Lifeboat Foundation

3D printing technology is now enabling people to give animals prosthetics!

They are giving a better life to injured animals. 😃

Continue reading “3D Printing Technology Gives Animals A Second Chance” »

A team of biophysicists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Penn State College of Medicine set out to tackle the long-standing question about the nature of force generation by myosin, the molecular motor responsible for muscle contraction and many other cellular processes. The key question they addressed—one of the most controversial topics in the field—was: how does myosin convert chemical energy, in the form of ATP, into mechanical work?

The answer revealed new details into how myosin, the engine of muscle and related motor proteins, transduces energy.

In the end, their unprecedented research, meticulously repeated with different controls and double-checked, supported their hypothesis that the mechanical events of a molecular motor precede—rather than follow—the biochemical events, directly challenging the long-held view that biochemical events gate the force-generating event. The work, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, was selected as an Editor’s Pick for “providing an exceptional contribution to the field.”

Cancer cells can hibernate like bears during chemotherapy, a team of doctors has discovered. The cancer cells can act as a living organism, slowing down their activities to survive until the drugs are cleared from the system.

Researchers develop the first nanomaterial that demonstrates “photon avalanching;” finding could lead to new applications in sensing, imaging, and light detection.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering report today that they have developed the first nanomaterial that demonstrates “photon avalanching,” a process that is unrivaled in its combination of extreme nonlinear optical behavior and efficiency. The realization of photon avalanching in nanoparticle form opens up a host of sought-after applications, from real-time super-resolution optical microscopy, precise temperature and environmental sensing, and infrared light detection, to optical analog-to-digital conversion and quantum sensing.

“Nobody has seen avalanching behavior like this in nanomaterials before,” said James Schuck, associate professor of mechanical engineering, who led the study published today (January 132021) by Nature. “We studied these new nanoparticles at the single-nanoparticle level, allowing us to prove that avalanching behavior can occur in nanomaterials. This exquisite sensitivity could be incredibly transformative. For instance, imagine if we could sense changes in our chemical surroundings, like variations in or the actual presence of molecular species. We might even be able to detect coronavirus and other diseases.”

Continue reading “First Nanomaterial Developed That Demonstrates ‘Photon Avalanching’ – Extreme Nonlinear Optical Behavior and Efficiency” »

Compared to standard machine learning models, deep learning models are largely superior at discerning patterns and discriminative features in brain imaging, despite being more complex in their architecture, according to a new study in Nature Communications led by Georgia State University.

Advanced biomedical technologies such as structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI and fMRI) or genomic sequencing have produced an enormous volume of data about the human body. By extracting patterns from this information, scientists can glean new insights into health and disease. This is a challenging task, however, given the complexity of the data and the fact that the relationships among types of data are poorly understood.

Deep learning, built on advanced neural networks, can characterize these relationships by combining and analyzing data from many sources. At the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS), Georgia State researchers are using deep learning to learn more about how mental illness and other disorders affect the brain.

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast I’m your host Siim Land and our guest today is Liz Parish. Liz is the founder and CEO of BioViva. Which is a company committed to extending human lifespan using techniques such as gene and cell technologies. Liz Parrish became the first person worldwide to take dual gene therapies for treating aging.

The creatures made famous by Game of Thrones went extinct some 13000 years ago. Now geneticists know a little more about where they come from.

Stuck at home with time on their hands, millions of amateurs around the world are gathering information on everything from birds to plants to Covid-19 at the request of institutional researchers. And while quarantine is mostly a nightmare for us, it’s been a great accelerant for science.

From backyard astronomy to birding, amateurs have been busy collecting data — and making real discoveries.

Continue reading “Citizen science is booming during the pandemic” »