JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) A decision will be taken in the June quarter on go-ahead for the Klipspruit Life Extension coal project in Mpumalanga, which is said to have robust economics.

The original BHP Billiton capital expenditure (capex) of more than $500-million for the two-year development has been more than halved under South32 to under $250-million, South32 CEO Graham Kerr told Creamer Medias Mining Weekly Online during a media conference call.

While the Klipspruit Life Extension coal project is export orientated and earmarked to make use of existing rail access, its location in relation to Eskoms new coal-fired Kusile power station, which is under construction, could see it playing a role in domestic supply.

All the key environmental approvals have been obtained and the go-ahead decision will be made at the end of South32s current financial year on June 30.

Certainly, as Ive been watching the project go through, its had very robust economics, said Kerr.

During the last 18 months of project study, the South32 team under president and COO Africa Mike Fraser has maximised optionalities, given the long-term uncertainty in the arbitrage between domestic and export.

What weve been able to introduce into this project is a lot of flexibility, which has enabled us to reduce capital but also to give us optionality should the market strengthen out of our current prediction range. There is certainly potential for a long life out of this resource Fraser told Mining Weekly Online.

Project capital expenditure (capex) of $30-million is expected in this financial year to June 30, to fund study costs and the acquisition of land in preparation for the Klipspruit Life Extension project.

After a turnaround from loss to profit in the half-year to December 31, cash-rich South32 has resolved to pay an interim dividend of $0.036 a share for the half-year ended December 31, which means a dishing out of $192-million to shareholders from the pile of cash it generated in the period, compared with the corresponding period's loss, which was impacted by the recognition of impairment charges totalling $1.7-billion.

The company came away with 197%-higher free cash of $626-million to boost its net cash position to $859-million on operational optimisation and leverage.

The rise in profit came as revenue climbed 8% to $3.2-billion.

Compared with the first half of 2016, controllable costs were cut by $239-million and capex by $116-million.

Capex guidance for this financial year remains unchanged at $450-million.

Exploration expenditure of $16-million is expected within the companys existing footprint, with exploration already started on high-grade manganese within the southern areas of Groote Eylandt, in Australia.

Continued pursuit of additional greenfield exploration opportunities could lead to an increase in expenditure.

The corporate tax rates applicable to the group include Australia at 30%, South Africa at 28%, Colombia at 40% and Brazil at 34%.

Better prices for metallurgical coal, energy coal, manganese ore and manganese alloy were the main contributors to increasing revenue by $661-million.

Higher average realised silver, lead and zinc prices increased sales revenue and chipped in an additional $93-million, but lower average realised prices for alumina cut revenue by $39-million.

Price-linked costs fell by $47-million on lower raw material prices at the alumina and aluminium operations and a reduction in treatment and refining charges for Cannington silver concentrates.

An increase in controllable costs is anticipated in the six months to June 30 as working capital unwinds.

The Sydney-, Johannesburg- and London-listed BHP Billiton spinoffs swing to profit included its restarting of 22 pots at Aluminium South Africa, which were taken offline in September 2015, as well as the opportunistic increase of manganese ore production in the wake of manganeses price surge.

ALUMINIUM

With 22 pots that were suspended in September 2015 back on stream, South32s Hillside aluminium smelter is back at full tilt.

Saleable production from Hillside, which sources power from State utility Eskom under long-term contracts, increased by 1% to 356 000 t in the six months to December 31, on fewer load-shedding events.

We continue to identify opportunities for further energy efficiency but we are very happy at the current level of efficiency, said Fraser.

Operating unit costs fell by 8% to $1 380/t on lower raw material prices and a weaker South African rand offsetting higher aluminium price-linked power costs.

Some 72 pots are scheduled to be relined this year.

The price of electricity supplied to potlines 1 and 2 is linked to the London Metal Exchange (LME) aluminium price and the rand/dollar exchange rate. The price of electricity supplied to potline 3 is rand based and linked to South African and US producer price indices.

Saleable production from Mozal Aluminium, in Mozambique, increased by 2% to 136 000 t in the six months to December 31, with an 11% increase in sales reflecting the timing of shipments between periods.

Operating unit costs decreased by 12% to $1 448/t in the first half of the 2017 financial year, reflecting stronger sales and lower raw materials prices.

A total of 39 Mozal pots were relined in the period at $193 000 a pot, compared with 69 pots at $212 000 a pot in the corresponding period of the previous financial year.

A total of 106 pots are now scheduled to be relined in this financial year.

Mozal Aluminium uses hydroelectric power generated by Hidroelctrica de Cahora Bassa, which delivers power into the South African grid to Eskom, with Mozal sourcing the power through the Mozambique transmission company, Motraco.

We get some protection in terms of the cost of the Hillside business when the LME price goes down and foreign exchange doesnt work in our favour. So, it provides a bit of a natural hedge, whereas we dont get that same benefit at Mozal. But likewise, as the exchange goes the other way and we actually see aluminium prices increase, we get more out of Mozal than we do out of Hillside, Kerr said in response to Mining Weekly Online.

MANGANESE

The block development project at the Wessels underground manganese mine in South Africas Northern Cape will reduce cycle times by allowing mining activity to relocate closer to critical infrastructure. Commissioning is expected in the March 2017 quarter.

Manganese alloy saleable production fell 20% to 37 000 t on furnace instability at Metalloys in South Africas Gauteng province, where only one of the four manganese furnaces is operating, compared with all four of the manganese furnaces at Temco, in Australia, being expected to return to full capacity once scheduled maintenance is completed in the March quarter.

Saleable ore production from South32s 44.4%-owned South Africa manganese mines increased by 23% to 934 000 wet metric tons (wmt) with market conditions supporting a drawdown of Wessels concentrate stockpiles and the use of higher cost trucking to access export opportunities.

Wessels concentrate accounted for 15% of external sales in the six months to December 31, compared with 4% in the prior corresponding period.

Manganese ore production from South Africa will remain configured for an optimised rate of 2.9-million wmt a year, with opportunistic action when market fundamentals are supportive.

Tragically, the company lost an employee in the half-year, which has prompted it to invest time, energy and leadership in make a lasting change to its safety performance.

The fatality at Metalloys has hit very hard and new practice to avoid a recurrence has been shared across the group.

Permanent processes have been embarked upon following the internal investigation, supplemented by external engagements.

COAL

At South Africa Energy Coal, coal production guidance is 30.9-million tonnes, 17-million tonnes of it for the domestic market and 13.9-million tonnes for export.

The $103-million impact in the period of the lower production at South Africa Energy Coal followed the suspension of the North plant at the Wolvekrans Middelburg Complex, scheduled maintenance and the repositioning of draglines.

Saleable production from the 92%-owned South Africa Energy Coal decreased by 9% to 14.8-million tonnes in the six months to December 31, reflecting the prior suspension of the North plant at the Wolvekrans Middelburg Complex, and export sales were also impacted by Transnet's yearly rail maintenance cycle.

Future production will benefit from additional capital investment at the Wolvekrans Middelburg Complex that will open up new mining areas.

In Australia, steps to acquire Metropolitan Colliery, to realise synergies with Illawarra Metallurgical Coal in Australia, are well advanced and the access agreement for Worsley Alumina in the West Marradong mining area is being completed.

In South America, unlocking more value at Cerro Matosos La Esmeralda nickel prospect is envisaged. In Canada, exploration for copper, nickel and platinum group element mineralisation at Huckleberry is being started.

Underlying earnings before taxes, depreciation and amortisation increased by $522-million to $1.1-billion in the six months to December 31, as higher prices for most of its commodities offset lower volumes, giving rise to an increase in sales revenue of $240-million and a rise in operating margin from 20% to 37%.

Our strong balance sheet and simple capital management framework is designed to reward shareholders as financial performance improves.

We have declared our first interim dividend and will continue to manage our financial position to ensure we retain the right balance of flexibility and efficiency, Kerr told journalists.

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Major South African coal extension project on cards South32 - Creamer Media's Mining Weekly

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is famous for a lot of reasons. He's an acclaimed bioethicist and oncologist who advised President Obama on health care and has two very well known brothers, but another thing people always seem to remember about him is that article he wrote in 2014: "Why I Hope to Die at 75."

More than 1,000 people have sent him letters and emails--some saying he's insane and ungrateful, others thanking him for voicing the same thoughts for which they'd been ridiculed. One 75-year-old man who died in upstate New York requested that his mourners, instead of making a donation, sit down and read the piece.

Emanuel's embrace of an early end--one that's only a few years shy of the U.S. life expectancy of 78.8--is the exact opposite of how most people in America feel about dying. In a survey from the Pew Research Center, nearly 70% of American adults said they wanted to live to be up to 100 years old. But why?

"The quest to live forever, or to live for great expanses of time, has always been part of the human spirit," says Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics. People now seem to have particular reason to be optimistic: in the past century, science and medicine have extended life expectancy, and longevity researchers (not to mention Silicon Valley types) are pushing for a life that lasts at least a couple decades more.

Of course, people want to juice their life spans for reasons beyond their pioneering spirits. "The thing that is most difficult and inscrutable to us as mortal beings is the fact of our own death," Wolpe says. "We don't understand it, we don't get it, and as meaning-laden beings, we can't fathom what it means to not exist." In other words, thinking about the infinite desert of death can trigger the worst kind of FOMO.

At the same time, the odds of living a long life that's also a good, healthy one are slim. Almost all people complete their most meaningful years before age 75, Emanuel writes in his essay, so living past that age is rarely as good as it may sound. Physical function crumbles for about half of Americans at around age 80, and aging makes all of us mentally slower and less creative. We may die later, but we don't age slower.

Older folks understand this better than younger people. "What you see when you actually look at people at the end of life, to a large degree, is a sense of a life well lived and a time for that life to transition itself," says Wolpe. "Younger people have a harder time with that, but older people don't."

When people are asked how long they hope to live, however, attitude seems to make a greater difference than how old they are. A study of young and middle-aged people ages 18 to 64 found that 1 in 6 preferred to die before age 80. Those who did tended to hold more negative beliefs about what old age would be like. Still, the vast majority of people surveyed wanted to live a good long life and had sunnier expectations for their own old age.

That's why Emanuel isn't trying to persuade many people to drop the quest for a longer life: evidence, he knows, is no match for the human ego. "One of the things I don't understand is why the Silicon Valley types want to live forever," Emanuel says. "Obviously they believe the world can't possibly survive without their existence, and so they think their immortality is so critical to the survival of the world."

There is, however, an ethical way to chase life extension in a way that benefits everyone. "The proportion of the population that dies before 75, that's the number we ought to be looking at and tracking," Emanuel says. "We want to get everyone to 75."

Continued here:

Why Do People Want to Live So Long, Anyway? - TIME

Isabella Connelley and Bethan Mooney for TIMEIsabella Connelley and Bethan Mooney for TIME

The titans of the tech industry are known for their confidence that they can solve any problem--even, as it turns out, the one that's defeated every other attempt so far. That's why the most far-out strategies to cheat death are being tested in America's playground for the young, deep-pocketed and brilliant: Silicon Valley.

Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, has given more than $330 million to research about aging and age-related diseases. Alphabet CEO and co-founder Larry Page launched Calico, a research company that targets ways to improve the human lifespan. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal , has also invested millions in the cause, including over $7 million to the Methuselah Foundation, a nonprofit focused on life-extension therapies.

Rather than wait years for treatments to be approved by federal officials, many of them are testing ways to modify human biology that fall somewhere on the spectrum between science and entrepreneurialism. It's called biohacking, and it's one of the biggest things happening in the Bay Area.

"My goal is to live beyond 180 years," says Dave Asprey, CEO of the supplement company Bulletproof, most famous for its popularization of coffee with organic butter mixed in. "I am doing every single thing I can to make it happen for myself."

For some, that means daily pill regimens and fasting once a week. For others, it means having the blood of a young person pumped into their veins. "I see biohacking as a populist movement within health care," says Geoffrey Woo, the CEO of a company called Nootrobox that sells supplements that promise to enhance brain function.

Many scientists are skeptical. Here's what's known--and what isn't--about the latest front of humanity's fight against the inevitable.

THE HACK: It may sound vampiresque, but 50 people in the U.S. have paid $8,000 for a transfusion of plasma from someone between the ages of 16 to 25. The study is run by Ambrosia, a company based in Monterey, Calif.

