Lifeboat Foundation

Pure water is an almost perfect insulator.

Yes, water found in nature conducts electricity – but that’s because of the impurities therein, which dissolve into free ions that allow an electric current to flow. Pure water only becomes “metallic” – electronically conductive – at extremely high pressures, beyond our current abilities to produce in a lab.

Continue reading “Scientists Transformed Pure Water Into a Metal — And There’s Video” »

Scientists have designed a striking new contact lens that could revolutionize ophthalmology. It’s based on a spiral pattern that lets the eye focus at different distances and in varying lighting conditions.

Beyond contact lenses, its inventors say the tech could be applied to a range of miniaturized imaging systems, including consumer gadgets like virtual reality headsets, to offer more versatility and flexibility than existing lenses.

The lens, called a spiral diopter, causes incoming light to spin in an optical vortex, making allowances for the various deformations in the cornea of the eye that can happen as we age.

These gross little eggs belong to invertebrates known as flatworms, and were found at a record depth of around 20,000 feet.

While Elon Musk was talking about hyperloop, China was busy building it.

A new stool test appears to detect colorectal cancer precursors better than the current fecal immunochemical test. This could further reduce the number of new colorectal cancer cases as well as the number of people dying from the disease. A study led by the Netherlands Cancer Institute compared both tests.

Their results are published in The Lancet Oncology.

Each year worldwide, approximately 1.9 million people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and 935,000 people lose their lives as a result of the condition. If detected early, colorectal cancer is curable. However, by the time symptoms such as weight loss or blood in the stool appear, it is often too late. That is why many countries have introduced population-based screening programs. In The Netherlands, for example, people between the ages of 55 and 75 are invited to be tested every two years.

Hackers have brought a children’s hospital in Chicago to its knees, an especially cruel attack that has made life for staff a nightmare.

according to a recent study.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with excess risk for kidney stones. Sodium–glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors increase urine output and alter urine composition in ways that might lower risk for kidney stones. In this U.S. study, researchers compared risks for kidney stones among 600,000 adults with type 2 diabetes who were new users of SGLT-2 inhibitors versus 600,000 propensity score–matched patients who initiated glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors, which do not have the same renal effects.

During median follow-up of 6 months, risk for kidney stones was significantly lower in patients who began using SGLT-2 inhibitors than in patients who began using GLP-1 receptor agonists (15 vs. 22 events/1000 person-years) or DPP-4 inhibitors (15 vs. 20 events/1000 person-years). The effect was larger for younger patients (age, 70).

Continue reading “SGLT-2 Inhibitors Lower Risk for Kidney Stones in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes” »

A new tool that uses images of your face, tongue, and retina, could help gauge your risk of developing chronic diseases.

Ask any parent, and they’ll tell you that one of — if not the — biggest challenges facing them is trying to decipher a newborn’s anguished cries in the middle of the night. Is the baby hungry? Does she have an upset stomach, or is she in the throes of colic? Maybe the poor girl needs to poop?

The only thing worse than feeling helpless in the face of such unreadable emotions is trying everything and still having no idea what’s wrong or how to ease their baby’s discomfort. Such a dilemma, mixed with a lack of quality sleep, can easily slide into feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and depression.

To help parents find peace of mind and a more restful night’s sleep, the startup Cappella has gathered a team of MIT, Berkeley, and Stanford engineers to help parents answer those inscrutable midnight questions. The team developed an app that detects baby sounds and then translates them so parents know what’s wrong. And the app runs on technology that’s already available in most U.S. homes.