Lifeboat Foundation

TOKYO (AP) — Japan launched a rocket Thursday carrying an X-ray telescope that will explore the origins of the universe as well as a small lunar lander.

The launch of the HII-A rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan was shown on live video by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, known as JAXA.

“We have a liftoff,” the narrator at JAXA said as the rocket flew up in a burst of smoke then flew over the Pacific.

Telomerase helps maintain telomere length in our cells, influences how our bodies age, and why we develop diseases like cancer. If cells had enough telomerase, telomeres might not shorten at all. But in most somatic cells, it’s present in very low amounts — only enough to slow the telomere shortening down.

This is part of a short series of videos where we explore telomeres, telomere length and telomerase, as well as the impacts they have on our health.

Continue reading “The links between telomerase and aging” »

New observations made with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory provide a “missing link” in our knowledge of black hole and star interactions.

A Sun-like star in a galaxy near ours is slowly being eaten by a relatively small black hole.

Though it’s small for a black hole, it is extremely active and devours the equivalent mass of three Earths every time the star passes close by, a press statement reveals.

For the first time, scientists produced human kidneys out of chimeric embryos containing a mix of pig cells and human stem cells. The same technique can be used to produce heart and pancreas.

A team of Chinese researchers has successfully grown early-stage developing human kidneys into female pigs using chimeric embryos.

Continue reading “Scientists grow human kidneys inside pigs using stem cells” »

Removing membranes could shave off as much as 30 percent of battery costs since they are the most expensive components.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati in the US have developed a new design that could make lithium-ion batteries much cheaper to produce. This can have a profound impact on the large-scale energy storage systems needed to store renewable energy, a press release said.

Lithium-ion batteries, extensively used for power electronic devices, have also found their way into electric vehicles (EVs) thanks to their superior energy density over conventional batteries. These can also be deployed to store renewable energy when production is high, but the demand is low.

This galaxy, named 9io9, is situated at such an immense distance that its light has traveled for over 11 billion years before reaching the Earth.

A powerful ground-based telescope has detected a magnetic field in a most distant galaxy, making it an unprecedented discovery. To date, astronomers have mostly detected and mapped magnetic fields in nearby galaxies.

Continue reading “Most remote galactic magnetic field found in early universe” »

The Mozilla Foundation examined 25 car brands and discovered that all of them violate user privacy.

In-car internet is great. A car occupant can play a song, chat with a voice assistant or find directions to their destination with one click of a button.

But after reading the latest report by Mozilla Foundation on user data privacy in cars, one might rethink before switching on their in-built navigation system. We’re not being alarmists, but the report is sounding alarms left, right, and center.

A new facility will be able to produce battery capacity to power 130,000 homes on a daily basis using renewable energy.

Zinc halide batteries touted as a low-cost alternative to battery energy storage system (BESS) have received a significant boost in the US after the Department of Energy (DOE) offered a $400 million loan to help scale production and reduce manufacturing costs, a press release said. The offer will cover setting up of four production lines at battery maker Eos’ facility in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

Lithium-ion batteries are a crucial component of our attempts to switch to a greener economy powered by renewable energy. Although the technology is ubiquitous these days and powers everyday devices like smartphones and even electric vehicles (EVs), it is still very expensive.

A new study explores the field of biological brain modeling, determining the brain’s structure is similar to a computer.

The brain has been designated as one of the most complex organs of the human body, comprised of features including intelligence, an interpreter of the senses, an initiator of body movement, and a controller of behavior, according to the National Institute of Health.

Now, a recent study discovered that a living model of this three-pound organ sheds light on the mechanisms of how humans understand and experience the world.