THE HYPE: The transfusions are based on the idea that two-liter injections of blood from the young may confer longevity benefits. Now, in the first known human clinical trial of its kind, Ambrosia is enlisting people willing to pay the hefty price to give it a shot.

Ambrosia's founder, Jesse Karmazin, who has a medical degree but is not a licensed physician, says that after the transfusions, his team looks for changes in the recipient's blood, including markers of inflammation, cholesterol and neuron growth. "When we are young, we produce a lot of factors that are important for cellular health," he says. "As we get older, we don't produce enough of these factors. Young blood gives your body a break to repair and regenerate itself."

THE DEBATE: Scientists are roundly critical of this study, in large part because of the way it has been designed: there's no control group, it's costly to participate in, and the people enrolled don't share key characteristics that make them appropriate candidates to be looked at side by side.

"What Ambrosia is doing is not useful and could be harmful," says Irina Conboy, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who is also studying blood as a potential target for aging.

The concept stems from mouse research by Conboy and others. In 2005, she and her research partner and husband Michael Conboy showed that when older mice were surgically sutured to younger mice, their tissues got healthier. The takeaway was not that young blood is a cure-all, but some entrepreneurs ran with the idea. "The story has switched into a highly exaggerated search of young blood as a silver bullet to combat aging," Irina says.

In a recent follow-up study, the Conboys developed a way to exchange the blood of young and old mice without surgically joining them. They found that old mice had some improvements but that young mice experienced rapid declines.

"The big result is that a single exchange hurts the young partner more than it helps the old partner," says Michael. Ambrosia says plasma transfusions are safe and, if proven effective, should be made available.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Blood-based therapies for longevity could still be in our future, but the science isn't there yet. "Donor blood can save lives, but using it to rejuvenate oneself is counterproductive," says Irina.

THE HACK: If you could learn your risks for the most-feared diseases years before you'd actually get sick, would you? For the curious (and the brave), there's Health Nucleus, an eight-hour, $25,000 head-to-toe, inside-and-out physical exam that includes whole-genome sequencing, high-tech scanning and early diagnostics. The goal is to paint a granular picture of an individual's health and disease risk, which could then inform lifestyle and medical choices that keep you healthier, longer.

THE HYPE: Health Nucleus bills the elite program as "a genomic-powered clinical research project that has the potential to transform health care." It was founded in 2015 by J. Craig Venter, the scientist widely credited with being one of the first to sequence the human genome, and it doesn't come cheap. The Health Nucleus price tag is for a single session, during which patients get a sequencing of their genome and microbiome, a full-body MRI and an array of blood tests. When the results come in, doctors translate the findings into measurements that patients can understand--and advice they can act upon.

The Health Nucleus team believes this deluge of information can help doctors flag problems that could lead to premature death for their patients down the line. "Right now medicine is a reactionary system where if you get pain or other symptoms, then you go see your doctor and they see if they can fix it," says Venter. "It's totally different from trying to predict your risk or identifying problems early, before they cause fatal disease. If you have the right knowledge, you can save your life."

THE DEBATE: Genome sequencing can indeed pinpoint genetic risk for some cancers and other diseases. And microbiome profiles--which look at the makeup of bacteria in the gut--can provide clues about the presence of some chronic diseases. Changes in cholesterol and blood sugar can also signal illness, though that kind of blood work is routinely tested by primary-care physicians.

About 400 people ages 30 to 95 have had the physical so far, and the test has identified significant medical problems in 40% of them, according to Venter, who says they've found cancer, aneurysms and heart disease in several people without symptoms.

Still, it raises questions among its skeptics about whether or not patients can actually use most (or any) of the data they receive. It also highlights some doctors' concerns about the negative consequences of overscreening, where there is always a risk for false positive results. "When healthy people undergo scanning, it can backfire," says Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, who has studied data-driven medicine. "It can find abnormalities and lead to more tests and procedures, many of them unnecessary. It can cause harm, not to mention anxiety and expense."

This isn't news to Venter. "The criticism people throw out is 'How dare you screen healthy people?'" he says. "My response is, 'How do you know they're healthy?' We are finding pretty good evidence that many are not."

Topol says a rigorous study of the program by independent researchers could help settle the score. "If validated for benefit in this way," Topol says, "my outlook would be more positive."

THE BOTTOM LINE: Venter acknowledges that while costs may come down, the battery of tests is so far too expensive to be realistic for most. Whether it adds years to a person's life is also an open question. For now, looking into the crystal ball requires a whole lot of money--and a comfort with uncertainty.

THE HACK: Biohackers in Silicon Valley and beyond have long experimented with the idea that a fistful of supplements, taken in just the right combination, may be the antidote to aging. Now, scientists and businesspeople are experimenting with the idea that just one or two pills, taken daily, may also get the job done.

THE HYPE: Many companies sell supplements with suspected longevity benefits, but one of the more talked-about new businesses is Elysium Health, co-founded by entrepreneurs and an MIT antiaging researcher named Leonard Guarente. Elysium has created a daily supplement, called Basis, that is "designed to support long-term well-being at the cellular level." The pill isn't marketed as a cure for aging, but Elysium Health cites evidence that the ingredients in the pill increase a compound called NAD+ that the company says is "essential to hundreds of biological processes that sustain human life." Basis costs $50 for a monthly supply, and the company, which doesn't release official sales numbers, says it has tens of thousands of customers so far.

THE DEBATE: Basis contains two main ingredients: nicotinamide riboside (NR) and pterostilbene, both of which have been shown in animal studies to fight aging at the cellular level. NR creates NAD+, which is believed to spur cell rejuvenation but which declines naturally in animals as they age. In a trial of 120 healthy people from ages 60 to 80, Guarente found that people taking Basis increased their NAD+ levels by 40%. "We are trying to be rigorously based on science," he says.

Studies have shown that supplementing with the compound extends life in mice, but whether it increases human longevity is unknown. To find out if it does--and to request FDA approval for the pill's clearance as a drug--long, rigorous clinical trials would need to be done. Instead, Elysium Health has released Basis as a supplement. That prevents the company from making specific medical claims about the pills--something that's prohibited by law in the marketing of supplements.

"I think the pathway Guarente is targeting is interesting"--meaning the idea that increasing NAD+ may also slow aging--"but clinical evidence is crucial," says Dr. Nir Barzilai, a researcher at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who also studies drugs for aging.

Other scientists question the supplement approach altogether. "There is no evidence whatsoever that [Basis] produces health benefits in humans," says Dr. Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School. "Many molecules that have some apparent benefits in mice or other organisms have no benefit when studied in humans."

The company has seven Nobel Prize--winning scientists on its advisory board, a fact that has also raised some eyebrows. Flier cautions that the company's association with lauded researchers cannot replace the science required to prove that the supplements combat aging and are safe to use.

THE BOTTOM LINE: It's too early to tell whether supplements can have any life-extending effects in humans.

THE HACK: These supplements, called nootropics or sometimes "smart drugs," promise to sharpen your thinking and enhance mental abilities. Many common nootropic ingredients--including the sleep-enhancing hormone melatonin, energy-boosting B vitamins as well as caffeine--are already present in the foods and pills that people consume on a daily basis.

THE HYPE: Nootrobox, one company that makes nootropics, combines ingredients like B vitamins and caffeine with a bouquet of other ingredients to create capsules with different purposes. "Rise" pills claim to enhance memory and stamina, "Sprint" pills promise an immediate boost of clarity and energy, "Kado-3" pills offer "daily protection of brain and body," and "Yawn" pills offer what you'd expect. A combo pack of 190 capsules retails for about $135.

Nootrobox is one of the more popular nootropic startups, with more than $2 million in funding from private investors like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. "I think nootropics will become things we consume on a daily basis," says the company's CEO, Geoffrey Woo.

THE DEBATE: The ingredients in nootropic supplements have a "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS, designation from the FDA, and some of them have been studied for their cognitive-enhancing effects. But the unique combinations in the pills themselves haven't been proven to heighten people's mental capacity. Nootrobox says it is currently conducting clinical trials of its products.

The FDA is notoriously hands-off when it comes to the regulation of dietary supplements. In the U.S., vitamins are not required to undergo rigorous testing for effectiveness or safety before they're sold.

Many doctors are also skeptical that they make a difference in mental performance. "There's probably a lot of placebo effect," says Kimberly Urban, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who has studied the effects of nootropics on the brain. "I think people should use some caution, especially young people." She adds that while these supplements may in fact be safe, there's no scientific research to prove it.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Many nootropics on the market are probably less sugary and lower in caffeine than most energy drinks, which often contain similar ingredients to those in the pills. Still, the notion that they make people sharper is largely unproven. So until independent clinical trials prove otherwise, it's buyer beware.

THE HACK: Calorie restriction--the practice of consuming nothing but water for a day at a time or drastically slashing calories a few days per week--has been popular for decades among eternal-youth seekers and health nuts alike. Now some companies are taking the guesswork out of it with fasting-diet meal-delivery kits.

THE HYPE: Not eating on a regular basis certainly sounds unpleasant, but proponents say that doing so comes with the benefits of better health, a stronger immune system and possibly even a longer life.

To help people get closer to this goal, L-Nutra, a Los Angeles--based company, offers a five-day, ultra-low-calorie meal kit called ProLon, which is designed to mimic fasting and promote health and longevity.

The meal kit includes energy bars, plant-based snacks, vegetable soups and algal-oil supplements that add up to a total of 770 to 1,100 calories a day. A five-day kit that must be ordered by a doctor costs $299.

THE DEBATE: Studies do show that calorie-restricted diets are linked to longer life expectancy. It's not clear why, exactly, but some scientists suspect that stressing the body kicks it into a temporary mode that leads to the creation of healthy new cells. Other research suggests that a very-low-calorie diet may make the body more responsive to cancer treatment and can slow the progression of multiple sclerosis.

A recent two-year study found that people who cut their calorie intake by 25% lost an average of 10% of their body weight, slept better and were even cheerier compared with those who didn't diet.

"Doctors can offer patients this as an alternative to drugs," says Valter Longo, director of the University of Southern California Longevity Institute and founder of L-Nutra. (Longo says he doesn't receive a salary from his work with L-Nutra.)

Still, not everyone agrees that the evidence is strong enough to support the price tag--or the effort required. "I certainly wouldn't do it," says Rozalyn Anderson, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, who studies calorie restriction in monkeys. "Life is too short, even if calorie restriction extends it."

The real promise of this kind of research is identifying cell pathways that are involved in aging and activated during fasting, she says. Ultimately this could lead to the development of a drug that could trigger those same pathways without requiring people to eat less.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Occasional calorie restriction does appear to have health benefits, but how much comes from weight loss and how much comes from healthy cell changes needs to be further explored. Widely agreed upon is that any version of a fasting diet should be done under a physician's supervision.

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How Silicon Valley Is Trying to Hack Its Way Into a Longer Life - TIME

Runner's World

These Serious Marathoners Lived 19 Years Longer Than Average Runner's World This is far greater than the life extension found in many other studies of fitness and longevity. For example, a study of Tour de France riders gave them an eight-year advantage. Other research generally concludes that modest and high fitness are worth ...

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These Serious Marathoners Lived 19 Years Longer Than Average - Runner's World

Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Gizmodo

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasnt a gene that suggested a high likelihood of cancer or a shocking revelation about his family tree. It was his diet. It was all wrong.

That was, at least, according to DNA Lifestyle Coach, a startup that offers consumers advice on diet, exercise and other aspects of daily life based on genetics alone. Husar, a 38-year-old telecom salesman, had spent most of his life eating the sort of Eastern European fare typical of his native Ukraine: lots of meat, potatoes, salt and saturated fats. DNA Lifestyle Coach suggested his body might appreciate a more Mediterranean diet instead.

They show you which genes are linked to what traits, and link you to the research, Husar told Gizmodo. There is science behind it.

DNA Lifestyle Coach isnt the only company hoping to turn our genetics into a lifestyle product. In the past decade, DNA sequencing has gotten really, really cheap, positioning genetics to become the next big consumer health craze. The sales pitcha roadmap for life encoded in your very own DNAcan be hard to resist. But scientists are skeptical that weve decrypted enough about the human genome to turn strings of As, Ts, Cs and Gs into useful personalized lifestyle advice.

