Lifeboat Foundation

Microsoft is “all-in” on building a quantum computer and is making advancements “every day”, according to one of the company’s top experts on the technology.

Julie Love (above), Director of Quantum Computing, called the firm’s push to build the next generation of computer technology “one of the biggest disruptive bets we have made as a company”.

Continue reading “Microsoft making progress on quantum computer ‘every day’” »

And inflammation is one of the three primary ageing processes.

Scientists have discovered a new metabolic process in the body that can switch off inflammation. They have discovered that ‘itaconate’—a molecule derived from glucose—acts as a powerful off-switch for macrophages, which are the cells in the immune system that lie at the heart of many inflammatory diseases including arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and heart disease.

The scientists, working in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute at Trinity College Dublin, hope their discovery will have relevance for inflammatory and infectious diseases—and that their findings may also help to develop much-needed new drugs to treat people living with these conditions.

Professor of Biochemistry at Trinity, Luke O’Neill, was, along with Dr. Mike Murphy of the University of Cambridge, the joint leader of the work just published in leading international journal Nature. The discoveries were made using both human cells and mice as a model organism.

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https://theglowingskinseries.com/day-15/

This could be used for hydrogen storage.

Of the four states of matter, gases are the hardest to pin down. Gas molecules move quickly and wildly and don’t like to be confined. When confined, heat and pressure build in the container, and it doesn’t take long before the gas blows the lid off the place, literally. Luckily, gases are superficial. Provide them with an attractive internal surface area, and they’ll pin themselves down in no time. No, it’s not love at first sight, it’s adsorption.

“Adsorption is the processes of gas pinning to the surface of another material—the inside walls of a container, for example,” says Chris Wilmer, assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. “When adsorption occurs, the gas molecules stop bumping into each other, reducing pressure. So, by increasing a container’s internal surface area, we can store more gas in less space.”

Continue reading “Full of hot air and proud of it” »

A new sodium-ion battery chemistry that shows superior performance to existing state-of-the-art sodium-based batteries could be the catalyst to enabling mass-production of the emerging technology for large-scale energy storage, such as in applications including storing solar power for industrial sites.

Despite sodium’s appeal as a low-cost, abundant and environmentally friendly building block for energy storage, it is a relatively new entrant in the field of battery technology research and development.

A key issue for sodium-ion batteries is that many of the active materials used in their chemistry are sensitive to air—exposure to even a few molecules of air can degrade the material and reduce battery performance.

Continue reading “Sodium-ion battery packs a punch” »

Viagra reduces colorectal cancer odds in mice by 50%, says a new report which adds that a clinical trial should be the next step.

Summary: Viagra reduces colorectal cancer odds in mice by 50%, says a new report which adds that a clinical trial of low-dose Viagra should be the next step.[This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Viagra cut in half the formation of precancerous polyps that form before the onset of colorectal cancer, says cancer researcher Darren D. Browning Ph.D. – a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Director of the Biochemistry and Cancer Biology Graduate Program at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta.

Continue reading “Daily Viagra May Reduce Colorectal Cancer Odds” »

Our known universe may end the same way it was created: With a big, sudden bang.

That’s according to new research from a group of Harvard physicists, who found that the destabilization of the Higgs Boson — a tiny quantum particle that gives other particles mass — could lead to a huge explosion of energy that would consume everything in the known universe.

The energy released by the event would destabilize the laws of physics and chemistry.

Continue reading “A second ‘Big Bang’ could end our universe in an instant — and it’s all because of a tiny particle that controls the laws of physics” »

YES!!!

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have discovered a new approach for developing a rechargeable non-aqueous magnesium-metal battery.

A proof-of-concept paper published in Nature Chemistry detailed how the scientists pioneered a method to enable the reversible chemistry of magnesium metal in the noncorrosive carbonate-based electrolytes and tested the concept in a prototype cell. The technology possesses potential advantages over lithium-ion batteries—notably, higher energy density, greater stability, and lower cost.

Continue reading “Research overcomes major technical obstacles in magnesium-metal batteries” »

The first large-scale age-map of the Milky Way shows that a period of star formation lasting around 4 billion years created the complex structure at the heart of our galaxy. The results will be presented by Marina Rejkuba at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool on Tuesday, 3rd April.

The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with a bulge at the centre, thousands of light years in diameter, that contains about a quarter of the total mass of stars. Previous studies have shown that the bulge hosts two components: a population of metal-poor stars that have a spherical distribution, and a population of metal-rich stars that form an elongated bar with a “waist”, like an x or a bi-lobed peanut. However, analyses of the ages of the stars to date have produced conflicting results. Now, an international team led by astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have analysed the colour, brightness and spectral information on chemistry of individual stars to produce the age-map of the Milky Way.

The team have used simulated and observed data for millions of stars from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) infrared survey of the inner Milky Way and compared them with measurements of the metal content of around 6000 stars across the inner bulge from a spectroscopic survey carried out with the GIRAFFE/FLAMES spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope (GIBS).

Continue reading “First age-map of the heart of the Milky Way” »