Lifeboat Foundation

The Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., will retain potentially lucrative rights to a powerful gene-editing technique that could lead to major advances in medicine and agriculture, the federal Patent and Trademark Office ruled on Wednesday.

The decision, in a bitterly fought dispute closely watched by scientists and the biotechnology industry, was a blow to the University of California, often said to be the birthplace of the technique, which is known as Crispr-Cas9.

An appeals board of the patent office ruled that the gene-editing inventions claimed by the two institutions were separate and do not overlap.

Scientists have discovered a groundbreaking immunotherapy combination that kills brain cancer, promotes long-term immunity and is highly effective against breast cancer and myeloma.

Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) in Ottawa had the promising findings published Wednesday in the journal ‘Nature Communications’.

The study outlines how the team developed a unique combination of drugs known as SMAC Mimetics and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) that produce high kill rates for cancer tumor cells in mice.

Feb. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Wednesday indicated that President Donald Trump may want the United States to resurrect its pioneering spirit in outer space — much the same way another American leader did five decades ago.

Acting NASA Administrator Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr., sent a memo to employees Wednesday saying he had instructed the agency to work up a feasibility report on adding astronauts to its planned EM-1 flight late next year.

The mission, which is currently unmanned, will launch NASA’s new Space Launch System rocket with an Orion capsule. The spacecraft would orbit the moon and return to Earth. The agency’s EM-2 mission, scheduled for years later, was supposed to be the spaceflight to carry humans.

Continue reading “Trump may get Kennedy-esque with earlier return to moon” »

A backyard engineer built an exoskeleton that helps him lift a truck.

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This article was originally posted on Inverse.

Humans won’t survive on Mars for very long if they don’t learn to grow their own food. That’s why we need to answer the question: What, if anything, can grow on the red planet?

A two-year experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) gives us some hints. A species of green algae and photosynthesizing bacteria have survived their 450-day stay in outer space. All but one of the algae samples started growing after being returned to Earth.

The experiment was part of the Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX) to understand to what extent terrestrial life can survive in space. It involved a series of pockets where hundreds of specimens of bacteria, fungi, lichens, algae, and mosses were exposed to conditions of near vacuum, temperatures between −4 °F (−20 °C) and 116 °F (47 °C), and a continuous blast of ultraviolet radiation.

Continue reading “An algae that survived two years in outer space may hold the secret to growing food on Mars” »

Seventy-five percent of the work in hotels can be automated.

Three researchers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency make some predictions for the future.

57% of the world’s jobs are at risk of being automated. Universal Basic Income may be our only way out. Here’s why.