Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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A small study conducted by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Kresge Eye Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit, and the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute in India was published in the journal Ophthalmology. The research included 20 patients who had surgery for Terson syndrome, a specific type of hemorrhage caused mostly by traumatic injury, such as vehicular collisions. Some of the patients experienced this hemorrhaging in both eyes, thus allowing for the study of 28 eyes.

The procedure used to restore sight in these patients is known as a vitrectomy. The surgery removes the jellylike tissue behind the lens of the eye and replaces it with a saline solution. The patients were split into groups who had the surgery within three months of the hemorrhage and those who received it after the three month mark.

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— longer synthetic DNA accelerates customer discoveries —

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – January 10, 2017 – Twist Bioscience, a company accelerating science and innovation through rapid, high-quality DNA synthesis on silicon, today announced that it is now shipping genes up to 3,200 base pairs (3.2 kilobase or kB) in length to Ginkgo Bioworks under their existing supply agreement.

“Twist Bioscience continues to deliver record volumes of the highest-quality DNA to advance our organism engineering efforts, meeting or exceeding our aggressive timelines,” said Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. “With the availability of synthetic genes up to 3.2kB from Twist, we are able to expedite the rapid prototyping of organism designs to generate cosmetics, nutritional ingredients, flavors, fragrances and other important ingredients.”

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Within the next fifty years, scientists at BAE Systems believe that battlefield commanders could deploy a new type of directed energy laser and lens system, called a Laser Developed Atmospheric Lens which is capable of enhancing commanders’ ability to observe adversaries’ activities over much greater distances than existing sensors.

At the same time, the lens could be used as a form of ‘deflector shield’ to protect friendly aircraft, ships, land vehicles and troops from incoming attacks by high power laser weapons that could also become a reality in the same time period.

The Laser Developed Atmospheric Lens (LDAL) concept, developed by technologists at the Company’s military aircraft facility in Warton, Lancashire, has been evaluated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and specialist optical sensors company LumOptica and is based on known science. It works by simulating naturally occurring phenomena and temporarily — and reversibly — changes the Earth’s atmosphere into lens-like structures to magnify or change the path of electromagnetic waves such as light and radio signals.

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Nine space-age designs have been revealed as the winners of the Moontopia competition, which asked architects and designers to visualise life on the moon.

Entrants to the Moontopia competition were asked to draw up plans for a self-sufficient lunar colony for living, working, researching and space tourism.

One winner and eight runners up were selected from hundreds of proposals submitted to the competition, which was organised by architecture and design magazine Eleven, and ran from August to November 2016.

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Exercise is one of the best ways to slow down aging and its free too!

(Boston) — Older adults who experience good cardiac fitness may be also keeping their brains in good shape as well.

In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, older adults who scored high on cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) tests performed better on memory tasks than those who had low CRF. Further, the more fit older adults were, the more active their brain was during learning. These findings appear in the journal Cortex. Difficulty remembering new information represents one of the most common complaints in aging and decreased memory performance is one of the hallmark impairments in Alzheimer’s disease.

Healthy young (18−31 years) and older adults (55−74 years) with a wide range of fitness levels walked and jogged on a treadmill while researchers assessed their cardiorespiratory fitness by measuring the ratio of inhaled and exhaled oxygen and carbon dioxide. These participants also underwent MRI scans which collected images of their brain while they learned and remembered names that were associated with pictures of unfamiliar faces.

Continue reading “Older, fitter adults experience greater brain activity while learning” | >

The TeraStructure algorithm can analyze genome sets much larger than current systems can efficiently handle, including those as big as 100,000 or 1 million genomes. Finding an efficient way to analyze genome databases would allow for personalized healthcare that takes into account any genetic mutations that could exist in a person’s DNA.

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