Lifeboat Foundation

Getting closer.

Drugs and vaccines circulate through the vascular system reacting according to their chemical and structural nature. In some cases, they are intended to diffuse. In other cases, like cancer treatments, the intended target is highly localized. The effectiveness of a medicine —and how much is needed and the side effects it causes —are a function of how well it can reach its target.

“A lot of medicines involve intravenous injections of drug carriers,” said Ying Li, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut. “We want them to be able to circulate and find the right place at the right time and to release the right amount of drugs to safely protect us. If you make mistakes, there can be terrible side effects.”

Continue reading “Targeting tumors with nanoworms” »

Aging | doi:10.18632/aging.202188. Yafit Hachmo, Amir Hadanny, Ramzia Abu Hamed, Malka Daniel-Kotovsky, Merav Catalogna, Gregory Fishlev, Erez Lang, Nir Polak, Keren Doenyas, Mony Friedman, Yonatan Zemel, Yair Bechor, Shai Efrati.

Harvard’s Wyss Institute has created a new gene-editing tool that enable scientist to perform millions of genetic experiments simultaneously.

Researchers from the Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have created a new gene-editing tool that can enable scientists to perform millions of genetic experiments simultaneously. They’re calling it the Retron Library Recombineering (RLR) technique, and it uses segments of bacterial DNA called retrons that can produce fragments of single-stranded DNA.

When it comes to gene editing, CRISPR-Cas9 is probably the most well-known technique these days. It’s been making waves in the science world in the past few years, giving researchers the tool they need to be able to easily alter DNA sequences. It’s more accurate than previously used techniques, and it has a wide variety of potential applications, including life-saving treatments for various illnesses.

Continue reading “Harvard scientists create gene-editing tool that could rival CRISPR” »

It’s exactly as weird as it sounds.

The U.S. Army is looking into using animal muscle tissue as a means to move robots.

The Army Research Laboratory believes its bots could use real muscle, which allows most living things to move and manipulate their environments, instead of mechanical arms, wheels, tracks, and other systems to travel across the battlefield. The concept, which some might find disturbing, is an example of the new field of “biohybrids.”

Continue reading “The Army Wants to Give Its Robots Living Muscle Tissue” »

Are drone swarms for firefighting the future of fire supression? New work from engineer and mathematician Elena Ausonio and a team of Italian researchers suggests that they could be.

The following is a guest post by Max Lenz, Executive Editor and project manager at the Berlin-based DroneMasters Boost GmbH and editor of the weekly DroneMasters Briefing. DRONELIFE neither makes nor accepts payment for guest posts.

The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) collaboration has released its latest scientific results. These results include two studies on dark energy led by Prof. ZHAO Gongbo and Prof. WANG Yuting, respectively, from National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(NAOC).

The study led by Prof. Zhao was recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Based on eBOSS observations, Prof. ZHAO’s team measured the history of cosmic expansion and structure growth in a huge volume of the past universe, corresponding to a distance range between 0.7 and 1.8 billion light years away from us. This volume had never been probed before.

In order to effectively navigate real-world environments, legged robots should be able to move swiftly and freely while maintaining their balance. This is particularly true for humanoid robots, robots with two legs and a human-like body structure.

Building robots that are stable on their legs while walking can be challenging. In fact, legged robots typically have unstable dynamics, due to their pendulum-like structure.

Researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology recently developed a computer vision-based robotic foot with tactile sensing capabilities. When integrated at the end of a robot’s legs, the artificial foot can increase a robot’s balance and stability during locomotion.

The mood a year later is very different, despite a brutal surge in coronavirus cases that is threatening the economic recovery. India’s startup community has found itself in an unprecedented funding bonanza.

In the first four months of 2021, 11 startups have attained unicorn status, meaning they’ve reached a valuation of at least $1 billion.

Yes, but they wont be trusted til 2035.

Current trends in AI use in healthcare lead me to posit that this market will significantly grow in the coming years. So, should leaders in healthcare expect the emergence of a fully automated electronic physician, sonographer or surgeon as a replacement for the human healthcare professional? Can the development of AI in healthcare help overcome the difficulties the industry faces today? To figure all this out, I would like to analyze the current challenges of using AI in healthcare.

Let’s discuss two promising examples: the application of AI in diagnosis and reading images, and the use of robotic systems in surgery.

Continue reading “AI Challenges For The Health IT Industry: Should We Expect Electronic Doctors?” »