Indeed, that lifestyle advice has a tendency to sound more like it was divined from a health-conscious oracle than from actual science. Take, for instance, DNA Lifestyle Coachs recommendation that one client drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice everyday to lose body fat.

Millions of people have had genotyping done, but few people have had their whole genome sequenced, Eric Topol, a geneticist at Scripps in San Diego, told Gizmodo. Most consumer DNA testing companies, like 23andMe, offer genotyping, which examines small snippets of DNA for well-studied variations. Genome sequencing, on the other hand, decodes a persons entire genetic makeup. In many cases, there just isnt enough science concerning the genes in question to accurately predict, say, whether you should steer clear of carbs.

We need billions of people to get their genome sequenced to be able to give people information like what kind of diet to follow, Topol said.

Husar stumbled upon the Kickstarter page for DNA Lifestyle Coach after getting his DNA tested via 23andMe a few years earlier. He wondered whether there was more information to be gleaned from his results. So six months ago, he downloaded his 23andMe data and uploaded it to DNA Lifestyle Coach. Each test costs between $60 and $70.

Im always looking for some ways to learn about my health, myself, my body, said Husar, who contributed to the companys Kickstarter back in 2015.

The advice he got back was incredibly specific. According to DNA Lifestyle Coach, he needed to start taking supplements of vitamins B12, D and E. He needed more iodine in his diet, and a lot less sodium. DNA Lifestyle Coach recommended that 55 percent of his fat consumption come from monounsaturated fats like olive oil, rather than the sunflower oil popular in Ukraine. Oh, and he needed to change his workout to focus more on endurance and less on speed and power.

He switched up his workout and his diet, and added vitamin supplements to his daily routine. The results, he found, were hard to dispute: He lost six pounds, and for the first time in memory didnt spend Kievs long harsh winter stuck with a bad case of the winter blues.

For now, DNA Lifestyle Coachs interpretation engine only offers consumers advice on diet and exercise, but in the coming months it plans to roll out genetics-based guidance on skin care, dental care and stress management. The company wants to tell you what SPF of sunscreen to use to decrease your risk of cancer, and which beauty products to use to delay the visible effects of aging. Its founders told Gizmodo that eventually they envision being able to offer their customers recipes for specific meals to whip up for dinner, optimized for their genetic makeup.

DNA Lifestyle Coach joins a growing list of technology companies attempting to spin DNA testing results into a must-have product. The DNA sequencing company Helix plans to launch an app store for genetics later this year. One of its partners is Vinome, a wine club that for $149 a quarter sends you wine selected based on your DNA. Orig3n offers genetics-based assessments of fitness, mental health, skin, nutrition and evenobviously unscientificwhich superpower you are most likely to have. The CEO of the health-focused Veritas Genetics told Gizmodo that the company hopes to create a Netflix for genetics, where consumers pay for a subscription to receive updated information on their genome for the rest of their life.

Its not going to happen overnight, but we believe that DNA will become an integrated part of everyday life, Helix co-founder Justin Kao told Gizmodo. The same way people use data to determine which movie to see or which restaurant to eat at, people will one day use their own DNA data to help guide everyday experiences.

Few would debate that our capability to decipher information from our genetic code is getting a lot more sophisticated. Just a decade ago, a bargain-basement deal on whole genome sequencing would run you $300,000. Recently, DNA sequencing company Illumina announced plans do it for just $100 within the next decade. Every day, researchers discover new links between our health, our environment, and our genetics.

But much of this research is still preliminary, and many of the studies are small. DNA Lifestyle Coachs advice to drink 750ml of cloudy apple juice for fat loss, for instance, stemmed from a study of just 68 non-smoking men. Those results, while promising, still require much larger studies to confirm. Suggesting that the same regiment might work for consumers is a little like reading the leaves at the bottom of a tea cupextracting meaning from patterns that arent necessarily there.

Not to mention that the information our genes offer up is probabilistic, not deterministic. You may have run into this if youve done an ancestry DNA test and received results indicating that your parents are only very likely your parents. More often than not, many genes contribute to a specific traitlike tasteand how those genes all interact is complex and poorly understood web. To complicate matters further, the expression of genes is often impacted by our behavior and the environment. If you have a gene that raises the risk for skin cancer, but live in overcast Seattle and dont ever go outside, your chances of getting cancer are probably slimmer than someone who lives in Los Angeles and spends every day in the sun without slapping on some sunblock.

DNA Lifestyle Coach, though, wants to offer its customers simple, actionable advice, and so omits all this confusing gray area from its results. Instead, the recommendations are clear and specific, from how much Vitamin A to take to how many cups of coffee a day are most beneficial. Its a bit reminiscent of a long-term weather forecast spitting out predictions for sunshine or rain 30 days in advanceyes, such predictions can be made, but most meteorologists will tell you theyre borderline useless.

We use a series of algorithms which rank studies by reliability of results, the company website explains. Studies are then analyzed for their relation to real-world dietary and nutritional needs, and the user is given straightforward recommendations.

Pressed on the questionable nature of that apple juice study, DNA Lifestyle Coachs founders responded that the data is not as strong as the the other studies it pulls from. But it is a harmless recommendation, the company said.

When asked whether it was possible that DNA Lifestyle Coachs claims might have any validity, Topol laughed.

One day, he said, its likely well have some genomic insight into what types of diets are better suited for certain people. But, he added, its unlikely that we will ever accurately predict the sort of granular details DNA Lifestyle Coach hopes to, like exactly what SPF of sunscreen you should be using on your skin.

There are limits, he said.

DNA Lifestyle Coach was founded by a chemist and a business consultant who met over an interest in the biohacker scene, a subculture focused on ideas like DIY life extension. The company that runs DNA Lifestyle Coach, Titanovo, actually started as a blog. The name is meant to invoke superhumans. Its like the rise of the titans, said Corey McCarren, the business side of the duo, when Gizmodo met with him at a health moonshots conference last month.

Their first foray into genetics was a home telomere length test, which launched in 2015 with help of $10,000 raised on Indiegogo. Telomeres are little bits of DNA at the end of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter, and so they provide some insight into our biological age. Titanovo wanted to develop an easy test to tell consumers how long or short their telomeres were. The company initially pitched the test as a way to measure both longevity and health, but eventually was forced to clarify for customers that it is not at present possible to discern biological age from telomeres alone, after receiving emails from customers panicked about their own short telomeres.

Instead, they suggest, the $150 telomere testing kit is a way to discern information about health. One finding from their data: vegetarians and vegans who use the service have, on average, longer telomeres. The company recommends going veg if you find your telomeres are in need of a boost. Even this, however, seems like a stretch: data on telomere length, like genomics, is not quite ready for public consumption. For every paper that finds a potential cause of telomere shorting, theres one that finds the opposite effect.

Undaunted by the rocky rollout of its telomere testing kit, Titanovo is now pressing forward into genomics. The Kickstarter campaign for DNA Lifestyle Coach wound up raising more than $30,000. The company says it now has more than 1,000 customers who either pay $215 for the full DNA testing kit along with one panel, or the $60 to $70 to run panels with data from services like 23andMe.

While it might seem harmless to take part in a little science-based superstition and find out whether youre more Batman or Superman, such indulgence can have serious side effects. For years, weve been sold on DNA as the answer to almost everything. Decode the human genome, and decode the mysteries of the human spirit. This gives companies like DNA Lifestyle Coach dangerous authority. If your DNA testing results say youre prone to obesity, why spend time exercising and eating right when your health seems beyond your control?

Joshua Knowles, a Stanford Cardiologist who studies applied genetics, told Gizmodo that he recently had a patient who was unwilling to try a certain class of drug based on their genotyping, even though they had a high risk of heart disease that might be drastically reduced by use of those medications.

Were doing a poor job of educating patients on risk-benefit analysis, Knowles said. In some cases, when it comes to genetics, were placing a lot of weight on some things that have very small overall effects.

In 2008, an European Journal of Human Geneticsarticleargued for better regulatory control of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, asking whether in the end, tests ran the risk of being little better than horoscopes that told people information they were already predisposed to believe.

It was these kinds of concerns that moved the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on 23andMe in 2013, ordering the company to cease providing analyses of peoples risk factors for disease until the tests accuracy could be validated. The company now provides assessments on a small fraction of 254 diseases and conditions it once scanned forit still processes the same information, but is restricted in what it can tell consumers. Where it once reported health risks alongside specific tips and guidance on how to reduce them, it now reports on your carrier status, framing the results in terms of whether you might pass down a specific genetic variant to your offspring rather that whether you might develop the condition yourself.

Companies like DNA Lifestyle Coach have moved in offer the sort of tips 23andMe no longer can.

We have much too many companies doing nutrigenomics and other unproven things like that, said Topol. That can give consumer genomics a really bad name. Thats unfortunate.

Kao, of Helix, said that educating consumers on what these results really mean alongside actionable information will be the industrys greatest challengeand what distinguishes it from just another pseudoscientific health fad.

Its typically been very hard to interpret DNA information, Kao said. DNA is most valuable with context, rather than as the only piece of the puzzle.

The industry, he argues, is young, but will get more accurate the more consumers use DNA-testing products. Just as Netflix improves the more you rate shows you watch, so would many DNA-based products, he said.

Husar told Gizmodo that he got blood work done to confirm what he could about his DNA Lifestyle Coach results. The tests indeed confirmed that he was low on vitamins B12, D and E, as DNA Lifestyle Coach had suggested. Of course, Hussar still cant be sure his genes are responsible. It could be that hes simply not eating enough meat or cheese. Still, the blood work was enough to convince Husar that DNA Lifestyle Coachs analysis was worth taking seriously. And, for the most part, the results felt rightit made sense that a boost of vitamin B12 might counteract the emotional toll of winter, and that cutting out potatoes and saturated fats might be benefical.

The testss fitness results though, he did find a tad shocking.

I was really surprised to learn that Im not fast or powerful, but I have a high endurance, he said. I can do Iron Man. This is what my genetics say. Im trying to change my workout to see if thats true.

Husar may never be sure whether the advice divined from his genetics was really helpful. He can only hope it doesnt hurt.

See the article here:

The Next Pseudoscience Health Craze Is All About Genetics - Gizmodo

Savannah River Sites Melter 2, a key component in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), will be replaced after nearly 14 years of record-breaking operational performance. A heater inside Melter 2 failed on Feb. 1 and is deemed not repairable.

Melter 2 is only the second melter in the 20-year history of DWPF. It has been operating nearly 14 years, approximately 12 years beyond its design life expectancy. Melter 1 ran for about six years of radioactive service and another two years of non-radioactive simulant processing.

The operational concept for DWPF is to use a melter until it is no longer operational and then replace it with a new melter. There are no risks to the public, workers or the environment during melter replacement. The replacement melter, the third melter to be installed in DWPF, known as Melter 3, has been ready for years. Work to install it will begin shortly, and will require approximately six months.

Melter 2 has poured 2,819 canisters during its life, more than double what Melter 1 produced in its life span, which was 1,339 canisters. Melter 1 was placed into radioactive operation in March 1996, following approximately two years of non-radioactive simulant operations. Melter 2 began operating in 2003. Together, Melters 1 and 2 have poured 4,158 canisters through January 31, 2017. The predicted number of canisters needed to dispose of SRS high-level tank waste is 8,170, according to the SRS Liquid Waste System Plan Rev. 20.

Since beginning operations, DWPF has poured more than 16 million pounds of glass and has immobilized about 61 million curies of radioactivity.

Savannah River Remediation (SRR) operates DWPF, as well as other liquid waste facilities at SRS, as part of its contract with DOE. Operations are expected to continue at DWPF for approximately 20 more years.

SRR keeps one melter in storage in case the working melter needs to be replaced.

Melter life extension is the product of work by engineers and scientists. The increased Melter 2 operational life resulted from the following:

Incorporating an improved insert in the melter, used from the beginning of this melters operation, ensures glass waste doesnt cause the melters pour spout to erode;

Heating the internal area where the glass flows into a canister to ensure it does not stick;

Adjusting electrical current to the electrode heaters inside the melter to increase its heating capacity; and

Installing agitation bubblers that are used to improve the heat distribution in the waste glass pool in the melter to achieve a better pour rate.

