The Obtain: Longevity myths, and sewer-cleaning robots

—Jessica Hamzelou

Earlier this week, my editor forwarded me a video of the leaders of Russia and China speaking about immortality. “Nowadays at 70 years previous you’re nonetheless a baby,” China’s Xi Jinping, 72, was translated as saying.

“With the developments of biotechnology, human organs might be repeatedly transplanted, and other people can reside 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 lengthen their lifespan anytime quickly. And it’s a simplistic method to consider growing old—a course of so sophisticated that researchers can’t agree on what causes it, why it happens, and even easy methods to outline it, not to mention “deal with” it. Learn the complete story.

This text first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Know-how Evaluate’s weekly biotech publication. To obtain it in your inbox each Thursday, and skim articles like this primary, join right here.

India is utilizing robots to scrub sewer pipes so people not must

When Jitender was a baby in New Delhi, each his mother and father labored as guide scavengers—a job that concerned clearing the town’s sewers by hand. Now, he’s amongst virtually 200 contractors concerned within the Delhi authorities’s effort to shift from this guide course of to safer mechanical strategies.

Though it has been outlawed since 1993, guide scavenging—the observe 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 complete story.