Lifeboat Foundation

Using engineered nanocomposite structures called metamaterials, a City College of New York-led research team reports the ability to measure a significant increase in the energy transfer between molecules. Reported in the journal ACS Photonics, this breakthrough breaks the F\xF6rster resonance energy transfer (FRET) distance limit of ~10–20 nanometers, and leads to the possibility of measuring larger molecular assemblies.

And since FRET is a staple technique in many biological and biophysical fields, this new development could benefit pharmaceuticals, for instance.

“Energy transfer between molecules plays a central role in phenomena such as photosynthesis and is also used as a spectroscopic ruler for identifying structural changes of molecules,” said Vinod Menon, professor of physics in City College’s Division of Science. “However, the process of energy transfer is usually limited in the distance over which it occurs, typically reaching 10 to 20 nm.”

In support of the NAD+ Mouse Project over at Lifespan.io, Dr. David Sinclair will be doing an AMA on Reddit Futurology Tuesday, October 23, 2018 from 11:00 – 12:00 AM EDT. Dr. Sinclair will be answering questions from the community about his work with NAD+ biology, Sirtuins, and why the NAD+ Mouse Project is important for aging research. To ask your question please visit the AMA thread on Reddit Futurology here.

For those not familiar with NAD+ biology we did the NAD+ World series recently which explores this area of the biology of aging. We also took a look at why NAD+ appears to decline as we age and what is one of the most likely reasons for this.

Continue reading “Dr. David Sinclair AMA at Reddit Futurology” »

The Silicon Valley mindset combines biology and engineering: The body is a machine to be hacked and improved.

Futurists at some of the biggest tech firms want to reshape the way we think about death.

Exciting visitor at the Real Bodies (https://www.realbodies.it/) exhibit!

The lovely Ms. Chiara Bordi (https://www.facebook.com/Chiara-Bordi-474572166390000/), Miss Italia 3rd place runner up (aka the “Bionic Beauty”) stopping by to visit our associates at HealthQE (www.healthqe.cloud), and QantiQa (https://www.qantiqa.com/), to test out their new Musyke device

Bio-mechanics and Bio-acoustics

Two critical components in the regeneration, repair, and rejuvenation equation, and part of the integrated age-reversal paradigm of Embrykinesis at Bioquark Inc.- (www.bioquark.com)

MIT has launched the Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, a $1 billion center dedicated to “reshaping its academic program” around AI. The idea, said MIT president L. Rafael Reif, is to use AI, machine learning and data science with other academic disciplines to “educate the bilinguals of the future,” defining bilingual as those working in biology, chemistry, politics, history and linguistics with computing skills that can be used in their field.

What happens when a new technology is so precise that it operates on a scale beyond our characterization capabilities? For example, the lasers used at INRS produce ultrashort pulses in the femtosecond range (10^-15 s), which is far too short to visualize. Although some measurements are possible, nothing beats a clear image, says INRS professor and ultrafast imaging specialist Jinyang Liang. He and his colleagues, led by Caltech’s Lihong Wang, have developed what they call T-CUP: the world’s fastest camera, capable of capturing 10 trillion (10¹³) frames per second (Fig. 1). This new camera literally makes it possible to freeze time to see phenomena—and even light—in extremely slow motion.

In recent years, the junction between innovations in non-linear optics and imaging has opened the door for new and highly efficient methods for microscopic analysis of dynamic phenomena in biology and physics. But harnessing the potential of these methods requires a way to record images in real time at a very short temporal resolution—in a single exposure.

Using current imaging techniques, measurements taken with ultrashort laser pulses must be repeated many times, which is appropriate for some types of inert samples, but impossible for other more fragile ones. For example, laser-engraved glass can tolerate only a single laser pulse, leaving less than a picosecond to capture the results. In such a case, the imaging technique must be able to capture the entire process in real time.

Can the origin of life be explained with quantum mechanics? And if so, are there quantum algorithms that could encode life itself?

We’re a little closer to finding out the answers to those big questions thanks to new research carried out with an IBM supercomputer.

Encoding behaviours related to self-replication, mutation, interaction between individuals, and (inevitably) death, a newly created quantum algorithm has been used to show that quantum computers can indeed mimic some of the patterns of biology in the real world.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Created Quantum Artificial Life For The First Time Ever” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YtQ-N_t84

When listening to world science festival’s latest episode on youtube, Pondering the Imponderables: The Biggest Questions of Cosmology, I found myself to be most in line with George F.R. Ellis’ line of thinking overall.

Big Bang cosmology, chemical and biological evolutionary theory, and associated sciences have been extraordinarily successful in revealing and enabling us to understand the development of the.

Continue reading “On the Nature of Causality in Complex Systems, George F.R. Ellis” »

Fuel cells have long been viewed as a promising power source. These devices, invented in the 1830s, generate electricity directly from chemicals, such as hydrogen and oxygen, and produce only water vapor as emissions. But most fuel cells are too expensive, inefficient, or both.

In a new approach, inspired by biology and published today (Oct. 3, 2018) in the journal Joule, a University of Wisconsin-Madison team has designed a fuel cell using cheaper materials and an organic compound that shuttles electrons and protons.

In a traditional fuel cell, the electrons and protons from hydrogen are transported from one electrode to another, where they combine with oxygen to produce water. This process converts chemical energy into electricity. To generate a meaningful amount of charge in a short enough amount of time, a catalyst is needed to accelerate the reactions.

Continue reading “New fuel cell concept brings biological design to better electricity generation” »