An expert predicts the date of the launch of the first anti-aging tablets on the market!

It was revealed that Sam Altman, 37, funded biotech startup Retro BioScience with $180 million last month. He is the latest in a long line of Silicon Valley billionaires who are throwing their vast fortunes on gerontology.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has reportedly invested $3 billion in life-extending startup Altos Labs. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, has invested in the Methuselah Foundation, which aims to make the "New 90 50".

With all of these resources being thrown around in anti-aging, Andrew Still, author of the 2020 book "Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old," thinks anti-aging pills could be on drugstore shelves within five years.

He points to existing drugs - such as diabetes tablets metformin - that could be retooled as anti-aging therapies in the very near term.

Steele said: "With these billionaires, I'm sure some of them do it purely for personal gain - they have money they can't spend in one human life. But if you're a smart investor, you can see that anti-aging drugs are a huge business opportunity because the potential market "It's every human being alive. I think it's going to be the biggest medical revolution since antibiotics - and as a savvy businessman, you want to be at the forefront of that revolution."

While aging does not directly kill people, the elderly are at risk of many deadly diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, heart disease and cancer.

According to the World Health Organization, about 100,000 people die from age-related diseases every day.

"Aging is the greatest human challenge of all time," Steele says. He explained that there are "20 to 30" companies developing new drugs known as "senolytics" that kill aging cells in the body.

In mice, these drugs suddenly make elderly animals vigorous and healthy.

"Many of these drugs are drugs that we already understand and use for different purposes, so we don't have to develop new drugs," Steele said.

A potential anti-aging drug is metformin. It was first approved in 1994 for type 2 diabetes, promising to extend life by improving the health of blood vessels.

And when Altos Labs was announced, Elon Musk quipped on Twitter: "If it doesn't work, he'll sue death!"

And with laboratories launched in America and Cambridge, the company is known for paying scientists caught from the best universities in the world, up to $1m a year.

Realistically, Steele says, the treatments we are likely to see in the near term will extend the "healthy period" by dealing with age-related ailments - delaying the onset of problems such as dementia.

Dr Cathy Slack, a biologist at Aston University in the UK, agrees: "The aim is to increase the number of healthy years of life rather than to lengthen the later life of poor health."

She said there are now "many" studies published that show genetic or environmental changes can extend a healthy lifespan.

Slack believes successful treatments are likely to be a combination of medication and lifestyle changes - and look comprehensively at all diseases that affect people later in life. Source: Daily Mail

Scientists discover a mechanism by which the Earth's atmosphere cleans itself

Human activities emit many types of pollutants into the air, and without a molecule called hydroxide (OH), many of these pollutants would continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.

A recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that a unique combination of atmospheric conditions can generate hydroxide (OH) molecules that facilitate atmospheric self-purification by neutralizing pollutants, even in the absence of sunlight.

A scientific team, including Sergey Neskorodov, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), reported that a strong electric field present at the boundary between airborne water droplets and the surrounding air can produce the hydroxide through a previously undiscovered mechanism.

This is a discovery that reshapes how scientists understand how to clear the air of things like human-emitted pollutants and greenhouse gases, which hydroxide (OH) can react with and eliminate.

"We need the hydroxide to oxidize the hydrocarbons, otherwise they will accumulate in the atmosphere indefinitely," Nizhgorodov said.

“Hydroxide is a key player in the story of atmospheric chemistry, setting off reactions that break down airborne pollutants and help remove harmful chemicals like sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide,” explained Christian Georges, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Lyon in France and lead author of the new study. ", which are toxic gases from the atmosphere. As an important contributor to atmospheric chemistry, having a full understanding of the sources and sinks of hydroxide (OH) is key to understanding and mitigating air pollution."

Previously, researchers assumed that sunlight was the main driver of hydroxide formation.

Nizhgorodov noted that the hydroxide is widely believed to be generated via photochemistry or redox chemistry, which requires sunlight or mineral catalysts to function. However, the current study challenges this assumption and says that in pure water itself, hydroxide can be formed spontaneously by the special conditions on the surface of the droplets.

The team built on previous research by Stanford University scientists led by Richard Zari, which reported the spontaneous formation of hydrogen peroxide on the surfaces of water droplets.

The new findings help explain unexpected results from Zari's group.

The team measured hydroxide concentrations in different flasks, some containing water and air on the surface and others containing only water without any air, and tracked hydroxide production in the dark by embedding a 'probe' molecule in the flasks that glows when it interacts with the hydroxide.

What they saw was that the rates of hydroxide production in the dark mirrored those of, and even exceeded, those of stimuli such as exposure to sunlight.

"Enough hydroxide will be created to compete with other known hydroxide sources," Nizhgorodov said. "At night, when there is no photochemistry, hydrogen is still produced at a higher rate than it would otherwise."

Nezhorodov said the findings change the understanding of hydroxide sources, something that will change how other scientists build computer models that try to predict how air pollution will occur.

"It can dramatically change models of air pollution. Hydroxide is an important oxidizing agent inside water droplets and the main assumption in the models is that the hydroxide comes from the air, and is not produced in the droplet directly," Nizhgorodov explained.

To determine whether the new hydroxide production mechanism plays a role, Nizhgorodov believes the next step is to conduct carefully designed experiments in the real atmosphere in different parts of the world. Source: phys.org

Russia is developing double shields that can withstand two kilograms of explosives

Engineers in the Russian arms industry have created double shields that will be used in promising models of modern war equipment and can withstand the explosion of two kilograms of the explosive trotyl.

This was announced by the management of the Russian company "Arzamas" when submitting a report to the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, who paid a field inspection visit to the company.

The arms makers, while briefing the Minister of Defense on their innovations, indicated that the innovative shields withstand the explosion of two kilograms of the explosive Trotile material and the injury of incendiary penetrating munitions. Missiles and mortars.

And the media had reported earlier that the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergey Shoigu, had also inspected factories that specialize in the production of military equipment, artillery ammunition and air bombs of all kinds.

A spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense said that during his field visit, the Minister of Defense entrusted the management of the Russian defense industries complex with the task of designing special armored vehicles that can be used for various purposes, including models of them used as communication vehicles, ambulances, and even vehicles that provide services to individuals.

The Minister of Defense also visited a company that specializes in the production of the developed "Suncibuk" (TOS-1A) systems, the first models of which arrived at the military units participating in the special military operation, and the military expert, Vasily Dandykin, said that this system uses a special mixture capable of burning fortified sites. and injuring enemy personnel. Source: Rossiyskaya Gazeta