Lifeboat Foundation

NASA is monitoring an asteroid that may be as large as the Empire State Building, expected to pass Earth on Saturday, June 6.

Asteroid 2002 NN4 is estimated to be 250–570 meters (820–1,870 feet) in diameter, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). New York City’s iconic Empire State Building is more than 1,400 feet tall at its tip.

The asteroid may seem daunting, but it will pass Earth at a safe distance, a representative for JPL told CBS News.

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With North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pulling back out his nuclear card for the first time since 2018, a very natural and perhaps even urgent question is, what next? There are signs that the North is getting closer to unveiling its strategic weapon promised by Kim at the end of last year. But with the U.S. constrained and South Korea committed to global sanctions, there’s no sign of a dialogue breakthrough. We could be about to witness Pyongyang’s new way.

Continue reading “Kim Jong-un pulled out his nuclear card…what next?” »

Although perovskites are a promising alternative to the silicon used to make most of today’s solar cells, new manufacturing processes are needed to make them practical for commercial production. To help fill this gap, researchers have developed a new precision spray-coating method that enables more complex perovskite solar cell designs and could be scaled up for mass production.

Perovskites are promising for next-generation solar cells because they absorb light and convert it to energy with better efficiency and potentially lower production costs than silicon. Perovskites can even be sprayed onto glass to create energy-producing windows.

“Our work demonstrates a process to deposit perovskite layer by layer with controllable thicknesses and rates of deposition for each layer,” said research team leader Pongsakorn Kanjanaboos from the School of Materials Science and Innovation, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University in Thailand. “This new method enables stacked designs for solar cells with better performance and stability.”

Scientists have successfully transplanted functional miniature livers into rats, after growing the bioengineered organs in the lab from reprogrammed human skin cells.

The experiment, which gave the animals working liver organs, could lay the groundwork for future treatments to address terminal liver failure – a disease that claims the lives of over 40,000 people in the US every year.

While there’s still a lot of work to be done before the technique can directly aid human patients, the researchers say their proof of concept may help underpin a future alternative to liver transplants, which are often incredibly expensive procedures to perform, in addition to being strictly limited by donor supply.

Although promising, convalescent plasma has not yet been shown to be safe and effective as a treatment for COVID-19. Therefore, it is important to study the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 convalescent plasma in clinical trials.

Pathways for use of investigational COVID-19 convalescent plasma

The following pathways are available for administering or studying the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma:

SpaceX will launch its next batch of Starlink internet satellites into orbit tonight (June 3) after two weeks of weather delays and the company’s historic first astronaut flight.

A Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX has already flown four past missions, will launch 60 new Starlink satellites into orbit from the company’s pad at Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. Liftoff is set for 9:25 p.m. EDT (0125 June 4 GMT).

Immortalists magazine issue no. 5 is out smile

It is predicted that a pandemic of psychological and societal injuries is to come as we face financial and emotional crises across the globe.

In a fascinating new study, scientists created fully-functional mini-livers out of human skin cells, then successfully transplanted them into rats.

The research is a proof-of-concept for potentially revolutionary technology and provides a glimpse of an organ donor free future.

“That’s very early,” Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University, told STAT. “We don’t know if those antibodies are durable.”

The Moderna press release also indicated that the antibody levels observed were equal to or greater in the 100 ug dose than was seen in patients who recovered from COVID-19. There’s not much context here, because studies on recovered COVID-19 patients have shown a range that is potentially influenced by the severity of the disease. For example, John “Jack” Rose, a Yale University vaccine researcher told STAT about a study in China demonstrating that in 175 recovered COVID-19 patients, 10 had no detectable neutralizing antibodies, while others had very high antibody levels.

Of the Phase III trial, Fauci indicated that the majority of trial participants will be between the ages of 18 and 55, but will include elderly Americans that are most at risk of serious illness from COVID-19.