A 25% increase in healthy lifespan in mice, by genetic surgery. It’s unclear, though, if this can be done to existing phenotypes.
[Update a while later]
Here’s a more interesting take from Ed Yong.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, they do actually seem to be clearing senescent cells from normal mice. This is pretty exciting stuff.
Rick Tumlinson told me about this in the hall yesterday, but the official press release is out.
[Afternoon update]
Doug Messier discusses the significance of this. It’s not just about investment.
This article at The Space Review seems profoundly ignorant of economics and history, including the history of the Moon Treaty, because that basically seems to be what he’s proposing.
Dale Skran critiques a strawmannish article from a few days ago, so I don’t have to.
A roundup of links and discussion of the latest in scientific “transparency.”
In my opinion, science that has any policy implications (I’m looking at you, climate and nutrition) has gone completely off the rails.
I got up at 3 AM to catch a 5 AM flight from LAX to DCA via ORD. Heading there for the FAA-AST Space Transportation Conference tomorrow. Earliest flight I’ve ever taken from there, I think. I had TSA pre-check, but the line wasn’t open yet, so I had to do the whole drill. The American terminal is pretty dead at 4 AM. Anyway, I’m in a flying chair somewhere over the plains with Internet. It almost feels like the 21st century.
Warning to denizens of the Beltway: I am on my way. Hide the women and liquor.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 31, 2016
Yeah, I fully expect to see oil go below $20, expecially after the shakeout and bankruptcies that allow pumping at lower prices. And it will be good for everyone except oil companies and oil kleptocracies. Other than California, look for gas below two bucks indefinitely.
[Update a few minuts later]
OK, well, this isn’t as encouraging:
During the 2007 crisis, central banks the world over made a coordinated effort that pumped large amounts of liquidity into the system, easing the pressure. However, since 2009, these same central banks have followed an easy monetary policy, inflating balance sheets to scary levels, as shown in the chart above. They will find it difficult to handle any future crises caused by low oil prices. They are now out of ammunition.
The current oil crisis will see regime changes in strategic places, and a currency crisis is in the offing. The world is staring at deflation. And while the 2007 crisis started in the US and then spread around the world, today’s crisis is affecting all major nations simultaneously. All are struggling due to low oil prices—some directly because of lower revenues, and others because of deflationary pressure.
The next crisis will be larger and longer and it will hurt a lot more than the last one. The windfall at the gas pump is a dark harbinger.
At least we’ll be able to afford to fill the tank, if we have jobs.
All this angers Americans with experience in our military and intelligence services who understand what Ms. Clinton and her staff did—and that they would be held to far harsher standards for attempting anything similar. They know that brave Americans have given their lives protecting Top Secret Codeword information. They know that in every American embassy around the world, our diplomatic outposts that worked for Hillary Clinton, Marine guards have standing orders to fight to the death to protect the classified information that’s inside those embassies. That Hillary Clinton gave similar information away, by choice, is something she needs to explain if she expects to be our next Commander-in-Chief.
She has no explanation, at least not one that doesn’t make it look even worse.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Her disregard wasn’t casual. It was a conscious and involved scheme to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, and possibly also Obama Administration scrutiny of her actions. She put the nation as a whole at risk, along with individual lives of intelligence sources, for political reasons: to avoid accountability.”
As she’s been doing, and gotten away with, for decades. Why wouldn’t she assume that she’d continue to not be held to account?
[Update a while later]
The FBI director would like to indict both Clinton and Abedin.
Analysis: Likely.
A call for an impartial scientific review of government guidelines.
They’re currently worse than useless.
The vast waste of money continues.