Tag: science

Nanobacterium

a hypothetical class of living organisms; specifically cell-walled microorganisms with a size much smaller than the generally accepted lower limits for life, 200 nm for bacteria.

Scientists have captured the first detailed microscopy images of ultra-small bacteria believed to be about as small as life can get. The bacterial cells have densely packed spirals that are probably DNA, a very small number of ribosomes, hair-like appendages, and a stripped-down metabolism that likely requires them to rely on other bacteria for many of life’s necessities.

Etanercept

It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention. It is imperative that the medical and scientific communities immediately undertake to further investigate and characterize the physiologic mechanisms involved. This gives all of us in Alzheimer’s research a tremendous new clue about new avenues of research, which is so exciting and so needed in the field of Alzheimer’s. Even though this report predominantly discusses a single patient, it is of significant scientific interest because of the potential insight it may give into the processes involved in the brain dysfunction of Alzheimer’s.”

wow. talk about how flexible the brain is.

Supercentenarian

someone who has reached the age of 110 years or more, something achieved by only 0.1% of centenarians. Furthermore, only 2% of supercentenarians live to be 115.

2014-11-13: Polygenic Supercentenarians, meaning that there isn’t a smoking gun simple enough for our currently primitive understanding.

We found no significant evidence of enrichment for a single rare protein-altering variant or for a gene harboring different rare protein altering variants in supercentenarian compared to control genomes

2023-09-08: Occam’s razor says bad record keeping

the number of of extremely old people is positively correlated with poverty, shorter average life spans and illiteracy. All factors which are difficult to explain if we think these factors are causally related to health but which make sense if we think that the explanation is unreliable birth and death records. Supercentenarian birthdates also exhibit patterns such as age-heaping that are “strongly indicative of manufactured birth data.”