Lifeboat Foundation

The world’s best artists can take a handful of differently colored paints and create a museum-worthy canvas that looks like nothing else. They do so by drawing upon inspiration, knowledge of what’s been done in the past and design rules they learned after years in the studio.

Chemists work in a similar way when inventing new compounds. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University and The University of Chicago have developed a new method for discovering and making new crystalline materials with two or more elements.

“We expect that our work will prove extremely valuable to the chemistry, materials and condensed matter communities for synthesizing new and currently unpredictable materials with exotic properties,” said Mercouri Kanatzidis, a chemistry professor at Northwestern with a joint appointment at Argonne.

Many medical treatments have toxicities, sometimes called adverse events, which can complicate a patient’s treatment regimen. Treatment-related adverse events can range from mild symptoms, like transient fatigue or nausea, to severe and lethal occurrences, including cardiac toxicity.

Cardiac toxicity, which manifests as indications like acute myocardial infarction (MI), and angina pectoris (AP), can occur in cancer survivors, even several years following successful treatment. The onset of heart-related adverse events long after treatment is known as late cardiac toxicity, which can become a lethal complication of cancer therapies like radiation and chemotherapy.

Continue reading “A Target to Toxicity of Cancer Therapies” »

S cientifically, it’s called ectogenesis, a term coined by J.B.S. Haldane in 1924. A hugely influential science popularizer, Haldane did for his generation what Carl Sagan did later in the century. He got people thinking and talking about the implications of science and technology on our civilization, and did not shy away from inventing new words in order to do so. Describing ectogenesis as pregnancy occurring in an artificial environment, from fertilization to birth, Haldane predicted that by 2074 this would account for more than 70 percent of human births.

His prediction may yet be on target.

In discussing the idea in his work Daedalus –a reference to the inventor in Greek mythology who, through his inventions, strived to bring humans to the level of the gods–Haldane was diving into issues of his time, namely eugenics and the first widespread debates over contraception and population control.

A Kent team, led by Professors Ben Goult and Jen Hiscock, has created and patented a ground-breaking new shock-absorbing material that could revolutionise both the defence and planetary science sectors.

This novel protein-based family of materials, named TSAM (Talin Shock Absorbing Materials), represents the first known example of a SynBio (or synthetic biology) material capable of absorbing supersonic projectile impacts. This opens the door for the development of next-generation bullet-proof armour and projectile capture materials to enable the study of hypervelocity impacts in space and the upper atmosphere (astrophysics).

Professor Ben Goult explained: ‘Our work on the protein talin, which is the cells natural shock absorber, has shown that this molecule contains a series of binary switch domains which open under tension and refold again once tension drops. This response to force gives talin its molecular shock absorbing properties, protecting our cells from the effects of large force changes. When we polymerised talin into a TSAM, we found the shock absorbing properties of talin monomers imparted the material with incredible properties.’

It was once thought that inflammation and immune responses in the brain were limited; that is was a so-called immune privileged organ. But there is increasing evidence to the contrary. New research has shown that immune cells called mucosal-associated invariant T cells (MAITs) can serve critical roles in the brain that reduce the levels of damaging reactive oxygen species, which prevents neuroinflammation, and protects learning and memory. The findings have been reported in Nature Immunology.

In this study, researchers genetically engineered mice so MAITs would no longer be produced. These mice were compared to a normal group and mice and while cognitive function was the same in both groups to start with, difference appeared as the mice approached middle age. The MAIT-deficient mice had difficulty forming new memories.

Researchers from MIT want to use a massive, powerfull laser, shoot it into outer space in an attempt to attract aliens to Earth.

The term AI Art refers to artwork created by computers and algorithms. AI Art is not theft as it does not involve taking or copying someone else’s work without permission. AI Art is an entirely new form of creativity that involves the use of artificial intelligence to create unique and original works of art.

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Continue reading “AI Art is NOT Theft” »

A probiotic bacterium called Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus HA-114 prevents neurodegeneration in the C. elegans worm, an animal model used to study amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

That’s the finding of a new study at Canada’s CHUM Research Center (CRCHUM) led by Université de Montréal neuroscience professor Alex Parker and published in the journal Communications Biology.

He and his team suggest that the disruption of lipid metabolism contributes to this cerebral degeneration, and show that the neuroprotection provided by HA-114, a non-commercial probiotic, is unique compared to other strains of the same bacterial family tested.

Austin, Texas-based 3D printing construction company ICON has gotten some pretty significant projects off the ground in recent years, from a 50-home development in Mexico to a 100-home neighborhood in Texas. This week the company won a NASA contract that will help it get an even bigger project much further off the ground—all the way to the moon, in fact.

The $57.2 million contract is intended to help ICON develop technologies for building infrastructure on the moon, like landing pads, houses, and roads. The goal is for ICON to build these lunar structures using local material—that is, moon houses built out of moon dust and moon rocks.