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Longevity Medicine – State of the Art 2024

In 2005, the former artificial intelligence researcher who became a biologist, Aubrey de Grey, proposed a detailed plan called “strategies for engineered negligible senescence” (SENS), aimed at preventing age-related physical and cognitive decline. Two years later, he published the book “Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime”, in which he wrote in detail about seven issues and measures how to repair them (table taken from Wikipedia): Issue Proposed countermeasures Extracellular aggregates Immunotherapeutic clearance Accumulation of senescent cells Senescence marker-targeted toxins, immunotherapy Extracellular matrix stiffening AGE-breaking molecules, tissue engineering Intracellular aggregates Novel lysosomal hydrolases Mitochondrial mutati
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Has the Age of Artificial Intelligence in Science begun?

When the Nobel Prizes were announced this year (2024), many people were initially shocked at seeing that the decision had been made to give the Nobel Prize in Physics to two researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI), one of whom did not even have a physics degree. But the Nobel Prize in Chemistry that was announced a day later showed why that decision had been made: after all, AI methods had been employed by the winners of that prize to conduct their research about the structure of proteins. So it was in some way justified to give two of the researchers who had laid the foundations for modern AI recognition. The big question is: Will we see more Nobel Laureates who worked with AI? Will it even perhaps soon be ordinary that Nobel Prize winning scientists have made their discoveries using AI? Is it even possible that every Nobel Prize will be given to people employing AI and maybe the Nobel Prize will be given to the AI systems themselves instead of human beings? Is it the dawn of a ne
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Computational Concepts in Biology

Computational Concepts in Biology I At the University of Vienna, an interesting new Master's programme was introduced only a couple of years ago (in 2013). This Master's programme is called "Computational Science" and it is highly interdisciplinary. To be admitted for this Master's programme, you need to have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology or a related field. The Master's programme has a minimum duration of two years and afterwards, you can enroll for a PhD programme. "Computational Science" is all about research in natural sciences that is done using computers and most of all self-written computer programs. It it thus an ideal study programme for people who are both into computers as well as natural sciences. Depending on what type of Bachelor's degree students have, they either have to attend basic lectures in mathematics, basic lectures in computer science or advanced l
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A Proof of the CTMU - Sketch

The CTMU is a theoretic model proposed by Christopher Langan. More information on it can be found at: https://ctmucommunity.org/wiki/ The core statement of the CTMU is: The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe is a language that describes itself. Another statement is: The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe is equivalent to Reality. From this follows: The universe is a language that describes itself. A language is a set of words that are generated using a set of rules called a formal grammar. A language can describe other languages - for example, English can describe French - and it can also describe itself - English can describe English. There is nothing that exists outside of the universe - everything that exists does so inside the universe. For this reason whatever describes the universe, as well as the language using which it does it, exists inside the universe. Therefore it it is legitimate to state that the universe describes itself. Since the language using which the
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The boy who communicated with his father via letters

In a quaint little house nestled within the heart of a bustling city, there lived a boy named Thomas. His world was painted in letters - letters penned to and fro between him and his father, who resided on the unreachable second floor. The stairway that led to his father’s domain was an insurmountable obstacle. Each step towered too high for young Thomas to conquer, leaving him confined to the ground floor. But the power of the written word transcended the physical barriers that separated them. Daily, he would carefully craft letters filled with his dreams, fears, and inquiries, slipping them under his father’s door, waiting with bated breath for the response that would arrive the next morning. His mother, a tall and graceful figure, was the emissary between the two realms. Every evening, she ascended the formidable staircase to deliver dinner to her husband, carrying with her Thomas’s words and bringing back his father’s responses. Years passed, and Thomas grew in both age and curiosi
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Algorithmics as the Basis of Artificial Intelligence

Basically, artificial intelligence is anything that makes a computer behave in a way that appears to be intelligent. That may be a complex program with a large rule set which determines what the computer should output for a given input. However, these days we usually think about machine learning when talking about artificial intelligence. Machine learning is a set of techniques that allow the computer to automatically improve the output it gives with time, when getting lots of different inputs. It basically means that the computation algorithm can be modified by the computer itself and it does so because it learns new input-output patterns. This however does not change the fact that it is an algorithm that determines what output the computer creates when being presented a given input. So the basis of artificial intelligence is algorithmics. An algorithm is a kind of computational recipe: it tells the computer what to do with the input it gets and what to eventually output. Usually algo
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Amarys' Journey - A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a young man named Amarys who lived in one of the richest countries in the world. At that time it was customary for the young men to first spend many years in a selection house where the best were selected. They were then allowed to complete an apprenticeship and go to work. Amarys had always been very good in the selection house, and after he had finally been released from the institute, praised for his great talent, he decided to study medicine. Amarys believed that his mastery of medicine, coupled with his wise mind, would enable him to discover something that would benefit all mankind. Shortly after Amarys had begun his studies, he also joined the Federation of Medical Students. At first he was a little sceptical whether this was the right decision. For he had heard that the members of this covenant had no head of their own, but were those who went to the house of prayer every Thursday and were told how they had to think. Actually, he could not have believ
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