Lifeboat Foundation

A Stanford University professor and stem cell pioneer whose first job in science paid $25 a month is poised to receive a $191 million windfall from the sale of the immunotherapy biotech firm he co-founded.

Irv Weissman, 80, owns 4.2% of Forty Seven Inc., which Gilead Sciences Inc. agreed to buy for about $4.9 billion, a remarkable amount considering the company’s market value was less than $250 million just five months ago.

The advancements that are being made in battery technology are pretty mind boggling. We are seeing devices that are drawing power from just about every source that is imaginable, and now there is battery technology from researchers at Imperial College London that may actually have devices that create their own power. From cell phones to cars and everything in between, there may eventually be nothing more needed that to actually use the device.

This incredible new battery technology works because of the material that is being used in the actual construction of the items. The reason that the new material is making headlines is because of the fact that it can be integrated into the design of an automobile and would make it lighter and more fuel efficient, but could actually supply power to recharge the battery of an electric car.

With the material being able to be strong enough for the construction of a car, there are many other possibilities for its use. Right off the bat, devices such as cell phones, iPods, laptops and anything else that you can think of that would use battery power would be able to benefit from this new battery technology.

Researchers at Princeton University have revealed the inner workings of a gene repression mechanism in fruit fly embryos, adding insight to the study of human diseases.

Led by graduate student Shannon Keenan, the team used light to activate chemical signals in developing fruit flies and traced the effects on a protein called Capicua, or Cic. Located in a cell’s nucleus, Cic binds to DNA and performs the specialized task of silencing genes. The study, published in Developmental Cell and made available online March 5, reveals the dynamics of gene repression by this protein.

In a complex piece of music, the silences running through the melody contribute as much to the score’s effect as the sounded notes. The biological processes that control development rely on highly sophisticated temporal patterns of gene activation and repression to create life’s beautiful symphonies. When a pattern is disrupted, it’s like a wrong note in the music. In this case, Cic is a repressor protein that silences certain parts of the genome, allowing other genes to express in harmony with one another. Understanding how repressors like Cic work allows researchers to better conduct the orchestra.

Well this is anticlimactic, to say the least.

After the cancellation of the March Meeting, researchers quickly assembled online talks and provided a glimpse of a virtual-conferencing future.

COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS is helmed by Carl Sagan’s collaborator Ann Druyan, who boldly carries the torch forward with the 3rd season of the most beloved science show on the planet. Series premieres 3/9, at 8/7c, on Nat Geo; hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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She builds tools for space exploration — but her cellphone is strictly down to earth.

Justine Haupt, 34, hates smartphones. She hates the way they work, and she hates the way they rule our lives.

“I work in technology but I don’t like the culture around smartphones,” says the astronomy instrumentation engineer from Long Island.

The origins are still too unknown. This is entirely new life a more parasitic lifeform. Bit still new lifeforms entirely. My experiencers tell me of alien origin though the rate of spread also the complexity. No human could make this no even government can make this. We can mimic life not create something new. Sure new things can be added but the signature tells me it is definitely of alien origin. Not even nature can create something this quick nor even governments. Sure there may be like similar things but why does it spread so fast in near systematic precision. Which leads to essentially of exterrestial origin. This is essentially new life we are dealing with.

Nat Rev Microbiol. 2019 Mar;17:181–192. doi: 10.1038/s41579-018‑0118-9.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) are two highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses that emerged in humans at the beginning of the 21st century. Both viruses likely originated in bats, and genetically diverse coronaviruses that are related to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV were discovered in bats worldwide. In this Review, we summarize the current knowledge on the origin and evolution of these two pathogenic coronaviruses and discuss their receptor usage; we also highlight the diversity and potential of spillover of bat-borne coronaviruses, as evidenced by the recent spillover of swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV) to pigs.

Whether man made or alien made or whatever a chimeric vaccine could essentially cure the illness.

Chimeric vaccines consisting of a series of immunodominant epitopes have been explored in the development of vaccines against malaria ( Hanson and Edelman, 2004 ; Caro-Aguilar et al., 2005 ), group A streptococci ( Dale, 1999 ; Hu et al., 2002 ; Kotloff et al., 2004 ; Kotloff and Dale, 2004 ; Dale et al., 2005 ; McNeil et al., 2005 ), and several viruses ( Wang et al., 1999d ; Bouche et al., 2005 ; Fan et al., 2005 ; Apt et al., 2006 ). Data suggest that a broadly protective OspC vaccine will require the inclusion of epitopes from approximately 28 OspC types ( Earnhart and Marconi, 2007c ). Such a construct is predicted to provide protection against all major Lyme disease spirochete species associated with human disease, and to be effective in both Europe and North America. Possible cross-protection elicited by some epitopes may reduce the total number of epitopes required to achieve this goal.

A prototype tetravalent chimeric recombinant OspC-based vaccine has been produced that incorporates epitope-containing regions from types A, B, K, and D. This “ABKD” vaccine elicited antibodies in mice that bind OspC as presented on the surface of intact and viable spirochetes and mediate bactericidal activity by a complement-dependent mechanism ( Buckles et al., 2006 ; Earnhart et al., 2007 ). It is noteworthy that a decrease in epitope-specific titer was observed for epitopes progressing from the N- to the C-terminus of the chimeric protein. The antibody titer to the type D epitope was 1.7 logs lower than that observed for the N-terminally located type A epitope ( Earnhart et al., 2007 ). This effect did not appear to be due to C-terminal degradation of the construct since the addition of C-terminal tags that have been reported to stabilize recombinant proteins did not improve antibody titer ( Earnhart and Marconi, 2007a ).