Lifeboat Foundation

“It regenerates almost anything after almost any injury that doesn’t kill it,” said Parker Flowers, postdoctoral associate in the lab of Craig Crews, the John C. Malone Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and professor of chemistry and pharmacology.

If scientists can find the genetic basis for the axolotl’s ability to regenerate, they might be able to find ways to restore damaged tissue in humans. But they have been thwarted in the attempt by another peculiarity of the axolotl — it has the largest genome of any animal yet sequenced, 10 times larger than that of humans.

Now Flowers and colleagues have found an ingenious way to circumvent the animal’s complex genome to identify at least two genes involved in regeneration, they report Jan. 28 in the journal eLife.

Do you think Xenobots is the early stage of nanobots, which could repair our body to achieve longevity escape velocity?

Scientists have created the world’s first living, self-healing robots using stem cells from frogs.

Continue reading “Scientists have built the world’s first living, self-healing robots” »

When Mina Jang played the same melodious tune on two different flutes behind a screen, she said the examiners grading her couldn’t tell the difference.

Yet the two instruments were made in dramatically different ways.

One was a handmade version of an original early 18th-century flute crafted in 2001, while the other was made of white plastic and “cloned” using a 3D printer in 2019.

Today’s super-rich are putting record sums into tackling the world’s most pressing problems. But how altruistic is this golden age of charitable giving?

Today’s super-wealthy are richer than ever. And they’re giving away their billions like never before. Philanthropists are putting record sums into tackling the world’s most pressing problems. And unlike the mega-donors of the past today’s philanthropists want to see the results in their lifetimes. But how altruistic is this new golden age of giving? Have these mega-donors become too powerful?

Continue reading “Charity: how effective is giving? | The Economist” »

An international group of researchers has made graphene more affordably and with a lower environmental impact than current chemical methods by using bacteria.

Graphene is a very strong and conductive material that could revolutionize electronics and engineering. However, producing graphene in large quantities requires lots of energy and involves toxic chemicals, such as hydrazine, which damages the nervous system.

Researchers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Rochester in the US have worked to overcome these problems by using bacteria to produce graphene. Their work has been published in the journal ChemOpen.

We do have to grow meat in the labs!

Maastricht-based Mosa Meat, which has in the past received more than $1m from Google cofounder Sergey Brin, said it hopes to sell its first products — most likely ground beef for burgers — in the next three years.

The aim is to achieve industrial-scale production two to three years later, with a typical hamburger patty costing about $1.

Continue reading “Lab-grown meat could be in restaurants by 2021” »

Any nation invested on this will be able to create its own trillionares!

There’s been a lot of fuss of late about asteroid mining and what it could mean for us Earthlings. But what will it take to make this happen, and should we even be doing it?

Continue reading “Asteroid Mining Could Become a Reality in the Next Coming Years” »

Chinese health officials have already been administering the HIV and flu drugs to fight the coronavirus. The use of the three together in a cocktail seemed to improve the treatment, the Thai doctors said.

Another doctor said that a similar approach in two other patients resulted in one displaying some allergic reaction but the other showed improvement.

“We have been following international practices, but the doctor increased the dosage of one of the drugs,” said Somsak Akkslim, director-general of the Medical Services Department, referring to the flu medicine Oseltamivir.