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. “As of late at 70 years outdated you might be nonetheless a toddler,” China’s Xi Jinping, 72, was translated as saying.

“With the developments of biotechnology, human organs could 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 prolong their lifespan anytime quickly. And it’s a simplistic means to consider growing older—a course of so difficult that researchers can’t agree on what causes it, why it happens, and even tips on how to outline it, not to mention “deal with” it. Learn the total story.

This text first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Expertise Overview’s weekly biotech e-newsletter. 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 should

When Jitender was a toddler in New Delhi, each his dad and mom labored as handbook scavengers—a job that concerned clearing the town’s sewers by hand. Now, he’s amongst nearly 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 bathrooms, sewers, or septic tanks—remains to be practiced extensively in India. And never solely is the job undignified, however it may be extraordinarily harmful.

Now, a number of firms have emerged to supply alternate options at a variety of technical complexity. Learn the total story.