Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 11774

Researchers at the ASU School of Life Sciences may have found a way to improve crop performance and yield with the help of some new biotechnology. They’ve discovered a method to enhance a plant’s tolerance to stress, which could help them survive inclement conditions and still produce food.

The world’s population is currently exploding. There is already well over 7 billion people on Earth, and that number is expected to grow even larger in the next few years. This means that feeding the human race will become more of a challenge in the coming decades.

As the human population grows, climate change is taking its toll. Weather conditions are shifting in areas that are usually used to grow crops, which means that plants in those areas may not produce as much as they normally would. Drought, abnormal heat and other conditions could cause farms to lose production.

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Washington D.C.: A new study has revealed that fruit flies, who have similar sleeping habits like humans, can tell a lot about the connection between sleep deprivation and metabolic disorders like diabetes, obesity, and blood glucose levels.

The study conducted by the Florida Atlantic University is the first to identify that a conserved gene called translin works as a modulator of sleep in response to metabolic changes.

The study establishes that translin is an essential integrator of sleep and metabolic state, with important implications for understanding the neural mechanism underlying sleep deprivation in response to environmental challenges.

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FRIDAY, March 25, 2016 — Brain stimulation may ease major symptoms of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, a typically hard-to-treat condition, a new study suggests.

British researchers evaluated anorexia patients before and after they underwent repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS), a treatment approved for depression.

“With rTMS we targeted … an area of the brain thought to be involved in some of the self-regulation difficulties associated with anorexia,” study first author Jessica McClelland, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, said in a school news release.

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Researchers from Griffith University and the University of Queensland have overcome one of the key challenges to quantum computing by simplifying a complex quantum logic operation. They demonstrated this by experimentally realising a challenging circuit — the quantum Fredkin gate — for the first time.

“The allure of quantum computers is the unparalleled processing power that they provide compared to current technology,” said Dr Raj Patel from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics.

“Much like our everyday computer, the brains of a quantum computer consist of chains of logic gates, although quantum logic gates harness quantum phenomena.”

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