Lifeboat Foundation

An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth’s continents have entered a persistently drier phase.

From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land—that includes liquid surface water like lakes and rivers, plus water in aquifers underground—was 290 cubic miles (1,200 cubic km) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost.”

During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped.

Researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) have uncovered that stress changes how our brain encodes and retrieves aversive memories, and discovered a promising new way to restore appropriate memory specificity in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If you stumble during a presentation, you might feel stressed the next time you have to present because your brain associates your next presentation with that one poor and aversive experience. This type of stress is tied to one memory.

But stress from traumatic events like violence or generalized anxiety disorder can spread far beyond the original event, known as stress-induced aversive memory generalization, where fireworks or car backfires can trigger seemingly unrelated fearful memories and derail your entire day. In the case of PTSD, it can cause much greater negative consequences.

I have my own introduction to quantum mechanics course that you can check out on Brilliant! First 30 days are free and 20% off the annual premium subscription when you use our link ➜ https://brilliant.org/sabine.

“New physics” is a catch-all term for fundamentally new discoveries in physics (such as dark matter, quantum gravity, or a theory of everything) which push the boundaries of how we understand our reality. How could new discoveries in these areas of research affect our lives? Let’s take a look at what knowledge and practical use we could potentially gain.

Continue reading “A New Physics Breakthrough Could Change Everything” »

Subboor Ahmad is a Muslim evolution critic who likes to quote academics to support his case. One in particular is Elliott Sober, whom Subboor described as \.

Sean Michael Carroll (born 5 October 1966) is a cosmologist and Physics professor specializing in dark energy and general relativity. He is a research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He has been a contributor to the physics blog Cosmic Variance, and has published in scientific journals and magazines such as Nature, Seed, Sky \& Telescope, and New Scientist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M…

Other videos related to challenging or debunking the fine tuning argument

Continue reading “Disproving the Fine-tuned Universe Theory” »

New drugs and therapies have become indispensable for treating an array of cancers. Unfortunately, they can also cause damage to the heart, a side effect that has led to the development of a new discipline in medicine, called cardio-oncology. Now teams from University of California San Francisco and Stanford University…

Nearly half a dozen institutions of higher education separately announced plans this week to make tuition free for undergraduates who meet certain income requirements, reflecting a growing nationwide effort to make college more affordable.

The schools span states from Massachusetts to New Mexico, and include some of the country’s leading universities. They all announced their initiatives within days of each other. And while the specific financial requirements for current students applicants vary between schools, all are slated to take effect in fall 2025.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, for example, says undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can attend tuition free starting next year, up from its current threshold of $140,000. It said in its announcement that 80% of American households meet the updated threshold.

We cordially invite you to participate in the 5th International Symposium on Frontiers in Molecular Sciences Regulatory Mechanisms of Biological Function and Drug Discovery based on Protein Structure/Function Analysis, to be held in Kyoto, Japan, from August 26 to 29, 2025. The symposium will present outstanding research results that elucidate the molecular mechanisms of biological function and regulation, and it will also facilitate drug design based on molecular biology, biophysical characterization, in vivo environmental homeostasis, organ interactions based on sensory systems, physiome, and AI-assisted analysis of protein structures and functions.

The venue will be the Inamori Hall, Liberal Arts and Science Building and the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives (Rekisaikan), both affiliated with Kyoto Prefectural University, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine and the Kyoto Prefectural Government, located in Kyoto City. The venue is conveniently located approximately 20 minutes by subway or car from Japan Railway (JR) Kyoto Station, which is also easily accessible from Kansai International Airport (KIX) by JR (approximately 1 hour 20 minutes) or limousine bus (approximately 1 hour 30 minutes).

Hip osteoarthritis (HOA), a prevalent condition among those aged 55 years and above, is a significant cause of joint pain and functional impairment and it contributes to the overall burden of chronic pain experienced by the elderly population. While platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and hyaluronic acid (HA) injections have emerged as innovative therapeutic approaches for managing osteoarthritis, their effectiveness in HOA remains a subject of contention. Therefore, the objective of this review was to assess the efficacy of PRP versus HA in terms of pain relief and functional outcomes for the management of HOA. We searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases from 2013 to 2023 to identify pertinent randomized controlled trials (RCTs). A total of seven trials (478 participants) were included. The selected studies underwent quality assessment using the updated Cochrane risk of bias tool. The pain and functional outcomes were examined using measures of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain scale, visual analog scale (VAS), and Harris hip score (HHS). In the meta-analysis, standard mean differences (SMDs) along with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to estimate overall effect magnitudes for continuous outcomes were extracted. Statistical significance was determined using p-values below 0.05. At six months, the PRP group experienced a significantly lower standard mean WOMAC pain score (SMD =-0.38, CI =-0.64 — 0.13; p = 0.03). No significant differences in WOMAC pain scores were noted at one to two months (SMD = 0.09, CI =-0.24, 0.43; p = 0.59), and at 12 months (SMD =-0.85, CI =-1.81, 0.12; p = 0.09). Similarly, for VAS, patients on PRP showed a slight improvement in their VAS scores at six months (SMD =-0.50, CI =-0.89,-0.12; p < 0.01). However, no significant differences in VAS between the PRP groups and the HA groups were observed at one to two months (SMD =-0.22, CI =-0.49, 0.04; p = 0.10) and at 12 months (SMD =-0.22, CI:-0.63, 0.19; p = 0.29). In terms of hip dysfunction, there was no statistically significant standard mean difference in HHS between the PRP and HA groups at six months (SMD = 0.02, CI =-0.40, 0.44; p = 0.93), and at 12 months (SMD =-0.31, CI =-0.32, 0.22; p = 0.73). This review and meta-analysis provide insights into emerging treatments for HOA, especially considering that PRP shows potential benefits and safety for patients with HOA during mid-term follow-up in a 12-month period. Nevertheless, it is necessary to conduct research that includes high-quality designs and larger sample sizes to validate the comparative efficacy of these treatments.