque Professor at the UPV/EHU.</p>
<h5>Vital Applications</h5>
<p>In the past, some of the researchers used these algorithms to color graphs, a technique with potential applications in the field of wireless networks. Now they have been used to detect &#8220;independent sets of nodes&#8221; or those which are not directly connected within the graph. Blum explains: &#8220;This has a number of vital applications in communication networks, such as in the formation of wireless backbone networks, but also in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, since it allows for structural analysis and for the detection of independent communities within these networks.&#8221; For example,  it is possible to track down inactive users, detect communities that don&#8217;t interact with anyone else or discover well-known individuals within the network.&#8221;All these issues can be translated into mathematical problems, which can then be solved on a graph representing the network,&#8221; Blum points out.</p>


Sci-Fi Visions

Japanese tree frogs inspire the development of computational algorithms which can be used to design wireless systems and analyze social networks

Frogs provide researchers with new computational algorithms

<h5>Concept Development and Design</h5>
<p>The portable apartments, called Kasita, were developed by Jeff Wilson alongside an industrial designer from Frog. Wanting to stray from traditional micro-apartments and small housing, the duo pegged its design process to an iPhone&#8217;s. Each unit is 30% bigger than a container, which is usually 2,240 sq. ft., and it&#8217;s equipped with modular furniture and other high-tech features like the ability to command the glass to darken for privacy. If an individual wishes to move locations, he/she can simply press a button from an app, and a moving truck will be ready to move and plug the entire unit on another rack of apartments in a new place.</p>
<figure id="attachment_7452" style="width: 640px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/apt.png"><img class="size-full wp-image-7452" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/apt.png" alt="Inside the apt, from FastCoExist" width="640" height="427" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Inside the apt, from FastCoExist</figcaption></figure>
<h5>Future Plans</h5>
<p>Another selling point of Kasita is its affordability. Despite having a long list of high-tech features and its mobility, the group believes the price will remain at about half that of a comparable studio apartment. In the future, the company hopes to make the homes run on solar via Tesla batteries, and add rainwater collection. The first rack of smart apartments will be built in Spring 2016 in Austin, Texas &#8211; and hopefully more cities shortly thereafter</p>


Imagine being able to push a button on your phone and have your entire apartment move from one location to another

Image

/ Enhanced Humans