Lifeboat Foundation

A little known biotech company has developed an effective and affordable cardiovascular disease detection device that could save millions of lives and billions of dollars in medical expenses.

Short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, CRISPR is a revolutionary gene editing technique that’s taken the scientific world by storm. Both ultra-precise and easy to access, CRISPR could be the next step towards wiping out genetically inherited diseases and even curing cancers. A host of exciting CRISPR concepts are currently undergoing clinical trials and proof-of-concept experiments, with one particularly controversial focus — human embryos.

A “cut and paste” concept

While there have been rumours coming out of China for years, US scientists have now confirmed that the first attempts to create genetically modified human embryos have been a success. Led by researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, the study used CRISPR to change the DNA of multiple one-cell human embryos. Basically, this allowed them to “snip” out segments of a particular genome and switch them with customised replacements. As in previous cases, the embryos were terminated several days after creation to prevent them from developing into foetuses.

Continue reading “Is Human Genetic Modification Possible?” »

Professor whose study suggested technology can detect whether a person is gay or straight says programs will soon reveal traits such as criminal predisposition.

Using the CRISPR gen-editing technique, a team of researchers altered the flowers on morning glory plants from purple to white. This is the first time it’s been used to change a plant’s color.

The joy and pain of artificial intelligence was already apparent in the 1920s.

Brain scientists have identified a genetic programme that controls the way our brain changes throughout life.

The programme controls how and when brain genes are expressed at different times in a person’s life to perform a range of functions, the study found.

Experts say the timing is so precise that they can tell the age of a person by looking at the genes that are expressed in a sample of brain tissue.

Continue reading “Scientists discover genetic timetable of brain’s aging process” »

Ten years ago, researchers thought that getting a computer to tell the difference between a cat and a dog would be almost impossible. Today, computer vision systems do it with greater than 99 percent accuracy. How?

Joseph Redmon works on the YOLO (You Only Look Once) system, an open-source method of object detection that can identify objects in images and video — from zebras to stop signs — with lightning-quick speed. In a remarkable live demo, Redmon shows off this important step forward for applications like self-driving cars, robotics and even cancer detection.

Continue reading “How computers learn to recognize objects instantly” »

Supernovae are an explosion of a massive supergiant star which may shine with the brightness of 10 billion suns! The study of these phenomena has unlocked mysteries about black holes, the origin of metals such as gold and the dynamic of the universe. Supernovae are rare — the last supernova seen in our galaxy was recorded in 1604, according to NASA. However, the Universe is large and astronomers estimated that one of the Milky Way’s massive stars explodes about every 50 years on average [1].

There is a crisis in science funding and in the relatively small field of rejuvenation biotechnology this means that crowdfunding breakthrough science is vitally important.