Aging & Bio

Strategies for reversal of brain aging with cell replacement

Review of the role of long lived proteins in humans (Why should you care? Because these are hard to target to replace or remove)

New marker of brain aging found in blood. One more step towards assaying organ-specific health in humans without having to take biopsies.

New therapy found that can reduce weight and improve overall metabolic health

Some proteins are by their nature not folded, or disordered

ROS and aging, a review. This was one of the unresolved questions that I noted in my longevity FAQ

Single celled predators in Antarctica

Derek Lowe on mRNA vaccine manufacturing, adenovirus vaccine manufacturing, cancer and gene therapy, and on antidepressants

Gene therapy for cholesterol reduction

S&T other than bio

Michael Nielsen on scanning tunneling microscopes

Sean Carroll argues that for practical purposes, physics is complete, points out to what the bounds are on forces we may have missed out.

A century of ramjets

What are protons, actually?

The joy of condensed matter

Everyone seems to be talking about the problems with physics: Peter Woit’s book Not Even Wrong, Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics, and Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math leap to mind, and they have started a wider conversation. But is all of physics really in trouble, or just some of it? If you actually read these books, you’ll see they’re about so-called “fundamental” physics. Some other parts of physics are doing just fine, and I want to tell you about one. It’s called “condensed matter physics,” and it’s the study of solids and liquids. We are living in the golden age of condensed matter physics.

Cancel the SLS, including some shots at the Space Shuttle

By comparison, the Falcon 9 has a similar payload capacity (~22 T expendable), uses kerosene and oxygen propellant, and costs 5% what the Shuttle does on a per kg to LEO basis. Not a 5% cost improvement. A 20x cost improvement. The ISS required about 35 Shuttle flights to assemble. If the modules had been flown for Falcon 9 prices, the entire thing could have been launched for less than the cost of two Shuttle flights, or a single year of the program’s operation, and it might not have taken 20 years to build.

Innovation

Matt Clifford on, among other things, UK's new DARPA-like agency

Third issue of Works in Progress

Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? From OWID

Anton Howes on bringing back the Great Exhibition

Other

Scott Alexander book review (Or Scott Siskind now that he's gone public? He'll always be Scott Alexander in our hearts) on class in the US. And review of the cult of smart.

Scholar's Stage on that Scott Alexander article

What happened with the Texas power grid?

Michael Huemer's 3 part series on what should students learn

Seeing like a pro-family state

Talking to lucid dreamers as they dream

Prediction markets may be happening

Jonathan Pallesen is skeptical of open borders, a review of Caplan's book.

Problems with the literature on GDP growth in Chinese provinces and promotion of political leaders