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SRS's Melter 2 to be replaced | News | northaugustastar.com - The Star

Studies have shown that 30-50 percent of patients diagnosed with MDD do not respond to an initial anti-depressant trial, while 15 percent will continue to suffer from depression. Treatment-resistant depression commonly refers to major depressive episodes that have not responded to two adequate trials of antidepressant monotherapy.

In a recent study conducted at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and published in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (2016), 12 subjects with mild or moderate TRD were randomized into a double-blind crossover trial to receive an intravenous (IV) infusion of 4 g of magnesium sulfate in five percent dextrose or an IV infusion of five percent dextrose (placebo) with a one week washout period in between.

Subjects were assessed before and after the intervention for serum and urine magnesium. Assessment tools included the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D), which is a clinician-used questionnaire to assess severity of depressive symptoms related to mood, feelings of guilt, suicidal ideation, insomnia, agitation or retardation, anxiety, weight loss, and somatic symptoms. The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) was also utilized and is a brief self-report tool that can be rapidly used by clinicians to determine the response to treatment.

Study results indicated a significant increase in the serum magnesium level in response to the magnesium sulfate IV infusion and as the serum magnesium increased from baseline to day seven, the PHQ-9 score significantly decreased during the same timeframe suggesting an improvement in depression symptoms. The change in the score for the HAM-D scale from day two to eight was also positively correlated with the PHQ-9 score change during the same time period. It was also noted that the 24-hour post-infusion scores on the HAM-D and PHQ-9 did not change. The treatment was well tolerated, and no serious adverse events were noted.

Researchers concluded that IV infusion of magnesium sulfate increased the serum level of magnesium, which was correlated with improved depression symptoms according to the PHQ-9. Improvements in the PHQ-9 and HAM-D were positively correlated. This is in alignment with current literature noting that the administration of magnesium may be beneficial for patients with TRD. Additional research is needed to assess the use of the various forms of magnesium as an alternative to the current standard of care for TRD. Funding for this investigation was provided by a grant from the Life Extension Foundation, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

For more information contact John E. Lewis, Ph.D., the principal investigator of the study at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine at jelewis@miami.edu or Dr. Steven Hirsh, director of clinical research, Life Extension Clinical Research, Inc. at shirsh@lifeextension.com.

Mehdi S, Atlas S, Qadir S et al. Double-blind, randomized crossover study of intravenous infusion of magnesium sulfate versus 5% dextrose on depressive symptoms in adults with treatment-resistant depression. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2016 Nov 10 doi: 10.1111/pcn.12480.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/double-blind-randomized-crossover-study-of-intravenous-infusion-of-magnesium-sulfate-300406898.html

SOURCE Life Extension

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Double-blind, randomized crossover study of intravenous infusion of magnesium sulfate - PR Newswire (press release)

Private space technology company Orbital ATK sued the Pentagons Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) last Tuesday over plans to give a rival firm a contract to build satellite-repairing robots for a government-funded mission.

The Virginia-based company filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, asking court to halt DARPAs work on the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) mission, which would promote and develop robotic satellite repair technology.

DARPA chose rocket manufacturer Space Systems Loral (SSL), which is a subsidiary of Canadas MDA Corp., to award a $15 million contract for building robots for repairing government and commercial satellites.

It clearly demonstrates the success of our strategy to bring the benefits of our commercial business to a broader audience and to grow our business with U.S. government work, Howard Lance, CEO of SSL MDA Holdings, said in a statement last Thursday.

According to Jared Adams, DARPAs chief of media relations, the RSGS public-private effort is a first for DARPA in the space-servicing domain, and DARPAs selection of SSL has been submitted for review by the Defense Departments Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

In the lawsuit, Orbital ATK argued that DARPA intends to give away this technology to a foreign-owned company for that companys sole commercial use. In addition, Orbital ATK said RSGS would waste hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to develop robotic satellite servicing technology for which DARPA has admitted there is no present U.S. government need and that NASA and the U.S. private sector specifically the plaintiffs are already developing.

On the other hand, DARPA says RSGS would lower the risks and costs of operating in orbit.

Servicing on orbit could provide significant cost savings compared to current practices and a major advantage to the security of both commercial and Government space assets, Gordon Roesler, DARPAs program manager for RSGS, said in a statement last Thursday.

RSGS, Orbital ATK argues, directly competes with Orbital ATKs Mission Extension Vehicle, which is in development and provides life extension services to satellites. The company argues this violates the 2010 National Space Policy, which says that the government must refrain from conducting United States government activities that preclude, discourage, or compete with U.S. commercial space activities.

Currently, the Mission Extension Vehicle is backed by at least $200 million from investors, and Orbital ATK had set up a production facility in Northern Virginia. The company planned to launch the Mission Extension Vehicle next year.

In the past, Orbital ATK has worked with the U.S. government and NASA on various space projects. On Monday, the company announced that the U.S. Air Force awarded it a contract to provide support services for a multipurpose satellite.

This isnt the first time DARPA was asked to stop RSGS. Two weeks ago, three Republican members of Congress wrote a letter to the Pentagon saying RSGS violates the National Space Policy because its competing with a private company.

We urge you to promptly review this program to ensure its compliance with the 2010 National Space Policy, the letter to DARPA Acting Director Steven Walker said. As Acting Director, you should stop any further action on RSGS until the review is completed.

Walker replied saying that the commercial systems under development would not be as capable as RSGS, and he reviewed the mission, saying that it complied with the National Space Policy.

DARPA also said that a NASA satellite repair program called Restore-L does not have the same degree of autonomous control as RSGS. Restore-L was also awarded to Space Systems Loral and is planned to launch by 2020.

Photos via Flickr / NASA Johnson

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Orbital ATK Sues DARPA Over Satellite-Repairing Robots | Inverse - Inverse

Andrew Weil is Americas best-known revolutionary. You know him as a doctor a pioneer in what he calls Integrative Medicine who gets around in the very best media circles. Like the cover of Time Magazine, where he looks like a jolly Santa, with his bald head, big grin and a white beard just long enough to make you think he may someday play in ZZ Top. Hes a very reassuring guest on talk shows, where he speaks in praise of common sense and treatments that work, whatever their source. But dont be fooled Andrew Weil is a bomb-thrower.

Check out the book on Amazon here.

Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being is a bomb that may come as a shock to Boomers who tend to believe that life started with them and cannot go on without them and a total surprise for Millennials. Its newsflash: We all will die. There is no fountain of youth, no magic elixir that extends life. In 2002, when Weil turned sixty, he noted what that means: Sixty is about the time that organs of the body begin to fail, when the first signs of age-related disease begin to appear.

Can aging be reversed? No. But here comes the second bomb Dr.Weil throws in these pages and from his point-of-view, its pure good news: You can age gracefully. And if you are smart and careful and active and lucky, you will live as long and as well as possible, then have a rapid decline at the end of life. That is, youre healthy and vital right into your 80s and 90s, and then you get sick and die quickly, with your dignity and your wits intact. The goal, he reminds us, is compression of morbidity, not life extension.

How does he know? Well, hes studied widely. And hes seen his own mother who went toAntarctica at89 die at the end of a happy day when she was 93. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

That personal story is welcome because its a stark contrast to the rest of the book, which is unusually technical for Dr. Weil. But youll want to slog through it. First, because it is your life a subject of plausible interest to you hes talking about.Second, because the science is in support of some very blunt statements about how to live and eat and medicate.

Among the new ideas I encountered in these pages:

Vitamins C and E and green tea extract block and perhaps undo some of the skin damage caused by the suns ultraviolet rays.

Those who are somewhat overweight in middle age may enjoy a healthier and longer old age than those who are not it is better to be fit and fat than lean and not fit.

Buy oils in small quantities.

Avoid all products containing high-fructose corn syrup.

The least processed tea is white tea from China. To remove most caffeine from tea, steep the tea in hot water for 30 seconds, then use the tea leaves (or bag) in your cup or pot. [To buy white tea leaves from Amazon, click here. For white tea bags, click here.]

Take Vitamin E daily it offers the best antioxidant protection against common age-related diseases. [To buy Vitamin E from Amazon, click here.]

Take 200 milligrams of Vitamin C a day your body cant easily absorb more. [To buy Vitamin C from Amazon, click here]

If you are taking a statin, you should also take 60 milligrams a day of CoQ10. [To buy COQ10 from Amazon, click here.]

Turmeric may help prevent Alzheimers disease. [To read about Turmeric on Head Butler and buy it from Amazon, click here.]

DHEA decreases abdominal fat in elderly men and women. [To buy DHEA from Amazon, click here.]

Theres much more. And then theres this: The magnificence of autumn foliage is the ripe period of the year, before the sleep of winter.

____

This article originally appeared on The Head Butler

Photo credit: Getty Images

Jesse Kornbluth is is a New York-based writer and editor of HeadButler.com, a cultural concierge site he launched in 2004. As a magazine journalist, he has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, New York and Architectural Digest. As an author, his books include Airborne: The Triumph and Struggle of Michael Jordan; Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken and Pre-Pop Warhol. As a screenwriter, he has written for Robert De Niro, Paul Newman and PBS. On the Web, he co-founded Bookreporter.com. From 1997 to 2002, he was Editorial Director of America Online.

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My Mother is 100. She Does't Need Andrew Weil's 'Healthy Aging' You do - The Good Men Project

Layer 8 is written by Michael Cooney, an online news editor with Network World.

DARPA is going to have to contend with an Earth-bound problem if it is to get its plan to service satellites in geosynchronous orbit into space.

The agency this week said it had picked Space Systems Loral (SSL) as its commercial partner to develop technologies under its Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program that would enable cooperative inspection and servicing of satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), more than 20,000 miles above the Earth, and demonstrate those technologies on orbit.

+More on Network World: How to catch a 400lb drone traveling at full speed+

But SSL competitor Orbital ATF promptly filed a lawsuit looking to stop the award.

Inside Defense.com reported that according to the complaintfiled in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Orbital ATK is seeking a permanent injunction that would prohibit further action on DARPA's Robotic Servicing of Geospatial Satellites program as well as a judgment that the project violates the National Space Policy and the Administrative Procedure Act. Orbital ATK says in its lawsuit that it has long worked on in-space satellite servicing. It is developing the Mission Extension Vehicle, which it describes as a "satellite life extension service for GEO satellites.

According to the Orbital website the MEV docks with customers existing satellites providing the propulsion and attitude control needed to extend their lives. The MEV is capable of docking with virtually all-geosynchronous satellites with minimal interruption to operations. It will let satellite operators significantly extend satellite mission life, activate new markets, drive asset value and protect their franchises. Orbital subsidiary Space Logistics LLC delivers life extension services that are flexible, scalable, capital-efficient and low-risk.

In a release, today (Feb. 9) DARPA said RSGS will demonstrate a suite of capabilities critical to national security and not currently available or anticipated to be offered commercially in the near term, including ultra-close inspection, repair of mechanical anomalies, and installation of technical packages on the exterior of US satellites, all of which require highly dexterous robotic arms. DARPA has already designed and created the required robotic arms.

Under the RSGS program, a DARPA-developed modular toolkit (the robotic payload), including hardware and software, would be joined to a privately developed spacecraft to create a commercially operated robotic servicing vehicle that could make house calls in space, DARPA stated.

DARPA said its role will be to contribute the robotics technology, expertise, and a government-provided launch while SSL would contribute the satellite to carry the robotic payload, integration of the payload onto it and the RSV to the launch vehicle, and the mission operations center and staff.

Since there are roughly four times as many commercial satellites in GEO as Government satellites, DARPA elected to find a commercial partner capable of servicing both in order to lower the cost of servicing to the Government and commercial entities and collect a broader range of research data. This partnership approach will enable the fastest deployment of RSGS capability, DARPA wrote.

DARPA continued: After a successful on-orbit demonstration of the robotic servicing vehicle, SSL would own and operate the vehicle and make cooperative servicing available to both military and commercial GEO satellite owners on a fee-for-service basis. In exchange for providing government property to SSL, the government will obtain reduced priced servicing of its satellites and access to commercial satellite servicing data throughout the operational life of the RSV.

