Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical

Just 10 to 15 minutes of mindfulness practice a day led to reduced stress and anxiety for autistic adults who participated in a study led by scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Participants in the study used a free smartphone app to guide their practice, giving them the flexibility to practice when and where they chose.

Mindfulness is a state in which the mind is focused only on the . It is a way of thinking that can be cultivated with practice, often through meditation or breathing exercises—and evidence is accumulating that practicing mindfulness has positive effects on mental health. The open-access study, reported April 8 in the journal Mindfulness, adds to that evidence, demonstrating clear benefits for .

“Everything you want from this on behalf of somebody you care about happened: reduced reports of anxiety, reduced reports of stress, reduced reports of negative emotions, and increased reports of positive emotions,” says McGovern investigator and MIT Professor John Gabrieli, who led the research with Liron Rozenkrantz, an investigator at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a research affiliate in Gabrieli’s lab.

Read more | >

A method is developed for expressing large dystrophins to enhance muscle function in mouse models of muscular dystrophy, with potential clinical benefits for numerous disorders caused by mutations in large genes that exceed the adeno-associated virus capacity.

Read more | >

Biomarkers used to predict heart failure risk in the general population may be ineffective for assessing risk after pregnancies complicated by hypertension or diabetes, according to a study published in JAMA Cardiology.

Several adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preeclampsia and gestational , have been linked to long-term heart health risks for , said Priya Freaney, MD, ‘22 GME, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, who was first author of the study.

“We know that features of complicated pregnancies can impact a woman’s heart disease risk decades later,” Freaney said. “It’s important for us to have some way to track and screen the patients that have pregnancy complications to further clarify if someone’s on a high-risk path toward and help bring their risk down with aggressive screening, prevention or early implementation of therapies.”

Read more | >

New findings in Nature reveal how age-related gut changes fuel the growth of pre-leukemic blood cells. Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s along with an international team of researchers have discovered a surprising new connection between gut health and blood cancer risk — one that could transform how we think about aging, inflammation, and the early stages of leukemia.

As we grow older — or in some cases, when gut health is compromised by disease — changes in the intestinal lining allow certain bacteria to leak their byproducts into the bloodstream. One such molecule, produced by specific bacteria, acts as a signal that accelerates the expansion of dormant, pre-leukemic blood cells, a critical step to developing full-blown leukemia.

The team’s findings — published April 23, 2025, in the journal Nature — lay out for the first time how this process works. The study also suggests that this mechanism may reach beyond leukemia to influence risk for other diseases and among older people who share a little-known condition called clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP).

Read more | >

ITrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://impacttheory.co/iTrustCapitalMay.
Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://impacttheory.co/ShopifyApr.

On this mind-bending episode of Impact Theory, Tom Bilyeu sits down with Ben Lamm, the visionary entrepreneur behind Colossal Biosciences, to explore a world that sounds straight out of science fiction—yet is rapidly becoming our reality. Together, they pull back the curtain on the groundbreaking technology making de-extinction not only possible, but increasingly practical, from resurrecting woolly mammoths and dire wolves to saving endangered species and unraveling the secrets of longevity.

Ben explains how CRISPR gene editing has unlocked the power to make precise DNA changes—editing multiple genes simultaneously, synthesizing entirely new genetic blocks, and pushing the limits of what’s possible in biology and conservation. The conversation dives deep into the technical hurdles, ethical questions, and the unexpected magic of re-engineering life itself, whether it’s creating hairier, “woolly” mice or tackling the colossal challenge of artificial wombs and universal eggs.

But this episode goes way beyond Jurassic Park fantasies. Tom and Ben debate the future of human health, gene selection through IVF, the specter of eugenics, global competition in biotechnology, and how AI will soon supercharge the pace of biological engineering. They even touch on revolutionary solutions to our plastic crisis and what it means to inspire the next generation of scientists.

Get ready to have your mind expanded. This is not just a podcast about bringing back extinct creatures—it’s a deep dive into the next frontiers of life on Earth, the technologies changing everything, and the choices we’ll face as architects of our own biology. Let’s get legendary.

00:00 Meet Ben Lamm.

Continue reading “Meet Ben Lamm” | >

An international team of researchers has successfully controlled the flow of energy in a molecule with the help of its pH value. The results of the study, led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), could contribute to the development of new sensors for medical diagnostics, for example.

The findings are also of interest for building more efficient solar cells and for use in . The results have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

A process called singlet fission is at the center of the study. In future generations of solar cells, it should improve the utilization of light and thus increase efficiency. Until now, a large proportion of the energy that shines onto solar cells is lost and released as heat.

Read more | >

A Massive DNA Study Just Rewrote Japan’s Ancestry — And It Could Help Future Medicine Scientists have just made a fascinating discovery about the roots of the Japanese people. By analyzing the complete genomes of over 3,200 individuals from all across Japan, researchers found that the population is

Read more | >

At the level of molecules and cells, ketamine and dexmedetomidine work very differently, but in the operating room they do the same exact thing: anesthetize the patient. By demonstrating how these distinct drugs achieve the same result, a new study in animals by neuroscientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT identifies a potential signature of unconsciousness that is readily measurable to improve anesthesiology care.

What the two drugs have in common, the researchers discovered, is the way they push around brain waves, which are produced by the collective electrical activity of neurons.

When brain waves are in phase, meaning the peaks and valleys of the waves are aligned, local groups of neurons in the brain’s cortex can share information to produce conscious cognitive functions such as attention, perception and reasoning, said Picower Professor Earl K. Miller, senior author of the new study in Cell Reports. When fall out of phase, local communications, and therefore functions, fall apart, producing unconsciousness.

Read more | >