Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: engineering – Page 2

Dr. Dominique Darvas | The Bioreactor of Youth

Supporting scientists, entrepreneurs, funders, and institutional partners in advancing biotechnology to reverse aging, extend human healthspan, and improve the human condition. This group is sponsored by 100 Plus Capital. http://100pluscap.com/

Dr. Dominique Darvas | The Bioreactor of Youth.

Abstract: For five thousand years, humanity has sought the fountain of youth. Today, the stem cells we expand in our laboratories also dream of it. Before we were born, each of us held it in our veins for a fleeting moment. HALOS Biosciences is engineering it in a bioreactor.

Company profile: HALOS Biosciences is engineering the world’s first lab-grown human fetal plasma: a synthetic, scalable, and ethical recreation of the most regenerative biochemical environment in human biology as a platform technology for cell culture and regenerative medicine.

Short Bio: Dr. Dominique Darvas, CEO MD PhD with a clinical background in emergency medicine and a first doctoral thesis in emergency blood transfusion protocols. Second specialization in anti-aging and longevity medicine at Université Paris Descartes with a second thesis in mitohormesis. Co-founder of Clinique Cleage Genève (anti-aging and aesthetic clinic in Geneva). Direct clinical experience with blood composition, therapeutic protocols, and regenerative medicine. Active in the longevity biotech community as both fellow and counsellor of the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, resident at Vitalist Bay 2025 and speaker at Synbiobeta 2026.

About The Foresight Institute.

Continue reading “Dr. Dominique Darvas | The Bioreactor of Youth” | >

Simple blood test on a chip could help diagnose lung cancer

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a new method for diagnosing lung cancer: a simple, fast, low-cost blood test that does not require DNA sequencing. The method identifies a chemical fingerprint of cancer cells in the blood by analyzing cell-free DNA originating from those cells. In the study, the test distinguished between lung cancer patients and healthy individuals with a sensitivity of 93.1% and a specificity of 90.3% for patients with stage 2–4 disease.

The study was led by Prof. Yuval Ebenstein of the School of Chemistry at the Faculty of Exact Sciences, the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Zimin Institute at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with researchers from JaxBio Technologies, Bnai Zion Medical Center and Sheba Medical Center. The paper is published in the journal npj Precision Oncology.

Discovery of ‘slow’ electrons in 2D material could lead to new memory device

Over the last decade, researchers have developed two-dimensional materials with fascinating quantum effects that could be harnessed for next-generation technologies.

Such materials have shown superconductivity—conducting electricity without energy loss—and charge orders, where electrons arrange in frozen patterns rather than moving freely in the material.

At the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), a research team discovered that one such material, Fe5GeTe2, exhibits a charge-ordered state in which electrons move collectively and unusually slowly while remaining quantum coherent.

Long-pulse fast ignition in magnetized liner inertial fusion

The fast-ignition paradigm for inertial confinement fusion allows for extremely high gains but requires fuel to be heated very quickly to outpace hotspot disassembly and energy losses. This demands lasers with high power and intensity, posing engineering challenges that have called into question the fundamental practicality of fast ignition. Magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) circumvents these problems through its large-aspect-ratio cylindrical geometry and strong axial magnetic fields that allow for ignition at lower areal densities. Furthermore, MagLIF’s large aspect ratio and higher yields relax other constraints on energy deposition and repetition rate, while its axial magnetic fields can be used to collimate ignitor electrons and thereby increase allowed standoff distance and save on ignitor energy. This tremendous overall relaxation of the engineering constraints that have historically limited the practicality of fast ignition suggests that the paradigm may be considerably more viable in a MagLIF context.

Repurposing deep-Earth tools in the hunt for practical superconductors

If scientists could find a material that acts as a superconductor—that is, one that transmits energy with zero resistance—at normal pressures and relatively high temperatures, it would open up a vast number of possibilities. These include medical imaging, quantum computing and numerous other fields. So, yes, it would be a big deal.

“Right now, almost 50% of the energy in transmission is just heat in copper wires,” said Shomeek Mukhopadhyay. “If you can transmit electricity through wires without dissipating energy, that’s a huge economic benefit. I would say it’s equivalent to having thermonuclear fusion.”

Mukhopadhyay, a research scientist in Chemical & Environmental Engineering, is on the third floor of the Kline Geology Laboratory. Nearby, Natalia Nevskaya, a postdoctoral associate in Earth & Planetary Sciences, prepares a massive device called the Kawai multi-anvil press.

