Lifeboat Foundation

TEL AVIV — Critically ill COVID-19 patients recovered rapidly from respiratory failure after three days of treatment with RLF-100, a therapy granted fast-track designation in the United States, two drug companies said Sunday.

Geneva-based Relief Therapeutics Holdings AG RFLB.S has a patent for RLF-100, or aviptadil, a synthetic form of a natural peptide that protects the lung. US-Israeli NeuroRx Inc. partnered with Relief to develop the drug in the United States.

In June the US Food and Drug Administration granted fast-track designation to RLF-100 for treatment of respiratory distress in COVID-19.

READ: Avalon GloboCare forges partnership with Austrian university to develop coronavirus vaccine

It noted that treatment with AVA-001 was generally well tolerated with minimal toxicities and adverse side effects. No neurotoxicity or greater than Grade-1 cytokine release syndrome was observed in this cohort of patients treated with AVA-001. All patients who achieved CR successfully proceeded to allogeneic bone marrow transplant with curative intent.

Purdue University innovators are working on inventions to use micro-chip technology in implantable devices and other wearable products such as smart watches to improve biomedical devices, including those used to monitor people with glaucoma and heart disease.

The Purdue team developed a fully implantable radio-frequency transmitter chip for wireless sensor nodes and biomedical devices. The research is published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II. The transmitter chip consumes lowest amount of energy per digital bit published to date.

The transmitter works in a similar fashion to communication technology in mobile phones and smart watches, but the Purdue transmitter has an unprecedented level of miniaturization and low-energy consumption that it can be implanted into an eye to monitor pressure for a glaucoma patient or into another part of the body to measure data related to heart functions.

Singapore researchers have developed “electronic skin” capable of recreating a sense of touch, an innovation they hope will allow people with prosthetic limbs to detect objects, as well as feel texture, or even temperature and pain.

The device, dubbed ACES, or Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin, is made up of 100 small sensors and is about 1 square centimeter (0.16 square inch) in size.

The researchers at the National University of Singapore say it can process information faster than the human nervous system, is able to recognise 20 to 30 different textures and can read Braille letters with more than 90% accuracy.

DARPA’s Subterranean (SubT) Challenge focuses on discovering innovative approaches to map, navigate, and search complex underground environments across three diverse subdomains: human-made tunnels, urban underground, and natural cave systems. Two previous scored events – Tunnel and Urban Circuits – featured both Virtual and Systems Competitions. DARPA has made the difficult decision to proceed only with the Virtual Competition for the Cave Circuit, due to safety considerations surrounding COVID-19. The date for the Cave Circuit Virtual Competition webcast/public event will be announced in the coming weeks.

Teams must qualify by a September 15 deadline to participate in the Cave Circuit Virtual Competition, which includes team registration and registration on the SubT Challenge Virtual Portal. Additional details are available in the SubT Qualification Guide available on the program’s Resources Page. Interested teams also are encouraged to join the SubT Community Forum, where they can engage with other participants and ask any questions.

“We recognize and share the teams’ passion to compete and showcase the hard work they have completed since the Urban Circuit, and we also are committed to the safety of the global community and extended SubT Challenge family,” said Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager for the SubT Challenge in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “Additionally, I know a significant aspect of the SubT Challenge is the opportunity to invite the public to experience the camaraderie and competition unique to DARPA challenges. We look forward to providing greater insight into the Virtual Competition Cave Circuit via an enhanced webcast and online experience, and offering additional opportunities to experience the SubT Challenge during the Final Event.”

Two California companies were selected for DARPA’s Gamma Ray Inspection Technology (GRIT) program and have begun work to develop a transportable, tunable source of gamma rays for a host of national security, industrial, and medical applications.

Lumitron Technologies and RadiaBeam Technologies started work on the GRIT program in April and are exploring novel approaches to achieve high-intensity, tunable, and narrow-bandwidth sources of gamma ray radiation in a compact, transportable form factor.

GRIT aims to provide a source of tunable, pure x-rays and gamma rays from tens of keV (kilo-electron volts) up through three MeV (mega-electron volts). Currently, tunable and narrow bandwidth gamma ray sources only exist at highly specialized user facilities best suited for basic research and are not able to support broad practical applications. Shrinking these photon sources to a transportable system is the major goal and challenge of the GRIT program.

The advent of DNA sequencing has given scientists a clearer insight into the interconnectedness of evolution and the web-like path that different organisms take, splitting apart and coming back together. Tony Capra, associate professor of biological sciences, has come to new conclusions about the influence of Neanderthal DNA on some genetic traits of modern humans.

The article “Neanderthal introgression reintroduced functional ancestral alleles lost in Eurasian populations” was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on July 27.

The ancestors of all modern humans lived across the African continent, until approximately 100,000 years ago when a subset of humans decided to venture further afield. Neanderthals, an extinct relative of modern humans, had been longtime residents of Europe and central and south Asia; their ancestors had already migrated there 700,000 years previously. The humans who moved into central Asia and the Middle East encountered and reproduced with Neanderthals. Neanderthal DNA is present in some modern humans, and now research shows that can sometimes be a good thing.

NASA’s Lucy mission, led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), has achieved an important milestone by passing its System Integration Review and clearing the way for spacecraft assembly. This NASA Discovery Program class mission will be the first to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, ancient small bodies that share an orbit with Jupiter and hold important insights to understanding the early solar system.

The Lucy spacecraft, during its nominal 12-year mission, will fly by and collect data from seven of these primitive worlds, plus a main belt asteroid. Because the Trojan asteroids are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.

Over the last few months, the Lucy team has focused on building and testing all the components of the spacecraft, including the scientific instruments, electronics, communications and navigation systems while observing all appropriate pandemic protocols. At this review, the Lucy team demonstrated to an independent senior review board, including NASA and external experts, that the systems and subsystems are on schedule to proceed to assembly, testing and integration.

Circa 2011

Gravity is no obstacle for this climbing robot. It scales vertical walls—even those made of smooth materials like glass. Jeff Krahn, an engineer from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, created this gecko-inspired tank of a robot, which he detailed in a paper in the journal Smart Materials and Structures this week.

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