Lifeboat Foundation

The biology underpinning a rare genetic mutation that allows its carrier to live virtually pain-free, heal more rapidly and experience reduced anxiety and fear, has been uncovered by new research from UCL.

The study, published in Brain, follows up the team’s discovery in 2019 of the FAAH-OUT gene and the rare mutations that cause Jo Cameron to feel virtually no pain and never feel anxious or afraid. The new research describes how the mutation in FAAH-OUT “turns down” FAAH gene expression, as well as the knock-on effects on other molecular pathways linked to wound healing and mood. It is hoped the findings will lead to new drug targets and open up new avenues of research in these areas.

Jo, who lives in Scotland, was first referred to pain geneticists at UCL in 2013, after her doctor noticed that she experienced no pain after major surgeries on her hip and hand. After six years of searching, they identified a new gene that they named FAAH-OUT, which contained a rare genetic mutation. In combination with another, more common mutation in FAAH, it was found to be the cause of Jo’s unique characteristics.

High-frequency light is useful. The higher the frequency of light, the shorter its wavelength—and the shorter the wavelength, the smaller the objects and details the light can be used to see.

So violet light can show you smaller details than red light, for example, because it has a shorter wavelength. But to see really, really small things—down to the scale of billionths of a meter, thousands of times less than the width of a human hair—to see those things, you need extreme ultraviolet light (and a good microscope).

Extreme ultraviolet light, with wavelengths between 10 and 120 nanometers, has many applications in medical imaging, studying biological objects, and deciphering the fine details of computer chips during their manufacture. However, producing small and affordable sources of this light has been very challenging.

Metalenses migrate to smartphones.

Metalenz came out of stealth mode in 2021, announcing that it was getting ready to scale up production of devices. Manufacturing was not as big a challenge as design because the company manufactures metasurfaces using the same materials, lithography, and etching processes that it uses to make integrated circuits.

In fact, metalenses are less demanding to manufacture than even a very simple microchip because they require only a single lithography mask as opposed to the dozens required by a microprocessor. That makes them less prone to defects and less expensive. Moreover, the size of the features on an optical metasurface are measured in hundreds of nanometers, whereas foundries are accustomed to making chips with features that are smaller than 10 nanometers.

A new method of controlling the shape of tiny particles about one tenth of the width of human hair could make the technology that powers our daily lives more stable and more efficient, scientists claim.

The process, which transforms the structure of microscopic semiconductor materials known as quantum dots, provides industry with opportunities to optimize optoelectronics, energy harvesting, photonics, and biomedical imaging technologies, according to the Cardiff University-led team.

Their study, published in Nano Letters, used a process called nanofaceting—the formation of small, flat surfaces on nanoparticles—to manipulate the quantum dots into a variety of shapes called nanocrystals.

Aubrey: 50% chance to LEV in 12–15 years, and a variety of topics from Rey Kurzweil to A.I. to Singularity, and so on.

In this podcast, Aubrey de Grey discusses his work as President and CSO at Lev Foundation and co-founder at Sense Research Foundation in the field of longevity. He explains how the Foundation’s focus is to combine rejuvenation and damage repair interventions to have greater efficacy in postponing aging and saving lives. De Grey believes that within 12 to 15 years, they have a 50% chance of achieving longevity escape velocity, which is postponing aging and rejuvenating the body faster than time passes. De Grey acknowledges the limitations of traditional approaches like exercise and diet in postponing aging and feels that future breakthroughs will come from high-tech approaches like skin and cell therapies. He discusses the potential of AI and machine learning in drug discovery and the possibility of using it to accelerate scientific experimentation to optimize decisions about which experiments to do next. De Gray cautions that the quality of conclusions from AI depends on the quality and quantity of input data and that the path towards defeating aging would require a symbiotic partnership between humans and AI. Finally, he discusses his excitement about the possibilities of hardware and devices like Apple Watch and Levels in tracking blood sugar levels and their potential to prolong life.

Optical imaging and metrology techniques are key tools for research rooted in biology, medicine and nanotechnology. While these techniques have recently become increasingly advanced, the resolutions they achieve are still significantly lower than those attained by methods using focused beams of electrons, such as atomic-scale transmission electron spectroscopy and cryo-electron tomography.

Researchers at University of Southampton and Nanyang Technological University have recently introduced a non-invasive approach for optical measurements with atomic-scale resolution. Their proposed approach, outlined in Nature Materials, could open exciting new possibilities for research in a variety of fields, allowing scientists to characterize systems or phenomena at the scale of a fraction of a billionth of a meter.

“Since the nineteen century, improvements of spatial resolution of microscopy has been a major trend in science that has been marked with at least seven Nobel Prizes,” Nicolay I. Zheludev, one of the researchers who carried out the study told Phys.org. “Our dream was to develop technology that can detect atomic scale events with light, and we have been working on this for the last three years.”