New quantum microscopy trick quadruples microscope resolution

Three years after a team of Caltech scientists showed that pairs of entangled photons could double the resolution of a light microscope, the same lab has figured out a way to double down on that improvement. They have now achieved a fourfold resolution boost compared to a classical microscope, using a new optical design that sends one of the entangled photons through the microscope’s optics three times rather than just once.

The work, led by Lihong Wang, the Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Medical Engineering Leadership Chair at Caltech, builds on the lab’s 2023 demonstration of quantum microscopy by coincidence (QMC). The approach relies on one of those bizarre quantum-mechanical phenomena called entanglement, in which two particles are linked such that the state of one particle is intimately tied to the state of the other no matter how far apart they might be.

In QMC, entangled pairs of photons, called biphotons, are split so that one photon, called the signal photon, passes through the sample while its entangled partner, called the idler photon, travels a separate parallel path. In some ways, the pair behaves as a single particle that has twice the momentum of an individual photon.

Single-shot phase imaging technique can reconstruct transparent objects

A KAIST research team led by professor Mooseok Jang from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering has developed a single-shot phase imaging technique that reconstructs a phase object—a transparent object such as glass, plastic film or a living cell, which produces almost no visible contrast under an ordinary camera but induces a subtle shift in light called a phase change—from a single measurement, even when the object is fully enclosed between two dynamic scattering layers.

The findings are published in the journal Optica.

Phase objects are difficult to see with conventional cameras because they show little brightness contrast with their surroundings. However, analyzing the minute phase shift can reveal an object’s morphology and optical thickness and can be used to determine its physical thickness or refractive index variation when the other quantity is known. For this reason, phase imaging is widely used to observe living cells without staining and to inspect transparent components in semiconductors and displays.

Powerhouses for fake meat: Muscle protein can now be grown in chloroplasts of lettuce and tobacco plants

Livestock farming requires valuable land to grow fodder, uses vast amounts of freshwater and contributes to global warming through methane and nitrous oxide emissions. And, for many consumers it is important to prevent animal suffering. For these reasons, the global market for meat alternatives is currently worth €6.7 billion to €8.1 billion per year and is projected to grow 8.1% to 12.3% each year over the next decade.

One common method for producing fake meat is microbial engineering, in which genes coding for animal proteins are inserted into the genomes of bacteria or yeast for mass production in bioreactors. But now, scientists have developed a promising alternative as a proof of principle.

“Here we show that plants can be engineered to produce the animal protein myoglobin (Mb) in their chloroplasts, the energy factories for photosynthesis. This could provide a more sustainable way to produce an important ingredient for plant-based meat products,” said Dr. Alexia Groff, a researcher at Imperial College London.

Self-repairing, recyclable substrate developed for durable soft sensors

Soft sensors convert movement, temperature and moisture into electrical signals. Repeated bending and friction can cause their metal conductors to peel from the underlying polymer, while physical damage, such as cuts, can disable the device. Commonly used petroleum-derived substrates are also environmentally unfriendly because they are difficult to recycle.

Researchers at the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS CDE) have developed a soft, stretchable substrate that repairs itself, firmly grips metal conductors and can be remolded or broken down after use. It could make wearable patches and electronic skin used in applications such as health monitoring and virtual reality more durable while enabling the recovery of valuable components, thus reducing electronic waste.

The new material, called an intrinsically dynamic biosubstrate (IDBS), was developed by researchers led by assistant professor Zhai Wei from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at NUS CDE. Their findings were published in Nature Sustainability on June 19, 2026.

Polar molecules and polymer bridges overcome two key limits in organic electronics

A research team led by Professor Kang Bosoek of the SKKU Advanced Institute of Nano Technology (SAINT), Department of Nano Engineering and Department of Semiconductor Convergence Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University has developed two new molecular design technologies to enhance the electrical conductivity of organic electronic materials. One technology generates a greater number of charge carriers within a polymer, while the other connects transport pathways so that charge can move without interruption.

The findings were published, respectively, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Nature Communications. The paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society was also selected as a cover article.

Organic semiconductors are lightweight and flexible materials expected to be used in next-generation displays, wearable electronics and sensors. However, for practical use in electronic devices, their electrical conductivity must be improved—which requires generating a sufficient amount of charge and ensuring that the charge, once generated, can move rapidly through the material. Through two separate studies, the research team addressed these two challenges in a complementary way.

/* */