Lifeboat Foundation

Here’s a nifty if still early-in-development bit of science. This week, scientists at Harvard and elsewhere said they’ve created a novel type of dressing that could rapidly heal all sorts of wounds. The gel-based, heat-activated design was inspired by the Wolverine-like skin we have when we’re in the womb.

It’s well known that our fetal skin can completely regenerate itself when injured, without scarring. This happens, at least partly, because embryonic cells produce protein fibers that quickly and tightly close up and contract the skin surrounding a wound. As adults, our skin cells can still do this to an extent, but nowhere to the same degree.

By Will Knight

A super-powered neutrino generator could in theory be used to instantly destroy nuclear weapons anywhere on the planet, according to a team of Japanese scientists.

If it was ever built, a state could use the device to obliterate the nuclear arsenal of its enemy by firing a beam of neutrinos straight through the Earth. But the generator would need to be more than a hundred times more powerful than any existing particle accelerator and over 1000 kilometres wide.

I don’t use the term artificial gravity because, the gravity from a black hole is real.

If you have harnessed and are able to control a black hole would you be able to use it as portable gravity device?

I don’t really have the physics and the math to to figure it out. But it would seem that if you are in a low gravity environment, you could place a black hole under the floor, and have gravity. Presumably by changing the distance between the floor and the black hole you could adjust to 1 gravity or partial gravity.

“I was wrong,” Church now admits.

A startup he cofounded, eGenesis, had made news for its ambitious plans to use CRISPR gene-editing technology to modify pigs so their organs could be safely transplanted into humans without being rejected. That could solve a critical shortage of human organs available for transplant.

But no human test has yet been carried out. Instead, the company is currently testing organs from its pigs in monkeys at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The experiments are being led by the hospital’s chief of transplant surgery, James Markmann.

The Vintage Patterns Wiki released 83,500 sewing patterns of pre-1992. You can find pretty much everything from the Dynasty-inspired suits and Betty Draper’s frocks and white gloves. There’s also an 1985 boys’ Reefer Suit and short trousers.

The search can be narrowed to particular pieces, designed and decades. There are patterns from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Fans went crazy for the movie star collection, and women adore Katharine Hepburn’s pants. If you sort the patterns by garment type, you will find some nice lingerie and raincoats. There are some great wedding dresses and maternity wear.

Humans have proven themselves remarkably adept at learning to do what other animals can do naturally. We have taught ourselves to fly like birds, climb like monkeys and burrow like moles. But the one animal that has always proven beyond our reach is the fish.

The invention of scuba diving has allowed us to breathe underwater but only at very shallow depths.

Thanks to our inability to conquer the bends, diving below 70m still remains astonishingly dangerous to anyone but a handful of experts. Ultra-deep diving is so lethal that more people have walked on the moon than descended below 240m using scuba gear.

The X3 is made possible thanks to a collaboration among NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of Michigan.

It’s a new type of propulsion engine that smashed records during test firings. This engine and other electric propulsion systems will help us reach distant planets faster than ever before.

Continue reading “The X3 Ion Thruster Is Here, This Is How It’ll Get Us to Mars” »

Astrophysicists think they know how to destroy a black hole. The puzzle is what such destruction would leave behind.

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake was reported Thursday evening at 5:42 p.m. Pacific time 16 miles from Ridgecrest, Calif., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The earthquake occurred 44 miles from California City, 66 miles from Tehachapi, 68 miles from Bakersfield, and 70 miles from Porterville.

In the last 10 days, there have been 68 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby. A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the area July 4 and a 7.1 hit the next day, with thousands of small aftershocks following.