—Jessica Hamzelou
Earlier this week, my editor forwarded me a video of the leaders of Russia and China speaking about immortality. “Lately at 70 years previous you might be nonetheless a toddler,” China’s Xi Jinping, 72, was translated as saying.
“With the developments of biotechnology, human organs might be constantly transplanted, and folks can stay youthful and youthful, and even obtain immortality,” Russia’s Vladimir Putin, additionally 72, is reported to have replied.
In actuality, rounds of organ transplantation surgical procedure aren’t doubtless to assist anybody radically prolong their lifespan anytime quickly. And it’s a simplistic approach to consider getting old—a course of so difficult that researchers can’t agree on what causes it, why it happens, and even how you can outline it, not to mention “deal with” it. Learn the total story.
This text first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Expertise Assessment’s weekly biotech e-newsletter. To obtain it in your inbox each Thursday, and skim articles like this primary, enroll right here.
India is utilizing robots to wash sewer pipes so people now not need to
When Jitender was a toddler in New Delhi, each his mother and father labored as handbook scavengers—a job that concerned clearing town’s sewers by hand. Now, he’s amongst virtually 200 contractors concerned within the Delhi authorities’s effort to shift from this handbook course of to safer mechanical strategies.
Though it has been outlawed since 1993, handbook scavenging—the apply of extracting human excreta from bogs, sewers, or septic tanks—continues to be practiced broadly in India. And never solely is the job undignified, however it may be extraordinarily harmful.
Now, a number of corporations have emerged to supply options at a variety of technical complexity. Learn the total story.
