Lifeboat Foundation

The new SENS Research Newsletter is out!

SENS Research Foundation email newsletter from 28th November 2016.

In Brief

• Scientist have developed an ingenious means of converting nuclear power plant waste (76,430 metric tons in the US alone) into sustainable diamond batteries.
• These long-lasting batteries could be a clean and safe way to power spacecraft, satellites, and even medical devices.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ySsv5-jSqss

BMI implant leveraging AI.

You probably clicked on this article because the idea of using brain implants to allow artificial intelligence (AI) to read your brain sounds futuristic and fascinating. It is fascinating, but it’s not as futuristic as you might think. Before we start talking about brain implants and how to augment the human brain using AI, we need to put some context around human intelligence and why we might want to tinker with it.

Continue reading “Brain Implants that Augment the Human Brain Using AI” »

Summary: Researchers have discovered a link between nerve clusters in the brain and the amount of force generated by a physical action.

Source: Oxford University.

Researchers have found a link between the activity in nerve clusters in the brain and the amount of force generated in a physical action, opening the way for the development of better devices to assist paralysed patients.

What generates voltage when you warm it up, push on it, or blow on it?

Get your mind out of the gutter. The correct answer is polyvinylidene fluoride, a material NASA researchers have refined for use in morphing aircraft that shapeshift in response to their environment. But wait! There’s more: It can also kickstart the human body’s healing process.

Continue reading “A Material From Shapeshifting Planes Could Heal Human Flesh” »

Our DNA encodes a complex biological blueprint for our lives.

Every toenail, artery, and brain cell we grow is meticulously planned and executed through our DNA’s unfathomably complex genetic instructions.

Recent genetics research has focused on how DNA may affect a person’s education, a field known as ‘educational genomics’.

Continue reading “Future schools could test a student’s DNA to predict their success” »

Bioprinting has been all over the news in the past several years with headline-worthy breakthroughs like printed human skin, synthetic bones, and even a fully functional mouse thyroid gland.

3D printing paved the way for bioprinting thanks to the printers’ unique ability to recreate human tissue structures; their software can be written to ‘stack’ cells in precise patterns as directed by a digital model, and they can produce tissue in just hours and make numerous identical samples.

Despite the progress in bioprinting, however, more complex human organs continue to elude scientists, and resting near the top of the ‘more complex’ list are the kidneys.

Continue reading “Bioprinting Is One Step Closer to Making a Human Kidney” »

More progress to help stroke victims.

Researchers at The University of Manchester have discovered that a potential new drug reduces the number of brain cells destroyed by stroke and then helps to repair the damage.

A reduction in blood flow to the brain caused by stroke is a major cause of death and disability, and there are few effective treatments.

Continue reading “New drug limits and then repairs brain damage in stroke” »

Glasgow University has taken delivery of Scotland’s most powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner.

The £10m device was lifted into place at the new Imaging Centre of Excellence (ICE) at the city’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH).

A giant crane eased the 18-tonne scanner down an alleyway with inches to spare on each side, then through a hole in the wall of the new building.