Category Archives: Uncategorized

Iron Battery 3.0 is Published!

Here’s the Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2025.e00629

The youtube version of this post is live https://youtu.be/ojolTZqfv-k

I’ve been working on the all-iron battery for eight years now. That feels wild to me. I’m happy to announce that version 3.0 is published! This paper is absolutely Dipak Koirala’s work more than mine. The newest incarnation of the Iron Battery is significantly more powerful than the previous version; it can completely discharge in ~10 hours (still slow compared to a lithium ion, but now in a practical range). To get there, we did 3 major changes:

  • Commercial membrane
  • Improved electrolyte and paste material
  • Soluble electrochemical mediators

First, a recap.

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What is Systems Biology and can it help cure aging?

Aging is complex, with lots of interacting parts. A new field called “systems biology” can give us a more accurate picture of how aging works and maybe we can get closer to a cure.

We can think of a cell as a tiny submarine with thousands of little crewmen (proteins) all working together to make it work. That’s the weird ‘comic’ at the top. We have known they were in there, but we couldn’t really see them working together like this, so it was hard to make sense of it. We knew which one was the captain, and which one operated the engines, and which one operated the sensors. But how, exactly, do they all communicate? What we need is something like the “org chart” for the whole crew.

A version of this post is also available on YouTube (click here)

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Will NAD+ Longevity Supplements Extend Lifespan? Maybe.

Comics: First – Previous – Next – Last

This post also appears on my youtube channel for long-form essays. Here’s the link.

Today, we’re diving into the world of longevity research – examining the supplements Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) and Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN). There’s buzz about them on the internet and in the scientific literature. I see ads, I see sponsored studies. The big question is: are these pills worth the money – will they buy a human a few extra youthful years – or is it just an unregulated supplement cash grab? It all comes down to making hard choices with incomplete information. Like our mouse friend in the comic.

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Reverse Centaurs and Better Living through Apps

Hello my fellow scientists. I just put up a video about 4 topics to share. If you want your blog in video form, it’s available on YouTube.

1. New essay (last week’s post) about parabiosis and vampirism. It’s super creepy.
2. Loneliness
3. A short story recommendation about a fictional app that makes people happy. It’s so good.
4. Reverse centaurs – a term for our time – and “Sludge content”

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comic of a woman who says she can't wear high heel shoes

Regarding arthritis and high heel shoes

Comics: First – Previous – Next – Last

I uploaded a video this week about the possible link between senescent cells and arthritis. Injury can generate senescent cells. Injury can make cause (or at least increase) osteoarthritis. So could that be the mechanism? Could senescent cells be causing or exacerbating osteoarthritis? I’m not the first to think so. This paper from 2017 shows how a drug to kill senescent cells in mice helped with arthritis. But, unfortunately, the drug didn’t work in people as of 2020.

This got me thinking of arthritis and “high-heel socks.” So I made this comic in collaboration with an artist. I’m very glad Snowman was available to do the art again. They do wonderful work.

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