Lifeboat Foundation

Biologist and genetics expert Dr. David Sinclair is out to prove he can live past 100 years old, and he thinks you can too. On this episode Sinclair goes in-depth on the process of aging and the techniques you can incorporate into your life that help you live a longer, healthier life, including optimizing your diet, the benefits of exercise, the role of a positive attitude, the importance of sleep, the three supplements he takes every day, why it’s never too late to slow the process of aging, and so much more.

How much stress do pipes undergo when a liquid flows through them, and how does it depend on the degree of curvature of the pipe?

Bends in pipes are especially crucial, for example in the aortic arch that connects to the left ventricle of the human heart. Piping systems in industrial plants often include bends of 90 degrees or more, can be helical, and can even have 180-degree bends. Fluid mechanists in Sweden have analyzed fluid flow in such pipes with a 180-degree bend. Their research is published in the journal Physical Review Fluids.

Bends in pipes are different than their straight sections because, in the curved sections, there are outward centrifugal forces due to the inertia of the liquid inside. That force is balanced by a pressure gradient from the outer wall of the pipe to the inner wall. Because the fluid velocities in an imaginary slice through the pipe will not be equal in the curved section—for example, the velocity near the outer wall of the pipe will be greater than near the inner wall—a secondary flow pattern, besides the motion through the pipe, is set up perpendicular to the main flow direction.

The team at EPFL’s Photonic Systems Laboratory (PHOSL) has developed a chip-scale laser source that enhances the performance of semiconductor lasers while enabling the generation of shorter wavelengths.

This pioneering work, led by Professor Camille Brès and postdoctoral researcher Marco Clementi from EPFL’s School of Engineering represents a significant advance in the field of photonics, with implications for telecommunications, metrology, and other high-precision applications.

The study, published in the journal Light: Science & Applications, reveals how the PHOSL researchers, in collaboration with the Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurements, have successfully integrated semiconductor lasers with silicon nitride photonic circuits containing microresonators. This integration results in a hybrid device that emits highly uniform and precise light in both near-infrared and visible ranges, filling a technological gap that has long challenged the industry.

A recent study by European scientists shows that highly sensitive sensors based on color centers in a diamond can be used to record electrical activity from neurons in living brain tissue. The work is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Before people encounter symptoms of brain diseases such as dementia, slight changes have usually occurred already in the brain tissue. It may be that parts of the brain are swelling up or clumps of proteins are forming. These small changes might influence how nerve cells in the brain signal each other and communicate, how information is processed and memorized.

Medical scientists want to study these minor changes that occur in the very early stages of a disease. That way, the intention is to learn more about the causes of the disease to provide new insights and more efficient treatments. Today, microscopic studies on the brain are performed with one of two strategies: Optical inspection of brain tissue samples from animals or deceased patients that suffer from the studied disease or measurements of the signals from the nerve cells using wires, coloring, or light.

One of the biggest and brightest stars in the night sky will momentarily vanish as an asteroid passes in front of it to produce a one-of-a-kind eclipse.

Physicists at RIKEN have developed an electronic device that hosts unusual states of matter, which could one day be useful for quantum computation.

When a material exists as an ultrathin layer—a mere one or a few atoms thick—it has totally different properties from thicker samples of the same material. That’s because confining electrons to a 2D plane gives rise to exotic states. Because of their flat dimensions and their broad compatibility with existing semiconductor technologies, such 2D materials are promising for harnessing new phenomenon in electronic devices.

These states include quantum spin Hall insulators, which conduct electricity along their edges but are electrically insulating in their interiors. Such systems when coupled with superconductivity have been proposed as a route toward engineering topological superconducting states that have potential application in future topological quantum computers.

In order for immune cells to do their job, they need to know against whom they should direct their attack. Research teams at the University of Würzburg have identified new details in this process.

As complicated as their name is, they are important for the human organism in the fight against pathogens and cancer: Vγ9Vδ2 T cells are part of the immune system and, as a subgroup of white blood cells, fight tumor cells and cells infected with pathogens. They recognize their potential victims by their altered cell metabolism.

Research teams from the University of Würzburg and the University Hospital of Würzburg, together with groups in Hamburg, Freiburg, Great Britain and the U.S., have now gained new insights into how these cells manage to look inside the cell. Thomas Herrmann, Professor of Immunogenetics at the Institute of Virology and Immunobiology and his colleague Dr. Mohindar Karunakaran at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU), were responsible for the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

Rotor Technologies is now in production on a full-size unmanned helicopter for civilian use. Based on the Robinson R44 Raven II, the R550X flies for more than three hours, at speeds up to 150 mph (241 km/h), carrying up to 1,200 lb (550 kg) of cargo.

According to Torklaw, helicopters have about 9.84 crashes per 100,000 hours of flight time. That’s curiously low, given their reputation and the fact that “general aircraft” have 7.28 crashes per 100,000 hours. But still, they’re notoriously tricky to fly, and there are a growing number of projects attempting to make them much easier, using simple fly-by wire joystick controls, or even simpler one-finger tablet control schemes.

Continue reading “Rotor R550X: A full-size autonomous helicopter anyone can buy” »

The negative side of not having it on a disk or flash drive.

Sony announced on Monday that it would remove all Discovery content, including shows like “MythBusters” and “Deadliest Catch,” from user libraries, even if they had been purchased on the PlayStation Store.

The company, which owns and operates PlayStation game consoles, said in a brief statement that the Discovery shows would be deleted on Dec. 31, attributing the decision to “our content licensing arrangements with content providers.”

Continue reading “PlayStation Will Delete Purchased Discovery Shows” »