Lifeboat Foundation

“Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Zachary Kallenborn discusses acts of existential terrorism, such as the Tokyo subway sarin attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995, which killed or injured over 1,000 people.

Zachary kallenborn is a policy fellow in the center for security policy studies at george mason university, research affiliate in unconventional weapons and technology at START, and senior risk management consultant at the ABS group.

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In a groundbreaking study, researchers have unlocked a new frontier in the fight against aging and age-related diseases. The study, conducted by a team of scientists at Harvard Medical School, has published the first chemical approach to reprogram cells to a younger state. Previously, this was only achievable using a powerful gene therapy.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School, University of Maine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a new research paper in Aging, titled, “Chemically induced reprogramming to reverse cellular aging.”

The new electric two-seater promises to reshape urban mobility in smart cities and will hopefully help lessen the effects of overcrowding on the roads.

Earth has often been compared to a spaceship, one that’s successfully orbited our star and the galaxy many times over billions of years. So what about moving our planet or even converting it or another world into a spaceship? Can we use entire planets to cross the intergalactic void to settle planets in distant galaxies or superclusters? And what sort of engine and drive could move a whole planet?

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One of the main ways cells “talk” to each other to coordinate essential biological activities such as muscle contraction, hormone release, neuronal firing, digestion and immune activation is through calcium signaling.

Rice University scientists have used light-activated molecular machines to trigger intercellular calcium wave signals, revealing a powerful new strategy for controlling cellular activity, according to a new study published in Nature Nanotechnology. This technology could lead to improved treatments for people with heart problems, digestive issues and more.

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The problem of psychology is more important than the problem of consciousness.

Envision a realm where light can be meticulously controlled and manipulated at minuscule scales, unlocking unprecedented potentials for nanotechnology and quantum information technology. Recent breakthroughs in quantum research have propelled us closer to a reality that may be more achievable than previously realized.

In this article, we delve into the domain of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and the vast possibilities they offer in revolutionizing the field of quantum optics.

Picture a serene lake on a sunny day. As you drop a small stone into the water, it sets in motion gentle ripples that traverse the surface. Now, imagine light as akin to those undulating ripples. When light encounters the interface of a metal and a dielectric material, it has the power to generate waves, much like the ripples on the lake. This phenomenon is even more intriguing because these light waves can interact with the metal’s microscopic constituents, such as electrons. Remarkably, the light waves and electrons synchronize their oscillations, giving rise to an SPP wave.

Last year, the chemist – who is an emeritus professor at the University of Strasbourg – published a book titled The Elegance of Molecules. In the pages, he lets his imagination run wild. “Over time, most of the chemical reactions that govern nature could be controlled or imitated by a nanorobot: counter-offensives by the immune system, the production of antibodies, hormones on demand, the repairing of damaged cells and organs [or] the correction of anomalies in the genetic text,” Sauvage writes. “None of this will belong in the realm of science fiction in the long-term.”

Sitting in the hotel’s restaurant, however, the researcher’s realism contrasts with his futuristic fantasy. “Today, we can’t do much. Molecular machines are a somewhat new concept: we can make molecules that move as we choose [and] we can make a fairly complex molecule perform a rotary motion. Or we can make it behave like a muscle, stretching and contracting. The applications will arrive in the future, but we’re not there yet,” he stresses.

The French researcher has been developing these molecular muscles since 2002 alongside a Spanish chemist – María Consuelo Jiménez – from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. “The first thing was to show that we can make a molecule that contracts and stretches. Now, you can think of making materials – especially fibers – that can contract and stretch. Perhaps artificial muscles could be made to replace damaged muscles in people, but that will be in the future. At the moment, there are no real applications,” Sauvage clarifies.

Researchers developed a new method called wildDISCO that uses standard antibodies to map the entire body of an animal using fluorescent markers. This revolutionary technique provides detailed 3D maps of structures, shedding new light on complex biological systems and diseases. WildDISCO has the potential to transform our understanding of intricate processes in health and disease and paves the way for exciting advancements in medical research. This technology was now introduced in Nature Biotechnology.

In the past, scientists relied on genetically modified animals or specialized labels to make specific structures and cells of interest visible in the entire body of an animal. But these approaches are expensive and time-consuming to create, especially when it comes to body-wide systems such as the nervous system.

A team of scientists from Helmholtz Munich, the LMU University Hospital and the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München (LMU) now introduced a new method called wildDISCO, which makes use of standard antibodies to map whole bodies of mice. This ultimately enables the creation of detailed three-dimensional maps of normal and diseased structures in mammalian bodies in an easy-to-use and cost-efficient way.