Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON — SpaceWERX, the technology arm of the U.S. Space Force, is looking to award a new round of Small Business Innovation Research contracts worth up to $1.9 million each for IT infrastructure upgrades at the Eastern and Western launch ranges.

The project known as Digital Spaceport of the Future was announced earlier this month. SpaceWERX officials on Jan. 10 said launch ranges are in dire need of IT upgrades and are seeking proposals from the private sector by February 7.

Maj. Jareth Lamb, deputy director of SpaceWERX, said during a briefing that the contracts will be “direct to Phase 2” SBIR/STTR agreements. These are Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer deals that require collaboration between small businesses and non-profit research institutions.

A team of astronomers including those from the University of Tokyo have created the first-ever map of magnetic field structures within a spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Previous studies on galactic magnetic fields only gave a very general picture, but the new study reveals that magnetic fields in the spiral arms of our galaxy break away from this general picture significantly and are tilted away from the galactic average by a high degree.

The findings, appearing in The Astrophysical Journal, suggest magnetic fields strongly impact star-forming regions which means they played a part in the creation of our own solar system.

It might come as a surprise to some that magnetic fields can exist on scales larger than a planet. Most of our daily experience with magnetic fields involves either sticking things to our refrigerator, or perhaps using a compass to point north. The latter shows the existence of magnetic fields generated by our planet.

The transcription factor FOXP3’s interactions with DNA present more evidence of the importance of disorder.

Since its earliest days, supramolecular chemistry has taken inspiration from biology. To create a ‘chemistry beyond the molecule’, supramolecular chemists can learn from the way nature builds hierarchies of organisation from the selective and orderly interactions of molecular components. At least, that’s what Jean-Marie Lehn and I argued in an overview of the subject in 2000.¹ Yet while I still believe that today, I’m less sure that nature’s molecular principles can be easily translated into what Lehn has called a rational ‘science of informed matter’² – and even less so that the principles used in supramolecular chemistry to create wonderful edifices of molecular order and design will by themselves give us anything like proto-living systems.

The reason is that life’s molecular principles are far less transparent than we thought even a few decades ago, and certainly less amenable to rational bottom-up design. An example is supplied by a new study of how a transcription-factor protein called FOXP3 interacts with DNA to influence the differentiation of regulatory T (T_reg) cells, key components of the immune system, from their precursor cells. Transcription factors regulate gene expression, and one way FOXP3 seems to do this is by binding directly to DNA as dimers in which two of the proteins sit in ‘head-to-head’ contact.

This is definitely a good find. Helping the brain can help a lot as well as reducing inflammation. I’ll make use of the meditation feature of my Pixel watch.

The brain doesn’t always stay the same. Mental disorders, health issues, and lifestyle habits can alter the way it looks and works.

“The bottom-line finding is that cannabis before exercise seems to increase positive mood and enjoyment during exercise, whether you use THC or CBD. But THC products specifically may make exercise feel more effortful,” said Dr. Laurel Gibson.

How does cannabis influence workouts? Does it serve as a performance enhancer or in other ways? This is what a recent study published in Sports Medicine hopes to address, as a team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus investigated how cannabis influences exercise workouts and regimens, specifically pertaining to the exercise performance. This study comes almost a decade since Colorado legalized the sale of recreational marijuana and holds the potential to help researchers and the public better understand cannabis’ role in our everyday lives.

For the first-of-its-kind study that started in 2021, the researchers recruited 42 participants who were consistent cannabis users ages 21 to 39 to ascertain their responses to exercise after using cannabis and in a controlled laboratory setting. In the end, the participants reported increased enjoyment and “runner’s high” characteristics while also reporting greater levels of exertion during their exercise regimen. Additionally, the participants reported the following when the researchers asked them why they combine cannabis with their workout routines: 90.5 percent said it increases enjoyment, 69 percent said it reduces pain, 59.5 percent said it increases focus, 57.1 percent said it increases motivation, 45.2 percent stated they perceived that it speeds up time, and 28.6 percent said it improves their performance.

Continue reading “Cannabis and Exercise: A Novel Study Reveals Surprising Findings” »

The researchers also discovered newer burials, including remains from the Ptolemaic period (around 304 to 30 B.C.E.) and a coffin from the 18th Dynasty (roughy 1,550 to 1,295 B.C.E.). Though the coffin was damaged, it held a well-preserved vessel made of alabaster, the white mineral Egyptians often used to make perfume containers, jars and funerary decorations, according to Ahram Online.

“The artifacts and burials uncovered provide a window into the lives of those who lived in this ancient civilization,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, tells the publication.

Additionally, researchers found two terracotta statues of Isis, the Egyptian goddess associated with magic and resurrection, and one of the child deity Harpocrates riding a goose. The goose symbolizes “an evil spirit over which the Divine Child triumphs,” Kawai tells Live Science’s Owen Jarus.

The world’s oldest known fossilized skin belonged to a species of reptile that lived before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, a new study has found.

The fragment of fossilized reptile skin was found in a limestone cave in Oklahoma, United States, and is at least 130 million years older than the oldest previously known skin fossil.

Researchers from the University of Toronto Mississauga identified a skin fragment with a pebbled surface which is similar to crocodile skin, according to a press release published Thursday.

Spanish colonizers enslaved the Lucayans, putting an end to their lineage by 1530.

Like several scientific discoveries, the researchers stumbled upon this result accidentally while conducting experiments irradiating graphene when they found that irradiated noble gases became trapped between two sheets of graphene, which results in the graphene forming small pockets where the atoms of the gases coalesce into small groups of atoms.

“We used scanning transmission electron microscopy to observe these clusters, and they are really fascinating and a lot of fun to watch,” said Manuel Längle, who is a PhD student at the University of Vienna and lead author of the study. “They rotate, jump, grow and shrink as we image them. Getting the atoms between the layers was the hardest part of the work. Now that we have achieved this, we have a simple system for studying fundamental processes related to material growth and behavior.”