Lifeboat Foundation

Every year-and-a-half or so, a bunch of hardcore space engineers meet in Tennessee to figure out how to get humanity to the stars.

The woolly mammoth has been extinct for more than 4000 years. Now scientists are talking about bringing it back with the help of a powerful gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9.

But CRISPR’s promise extends far beyond the possibility to resurrect extinct animals. It may also have the potential to boost crop yields and create alternatives fuel sources, protect us from insect-borne scourges like malaria and Zika, and even cure cancer.

NEW YORK (AP) — Tiny tubes and filaments in some Canadian rock appear to be the oldest known fossils, giving new support to some ideas about how life began, a new study says.

The features are mineralized remains of what appear to be bacteria that lived some 3.77 billion to 4.28 billion years ago, the scientists said. That would surpass the 3.7 billion years assigned to some other rock features found in Greenland, which were proposed to be fossils last August.

Such early-life findings are not as clear-cut as, say, digging up a dinosaur bone. The key question is always whether the rock features were really produced by living things. The new study hasn’t convinced everybody.

Continue reading “Tiny tubes in Canadian rock may be oldest known fossils” »

By David Ewalt

REUTERS TOP 25

Continue reading “The World’s Most Innovative Research Institutions” »

SAN FRANCISCO A company now owned by Uber last year quietly bought a small firm specializing in sensor technology used in autonomous vehicles, giving the ride services company a patent in the technology and possibly a defense against a trade secrets theft lawsuit filed against it by rival Alphabet Inc.

The chief executive of little-known Tyto Lidar LLC said in a May 2016 post on LinkedIn that the company had been sold, at the same time as he and three other executives joined Otto, according to their profiles on the online business network. Official U.S. patent data shows Otto acquired Tyto technology at the same time.

Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by former Alphabet employees, was bought by Uber in August.

Continue reading “Uber’s self-driving unit quietly bought firm with tech at heart of Alphabet lawsuit” »

El mexicano Julián Ríos inventó un brasier que es capaz de recolectar información a través de sensores y con inteligencia artificial arrojar un diagnóstico más preciso y no riesgoso.

A core set of genes involved in the responses of honey bees to multiple diseases caused by viruses and parasites has been identified by an international team of researchers. The findings provide a better-defined starting point for future studies of honey-bee health, and may help scientists and beekeepers breed honey bees that are more resilient to stress.

“In the past decade, honey-bee populations have experienced severe and persistent losses across the Northern Hemisphere, mainly due to the effects of pathogens, such as fungi and viruses,” said Vincent Doublet, postdoctoral research fellow, University of Exeter. “The genes that we identified offer new possibilities for the generation of honey-bee stocks that are resistant to these pathogens.”

According to the researchers, recent advances in DNA sequencing have prompted numerous investigations of the genes involved in honey-bee responses to pathogens. Yet, until now, this vast quantity of data has been too cumbersome and idiosyncratic to reveal overarching patterns in honey-bee immunity.

Continue reading “Scientists reveal core genes involved in immunity of honey bees” »

The discovery that living and dead cockroaches have strikingly different magnetic properties could help bioengineers design new magnetic sensors.

Current News

TITAN-III Spider Robot Is WAY Too Quick (Video) ‘My little friends can find you wherever you go!’

Bill Gates Suggests Tax On Robots ‘A worker replaced by a nubot that ‘appears or pretends to be human’ had to be compensated…’

Continue reading “Robotic Physician Assistant Has Steady ‘Hands’” »