In my work, I build instruments to study and control the quantum properties of small things like electrons. In the same way that electrons have mass and charge, they also have a quantum property called spin. Spin defines how the electrons interact with a magnetic field, in the same way that charge defines how electrons interact with an electric field. The quantum experiments I have been building since graduate school, and now in my own lab, aim to apply tailored magnetic fields to change the spins of particular electrons.

Research has demonstrated that many physiological processes are influenced by weak magnetic fields. These processes include stem cell development and maturation, cell proliferation rates, genetic material repair, and countless others. These physiological responses to magnetic fields are consistent with chemical reactions that depend on the spin of particular electrons within molecules. Applying a weak magnetic field to change electron spins can thus effectively control a chemical reaction’s final products, with important physiological consequences.

Currently, a lack of understanding of how such processes work at the nanoscale level prevents researchers from determining exactly what strength and frequency of magnetic fields cause specific chemical reactions in cells. Current cell phone, wearable, and miniaturization technologies are already sufficient to produce tailored, weak magnetic fields that change physiology, both for good and for bad. The missing piece of the puzzle is, hence, a “deterministic codebook” of how to map quantum causes to physiological outcomes.

Ago when I was a kid in college my friend Eric got me into many things. We played music together and used a Kurzweil Keyboard, and a bunch of weird stuff. We had an ADAT hooked up to the Kurzweil with fiber optic cables. I had Roland keyboards & Drum machines but I loved the Kurzweil. He started teaching me many things because he was really smart. I was studying psychology so he loaned me his DSMIV and books on Industrial Organiza… See more.

A bit long, but a good read. About 20 years ago when I was a kid in college my friend Eric got me into many things. We played music together and used a Kurzweil Keyboard, and a bunch of weird stuff. We had an ADAT hooked up to the Kurzweil with fiber optic cables. I had Roland keyboards & Drum machines but I loved the Kurzweil. He started teaching me many things because he was really smart. I was studying psychology so he loaned me his DSMIV and books on Industrial Organizational Psychology. He then told me about other books like “Society of Mind”(Marvin Minsky), “Age of Intelligent Machine” (Ray Kurzweil), Engines of Creation (K Eric Drexler), of course Richard Feynman, and many more. I dreamed of that technology and kept reading more. In the 2000’s Drexler and Feynman’s visions became a paradign and applications started rolling out, and now nanotechnology is applied to most everything we know. We are now at the second paradigm where we see the visions of Minsky/McCarthy, Kurzweil and others becoming easily available applications. As a Child I watched the Jetsons & Srar Trek and now with flying cars it’s not if, but when. Space travel is already here. All these technologies will transform global societies, but we must all focus on investing more in the advancement of society than the destruction of it. Many of the things we now invision in our minds we may see in 10 years. People think saving your consciousness & longevity is impossible, but I don’t. Some even thought that regenerating tissue and organs is impossible, but we can do that now. Now people keep saying, “This ancient turtle died, this rhino died (I hear that all the time in Kenya), this elephant died, but I say okay it’s not cool, but what can we salvage from it to bring the species back with advances in technology later? Do we use cryogenics? How do we save the genetic material? Technology can be used in so many ways. Every Day Lifeboat posts feats many do not know. If more people on earth had such a focus, as opposed to dumbed down entertainment like The Kardashians for instance, we would be living in a much better world with more people proposing more ideas and collaborations. I always say we are moving in the wrong way in the evolutionary process, and it is a bit telling that some phones are smarter than many people. I you add ChatGPT. We have so much advanced technology and science, yet we can’t even fight cancer. It took decades for people to learn the importance of diet in HIV treatment. However, Ray Kurzweil has for decades talked about the importance of diet for longevity. Just the other day it was published that processed foods affect cognitive function. Before that it was released processed foods cause cancer. We must change, and go in the right way of evolution to the Singularity another paradigm shift and cooperarion, instead of backwards to a barbaric age of conflict and greed. Always share your knowledge and I thank all who do share in this group. More should share as well, and Lifeboat should use more platforms to reach more people.

😗😁

Imagine having a building made of stacks of bricks connected by adaptable bridges. You pull a knob that modifies the bridges and the building changes functionality. Wouldn’t it be great?

A team of researchers led by Prof. Aitor Mugarza, from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) and ICREA, together with Prof. Diego Peña from the Center for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials of the University of Santiago de Campostela (CiQUS-USC), Dr. Cesar Moreno, formerly a member of ICN2’s team and currently a researcher at the University of Cantabria, and Dr. Aran Garcia-Lekue, from the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and Ikerbasque Foundation, has done something analogous, but at the single-atom scale, with the aim of synthesizing new carbon-based materials with tunable properties.

Continue reading “Engineering graphene-based quantum circuits with atomic precision” »