How would you spend 30 million dollars?

There’s a good song by Eminem – If I had a million dollars.  So, if I had a hypothetical task to give away $30 million to different foundations without having a right to influence the projects, I would distribute them as follows, $3 million for each organization:

1. Nanofactory collaboration, Robert Freitas, Ralph Merkle – developers of molecular nanotechnology and nanomedicine. Robert Freitas is the author of the monography Nanomedicine.
2. Singularity institute, Michael Vassar, Eliezer Yudkowsky – developers and ideologists of the friendly Artificial Intelligence
3. SENS Foundation, Aubrey de Grey – the most active engineering project in life extension, focused on the most promising underfunded areas
4. Cryonics Institute – one of the biggest cryonics firms in the US, they are able to use the additional funding more effectively as compared to Alcor
5. Advanced Neural Biosciences, Aschwin de Wolf – an independent cryonics research center created by ex-researchers from Suspended Animation
6. Brain observatory – brain scanning
7. University Hospital Careggi in Florence, Paolo Macchiarini – growing organs (not an American medical school, because this amount of money won’t make any difference to the leading American centers)
8. Immortality institute – advocating for immortalism, selected experiments
9. IEET – institute of ethics and emerging technologies – promotion of transhumanist ideas
10. Small research grants of $50-300 thousand

Now, if the task is to most effectively invest $30 million dollars, what projects would be chosen? (By effectiveness here I mean increasing the chances of radical life extension)

Well, off the top of my head:

1. The project: “Creation of technologies to grow a human liver” – $7 million. The project itself costs approximately $30-50 million, but $7 million is enough to achieve some significant intermediate results and will definitely attract more funds from potential investors.
2. Break the world record in sustaining viability of a mammalian head separate from the body – $0.7 million
3. Creation of an information system, which characterizes data on changes during aging in humans, integrates biomarkers of aging, and evaluates the role of pharmacological and other interventions in aging processes – $3 million
4. Research in increasing cryoprotectors efficacy – $3 million
5. Creation and realization of a program “Regulation of epigenome” – $5 million
6. Creation, promotion and lobbying of the program on research and fighting aging – $2 million
7. Educational programs in the fields of biogerontology, neuromodelling, regenerative medicine, engineered organs – $1.5 million
8. “Artificial blood” project – $2 million
9. Grants for authors, script writers, and art representatives for creation of pieces promoting transhumanism – $0.5 million
10. SENS Foundation project of removing senescent cells – $2 million
11. Creation of a US-based non-profit, which would protect and lobby the right to live and scientific research in life extension – $2 million
12. Participation of  “H+ managers” in conferences, forums  and social events – $1 million
13. Advocacy and creating content in social media – $0.3 million

This is How Biology Should Look Like

Have you ever watched the The İnner Life Of The Cell movie? You should. I’ve watched it many times, but I can’t get tired of that real beauty. The beauty of reality.

This video was produced by the scientific animation company XVIVO for the BioVisions program at Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. The fascinating animation sheds light to what’s happening beneath the membrane of a leukocyte that interracts with an endothelial cell. You can see the cytosceleton, assembling actine fibers and microtubules, protein synthesis in the cytoplasm, a vesicle leaving Golgi apparatus and excreating what it had inside into the extracellular space and, of course, the kinesin, which paces proudly along the microtubule carrying its heavy load – a vesicle.

There’s another amazing video – Powering the Cell: Mitochondria « XVIVO. This one shows the ATP production in the mitochondia – a rather complex set of processes to understand if one’s just reading the description. I think this is how all textbooks should look like, especially in such complicated subjects as Biology. At some point of time in the future I hope to open up one of those books, or should I say click ‘play’?

Read more about miraculous scientific animations in New York Times