Lifeboat Foundation

Outfield Technologies is a Cambridge-based agri-tech start-up company which uses drones and artificial intelligence, to help fruit growers maximise their harvest from orchard crops.

Outfield Technologies’ founders Jim McDougall and Oli Hilbourne have been working with Ph.D. student Tom Roddick from the Department’s Machine Intelligence Laboratory to develop their technology capabilities to be able to count the blossoms and apples on a tree via drones surveying enormous apple orchards.

Continue reading “Predicting fruit harvest with drones and artificial intelligence” »

Engineering biology is already transforming technology and science, and a consortium of researchers across many disciplines in the international Genome Project-write is calling for more discussion among scientists, policy makers and the general public to shepherd future development. In a policy forum article published in the October 18 issue of Science, the authors outline the technological advances needed to secure the transformative future of synthetic biology and express their concerns that the implementation of the relatively new discipline remains safe and responsible.

Two researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture are co-authors on the piece titled “Technological challenges and milestones for writing genomes: synthetic genomics requires improved technologies.” Neal Stewart and Scott Lenaghan with the UTIA departments of Plant Sciences and Food Science, respectively, join Nili Ostrov, a Ph.D. research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School, and 18 other leading scientists from a number of institutions and disciplines, in outlining a potential timeline for the development of what they call transformative advances to science and society.

Stewart and Lenaghan are the co-directors of the UT Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology (CASB). Formed in 2018, Stewart says CASB is the first synthetic biology center in the world aimed specifically at improved agriculture. A professor of plant sciences in the UT Herbert College of Agriculture, Stewart also holds the endowed Racheff Chair of Excellence in Plant Molecular Genetics. Lenaghan is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science who also holds an adjunct position in the UT Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) Department.

The newly fashionable pills and foods meant to increase the variety of healthy bacteria in our bodies can actually have the opposite effect.

Playing with a simple bean machine illustrates how deterministic laws can produce probabilistic, random-seeming behavior.

The core of what we do at Nanalyze is to tell our readers all they need to know about investing in emerging technologies. Sometimes that story is much, much bigger, and what we’re really talking about is investing in emerging industries. NewSpace is one example, launching about 15 years ago with the emergence of companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. It’s probably only within the last five years that the NewSpace industry has achieved real liftoff, with dozens of startups doing everything from offering launch services to building satellites to developing business analytics from space-based imagery. While we may one day end up living on Mars, we’re more interested in living a long and fruitful life right here on Mother Earth, despite the specter of cancer and dementia. An entire industry is coalescing around human longevity, promising to beat these age-related diseases and extend our lives to biblical proportions.

We’ve been covering the topic of life extension for more than five years, beginning with a profile on an anti-aging company called Human Longevity Inc, whose founders include billionaire serial entrepreneur Peter Diamandis and J. Craig Venter, a leading genomics expert. More recently, we introduced you to nine companies developing products in regenerative medicine, a broad category that refers to restoring the structure and function of damaged tissues or organs. We also tackled the more controversial topic of young blood transfusions earlier this year, as well as covered the 2019 IPO of Precision BioSciences (DTIL), a gene-editing company that wants to fight disease and re-engineer food.

Death rates from cancer are down, but the number of Americans dying each year is higher than ever. A new method enables people to achieve higher blood levels of anti-cancer nutrients found in cruciferous vegetables.

New research from North Carolina State University shows that unique materials with distinct properties akin to those of gecko feet—the ability to stick to just about any surface—can be created by harnessing liquid-driven chaos to produce soft polymer microparticles with hierarchical branching on the micro- and nanoscale.

The findings, described in the journal Nature Materials, hold the potential for advances in gels, pastes, foods, nonwovens and coatings, among other formulations.

The soft dendritic particle materials with unique adhesive and structure-building properties can be created from a variety of polymers precipitated from solutions under special conditions, says Orlin Velev, S. Frank and Doris Culberson Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State and corresponding author of the paper.

Unfortunately, as we age they begin to breakdown due to damage.

MitoSENS project aims to reverse that damage with the goal of preventing age-related ill health. In their first study, they managed to show that allotopic expression of two mtDNA genes from the nucleus could bring back several functions in a patient cell line.

MitoSENS team is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Lifespan.io to collect money for the next crucial step of this project. Scientists want to investigate if functional backup copies of mitochondrial DNA genes in the nucleus can replace their mutated counterparts in live animals, and if this could rescue mitochondrial function.

Customers can trim branches for $35 a pound or cut down the whole plant (like a Christmas tree) for $25 a pound. In a video of the field’s grand opening, a customer buys a 15-pound plant for almost $400.

That may sound pricey, but considering you’re lucky to find most refined hemp products for $25 an ounce, it’s a bargain, according to the farm’s customers, who tell the local newspaper, they’ll be using the plant’s flowers to make CBD oil, lotions and tinctures for pain, anxiety, depression and insomnia.

Instead of conventional row crops, they now grow one of the most lucrative plants on the planet.

Continue reading “USA’s First ‘Pick-Your-Own Hemp’ Field Opens in Maine” »