[Tristan]

Issue of the day 06/01/2013
06/01/2013 22h58 - 22h58 Updated 06/01/2013
Scientist believes humans could live a thousand years
Idea is not taken seriously by many scientists, but there are others who believe in this possibility.


They are already among us. The first humans to pass the 150-year-old has already been born, researchers and futurists. Are among children and young people today. Now, it seems impossible, but when they become adults, they will have to reach fountains of youth that will soon come out of the labs. Japan, the country with the greatest number of centenarians in the world, wants to further extend the life and health.
To live longer, we have to find diseases before they feel the first symptom. This will be possible soon and we need not even go to the doctor. Our home will tell us if we are sick.
The residence of the future should be like an apartment-model created by the University of Kanazawa. Inside, the person has health monitored all the time while sleeping, at the time going to the bathroom. We can already make 14 medical examinations. Until at bath time, because the tub is an electrocardiogram machine. Just put both hands into the water to get an idea of ​​how the heart is.
The player who makes the traditional method has electrodes, which pick up the electrical variations of the heart. Thus, it is possible to know if it is working well. The physician applies a gel to facilitate conduction of electrical signals.
The tub makes the examination, because it has six electrodes and the water works as a gel used by the doctor. The equipment is also able to identify if the person is drowning and triggers an alarm.
At the time of needs, makes six private examinations. It measures, for example, pressure jet of urine. In the experiment, they use water. For men, explains Professor Kenichi Yamakoshi, a variation in pressure may indicate the onset of prostate cancer.
In the future, private vai analyze the urine, as does a lab today to know, for example, if there is any sign of infection - and will send the results via the Internet to the doctor. And when the occupant sitting on the toilet, a sensor for measuring the leg leaning against, for example, pressure.
Some major tests will be done while we sleep. The bed has sensors that measure heart rate, weight distribution in the body, breath and even snoring.
All these data go to a computer that identifies if there is any variation worrying and tells the doctor, who may be many miles away.
"Living longer with health is the dream of many people," says Professor Yamakoshi, "and all prefer to live without having to go to the doctor. But with advancing age, people tend to get sick more often. When this happens, soon discover is better to heal as quickly as possible. "
And one more advantage. Imagine, a shower, having to leave the house to go to the doctor. It's a problem that your Toshio Shouchi, 80, has more. He is one of eight volunteers who are testing the smart home. He suffers from heart failure and live alone. Two years ago, his vital signs are measured by sensors and it does a query daily, the internet, with a doctor, on call at the hospital. Describes the feeling, shows, for example, blotches that appeared on the arms. On the other hand, it assesses symptoms and test results and whether it should increase or decrease the medication. His Toshio says that without this system, would have to live in a hospital.
"I feel much safer. They even discovered that I was showing signs of a stroke last year and I was sent to hospital for treatment. Was something temporary and fleeting," says Toshio His.
And in the future, healing will come invisibly to the eye. In micromachines Research Center of Tokyo Medical University, gives only with microscopes to see what Professor Koji Ikuta and their students are making.
In the image, a line at the top is a human hair. Below are some points that seem, at first glance, with dust grains. But it's just us closer to the picture they take shape. They are man-made structures. They are the "microrobots" equipment, in a few years may enter the body to cure disease and restore damaged pieces.
To enter the factory these robots, you need to wear a special outfit. Dirt or dust can cause failures in production. Robots are constructed from a single drop of polymer, a chemical similar to liquid plastic.
The manufacturing occurs in the microscope slide, which is coupled to a TV monitor, the only way to see what happens there. A laser-ray beam, which makes the solid polymer. Gradually, the robot takes shape.
Professor Ikuta explained that, first, they design the robot on a computer. "Then, we transfer the data for this system. Automatically, we can create any structure in three dimensions."
A single drop, can be produced or more robots 50. In 4 minutes, are ready. For now, have a very simple way. One, for example, looks like a horseshoe with a pin in the middle, but he already has some skills.
Scientists make the little robot into action inside a dark booth, to prevent interference from external light. The video shows the experience of a little robot pushing the cell from the blood of a chicken, a red blood cell, compared with a microscopic structure, like a wall. It's like he was hitting a tennis ball against a wall.
The robot is driven by a laser beam. By pushing the cell, he can sense her resistance. Professor Ikuta predicts that in five years, this robot will be used in laboratories to study because a cell changes its shape because it becomes cancerous, for example. In 10 years, he believes, the robots could be introduced within our body. Will identify diseased cells and heal them.
"This robot, very tiny, can extend human life safely. And this is the great object of my research," says Professor Ikuta.
To do this will have to be even smaller, will be "nanobots", so small that neither the microscope you can see them. See what scientists think is going to happen within our body in a few years.
An army of nanobots could repair organs or muscles, as if they were workers repairing the walls of a house.
Others work as janitors of our lungs, removing all impurities that can cause diseases.
A robot specialized in combating microbes will identify them and destroy them.
With so many advances in science, that one day we will live forever? Rejuvenate instead of aging? Impossible? Not for a jellyfish, which is being studied in Japan Unless we turn food from another animal or get a disease, it is biologically immortal.
And she performs another ancient dream of humanity: after age, be a child again. Professor Shin Kubota, of Kyoto University, has identified three species of jellyfish of the genus "Turritopsis" that are capable of this feat. Each life cycle lasts on average 2 months. She grows up in the form of jellyfish, we are accustomed to seeing on beaches. It adulthood, when it reproduces and lays eggs.
As they age, she does not die, but performs a unique phenomenon in nature: back to a polyp, is like a tiny tree branch. It is one of the early life stages of jellyfish, while still not able to reproduce. In other words, it's like being a child again.
35 years ago, Professor Shin examines these jellyfish in search of the secret of eternal youth. He explains that she developed this ability to allow the survival of the species. Very small and fragile, they are vulnerable, and serve as food for many animals. The information that can not die by aging was recorded in the genes of jellyfish. But is it possible to transfer this information into the gene for a human being?
The teacher thinks so. "The genes of a jellyfish are not that different," he says.
It seems unbelievable, even crazy, but he assures: "Even in this century, we will become immortal."
The idea is not taken seriously by many scientists, but there are others who believe in this possibility.
One is the British Aubrey de Gray. He has a hippie guy, but is a scientist at Cambridge University and renowned expert on aging. Gray thinks that soon, humans can easily live a thousand years.
He says the medicine will regenerate the human body the same way as we do the regular maintenance of our car or our house. With that, they last much longer than they were designed.
Another prophet of immortality is the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil American. He thinks that, in the near future, man will no longer be just flesh and blood. Every part of our body, which does not work well, will be replaced by a machine.
"Within 25 years, when you talk to a human being, like us, will be speaking with a cyborg, a hybrid of machine and biology." Said the scientist Raymond Kurzweil.
Since the early 20th century, humanity wins 3 months of life every year with advances in medicine, new drugs and treatments, and the care with hygiene and nutrition.
They are the ones that allow Kyuzo Andou, 101-year, take every day - Bicycle - customer orders. He owns a specialty coffee shop in Tokyo, which opened for business 85 years, when tired of being used and decided to become boss. He has climbed Mount Fuji - the highest mountain in Japan - 70 times. And he says he intends to keep working and climbing mountains as possible.
"The key is good nutrition, physical and mental exercises. And do not speak ill of others nor be regretting life," he says.
When your Kyuzo was born at the beginning of the last century, would be hard to believe that both could live. Life expectancy in developed countries did not reach 50 years. Today it is over 80. Therefore, it may be possible that within a few decades, as healthy as he centenarians are not exceptions, but people with a long future ahead.