Lifeboat Foundation

GOLD that’s just two atoms thick has been created in a lab by British scientists.

The “world’s thinnest gold” is one million times thinner than a fingernail – and is so thin, it’s technically regarded as “two dimensional”.

The official measurement is 0.47 nanometres, made possible because the gold is made up of just two atoms sitting on top of each other.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=D9Y30AMcg6s

It seems like the next step in human evolution (or animal evolution depending on where you’re standing) will be man-made. According to a recent report by Nature, Japan’s government has just approved experiments that will splice human cells into animal embryos, and then implant said embryos into surrogate animals, in an effort to grow human-congruent organs that can be used for transplant purposes.

Heading the experiments at the University of Tokyo is Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who plans to nurture human cells in rat and mouse embryos before moving the developing fetus to yet another animal for gestation. The hope is that the embryo will develop into an animal with human cells, meaning that the organs inside the newly-grown beast could then be surgically placed inside sick individuals that need new hearts, livers, pancreases — you name it.

The diseases most people die of have been attributed to unhealthy lifestyles. But evidence now suggests bacteria are to blame, heralding a revolution in medicine.

What’s the point of teaching a computer how to knit? MIT researchers found it goes beyond just some nice gloves and scarves, to a window into deep learning forms of artificial intelligence.

Researchers in the Department of Physics of ETH Zurich have measured how electrons in so-called transition metals get redistributed within a fraction of an optical oscillation cycle. They observed the electrons getting concentrated around the metal atoms within less than a femtosecond. This regrouping might influence important macroscopic properties of these compounds, such as electrical conductivity, magnetization or optical characteristics. The work therefore suggests a route to controlling these properties on extremely fast time scales.

The distribution of electrons in transition metals, which represent a large part of the periodic table of chemical elements, is responsible for many of their interesting properties used in applications. The magnetic properties of some of the members of this group of materials are, for example, exploited for data storage, whereas others exhibit excellent electrical conductivity. Transition metals also have a decisive role for novel materials with more exotic behaviour that results from strong interactions between the electrons. Such materials are promising candidates for a wide range of future applications.

In their experiment, whose results they report in a paper published today in Nature Physics, Mikhail Volkov and colleagues in the Ultrafast Laser Physics group of Prof. Ursula Keller exposed thin foils of the transition metals titanium and zirconium to short laser pulses. They observed the redistribution of the electrons by recording the resulting changes in optical properties of the metals in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) domain. In order to be able to follow the induced changes with sufficient temporal resolution, XUV pulses with a duration of only few hundred attoseconds (10^-18 s) were employed in the measurement. By comparing the experimental results with theoretical models, developed by the group of Prof. Angel Rubio at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, the researchers established that the change unfolding in less than a femtosecond (10^-15 s) is due to a modification of the electron localization in the vicinity of the metal atoms.

Prior studies in mice have shown that whole body vibration (WBV) can mimic some of the positive effects on health of exercise, and even reverse some of the symptoms of type 2 diabetes. New research by a team at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) and Dental College of Georgia (DCG) at Augusta University has provided new clues as to the mechanisms involved. Their studies in a mouse model of obesity showed that WBV results in increased levels of inflammation-suppressing immune system macrophages, and high numbers of gut bacteria that makes short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which can help the body better utilize glucose.

The findings “… support the notion that WBV has the potential to alter the microbiota in a way that triggers innate and mucosal immunity to produce anti-inflammatory responses, down-regulating the hyper-inflammatory state and reversing the adverse consequences,” the investigators wrote in their published paper in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. “More studies are required to solidify this novel approach, which can be a very affordable and effective therapeutic modality in the prevention and treatment of many diseases, including diabetes and obesity.” The researchers, headed by Jack Yu, MD, chief of pediatric plastic surgery at MCG, and Babak Baban, PhD, immunologist and intern associate dean for research at DCG, reported their findings in a paper titled, “Whole Body Vibration-Induced Omental Macrophage Polarization and Fecal Microbiome Modification in a Murine Model.”

The combination of high-fat, sugar-heavy diets and “massively reduced physical activities” is largely responsible for what the researchers called “an epidemic of obesity and chronic metabolic diseases,” including type 2 diabetes. Chronic inflammation is a major contributory factor to the development of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, and the immune system’s macrophages play a key role in regulating inflammatory responses.

The premier hospitals tend to have the most superbugs — they also have the best experts.

Imagine if you had a smart A.I. assistant in your head, capable of silently feeding you external information whenever you required it, without you needing to say a single word? That’s exactly what MIT postdoctoral researcher Arnav Kapur has developed. Here’s how it works.

For five years, several AT&T employees were conspiring with a Pakistani man to install malware on company computers so that man could unlock millions of smartphones subsidized by the carrier, according to federal investigators.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Muhammad Fahd for bribing AT&T employees at a call center in Washington state to pull off the scheme. According to the feds, Fahd allegedly paid more than $1 million in bribes to the AT&T employees during the conspiracy, which allowed him to fraudulently unlock more than 2 million AT&T phones from 2012 to 2017.

Fahd allegedly partnered with businesses that offered cell phone unlocking services in exchange for a fee. These unnamed business would then supply him with the IMEI numbers of the phones bound to AT&T’s network.