Lifeboat Foundation

If the virus that causes flu were an ice cream cone, then the yearly vaccine teaches the immune system to recognize just the scoop – chocolate one year, strawberry the next. As the virus changes each year, so too must the vaccine.

A new approach that teaches the body to recognize the cone portion of the virus – which stays the same year-to-year – could shake up that yearly vaccination ritual and protect people against pandemic flu like the one that killed 40 to 50 million people in 1918. The team working on this new approach, led by Stanford biochemist Peter Kim, has shown early signs that their technique works in lab animals. They warn that they still need to make their vaccine more specific and show it works in much larger studies before testing it in people.

“We think it could be very generalizable,” said Kim, who is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig professor of biochemistry and the lead investigator of the infectious disease initiative at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. “It could be important for coming up with a universal flu vaccine that would protect against pandemic flu, as well as for HIV.”

Continue reading “New approach could lead to a lifetime flu vaccine” »

CRISPR’d crops could help us address both hunger and obesity.

Here is a vegetable weeding robot designed to increase efficiency on large-scale vegetable farms. It works autonomously and can cover up to 12 acres in 9 hours. It uses GPS and camera to get the job done with accuracy.

Dino is designed to reduce labor costs and free up time for farming teams to focus on more important tasks. It can be put on a schedule and since it’s electric, only minimal maintenance is required.

Continue reading “Dino: Autonomous Weeding Robot Covers 12 Acres in 9 Hours” »

Australian officers square measure airdropping toxic sausages across the country so as to kill many untamed cats that have to confiscate the continenthat is calculable to be between a pair of and half dozen million.

On twenty-nine December 2014, the country’s government proclaimed a thought to kill a pair of million untamed cats by 2022, in keeping with a recent report from MTV.

An outstanding conservationist has planned a cat free future, with each domestic and untamed cats either controlled or culled.

Continue reading “Australia plans to kill uncountable wild cats with poisoned sausage” »

The AeroGarden Harvest is intuitive and easy to use, and being able to say you grew the herbs or tomatoes in your dishes is pretty cool.

I’m used to the shaming look I get from my peers when I crack open a can of sugar-free Red Bull. The questions – and judgement – never end. “That stuff’ll kill you,” someone said to me the other day, shaking his head. “So many chemicals!” was what I heard last week.

Truth be told, Red Bull (at least the sugar-free kind) isn’t all that terrible for you. Besides having only 10 calories and no sugar, it has only 80 milligrams of caffeine, about a third of the amount in a tall Starbucks drip coffee.

As far as its other ingredients – namely B vitamins and taurine – go, scientific studies have found both to be safe.

Continue reading “11 Things People Think Are Awful For Your Diet That Actually Aren’t” »

The hydroponic structure could allow astronauts to grow their own food on the desolate Martian surface. It’d cultivate up to eight food crops could be grown inside a rotating system that could serve up 3100 calories per day for four astronauts over a 600 day excursion to the Red Planet.

It’d grow kale, soy, sweet potato, potato, broccoli, strawberry, wheat, and chufa. A massive tank filled with a nutrient solution under the ceiling feeds a circular system of crop trays with the help of gravity. LEDs make sure that the plants get enough sunlight.

Continue reading “This Martian Greenhouse Concept Just Won a NASA Award” »

Sound familiar? The team basically built molecular devices that “die” without “food.” Thanks to the laws of thermodynamics (hey ya, Newton!), that energy eventually dissipates, and the shapes automatically begin to break down, completing an artificial “circle of life.”

The new study took the system one step further: rather than just mimicking synthesis, they completed the circle by coupling the building process with dissipative assembly.

Continue reading “New Lifelike Biomaterial Self-Reproduces and Has a Metabolism” »

Plant-based fake meat startup Beyond Meat has announced plans to go public sometime in early May, according to CNN. And based on the company’s plans, the public offering will likely value Beyond Meats at an impressive $1.2 billion.

That’s an extraordinary upswing — in addition to selling its increasingly-trendy meat alternative on grocery store shelves, the company recently partnered with both Carl’s Jr. and Del Taco, which could explain how the company is headed toward a coveted “unicorn” valuation.