Government-developed RSGS technologies would not become the exclusive property of DARPAs commercial partner but would be shared with other qualified and interested U.S. space companies. Qualified companies would be able to obtain and license the technology through cooperative research and development agreements.

+More on Network World: DARPA wants to give dead, in-orbit satellites new life+

In December, DARPA proposed consortium of industry players that will research, develop, and publish standards for safe commercial robotic servicing operations in Earths orbit. Specifically, DARPA said it wants to create the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations or CONFERS that looks to establish a forum that would use best practices from government and industry to research, develop and publish non-binding, consensus-derived technical and safety standards for on-orbit servicing operations. In doing so, the program would provide a clear technical basis for definitions and expectations of responsible behavior in outer space. In the end the ultimate goal is to provide the technical foundation to shape safe and responsible commercial space operations to preserve the safety of the global commons of space, DARPA stated.

Recent technological advances have made the longstanding dream of on-orbit robotic servicing of satellites a near-term possibility. The potential advantages of that unprecedented capability are enormous. Instead of designing their satellites to accommodate the harsh reality that, once launched, their investments could never be repaired or upgraded, satellite owners could use robotic vehicles to physically inspect, assist, and modify their on-orbit assets. That could significantly lower construction and deployment costs while dramatically extending satellite utility, resilience, and reliability, DARPA stated. But these efforts all face a major roadblock: the lack of clear, widely accepted technical and safety standards for responsible performance of on-orbit activities involving commercial satellites, including rendezvous and proximity operations that dont involve physical contact with satellites and robotic servicing operations that would. Without these standards, the long-term sustainability of outer space operations is potentially at risk.

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An Italian-based aerospace maker will compete for a U.S. Air Force $16.3 billion contract to build a next generation jet trainer, the company said.

Leonardo announced Wednesday its U.S. subsidiary Leonardo DRS will enter the competition with the T-100 jet trainer.

The company split from a partnership with U.S.-based Raytheon to compete for the deal to assemble 350 jet trainers.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is managing the competition.

Two expected competitors include Boeing, which teamed with Swedish aerospace maker Saab to build a new design, and Lockheed Martin, which partnered with Korean Aerospace Industries to build the T-50.

Deliveries of the T-X would begin in 2024, or possibly earlier, and continue over a decade. The new jet will replace the T-38, a supersonic trainer last delivered to the Air Force in 1972. The plane first flew in 1959 and has had numerous technology and life extension upgrades over the decades.

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Italian company competes for $16B US Air Force jet trainer contract - Dayton Daily News

Aging Hand.Max Pixel/Max Pixel

Right now, the best that humans could hope for in terms of their lifespan is to reach the age of 100 or perhaps even a few years beyond that. According to the Gompertz mortality law, which is basically a model to calculate the mortality of humans, this only makes sense because death depends on certain factors that cant be changed. A team of researchers at the Gero biotech firm recently published their study, which essentially challenged this misconception.

Putting it simply, Gompertz law uses whats called the Strehler-Mildvan (SM) correlation in order to explain mortality, which is basically the sum of two factors that will inevitably increase on an exponential level as people age, Futurism reports. The team at Gero looked into this correlation and found that it had no factual basis despite the fact that it has practically been accepted for over five decades.

This concept was popularized back in the 60s when it was published in the journal Science. It really put scientists who wanted to extend human life in a bind as well because the SM correlation suggests that trying to prolong life while young will have the effect of actually shortening lifespan. According to the study that the Gero team published, this is simply not the case.

Titled Strehler-Mildvan correlation is a degenerate manifold of Gompertz fit, the study basically argues that the conclusion derived from the SM correlation has no actual basis in biology. In a press release, the teams public face Peter Fedichev noted how this study will impact research into extending human life.

Elimination of SM correlation from theories of aging is good news, because if it was not just negative correlation between Gompertz parameters, but the real dependence, it would have banned optimal anti-aging interventions and limited human possibilities to life extension, Fedichev said.

Basically, scientists are now free to research the ways to increase human lifespan. In fact, they could potentially extend it as much as they want.

Human Life Could Be Extended Indefinitely, Study Suggests

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Weaving the practice of self-compassion into your life Self-compassion can help improve your health and happiness.

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Holly Tiret, Michigan State University Extension and Samantha Radecki, GVSU MPH Intern

I didnt warm up enough. My voice feels shallow. Everyone can SENSE how nervous I am. These thoughts used to run through my head before every performance.

Maybe this thought process sounds familiar to you. Its a self-antagonistic mental cycle of self-doubt and self-criticism that I have frequently experienced, and thankfully pushed through, when getting up to sing in front of an audience. Only after years of practicing yoga, meditation, mindfulness and breathing techniques, have I come to understand another way. What if I take a different approach to my self when nerves, fears or critical eyes arise? What if, at my most vulnerable moments, I practice self-love and tenderness instead of self-loathing and doubt? What if I completely turn this inner dialogue around? Creating this new tone comes with practice.

Compassion, according to Merriam-Webster, is expressed as sympathetic consciousness of others distresswith a desire to alleviate it. Compassion toward others comes naturally for many. It often is experienced when a close friend loses a loved one; a child becomes ill, or when a spouse expresses embarrassing moments or anxieties from work. Self compassion is practiced when you focus this sympathy inward as an exploration of self-inquiry and of the utmost importance, unconditional love, when we are feeling exposed, vulnerable or upset.

In the social and behavioral sciences, self-compassion is referred as the source of happiness and psychological well-being. According Dr. Kristin Neff, self-compassion can be divided into three key elements, including self-kindness instead of self-judgement, common humanity instead of isolation and mindfulness instead of over-identification. Neff and her colleague Andrew Costigan argue that self-compassion not only flips the inner-conversation from one of attack to one of acceptance, but it also involves actively soothing and comforting ones self in times of distress. To be self-compassionate, one must recognize that we all share a common human experience and we must be mindful of the present moment. Whether our suffering is self-induced (note my singing story) or caused by external circumstances, self-compassion can be practiced. These researchers argue self-compassion is the way to relate with the self and is a source of well-being.

Establishing self-compassionate self-talk takes practice. To help you interweave this new mindset into your daily life, the Positive Psychology Program (PPP) offers these five steps:

So, the next time you overeat ice cream, get into an intense argument with a sibling, or think critically or judgmentally of others or yourself, pause. Take full responsibility for your actions and practice loving kindness and acceptance toward yourself along the way. Stay present to the moment and to this vast human experience. Embrace the fact that we are in this together.

To learn more about how self-compassionate you are, you can check out Dr. Kristin Neffs self-compassion scale by going to http://www.selfcompassion.org. In addition, Michigan State University Extension offers a course in mindfulness called Stress Less with Mindfulness in many local communities around the state. Visit the MSU Extension website to find out more.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu. To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu/newsletters. To contact an expert in your area, visit http://expert.msue.msu.edu, or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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Weaving the practice of self-compassion into your life - Michigan State University Extension

The Strehler-Mildvan Correlation

The scientific team of biotech company Gero recently published a study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology that debunks a long-held misconception regarding two parameters of the Gompertz mortality law a mortality modelthat represents human death as the sumof two components that exponentially increases with age. The Gero team studied whats called the Strehler-Mildvan (SM) correlation and found no real biological reasoning behind it, despite having been held true for more than a half a century now.

The SM correlation, derived from the Strehler-Mildvan general theory of aging and mortality, is a mechanism-based explanation of Gompertz law. Specifically, the SM correlation uses two Gompertz coefficients called the Mortality Rate Doubling Time (MRDT) and Initial Mortality Rate (IMR). Popularized in the 1960s in a paper published in Science, the SM correlation suggests that reducing mortality rate through any intervention at a young age could lower the MRDT, thus accelerating aging. As such, the hypothesis disrupts the development of any anti-aging therapy, effectively making optimal aging treatments impossible.

The Gero team, however, realized that the SM correlation is a flawed assumption. Instead of using machine learning techniques for anti-aging therapy design, the researchers relied on an evidence-based science approach. Peter Fedichev and his team tried to determine the physical processes behind the SM correlation. In doing so, they realized the fundamental discrepancy between analytical considerations and the possibility of SM correlation. We worked through the entire life histories of thousands of C. elegans that were genetically identical, and the results showed that this correlation was indeed a pure fitting artifact, Fedichev saidin a press release.

Other studieshave questioned the validity of the SM correlation, but in their published study, Fedichev and his team were able to show how the SM correlation arises naturally as a degenerate manifold of Gompertz fit. This suggests that, instead of understanding SM correlation as a biological fact, it is really an artifactual property of the fit.

This discovery is particularly relevant now as more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that aging is a disease and, as such, could be treated. They are working hard to find ways to extend human life, and many of theseanti-aging studies are yielding curious developments.

Elimination of SM correlation from theories of aging is good news, because if it was not just negative correlation between Gompertz parameters, but the real dependence, it would have banned optimal anti-aging interventions and limited human possibilities to life extension, Fedichev explained. In order words,human life extension has no definitive limit.

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There is No Limit to Human Life Extension - Futurism

WESLACO, Texas - Students at Weslaco High School are working to make sure their school zone is safe.

Art students re-striped the crosswalk on Border Avenue near Panther Drive.

It's part of the Texas A&M Agri-Life Extension's Working on Wellness Project in Hidalgo County.

The city of Weslaco is working to make its streets more walkable. But with the help of students, they've added a little twist.

Andrea Valdez - Texas A&M Agri-Life Extension, "Our students at Weslaco High School designed this crosswalk with the Panther, or if you want to call them Wildcat also, paw prints down the side. So they had designed it and now they're painting it so they can take ownership. It's really theirs. They can promote it to their friends and say hey walk on the crosswalk. I designed it and I helped paint it."

Texas A&M Agri-Life Extension says residents can be on the lookout for more new crosswalks and bike lanes throughout the city to promote health and fitness.

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Weslaco ISD Students Re-Stripe Crosswalk to Promote School Zone Safety - RGVProud

Progressing at breakneck speed, genetic engineering has seen significant advancements since the first time Jamie Metzl addressed the topic at the Vail Symposium in 2015 to a sold-out audience. Metzl will return today, offering the latest update on the science and implications of this world-changing technology.

Metzl, an annual speaker at the Symposium, is a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council and an expert on Asian affairs and biotechnology policy. He previously served as executive vice president of the Asia Society, deputy staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senior coordinator for International Public Information at the U.S. State Department, director for multilateral affairs on the National Security Council and as a human-rights officer for the United Nations in Cambodia.

Also a novelist, Metzl explores the challenging issues raised by new technologies and revolutionary science in his science fiction writing. His latest novel, Eternal Sonata, imagines a future global struggle to control the science of extreme human life extension. This world, according to Metzl, is not far off.

Jamie Metzl is a brilliant thinker and eloquent speaker who will be discussing a captivating subject based very much in reality, said Kris Sabel, Vail Symposium executive director. His background in biotechnology allows him to understand this complex science, his experience with international affairs lets him place science in a geopolitical context and his dynamic and creative mind can break it all down into digestible information for everyone

Here, Metzl elaborates on the progress of the genetics revolution, his new book, how this unique science fits into the landscape of technological breakthroughs and how the new administration may impact scientific progress.

VAIL SYMPOSIUM: What sort of progress has the genetics revolution made since you first addressed the issue in front of the Vail Symposium audience two years ago?

METZL: The genetics revolution is charging forward at a blistering, exponentially accelerating pace. Virtually every day, major progress is being made deciphering the genome; describing gene-editing tools to alter the genetic makeup of plants, animals or even humans; and outlining how gene drives can be used to push genetic changes across populations. Even if this rate of change slows, then its absolutely clear to me that these new technologies will transform health care in the short to medium term and alter our evolution as a species in the medium to long term.

VS: Despite your scholarly background on the topic, youve again chosen to use science fiction writing as a way to encompass real issues surrounding the progress in genetics science. How does your new book, Eternal Sonata, based in 2025, two years after the setting of your first genetics thriller, Genesis Code, reflect the true pace, opportunities and consequences of genetic science?

METZL: The genetic revolution is too important to be left only or even primarily to the experts. I write nonfiction articles and spend a lot of time with expert groups, but the general public must be an equal stakeholder in the dialogue about our genetic future. I aspire for my novels to be fun and exciting, but also to help people who might be a little afraid of science find a more accessible on-ramp to thinking about the many complex, challenging human issues associated with technological innovation.

