Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh today published research showing how they’d solved a frustrating problem for people who use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to control prosthetic devices with their thoughts.

While the research itself is interesting – they created an algorithm that keeps the devices from constantly needing to be re-calibrated to handle the human brain’s fluctuating neuronal activity – the real takeaway here is how close we are to a universal BCI.

BCIs have been around for decades in one form or another, but they’re costly to maintain and difficult to keep working properly. Currently they only make sense for narrow use – specifically, in the case of those who’ve lost limbs. Because they’re already used to using their brain to control an appendage, it’s easier for scientists and researchers to harness those brainwaves to control prosthetic devices.

Newly-developed nanovalves allow the flow of individual nanoparticles in liquids to be controlled in tiny channels. This is of interest for lab-on-a-chip applications such as in materials science and biomedicine.

John Martinis brought a long record of quantum computing breakthroughs when he joined Google in 2014. He quit after being reassigned to an advisory role.

In a study published in Nature, a UCLA-led team of researchers describe how the nanomachine recognizes and kills bacteria, and report that they have imaged it at atomic resolution. The scientists also engineered their own versions of the nanomachine, which enabled them to produce variations that behaved differently from the naturally occurring version.

Their efforts could eventually lead to the development of new types of antibiotics that are capable of homing in on specific species of microbes. Drugs tailored to kill only a certain species or strain of bacteria could offer numerous advantages over conventional antibiotics, including lowering the likelihood that bacteria will develop resistance. In addition, the tailored drugs could destroy harmful cells without wiping out beneficial bugs in the gut microbiome, and they could eventually offer the possibilities of being deployed to prevent bacterial infections, to kill pathogens in food and to engineer human microbiomes so that favorable bacteria thrive.

Continue reading “Bactericidal nanomachine: Researchers reveal the mechanisms behind a natural bacteria killer” »

Its creators hope to begin human trials in 2021.

“Scientists have discovered an earlier origin to the human language pathway in the brain, pushing back its evolutionary origin by at least 20 million years.”

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#COVID19 #photonics

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., April 20, 2020 — Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara) are developing ultraviolet (UV) LEDs for decontaminating surfaces and potentially air and water that have come in contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofnm845BLDk

Klotho has been called the “king of anti-aging proteins.” It is an important biomarker and promising gene therapy treatment for Chronic Kidney Disease. It is more strongly correlated with IQ than any single gene, making it a potential nootropic and intelligence enhancing gene therapy.

https://biovivascience.myshopify.com/blogs/news/klotho-queen…g-proteins

Nature spoke to the world’s major research funders to find out how they are adapting their funding policies in response to the pandemic.

As lockdowns force scientists worldwide to put their research on hold, funders are introducing measures to minimize stress.