hourglass

Hourglass: Biology of Aging blog carnival

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Wel­come to the 8th edi­tion of Hour­glass, the blog car­ni­val devot­ed to biogeron­tol­ogy. Enjoy!

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Use It or Lose It 

Exis­tence is Won­der­ful,
by Anne C.		 Nei­ther A Tran­shu­man­ist Nor a “Pes­simist”, And That’s Okay
“I can’t sur­vive cog­ni­tive­ly in envi­ron­ments that force every­thing into false dichotomies, and nobody should feel hurt, slight­ed, or bit­ter because of my doing what I need to do for the sake of being able to actu­al­ly use my brain.”
“Just because I think superla­tiv­i­ty tends to dis­tort dia­logue and make it dif­fi­cult to focus on what can actu­al­ly be done in the real world does not mean I dis­par­age the pow­er of human imag­i­na­tion or our capac­i­ty to change things for the better.”

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Cog­ni­tive Enhance­ment, Health and Assessments

Ouroboros,
by Chris Patil
 Bet­ter think­ing through chemistry
“I sus­pect that the struc­ture of argu­ments about cog­ni­tive enhance­ment will mir­ror those of future debates regard­ing lifes­pan extension.”
Fight Aging,

by “Rea­son”


 A View of the Enhance­ment Debate
“A great many peo­ple grow up with what they know — hav­ing things far bet­ter than their par­ents, despite the efforts of past lud­dites who strived to block advance­ments — and then spend the rest of their lives fight­ing against vision­ar­ies who are try­ing to make things even better.”
Sharp­Brains,
by Alvaro Fernandez
 Ten Reflec­tions on Cog­ni­tive Health and Assessments
“Cog­ni­tive health is a crit­i­cal fac­tor in over­all health­care, but is often approached in a frag­ment­ed, non-sys­tem­at­ic way. We lack of a com­mon frame­work and tax­on­o­my to define the prob­lem and iden­ti­fy solu­tions and inter­ven­tions to mea­sure and help main­tain cog­ni­tive health across the lifespan.”

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The Ben­e­fits of Caloric Restric­tion [Read more…] about Hour­glass: Biol­o­gy of Aging blog carnival

MetaCarnival: A Carnival of Blog Carnivals

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If you are a blog­ger or read blogs often, you know that there are a good num­ber of excel­lent blog car­ni­vals focused on spe­cif­ic themes. If you are inter­est­ed in med­i­cine, you know what car­ni­val to vis­it. Edu­ca­tion, the same. Biol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, nurs­ing, birds, aging, philosophy…a vari­ety of top­ics are very well cov­ered in the blogosphere.

What you prob­a­bly haven’t come across is a high-qual­i­ty “metacar­ni­val” or “car­ni­val of car­ni­vals”, where you can read the best blog posts ACROSS top­ics, sub­jects, disciplines.

This is why a few blog car­ni­val “orga­niz­ers” are launch­ing next Mon­day a month­ly rotat­ing “MetaCar­ni­val” to fea­ture the most inter­est­ing posts from a vari­ety of high-qual­i­ty blog carnivals.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing blog car­ni­vals so far, alpha­bet­i­cal­ly: [Read more…] about MetaCar­ni­val: A Car­ni­val of Blog Carnivals

Education and the Biology of Aging

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Edu­ca­tion, Aging…two seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed top­ics, but with more biol­o­gy in com­mon than may meet the eye…

You may enjoy the most recent edi­tions of two great blog carnivals:

- Car­ni­val of Edu­ca­tion, host­ed by Joanne Jacobs.

- Hour­glass: a car­ni­val of biogeron­tol­ogy, host­ed by Chris at Ouroboros. Chris recent­ly launched this blog car­ni­val to pro­vide a home for “blog­gers who are writ­ing about biogeron­tol­ogy, lifes­pan exten­sion tech­nolo­gies, and aging in general.”

Anne writes my favorite post at Exis­tence is Won­der­ful, link­ing education/ learning/ nur­ture with aging.

She first explains that

“Many peo­ple use the word “aging” as a short­hand not just for the mere process of get­ting old­er (which is not only inevitable for every­thing in exis­tence, but some­thing to cel­e­brate — “get­ting old­er”, after all, means “expe­ri­enc­ing more life”!), but for the phys­i­cal degen­er­a­tion that occurs as meta­bol­ic, immune, and mechan­i­cal side effects take hold as a per­son ages. Per­son­al­ly I find this dual use of the word “aging” ter­ri­bly confusing”.

And then adds

“We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what hard lim­its are on longevi­ty until we opti­mize care. I saw a dra­mat­ic turn­around in my fish when I learned how to prop­er­ly con­fig­ure the tank set­up, and I hope to see the day when human med­i­cine makes a sim­i­lar leap in effectiveness”