Lifeboat Foundation

The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is based on the mass release of sterilized male insects to reduce the pest population size via infertile mating. Critical for all SIT programs is a conditional sexing strain to enable the cost-effective production of male-only populations. Compared to current female-elimination strategies based on killing or sex sorting, generating male-only offspring via sex conversion would be economically beneficial by doubling the male output. Temperature-sensitive mutations known from the D. melanogaster transformer-2 gene (tra2^ts) induce sex conversion at restrictive temperatures, while regular breeding of mutant strains is possible at permissive temperatures. Since tra2 is a conserved sex determination gene in many Diptera, including the major agricultural pest Ceratitis capitata, it is a promising candidate for the creation of a conditional sex conversion strategy in this Tephritid. Here, CRISPR/Cas9 homology-directed repair was used to induce the D. melanogaster-specific tra2^ts SNPs in Cctra2. 100% female to male conversion was successfully achieved in flies homozygous for the tra2^ts2 mutation. However, it was not possible, to identify a permissive temperature for the mutation allowing the rearing of a tra2^ts2 homozygous line, as lowering the temperature below 18.5 °C interferes with regular breeding of the flies.

Florida will use BlueGreen Water Technologies’ treatment to stop harmful algae blooms in Lake Okeechobee from reaching the state’s waterways.

Lake Okeechobee, also known as Florida’s Inland Sea, is the state’s largest freshwater lake. It has become overrun by cyanobacterial blooms (“blue green algae”) that render the water toxic for drinking and agriculture. It’s also not safe to eat fish from the lake or to swim in its waters.

Left untreated, cyanobacterial blooms can hijack all the resources in a lake or reservoir and turn it a dead aquatic zone.

Some animals, like mice and birds, are able to bring their body temperature and metabolism way down to conserve energy, going into a sleep-like state called torpor. Now researchers have identified the brain cells that trigger this state, showing they can activate it on demand. The team was even able to do it in rats, which don’t normally do it at all, suggesting that such a “suspended animation” state might eventually be possible in humans.

Torpor seems to have evolved as a survival strategy during times of food scarcity, allowing animals to snooze through cold nights or even entire winters without wasting too much energy keeping their body temperature up. That of course allows them to survive until things warm up again, and food becomes more plentiful.

Scientists have toyed with the idea of inducing this kind of hibernation state in humans to reduce the resources and room required for long treks into space. Now researchers at Harvard and the University of Tsukuba in Japan may have made progress towards doing just that.

Here’s my latest video!

Calorie restriction (CR) is well known to extend average and maximal lifespan in a variety of animal models, but what about in people? In this video, I present evidence showing that CR slows biological aging, which suggests that CR will positively affect lifespan in people.

Vertical farms subvert the space limitations of cities by allowing for portable, shipping container-esque produce farms that can operate in any urban environment.

Hello World. I’m Imagination. In this video, I’m going to talk about Milk and Impossible Burger. Impossibl…

Robotic waiters.

This restaurant hires robots to serve food.

This was the 17th farm closure in South Korea that HSI has facilitated, and the latest indication that the market for dog meat, a traditional delicacy in South Korea, is rapidly declining.

NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) discovered water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places. This water was detected in Clavius Crater, yes the very same crater featured in the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey as the site of the lunar monolith. In reality this crater’s discovery my spur space exploration, development, and settlement. Find out how in this video.

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