Lifeboat Foundation

Prior to this, it was assumed that egg cells (oocytes) would contain a complex array of factors needed to reprogram a somatic cell into becoming an embryonic cell. After all, the feat of transforming an aged egg cell and reprogramming it to make a new animal must be controlled by many factors present in the egg cell, or so they thought. Takahashi and Yamanaka turned this idea upside down when they showed that just four of the Yamanaka factors were needed to achieve this transformation.

They used the Yamanaka factors to reprogram adult mouse fibroblasts (connective tissue cells) back to an embryonic state called pluripotency, a state where the cell behaves like an embryonic stem cell and can become any other cell type in the body.

Continue reading “Yamanaka Factors and Partial Cellular Reprogramming” »

Mounting evidence suggests that humans may have the biological hardware to benefit from some aspects of hibernation. Switching on these mechanisms could treat cardiac arrest, boost longevity and help people travel further into space.

Teleportation is already real, but it’s probably not exactly how you imagine it. With the Metaverse in play, entering a virtual room is already happening. The Metaverse is a virtual space where people can interact and socialize with each other through technology. Even though we are not yet there with physical teleportation, virtually, we can pin ourselves anywhere we want. Let’s learn about this and other cool inventions that seem like they come straight from the future!

#brightside.

Continue reading “Teleportation Is Here, But It’s Not What You Think” »

How do you warn civilians of a criminal suspect you’ve never seen before? By using DNA to whip up an image of what they may or may actually not look like, of course.

Summary: Brain cells grown in a petri dish can perform goal-directed tasks, such as learning to play a game of Pong.

Source: Cortical Labs.

A Melbourne-led team has for the first time shown that 800,000 brain cells living in a dish can perform goal-directed tasks – in this case the simple tennis-like computer game, Pong.

A breakthrough in electric vehicle battery design has enabled a 10-minute charge time for a typical EV battery. The record-breaking combination of a shorter charge time and more energy acquired for longer travel range was announced today (Oct. 12) in the journal Nature.

“The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever,” said Chao-Yang Wang, the William E. Diefenderfer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State and lead author on the study. “There are simply not enough batteries and critical raw materials, especially those produced domestically, to meet anticipated demand.”

In August, California’s Air Resources Board passed an extensive plan to restrict and ultimately ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars within the state. By 2035, the largest auto market in the United States will effectively retire the internal combustion engine.

So at this year’s Connect, which kicks off at 10 AM PT tomorrow with a keynote from Zuckerberg, the stakes feel even higher. And we still have a lot of questions about what it really means to be a “metaverse company.”

It’s perhaps the most obvious issue, but in the nearly a year since Zuckerberg first attempted to articulate what a metaverse is, it’s still not very clear. Last year, Zuckerberg described it as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” The company’s website currently says the metaverse is “the next evolution in social connection and the successor to the mobile internet.”

But what those words mean to most people is fuzzy at best. “Outside of early adopters and tech-savvy people, there’s still confusion as to what is the metaverse and what we’re going to be doing with it,” says Carolina Milanesi, a consumer analyst with Creative Strategies.

From superfast magnetic levitation trains and computer chips to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines and particle accelerators, superconductors are electrifying various aspects of our life. Superconductivity is an interesting property that allows materials to transfer moving charges without any resistance, below a certain critical point. This implies that superconducting materials can transfer electrical energy in a highly efficient manner without loss in the form of heat, unlike many conventional conductors.

Almost two decades ago scientists discovered superconductivity in a new material —magnesium diboride, or MgB₂. There has been a resurgence in the of popularity MgB₂ due to its low cost, superior superconducting abilities, high critical current density (which means that compared to other materials, MgB₂ remains a semiconductor even when larger amounts of electric current is passed through it), and trapped magnetic fields arising from strong pinning of the vortices—which are cylindrical current loops or tubes of magnetic flux that penetrate a superconductor.

The intermetallic MgB₂ also allows adjustability of its properties. For instance, the critical current density values (J_c) of MgB₂ can be improved by decreasing the grain size and increasing the number of grain boundaries. Such adjustability is not observed in conventional layered superconductors.

Les Johnson, author of the new book A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars, talked to WIRED about solar sails and more ways to get farther into the final frontier.