Lifeboat Foundation

Science fiction is often seen as an anticipation – a fiction peculiarly expected to graduate into fact. But if technologies once found only in SF do sometimes become real they do not, in so doing, always cease to be science fictional. SF is not, after all, simply a literature about the future; it is a literature about the shock of new capacities and new perspectives, about transcendence, estrangement and resistance in the face of the inhuman. Its ideas shape and constrain the ways in which technological possibilities are seen, understood and experienced long after those possibilities are first tentatively realised. It illuminates the dreams of Musk, Bezos and all the other new moon-rushers.

Fifty years after the first moon landings, a new generation of space travellers, from Xi Jinping’s taikonauts to Jeff Bezos, are racing to colonise our nearest neighbour. Is reality catching up with sci-fi?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=49JB_pyPEic

Researchers have created carbon nanosheets for use as supercapacitors with waste hemp fibres, and can do this at 1/1000th of the cost of graphene!

http://xhne.ws/wvqF1

Can we create people who are optimized for ultra-long space travel?

But don’t linger in the interstellar vacuum, or hold your breath.

• By Anna Gosline on February 14, 2008

Jalila Essaïdi is a Dutch artist and entrepreneur focused on biotech applications of spider silk, which she makes using the milk of genetically engineered goats.

Spider silk is one of the strongest materials in nature. Jalila Essaïdi had her curiosity piqued when she read about the work of Randolph Lewis, a Professor at Utah State University, who had developed a method to create synthetic spider silk from goat milk.

“We genetically engineered the goats so that they produced a spider protein in their milk. We then purify that protein from the milk and spin it into fibers,” Lewis told CNN in an interview.

Continue reading “This Bulletproof Skin is Made of Goat Milk Spider Silk” »

Abstract: This report focuses on the effect of the surface topography of the substrate on the behavior of human mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow (MSCs) before and after co-differentiation into adipocytes and osteoblasts. Picosecond pulsed laser ablation technology was applied to generate different microstructures (microgrooves and microcavities) on poly (L-lactide) (PLLA), where orientation, cell shape and MSCs co-differentiation were investigated. On flat PLLA, the undifferentiated MSCs showed rounded or elongated shapes, the latter being randomly oriented. On PLLA microgrooves however, MSCs adapted their shape to the groove size and direction and occasionally anchored to groove edges. It was found that adipocytes, contrary to osteoblasts, are highly sensitive to topological cues. Adipocytes responded to changes in substrate height and depth, by adapting the intracellular distribution of their lipid vacuoles to these physical constraints. In addition, the modification of PLLA by laser ablation enhanced the adherence of differentiated cells to the substrate. These findings show that picosecond pulsed laser micromachining can be applied to directly manufacture 3D microstructures that guide cell proliferation, control adipocyte morphology and improve the adhesion of bone and fat tissue.

From: Jose L. Toca-Herrera [view email]

[v1] Thu, 25 Jan 2018 23:56:53 UTC (1,069 KB)

Volume 32 Issue 1 — Sangmo Koo, Samantha M. Santoni, Bruce Z. Gao, Costas P. Grigoropoulos, Zhen Ma.

Continue reading “Laser-assisted biofabrication in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine” »

An international team of scientists has created tiny droplets of the ultra-hot matter that once filled the early universe, forming three distinct shapes and sizes: circles, ellipses and triangles.

The study, published December 10, 2018 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Physics, focuses on a liquid-like state of matter called a quark gluon plasma. Physicists believe that this matter filled the entire universe during the first few microseconds after the Big Bang when the universe was still too hot for particles to come together to make atoms.

The researchers used a massive collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, to recreate that plasma. In a series of tests, the researchers smashed packets of protons and neutrons in different combinations into much bigger atomic nuclei. They discovered that by carefully controlling conditions, they could generate droplets of quark gluon plasma that expanded to form three different geometric patterns.

Continue reading “Tiny droplets of early universe matter created” »