I fully believe well be seeing significant growth in human health and lifespans throughout the coming decades, but this progress will also raise some thorny questions well need to address. Like Genesis Code, its based on real science and tries to explore what it will mean on a human level when new technologies begin to transform our understanding of our own mortality.

VS: How much weight should society put on concerns and opportunities of genetics science, or actually making conscious alterations to humans as a species?

METZL: Advances in genetic technologies will help us live longer, healthier, more robust lives, and we should all be very, very excited about that. Like all technologies, however, there will also be new opportunities for abuse. Thats why we need to have the broadest, most inclusive global dialogue possible to help us develop new norms and standards that can guide our actions going forward. The technologies are new, but the best values we will need to deploy to use them wisely are old.

VS: Has there, then, been any progress in policy to regulate genetics science or legal framework created to limit the radical changes this could have on society?

METZL: There is a real mismatch between the rapid pace of scientific advancement and the glacial pace of regulation. On the one hand, we dont want over-regulation killing this very promising field in its relative infancy. On the other, it is clear that all aspects of altering the human genome must be regulated. This challenge is all the greater because different countries have different belief systems and ethical traditions, so there is a deep need for a global norm-creation and then regulatory harmonization process.

VS: Do you have any insight on how changes in the administration will affect progress in this field of science?

METZL: Many people are worried about how the new administration will deal with these very complex scientific issues. Viewing genetic technologies in the context of the abortion debate would be a significant blow to this work in the United States. But the science is global, and even if the U.S. shuts down all of its labs for ideological or other reasons, then the science will advance elsewhere. Well lose our lead building the future as we wait forever for the coal mining and low-end manufacturing jobs to come back.

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Biotechnology xpert Jamie Metzl addresses realities of genetics revolution, Feb. 9 - Vail Daily News

ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. (OTCPK:ATSAF) Q3 2016 Earnings Call February 8, 2017 10:00 AM ET

Executives

Stewart McCuaig - VP, General Counsel

Anthony Caputo - CEO

Maria Perrella - CFO

Analysts

Cherilyn Radbourne - TD Securities

Mark Neville - Scotiabank

David Tyerman - Cormark Securities

Justin Keywood - GMP Securities

Yilma Abebe - JP Morgan

Robert Caldwell - Richardson GMP

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the ATS Automation Third Quarter Conference Call. I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded on February 08, 2017 at 10 AM Eastern Time. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. [Operator Instructions]

I'd now like to turn the call over to Stewart McCuaig, Vice President, General Counsel of ATS.

Stewart McCuaig

Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. Your main hosts today are Anthony Caputo, Chief Executive Officer of ATS; and Maria Perrella, Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I'm required to provide the following statement respecting forward-looking information, which is made on behalf of ATS and all of its representatives on this call. The oral statements made on this call will contain forward-looking information. The actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward-looking information.

Certain material factors or assumptions were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information. Additional information about the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward-looking information, and the material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information, are contained in HS' filings with Canadian provincial securities regulators.

Now, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Anthony.

Anthony Caputo

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I assume you've seen our press release. Maria will review financial highlights in a few minutes. In the third quarter, operating performance was strong notwithstanding with our revenues. Order bookings grew and we continue to advance our value creation plan. Today, Ill update you on our performance, after sales service, M&A, conditions in the market and then Ill make some summary comments.

Starting with Q3 results, bookings were 284 million, up 25% over Q3 last year. Year-to-date, we booked 812 million which is almost 20% higher than last year. Of note, in Q3 the average size of our three largest quarters was approximately $30 million, as we continue to engage with customers on a more strategic basis, which from time-to-time results in an enterprise order.

Our backlog is strong in terms of quantity and quality, and increasingly related to potential future orders, included in our third quarter bookings was an approximately $40 million initial order related to a multi-year enterprise agreement for the supply of automated systems and related services from Bruce Power's Life Extension Program. We executed a master supply agreement, which provides a framework for potential additional mortgage.

Q3 revenues of $237 million were driven by project timing, the cancel contract and some other adjustments. Adjusted earnings margin was 9%, as higher gross margins did not fully offset lower volumes. In December, we announced the cancellation of the aforementioned large enterprise order due to rapid changes in the customers market, which caused them to revaluate their product roadmap. We are currently engaged with this customer to determine what equipments can be repurposed for the next generation product.

Based on our discussions, we believe ATS will also provide additional equipment beyond that which maybe repurposed for the new requirements. From an operations perspective, we continue to see the benefit of operational changes, implemented to address the root causes of related programs and our gross margin improved accordingly. We remain focused on improving program management, enhancing the utilization of our global footprint and improving our cost structure.

Moving to after sales service, as I noted previously, customer receptivity has been positive and our after sales service organization has continued to advance our plans. We have a well-defined offering and channels to take our offering to new and existing customers. We will continue to focus on growing this aspect of our business.

On M&A, our efforts remain active as we seek to acquire capability that we deem to be strategic and at the appropriate price. We've seen a number of actionable targets and are also focused on generating more. We have a strong balance sheet with significant borrowing capacity, and we've demonstrated over the past year the ability to generate cash flows to quickly deliver.

Turning to our markets, our funnel is significant. We are focused on growing the funnel, which includes a number of synergy opportunities with PA, and increasingly submitting larger proposals, including some for enterprise-type programs. Customer receptivity has been positive, and the frequency of submitting enterprise proposals is increasing. In terms of our verticals, in transportation, our funnel has grown and we continue to see robust proposal activity and significant opportunities in new technologies like batteries and e-motors as well as traditional ones such as transmission and power train.

In life sciences, activity is very strong. We continue to see numerous opportunities in both pharma and medical devices for existing customers and new customers, which have led the several large orders. In energy, we also have significant opportunities. We have established a strong position in nuclear, and we are pursuing some significant opportunities in this market. In consumer products and electronics activities has continued to improve particularly in consumable, durables and industrials; however, this area remains soft relative to other markets.

In terms of outlook, our competitive position is strong. However, as I've said before, the global economy remains uncertain, and some customers are exercising additional caution when it comes to their capital investments. In summary, our third quarter performance was strong notwithstanding more revenues. Our enterprise program strategy is well routed, yielding clear results and the prospects are significant. After sale services has continue to gain traction and our strong balance sheet supports our growth strategy.

As you read in this morning second press release, ATS has appointed a new CEO, who will come on Board early March. I will be stepping down as ATS, CEO on February 15th and resigning from the Board. Maria will be taking over during the interim period. In due course, the Company will create an opportunity for Andrew to be introduced to you. On a personal note, I thank you for your continued interest in the Company and the respect you have afforded me and the management team. ATS is a great company with a differentiated platform, a strong balance sheet and a global customer base served by very talented people. ATS has achieved a lot and is well positioned to accomplish much more. It's been a privilege to serve as its CEO.

At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Maria.

Maria Perrella

Thank you, Anthony. Our operations continue to perform well in the third quarter despite the timing of revenue generation and the impact of the cancelled order. We're pleased with the level of quarterly order bookings at $284 million and closing backlog of 632 million. Although, we had cash usage of 14 million in the quarter on a year-to-date basis, we've generated $47 million in cash from operations. Our non-cash working capital as a percentage of revenue increased to 15.1%; however, we expect this to decrease in the next quarter.

This morning, I will discuss operating results for the quarter and our balance sheet. I'll start with our operating results. Q3 bookings of $284 million were similar to last Q2 bookings of $289 million and exceeded prior year Q3 bookings of 228 million. On a year-to-date basis fiscal '17 bookings are 812 million or 19% higher than 680 million last year. Backlog was adjusted for the cancelled programs however at 632 million is still 16% higher than a year ago, providing a strong foundation going forward.

Q3 revenues were at $237 million or 38 million lower than Q3 last year. This primarily reflected both the timing of program activities as a larger percentage of our programs are in early stages, where lower revenues are typically realized and the cancelation of the enterprise program. Also included in the quarter were adjustments and revised estimates related to certain programs, which have been completed or are in process. Our gross margin in Q3 was 25.8%, up slightly from 25.5% in Q3 last year, despite lower volumes.

Gross margins have been improving quarter over quarter from 24.4% in Q1 to 25% in Q2 and now 25.8% due to program execution and the types of programs we're perusing. On a year-to-date basis despite lower revenues of 745 million, as compared to 793 million last year, gross margins improved slightly to 25.1% versus 24.9% last year. Better program control and restructuring activities undertaken over the last year have offset the revenue impact.

Moving to SG&A, Q3 included restructuring charges of $2.3 million related to closing a U.S. facility. This was part of our ongoing initiative to improve our cost structure and consolidate capabilities, without negatively impacting capability or capacity. On an adjusted basis excluding amortization of acquisition-related intangibles and restructuring charges, Q3 SG&A was $36.9 million compared to the $36 million in each of Q2 and Q1. We expect to be in the $35 million to $37 million range going forward.

Q3 adjusted earnings from operations of $22.5 million were 9.5% of revenue or slight improvement over Q2's 22 million and 9.2% due to improved gross margins, which offset lower volume. Last year Q3 adjusted earnings were $10 million higher at 32 million and 11.7% of revenue as a result of higher revenues, which generated the incremental earnings dollars. In Q2, we said that if the enterprise program was to be terminated, we did not expect any material negative impact from the cancellation beyond Q3. This remains our view.

As reported in order backlog continuity, the cancelled program has been removed from our backlog, bringing closing Q3 backlog to $632 million, up 16% over last year. Based on the composition of our backlog at the end of Q3 and our estimates of in quarter orders, which are booked and converted to revenue in the same quarter, Q4 fiscal '17 revenues are estimated to be in the higher end of the 35% to 40% range of backlog. Our estimated Q4 revenues are being impacted by the timing and size of programs one in Q2 and Q3, as we expect programs will still be in early stages where revenues are primarily driven by labor as compared to the assembly stage where revenues ramp up as they include labor and third party materials.

Moving to the balance sheet, Ill review cash generation and non-cash working capital as a percentage of revenue. In Q3, we used cash from operations of $14.1 million due to the timing of milestone billing and payments. This is down from Q3 last year, when we generated cash from operations of 31.6 million. On a year-to-date basis, we generated cash from operations of 47 million compared to $2 million in the first three quarters last year.

At the end of the third quarter, our total net debt position was a $128 million compared to prior years net debt of 208 million. This represents a reduction of debt of $80 million. We continue to have strong liquidity with cash on hand of approximately $204 million and a 750 million credit facility of which approximately 650 million is available. Our capital structure also includes a seven-year fixed interest U.S. $250 million bond. Our Q3 non-cash working capital as a percentage of revenue is 15.1%, as compared to last year Q3 of 15.4%. We target to be below 15%; however, expect the percentage will fluctuate depending on opportunities, the timing of milestone billings and payments. Fluctuation can be close in our last few quarters where Q1 non-cash working capital as a percentage of revenue was 10.2% then in Q2 it was 11.5% and now 15.1% due to timing.

Turning to net earnings, in Q3 we generated earnings per share of $0.07 compared to $0.09 last quarter Q2 and $0.16 in Q3 last year. The decrease is primarily due to lower volumes. On an adjusted earnings per share basis, we generated $0.12 compared to $0.13 last quarter and $0.21 in fiscal 2016, Q3. The $0.09 year-over-year decrease is primarily due to lower volumes and increased stock compensation expense. Our effective tax rate was 26% in Q3 and 24% year-to-date. Going forward, our effective tax rate is expected to continue to be in the range of 25% of pre-tax earnings.

In summary, our business remains strong, our backlog is healthy at 632 million and well provide for a strong revenue base in the upcoming quarters. Our funnel remains well diversified with the good mix of programs and enterprise solutions. We will continue to focus on our frontend including pursuing enterprise programs and growth in after sales services and delivery initiatives including our cost structure and program management in order to improve organic growth and margins going forward. We have a strong balance sheet and we remain committed to our growth and value creation plans.

Now, we'd like to open the call to your questions. Operator, could you please provide instructions to our listeners. Thank you.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question-and-answer session. To allow us many voices to be heard as possible please limit yourself to two questions per turn. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ms. Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Cherilyn Radbourne

Thanks very much and good morning. Anthony, I wanted to extend my best wishes if you transition here.

