Lifeboat Foundation

A newly discovered manipulation mechanism used by parasitic bacteria to slow down plant aging, may offer new ways to protect disease-threatened food crops.

Parasites manipulate the organisms they live off to suit their needs, sometimes in drastic ways. When under the spell of a parasite, some plants undergo such extensive changes that they are described as “zombies”. They stop reproducing and serve only as a habitat and host for the parasitic pathogens.

Until now, there’s been little understanding of how this happens on a molecular and mechanistic level.

University of California-Riverside (UCR) researchers say they are studying whether they can turn edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories.

One of the challenges with this new technology is that it must be kept cold to maintain stability during transport and storage. If this new project is successful, plant-based mRNA vaccines, which can be eaten, could overcome this challenge with the ability to be stored at room temperature.

The project’s goals, made possible by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, are threefold: showing that DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate, demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot, and finally, determining the right dosage.

Co-op Food today announced a partnership with Amazon Prime, enabling same-day grocery deliveries, while also expanding the use of robots from 200 to 500 units.

Researchers have developed a new method that can automatically produce clear images through murky water. The new technology could be useful for searching for drowning victims, documenting submerged archaeological artifacts and monitoring underwater farms.

Imaging clearly underwater is extremely challenging because the water and the particles in it tend to scatter light. But, because scattered light is partially polarized, imaging using a camera that is sensitive to polarization can be used to suppress scattered light in underwater images.

“Our new method overcomes the limitations of traditional polarimetric underwater imaging, laying the groundwork for taking this method out of the lab and into the field,” said research team leader Haofeng Hu from Tianjin University in China. “Unlike previous methods, there’s no requirement for the image to include a background area to estimate the backscattered light.”

Ending the global sanitation crisis — jack sim, founder world toilet organization.

Around 2 billion people worldwide still lack access to the basic tools of improved sanitation (toilets and latrines). One billion people still have to defecate in the open, and at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by raw wastewater. An estimated 800,000 children, younger than 5 years of age, perish from diarrhea each year, including conditions related to cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.

Continue reading “Mr. Jack Sim — Founder, World Toilet Organization — Ending The Global Sanitation Crisis” »

Simply by adding sugar, researchers from the Monash Energy Institute have created a longer-lasting, lighter, more sustainable rival to the lithium-ion batteries that are essential for aviation, electric vehicles and submarines.

The Monash team, assisted by CSIRO, report in today’s edition of Nature Communications that using a glucose-based additive on the positive electrode they have managed to stabilize lithium-sulfur battery technology, long touted as the basis for the next generation of batteries.

“In less than a decade, this technology could lead to vehicles including electric busses and trucks that can travel from Melbourne to Sydney without recharging. It could also enable innovation in delivery and agricultural drones where light weight is paramount,” says lead author Professor Mainak Majumder, from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Associate Director of the Monash Energy Institute.

Scientists have long been interested in plasma’s biological implications. In the late 19th century, the Finnish physicist Karl Selim Lemström observed that the width of growth rings in fir trees near the Arctic Circle followed the cycle of the aurora borealis, widening when the northern lights were strongest. He hypothesized that the light show somehow encouraged plant growth. To artificially emulate the northern lights, he placed a metal wire net over growing plants and ran a current through it. Under the right conditions, he reported, the treatment produced larger vegetable yields.

For decades, scientists have known that exposure to plasma can safely kill pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses. Small studies in animals also suggest that plasma can prompt the growth of blood vessels in skin. In his research, Reuter studies ways to harness these properties to inhibit new infections in wounds and expedite healing or treat other skin conditions. But more recently, he and other physicists have been working on ways to use the power of plasma to improve food production.

Experiments conducted in the last decade or so have tested a mix of ways to apply plasma to seeds, seedlings, crops and fields. These include plasma generated using noble gases, as well as plasma generated from air. In some cases, plasma is directly applied through plasma “jets” that stream over the seeds or plants. Another approach uses plasma-treated water that can do double duty: irrigation and fertilization. Some studies have reported a range of benefits, from helping plants grow faster and bigger to resisting pests.

Thus, the researchers propose that disturbance in the DVC’s timekeeping leads to obesity, rather than being the result of excessive body weight.

When rats are fed a high fat diet, this disturbs the body clock in their brain that normally controls satiety, leading to over-eating and obesity. That’s according to new research published in The Journal of Physiology.

The number of people with obesity has nearly tripled worldwide since 1975.^[1] In England alone, 28% of adults are obese and another 36% are overweight.^[2] Obesity can lead to several other diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer.^[3]

Continue reading “High Fat Diets Break the Body Clock — This May Be the Underlying Cause of Obesity” »

“After demonstrating that cultured meat can reach cost parity faster than the market anticipated, this production facility is the real game-changer,” said Yaakov Nahmias, Future Meat Technologies founder and chief scientific officer, in a press release. “This facility demonstrates our proprietary media rejuvenation technology in scale, allowing us to reach production densities 10-times higher than the industrial standard.”

Cultured meat is made by extracting cells from animal tissue and giving them nutrients, oxygen, and moisture while keeping them at the same temperature they’d be at inside an animal’s body. The cells divide and multiply then start to mature, with muscle cells joining to create muscle fibers and fat cells producing lipids. The resulting nuggets of meat can be used to make processed products like burgers or sausages. Structured cuts of meat with blood vessels and connective tissue, like steak or chicken breast, require scaffolds, and researchers are creating these with biomaterials, like cellulose from plants. Companies are working on several varieties of more elaborate cultured products, from bacon to salmon.

Continue reading “New Cultured Meat Factory Will Churn Out 5,000 Bioreactor Burgers a Day” »