Lifeboat Foundation

A new tool can quickly and reliably identify the presence of Ebola virus in blood samples, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and colleagues at other institutions.

The technology, which uses so-called optical microring resonators, potentially could be developed into a rapid diagnostic test for the deadly Ebola virus disease, which kills up to 89% of infected people. Since it was discovered in 1976, Ebola virus has caused dozens of outbreaks, mostly in central and west Africa. Most notable was an outbreak that began in 2014 and killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia; in the U.S., the virus caused 11 cases and two deaths. A rapid, early diagnostic could help public health workers track the virus’ spread and implement strategies to limit outbreaks.

Doctors and infectious-disease experts across the continent have worked to contain monkeypox outbreaks for years. Few seemed to care, or even notice, until people in the West started getting sick.

The health authorities of the African nation declared a new outbreak of Ebola after a case was confirmed in Mbandaka, a city in the north-western Equateur Province, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Saturday.

A University of Minnesota research team has made mind-reading possible through the use of electronics and AI.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have created a system that enables amputees to operate a robotic arm using their brain impulses rather than their muscles. This new technology is more precise and less intrusive than previous methods.

Continue reading “Making Mind Reading Possible: Invention Allows Amputees To Control a Robotic Arm With Their Mind” »

Science and technology have advanced incredibly in the 21st Century. It’s easier now than ever to travel to or talk to people who live halfway across the world, and we now are more connected to advanced technology than anyone could have thought possible. Science fiction, in the 20th and 21st Centuries, has strived to anticipate just how far this technological advancement would go, and what the consequences of that would be.

Of course, a lot of old sci-fi movies included tropes about the 21st Century that proved to be wrong. Indeed, it was probably too optimistic, in hindsight, to assume we would get flying cars before the end of the 90s or that the 2000s would have lifelike androids running around. Despite these incorrect predictions, though, there are some movies that were eerily accurate, or even predicted we would have technology later than we eventually got access to. In some cases, sci-fi has even been the inspiration for invention, with people wanting to emulate what they saw on television. These are some predictions, made by older sci-fi movies, that turned out to be on the money.

Fourteen of the leaked recordings include conversations with or about a team of consultants from Booz Allen Hamilton. One of the consultants told TikTok employees that they were brought on in February 2021 to help manage the Project Texas data migration, and a TikTok director told other TikTok employees that the consultants reported to TikTok’s chief of US data defense. In recordings, the consultants investigate how data flows through TikTok and ByteDance’s internal tools, including those used for data visualization, content moderation, and monetization.

In September 2021, one consultant said to colleagues, “I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them, which is exhausting.”

New hope for therapy against retinitis pigmentosa.

Electrons are some of the most basic building components of matter that we are familiar with. They have several distinguishing characteristics, including a negative charge and the existence of an exact intrinsic angular momentum, often known as spin. Each electron, as a charged particle with spin, has a magnetic moment that aligns in a magnetic field as a compass needle does.

Quantum electrodynamics can forecast the strength of this magnetic moment, which is given by the so-called g-factor, with incredible accuracy. This computation agrees to within 12 digits with the empirically determined g-factor, making it one of the most precise theory-experiment matches in physics to date. The magnetic moment of the electron, on the other hand, changes when it is no longer a “free” particle, that is, when it is linked to an atomic nucleus, for example. QED, which defines the interaction between electrons and nucleus in photon exchange, can be used to determine minor changes in the g-factor. This notion can be sensitively tested thanks to high-precision measurements.

In a new study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg successfully investigated QED predictions with unprecedented resolution. They used a newly developed technique to measure a very small difference in the magnetic properties of two isotopes of highly charged neon in an ion trap with previously inaccessible accuracy.

Scientists have created the first reference charts for the human brain, mapping its growth from infancy to 100 years old. Now, they have to grapple with difficult ethical questions about how they should — and perhaps shouldn’t — be used.

The reference charts are visualizations created from aggregating analyses of over 120,000 brain scans to show ranges in brain size, or gray matter volume, for each age. They also track the human brain’s rapid expansion early in life and its gradual shrinking over time. The researchers primarily developed the charts to provide a standardized measurement that other neuroscientists could use for brain imaging research, with the hope that maybe one day it could lead to a tool used in clinics.

“It’s an absolutely spectacular advancement in neuroscience and neuroimaging,” said Judy Illes, professor of neurology and neuroethics at the University of British Columbia.