Anthony Caputo

Thank you.

Cherilyn Radbourne

I wanted to ask about the $40 million order with Bruce Power that was highlighted in the quarter. So, I was just wondering, if you could give us more color on the potential size and timing of the future orders?

Anthony Caputo

The order itself is part of whats called the major component replacement program, which is much bigger than the order we received. And the future depends on the really two things; number one, the program in its entirety and the rate at which it moves; number two, our performance; and number three, how we fit with other participants and players on the program. It's envisioned that we will continue to participate and thats why we negotiated and put in place some master supply agreement in order to allow for future potential. Its a very big program in all and ATS is now a major player in that nuclear space.

Cherilyn Radbourne

Great. And if I look at Q2 -- sorry, Q3 relative to Q2 there was a pretty big sequential increase in your life sciences backlog. But it doesnt sound like there was an enterprise order booked in that segment. Maybe you can just elaborate a little bit more on the work that you secured in life sciences recently?

Anthony Caputo

Ill talk about this three that I talked about in the script. One order has to do with a critical respiratory product, which is multi-dose dry powder inhaler, and it's for three lines with a bridge to a fourth line, AND you would recognize the name of the customer. The second one, you would also recognize the name of the customer has to do with infusion, and this is a repeat customer for which we built two lines before. And this is a closed IV the system with tube in connection. It's a fairly high growth product and the customers demand is such that he needs to hurry up to pick more to market and future systems are possible.

Another one which is kind of interesting has to do with PA, which is a customer that is establishing a facility and upgrading capability in the U.S., and it's the retrofit of biotech site. This is going to manufacture two drugs, one for Crohn's and colitis, and the second one for cancer. And like I said, it's the first U.S. site for this particular company, and we PA are designing and upgrading and implementing testing, automation process controls and commissioning and qualification.

Cherilyn Radbourne

That's a nice color. Thank you. And then last one from me for Maria. I just wanted to pick up on your comments regarding the gross margin performance in the quarter. Can you tell us how much you would attribute to better execution versus mix of work that was being revenued in the quarter?

Maria Perrella

I'd say it's all due to better execution. I'd say two about or last quarter for sure we have death with most of read programs. And therefore, we're not seeing the impact of those. And as far as work in our backlog goes, we have a good mix of better margin work, and we started to see that in Q2; and then in Q3, we had more benefit of that plus a slightly better performance.

Operator

Your next question comes from Mark Neville from Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Mark Neville

Just first question for Anthony. Curious as to you're involved into the selection of the new CEO and I guess to that extent sort of why you may feel that Andrew might be the right person to lead the Company going forward?

Anthony Caputo

I had peripheral involvement in the process and I think like I said in the script, we, the Company will create an opportunity for Andrew to be more formally introduced, and then at that occasion, I think the best person to talk about process and outcome, and it was an extensive process and it was an global process would be David, who is of course our Chairman. And then the best person to talk about Andrew and his fit and his background and on his steps going forward is Andrew, so I wouldnt want to steal the show from those two.

Mark Neville

Fair enough. Thank you. I guess just a follow-up on the Bruce. I'm just curious the master supply agreements, the term of that, again I think this investment to the Bruce Power program runs through 2064. So I'm just curious to how longer there supply agreement, I think most investment come for 2020 is well. So, just curious is to the length for the term of your agreement?

Anthony Caputo

I got to check, so I dont get it wrong. It's not 20 years and it's not one, but it's intended to parallel the life of the program, but before we hang up, I'm going to give you the right number.

Mark Neville

Sure thanks. I just want to follow up on the gross margin as well. So, I guess Maria from what's I am hearing correctly, mix was a necessary onetime benefit in the quarter, it's just better execution. So, just on the go forward basis or maybe some variability, but there is not necessary reason to take a big step down as a sort of that way you care for your comments?

Maria Perrella

Yes, thats a good way to interpret.

Anthony Caputo

And I think just -- as I could differentiate between mix and nature of programs.

Mark Neville

All right.

Anthony Caputo

So, I think a lot has to do with the nature; as programs get bigger, and we control more elements. If we get in trouble in one aspect of the program, we have another aspect of the program that we can use within the program itself to get healthy. So, its a function of mix but it's also a function of nature.

Mark Neville

Okay, that makes sense, I think I get that. And may be just one last one, on the 70 million backlog that was cancelled, I believe you said in your press release in December there, the vendor or the customer would be -- may be procuring new equipments early '17 or mid '17. And I'm just curious if there is any update on that if they start to procure equipment or again anything you can say that out?

Anthony Caputo

Sorry, do you want?

A - Maria Perrella

No.

Anthony Caputo

We've submitted a number of proposals on the repurposing, and we've submitted a number of proposals on equipment in addition to the repurposing. So, I think the timeline is that we gave before is still right.

Operator

Your next question comes from David Tyerman from Cormark Securities. Your line is open.

David Tyerman

So just may be going to the filler again. Do you have any kind of magnitude that we could be thinking about? Is this replacing the something possible or something you can resize the original 100 or is this going to be much smaller opportunity?

Maria Perrella

At this time we believe that, it won't be or the opportunity won't be similar to the original opportunity. Probably more in line with the cancelled backlog and that has to do with the repurposing of a lot of the material that we used in the original 100 million U.S. order.

Continued here:

ATS Automation Tooling Systems' (ATSAF) CEO Anthony Caputo on Q3 2016 Results - Earnings Call Transcript - Seeking Alpha

We've already tacked three decades onto the average lifespan of an American, so what's wrong with adding another few decades?

A centenarian riding his bike in Long Beach, California (Reuters).

So far as we know, the last hundred years have been the most radical period of life extension in all of human history. At the turn of the twentieth century, life expectancy for Americans was just over 49 years; by 2010, that number had risen to 78.5 years, mostly on account of improved sanitation and basic medicine. But life extension doesn't always increase our well-being, especially when all that's being extended is decrepitude. There's a reason that Ponce de Leon went searching for the fountain of youth---if it were the fountain of prolonged dementia and arthritis he may not have bothered.

Over the past twenty years, biologists have begun to set their sights on the aging process itself, in part by paying close attention to species like the American Lobster, which, despite living as long as fifty years, doesn't seem to age much at all. Though some of this research has shown promise, it's not as though we're on the brink of developing a magical youth potion. Because aging is so biologically complex, encompassing hundreds of different processes, it's unlikely that any one technique will add decades of youth to our lives. Rather, the best we can hope for is a slow, incremental lengthening of our "youth-span," the alert and active period of our lives.

Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect of radical life extension. As funding for anti-aging research has exploded, bioethicists have expressed alarm, reasoningthat extreme longevity could have disastrous social effects. Some argue that longer life spans will mean stiffer competition for resources, or a wider gap between rich and poor. Others insist that the aging process is important because it gives death a kind of time release effect, which eases us into accepting it. These concerns are well founded. Life spans of several hundred years are bound to be socially disruptive in one way or another; if we're headed in that direction, it's best to start teasing out the difficulties now.

But there is another, deeper argument against life extension---the argument from evolution. Its proponents suggest that we ought to avoid tinkering with any human trait borne of natural selection. Doing so, they argue, could have unforeseen consequences, especially given that natural selection has such a sterling engineering track record. If our bodies grow old and die, the thinking goes, then there must be a good reason, even if we don't understand it yet. Nonsense, says Bennett Foddy, a philosopher (and flash game developer!) from Oxford, who has written extensively about the ethics of life extension. "We think about aging as being a natural human trait, and it is natural, but it's not something that was selected for because it was beneficial to us." Foddy told me. "There is this misconception that everything evolution provides is beneficial to individuals and that's not correct."

Foddy has thought long and hard about the various objections to life extension and, for the most part, has found them wanting. This is our conversation about those objections, and about the exciting new biology of aging.

Foddy: The reason I present it that way, is that there's always this background moral objection in enhancement debates, where a technology is perceived to be new, and by virtue of being new, is depicted as threatening or even strange. That goes for everything from genetic engineering to steroids to cloning and on and on. I think it's always worth contextualizing these things in terms of the normal. So with human cloning it's worth remembering that it's exactly the same as twinning. With steroids, it's worth remembering that in many ways it's not that different from training and exercise, and also that people have been taking testosterone since ancient times. I think this way you can kind of resist the idea that something is wrong just because it's strange.

When you're talking about medicines that help us live longer, it's important to realize how much we've already accomplished. In the last 150 years or so, we've doubled our life span from 40 to 80 years, and that's primarily through the use of things you can characterize as being medical science. In some cases it's clear that we're talking about medical enhancement---vaccines, for instance, or surgical hygiene and sterilization. And then more broadly there are other, non-medical things like the sanitation of the water supply and the pasteurization of milk and cheese. All of these things have saved an enormous amount of life.

It used to be that people would die of an infectious disease; they'd be struck down when they were very young or when they were older and their immune system was weak. Now almost nobody in the first world dies of infectious disease; we've basically managed to completely eradicate infectious disease through medical science. If, at the outset of this process, you asked people if we should develop technologies that would make us live until we're 80 on average instead of until we're 40, people might have expressed these same kind of misgivings that you hear today. They might have said, "Oh no that would be way too long, that would be unnatural, let's not do that."

So, in a way, we shouldn't view it as being extremely strange to develop these medicines, but in another sense we're at a new stage now, because now we're at the forefront of having medicines that actually address the aging process. And that's what I'm interested in talking about---the kinds of medicines that actually slow down the aging process, or at least some of the mechanisms of aging.

Can you explain how senescence, the biological process of aging, is unevenly distributed across species?

Foddy: There are different animals that are affected differently by various processes of aging. In my paper I go into the case of the American Lobster, which lives about as long as a human being. When you dissect one of these lobsters at the end of its life, its body doesn't show much in the way of weakening or wasting like you see in a human body of advanced age. That suggests that aging can evolve differently in different species. Lobsters seem to have evolved an adaptation against the cellular lifespan. There's this phenomenon where the DNA in our cells basically unravel after they've divided a certain amount of times, but lobsters have this enzyme that helps them replenish their telomeres---the caps that hold DNA together.

That's one of the reasons why lobsters don't seem to undergo aging in the same way that we do. Other species give off an antioxidant chemical in their bodies that prevent these oxidizing free radicals in our bodies from breaking us down. That's why doctor's recommend that you have a certain amount of antioxidants---some species are really good at producing those naturally.

There is this idea that when you're evolving you make certain trade-offs. Lobsters and clams don't really move around a lot; their bodies move and grow very slowly and one of the upsides of that is that they've been able to invest their evolutionary chips, so to speak, in resisting the aging process. Human beings, on the other hand, have to move around quite a lot. We have giant brains and we have to be able to run away from saber tooth tigers. As a result we have bodies that burn a lot of calories, and so that's where our chips are invested. It's just a difference in our evolutionary environment and that's why we've evolved to live and die the way we do. But it could have easily not turned out that way---that's the point I really want to make.

What are the current biological limits on our human life span, or our human "youth span," as you call it---the time that we're able to live as young, vibrant, reproducing individuals?

Foddy: The sky is sort of the limit there. There won't be a magic pill that gives us infinite youth, but over time there will probably be different technologies that allow you a few extra years of youth. We think of aging as being a unitary thing, but it's made up of hundreds of different processes. So, one of the different things we think about, for example, is dementia, the state where your brain sort of wastes away. Now, if we discover a way of reversing that process, or slowing that process, that would be one dimension where we no longer age, where our minds will stay youthful for longer. It's also possible that we might be able to find a way of stopping people's muscles from wasting away as they get older.

Nothing is going to be super dramatic, but there will be a point where you'll look back a hundred years and notice that people used to get really kind of feeble and after awhile they weren't capable of really thinking or processing information anymore, and they had to go into a home and they had to be looked after and nursed for a time. And that will seem very old-fashioned and very barbaric, but I very much doubt it will happen at a moment in time where we suddenly realize that some magic pill has exponentially extended our youth. Part of that's because we're not exactly clear what aging is. We've identified a whole range of processes, but there ere still a whole lot of arguments in the scientific community about what is really responsible for aging, and which of the processes are subsidiary to other processes.

