Lifeboat Foundation

Acts of kindness may not be that random after all. Science says being kind pays off.

Research shows that acts of kindness make us feel better and healthier. Kindness is also key to how we evolved and survived as a species, scientists say. We are hard-wired to be kind.

Kindness “is as bred in our bones as our anger or our lust or our grief or as our desire for revenge,” said University of California San Diego psychologist Michael McCullough, author of the forthcoming book “Kindness of Strangers.” It’s also, he said, “the main feature we take for granted.”

As mentioned in previous videos, space junk is a deadly threat to our GPS, telecommunications, and satellite infraustructure. As such, in this video, we will talk about humanity’s upcoming, first mission to attempt to clean up orbital debris: Clearspace One, which is commissioned by the ESA.

Here is the petition link: https://www.change.org/p/save-vital-industries-call-for-subs…satellites

Continue reading “Clearspace One: The First Attempt At Cleaning Up Space Junk | The State of Science” »

Elon Musk is often referred to as the real-life Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, and in the new quest to engineer an electric vehicle battery that lasts up to 1 million miles, iron may play the role of hero.

We are in this together. From oxygen hoods to ventilators, our scientists and engineers across the agency are uniting to join the fight against coronavirus. Tune in to #NASAScience Live on June 25 at 3 p.m. EDT to watch this nationwide effort.

Until recently, there has not been a treatment for the deadly coronavirus. However, that is about to change with the discovery of a new compound: Dexamethosone! With this compound, the worst cases of the coronavirus have seen an increased survival rate.

PS: The stock footage from this photo comes from Videvo!

Continue reading “Dexamethosone: Upcoming Treatment for the Coronavirus | The State of Science” »

This is really old news:

Two tried-and-true vaccines — a century-old inoculation against tuberculosis and a decades-old polio vaccine once given as a sugar cube — are being evaluated to see if they can offer limited protection against the coronavirus.

The old vaccines are oddities among the cutting-edge and targeted technologies being developed to combat the novel coronavirus. New vaccines aim to teach the body’s immune system to recognize and destroy the coronavirus, but scientists are only now beginning to test them in people. Vaccines developed against TB and polio have already been used in millions of people and could offer a low-risk way to rev up the body’s first line of defense — the innate immune system — against a broad array of pathogens, including the coronavirus.

Continue reading “Can old vaccines from science’s medicine cabinet ward off coronavirus?” »

BioMed Realty, a real estate development firm that specializes in life-sciences and biotech space, is taking over development of a multi-acre site in Somerville’s Assembly Square to create a “best-in-class life science office park.”

BioMed has agreed to acquire an existing office at 5 Middlesex Ave. in Somerville, as well as 7.5 acres of land for future development, from a joint venture of Novaya Real Estate Ventures and Cresset Development. The firms did not disclose terms of the agreement.

BioMed, which investment giant Blackstone acquired in 2016, has a local portfolio spanning 3.5 million square feet, including a number of properties in Cambridge, as well as facilities in Watertown and Boston’s Longwood Medical Area. Its most recent project proposal in Cambridge is for a 16-story office and lab at 585 Third St.

Continue reading “BioMed pitches life science campus in Somerville’s Assembly Square” »

Like all countries, China is facing severe economic losses from the pandemic, and that will certainly have a negative impact on scientific research, because funding will be reduced and projects will be delayed, says physicist Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing. Some universities have already announced a cut in funding. The research budget given by the education ministry to Jiangnan University in Wuxi, for example, will drop by more than 25% for 2020, and other universities are facing similar reductions. “An overall budget cutting of government spending on higher education is highly possible, though the level and scope may vary by regions, universities and fields,” says Tang Li, a science-policy scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai.

The country is rapidly gaining on the United States in research, but problems could slow its rise: part 5 in a series on science after the pandemic.

Technion Professor Ido Kaminer and his team have made a dramatic breakthrough in the field of quantum science: a quantum microscope that records the flow of light, enabling the direct observation of light trapped inside a photonic crystal.

Their research, “Coherent Interaction Between Free Electrons and a Photonic Cavity,” was published in Nature. All the experiments were performed using a unique ultrafast transmission electron microscope at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The microscope is the latest and most versatile of a handful that exist in the scientific world.

Continue reading “One-of-a-kind microscope enables breakthrough in quantum science” »