Have we glimpsed, even theoretically, ways that we might add to that youth-span. What are the bleeding edge technologies that might allow us to overcome aging?

Foddy: I'm not a scientist, so I don't want to weigh in too heavily on somebody's body of research. We've seen promising results looking at the lobsters and we've seen promising results with antioxidants, even aspirin, but as I said these things are going to be incremental. You meet a lot of people in the scientific community that are true believers and they're expecting a kind of a radical thing. And it's not as though we never have a radical thing in medicine, but what we have more frequently is incremental advances.

Cancer is a great example of the kind of incremental progress I'm talking about. In 1970, your odds of surviving 5 years after you've were diagnosed with certain kinds of cancer were slim; those chances have increased substantially. But we still react to the idea of getting cancer as though it were 1970 because we don't really process incremental changes. Like with chemotherapy, they just change out one or two drugs every year based on trials that show that the new drug is 2 percent more effective than the previous drug. That's constantly going on, but it really isn't announced. Instead, we get the occasional story in the news about a miracle cure for cancer, and it always turns out not to be as good as they had hoped and everyone begins to get disillusioned about science and the value of medical progress. But when you run the comparisons across decades, you see something much more dramatic.

You give an interesting account of how the aging process evolved in humans. You argue that aging is not the result of an optimizing process, but that instead it's a byproduct of an optimizing process. Can you explain why that difference is so important?

Foddy: I should say, first of all, that this is not original to me; this is very well established in evolutionary biology. We have a number of genetic traits that we developed because they were advantageous from the perspective of natural selection---that is, they helped us to survive and reproduce. People that had the gene for that trait had the ability to reproduce more than people that didn't have it. It's easy to imagine that every gene that we have is selected because it gave a positive advantage in this way, but it turns out there are trade-offs. A number of the processes of aging seem to have arisen because our bodies were not doing enough maintenance, because they were busy doing something else. The misconception that people often have is that any trade-off that we have is going to be directly beneficial, directly advantageous. But that's not right.

The second thing to say is that aging usually happens to an organism after it reaches menopause. Things that happen after menopause are much less interesting in terms of evolution, because they have much less of an effect. If I've already reached the age where I can't reproduce, then aging that takes effect at this point in my life is not going to affect whether or not I reproduce. The game is sort of already over for me. As a result, natural selection doesn't tend to weed out genes that take effect after you've reached the age of menopause. So, there is this idea that over time you can amass genes in your genome that have nothing to do with survival or not surviving, because they only activate after you reach a certain age. So, over time, some of these are going to be good genes and some of them are going to be bad. It's going to be this kind of mix, but it's certainly not going to be the case that they're on balance beneficial. We've got hundreds or thousands of genes that don't start to harm us until we reach old age, and those genes are responsible for a lot of what actually constitutes aging. So, in this sense, we think about aging as being a natural human activity or a human trait---and it is natural, but it's not something that was selected because it was beneficial to us. There is this misconception that everything evolution provides has to be beneficial to individuals and that's not correct. "There is this misconception that everything evolution provides has to be beneficial to individuals and that's not correct."

One defense of aging that your paper takes quite seriously is the argument from evolution, which was first put forth by Frances Fukuyama. Fukuyama claims that we should resist the temptation to tinker with any characteristic that we have been given through the process of natural selection. He argues that evolution can be relied upon to produce good results and that we ought not to mess with the fruit of its processes. What's wrong with this view?

Foddy: Fukuyama has this idea that evolution is very complicated, which is true. We don't always understand why we've evolved to be a certain way. Sometimes it looks like something is useful, but in fact it's performing some kind of role that we don't know much about. Fukuyama is also correct that sometimes we interfere with complicated biological systems without really understanding what the effects will be, and that then we wind up with some unwanted effect. That's all true.

The thing that I disagree with him about is his presumption that if we have a trait that's evolved, that it must be beneficial to us in some way, and that we have some good reason for allowing that trait stick around. Now he's not talking strictly about aging; his book discusses all kinds of intervention on the human organism. But, when it comes to aging, his argument can't even succeed on its own merits, because we know for a fact that aging is not the sort of thing that is produced by natural selection in the kind of positive way that he is talking about. He says it's not always easy to do nature one better, but that's not what we're doing when we're combating aging. We're not trying to do nature one better, because nature doesn't care that we grow old and die. This is neglect, evolutionary neglect. We shouldn't think about it as interfering with the sort of complex ecological balance in the way that he's worried about.

Now that's not to say that our current mode of life extension is ideal. Some of the biggest strains on our resources stem from the fact that populations are getting older as birthrate's go down, especially in the first world. Aging societies are spending more and more on nursing, and so I think that it makes sense to pursue a youth-extending medicine that would diminish the number of years that we have to spend in nursing homes. You could imagine us living more like the lobster, where we still live to be about 80-85, but we're alert and active until we drop dead. In that scenario we wouldn't have this giant burden where the state has to support and pay to nurse people that are unable to look after themselves anymore.

Now, it has to be said that the story of medicine and medical progress in the past 50 years has not been heading that way. If anything, we're extending the number of years that we spend needing nursing. We've gotten good at keeping people alive once they're fairly decrepit. And that sort of guarantees that you have the maximum drain on resources, while also producing the kind of minimum amount of human benefit. You get to be 90 years old and your hip goes out, and we give you a massively expensive hip replacement, but we don't do things to prevent your body from wasting away and becoming corroded when you're 20, 30 or 40.

There's this great Greek myth, the myth of Tithonus, that always comes to mind. Tithonus was a mortal who was in love with Eos, the goddess of the dawn. Eos didn't want Tithonus to grow old and die, so she went to Zeus to ask for eternal life, which was granted. But, she forgot to ask for eternal youth, and so Tithonus just gets older and older and more decrepit, and eventually he can't really move, and then finally he turns into a grasshopper in the end. That's sort of the course that we're on with our current approach to medicine and life extension.

Some ethicists have pointed out that death is one of the major forces for equality in the world, and that welfare disparities will be worsened if some people can afford to postpone old age, or avoid it altogether, while others are unable to. What do you say to them?

Foddy: I think that's right. I mean there are concerns whenever we develop any kind of medicine or any kind of technology---the concern that these things are going to widen welfare gaps. The story of industrialization is that the people who could afford the cars and machines and factories in Western countries were able to produce a lot more and generate a lot more wealth than people in poorer agrarian economies. That's a serious issue. It's probably true that if people in the first world were, through some sort of medical intervention, able to live to be 200 years old and people in Bangladesh were still dying at a relatively young age, that would tend to widen the distance in personal wealth.

And look this has already happened. It's already unfair that I will on average live to be 80 and yet, if I were born before some arbitrary date, or in some other place, I would live much less longer. Those things are unfair and it's worth worrying about them, but I don't think the correct response is to hold off on the science. It's better if everybody can eventually get this medicine, because living a long time is not a positional good, it's an absolute good. It would be great if everybody could live to be 150, because that would benefit every single person. It's not a good that benefits you only if other people are worse off. When you have goods like that you should try to develop them and then you should worry separately about making sure that they get delivered to people in poorer areas, whether it's through government aid or massive production.

Another objection to the elimination of aging is this idea that the aging process makes an elderly person's death less painful for the survivors around her, because it gradually forces people to stop relying on her, and forces her to gradually remove herself from society. You call this the argument from psycho-social history.

Foddy: This is Leon Kass' argument. He thinks aging is just fantastic for this reason because it helps us to let go of somebody. And of course it's true that when people grow old, they become less useful to society, and more socially difficult, which places burdens on people. And in a lot of cases we respond to this by cutting them out of our lives, essentially. People get older, they move into a nursing home, and we see them less and less, and then when they finally die everyone's like, "well it was expected." Advanced age sort of helps us prepare emotionally for letting go of people, but it seems to me that it's not good for the person who gets old.

Now, what would the world be like if people dropped dead in good health when they reach a certain age? It would be very sad, but on the upside the person would've had 20 or 30 years of additional integration into society and we would've been able to spend more time with them. I've got to say that I would've enjoyed my grandmother's presence a lot more if she'd been able to run around and to play and work and be part of society in her extremely advanced age.

Nick Bostrom has said that people have fallen victim to a kind of Stockholm syndrome when it comes to aging. The idea being that because aging has always been an insurmountable obstacle for humanity, that we have dignified it more than it deserves, that we contort ourselves logically and rhetorically to defend it precisely because it is so inescapable. Does that sound right to you?

Foddy: Yes, I think that's right, although Nick draws conclusions that are a bit more extreme than I would tend to draw. I think that we do have a tendency to kind of rationalize things that we don't think we can do anything about. This is a perfectly healthy attitude if you really can't do anything about the aging process---it's better to accept it and kind of talk about it as being a natural part of life, not something to rail against or feel bad about. It's something that everybody goes through. Now if it did so happen that we could discover a medicine that completely prevents that process from taking place, we would have to re-evaluate at that stage and realize that we've done some emotional rationalization here and the conditions for it no longer apply. We no longer need to comfort ourselves with the inevitability of death if it's not actually inevitable.

Having said that, death is, in fact, inevitable. Even if we solve every medical problem, you still have a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying every year by some sort of accident. So, on those odds you could probably expect to live to be about 1,000. I don't think it's ever going to be the case that we will live forever. It's not even going to be 1,000. We're probably talking about living to be 120 or 150 or somewhere around there, but to me the idea that we have to accept living to 80 rather than 120 is bizarre given that it's not so long ago that we lived to 40.

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Radical Life Extension Is Already Here, But We're Doing it ...

The next meeting of Clone Club is scheduled for Saturday, June 10 at 10/9c.

Thats whenOrphan Black will return for its fifth and final season, BBC America announced Tuesday.

VIDEOSTatiana Maslany Talks Emmy Prep and (Maybe) New Orphan Black Clones

Upcoming episodes of the Tatiana Maslany-led sci-fi series will explore prolongevity and life extension, which is a very interesting and topical science right now, co-showrunner Graeme Manson told TVLine at last years Emmys. (At that same event, Maslany took home her first Emmy for Lead Actress in a Drama Series.)

Also, as Manson previewed at San Diego Comic-Con, the fifth seasons revelation is that the founder of Neolution [P.T. Westmoreland] is somehow still alive That is part of the big mystery for next year.

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'Orphan Black' Final Season Premiere Date Set at BBC America - Yahoo TV (blog)

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The Royal Navy warship HMS Argyll has set sail again following a 20-month refit at its Devonport dockyard base.

The Type 23 frigate sailed with the very latest Royal Navy sensors and equipment newly fitted, in particular the new Sea Ceptor air-defence missile system, for which she will lead the first acceptance trials for the class of warship in the Navy later in the year.

Her crew, led by the captain Commander Toby Shaughnessy, has been working hard with the MOD's industrial partner Babcock, who delivered the refit to get her ready for sea.

Recently completing the last of her pre-sailing machinery trials and a busy period of safety drills, the 171-man crew is delighted to be back at sea.

Commander Shaughnessy said: "It is always extremely challenging to re-generate our ships following their routine periodical refits.

"They are complicated machines and the vast array of equipment needs close attention when we turn them on again after such a long period in dry dock.

"I am very proud of the determination and professionalism of my crew throughout this busy period in getting the ship ready to return to sea.

"We look forward to rejoining the fleet and contributing to its global operations once again."

HMS Argyll will consolidate her safety drills at sea before a short period of post-refit trials.

She will return to full operations with her sister Devonport ships thereafter.

Babcock warship director, Mike Whalley, said: "We are delighted to play our part in returning HMS Argyll to sea in a significantly improved material state and with enhanced capability.

"This has been the most complex Type 23 upkeep ever undertaken in Devonport and the first UK warship class to have its missile system changed mid -life since the 1970s.

"Key learning gained throughout the project will enhance our ability as class lead to life extend the rest of the class.''

A Royal Navy spokesman said the latest launch of HMS Argyll represents the culmination of more than 600,000 man hours of work at the Babcock Frigate Support Centre in Devonport Royal Dockyard.

They noted that this is Babcock's completion of the first Type 23 'life-extension' upkeep, designed to extend the ship's operational life from 18 to 35 years: maintaining, updating and upgrading capability for the 21st century.

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Plymouth warship HMS Argyll sets sail again after 20-month refit - Plymouth Herald