Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 4110

Atherosclerosis is a cardiac-based disease where plaque builds up inside the body’s arteries, the blood vessels responsible for carrying oxygen-rich blood to the heart and other organs of the body. Plaque is made up of immune blood cells, known as macrophages, fat, cholesterol, calcium, and other substances found in the blood.

As this plaque hardens it narrows the arteries, limiting the flow of oxygen-rich blood around the body. This, in turn, can lead to serious problems, including heart attack, stroke, or even death.

Now, a study from researchers led by Michigan State University engineers a nanoparticle capable of eating away, from the inside out, heart attack causing plaques. The team states their nanoparticle reduces and stabilizes plaque, providing a potential treatment for atherosclerosis, a leading cause of death in the United States. The study is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

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Discarded tree forks could replace load-bearing joints in architecture projects using a construction technique developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The system combines generative design and robotic fabrication to allow tree forks – the pieces of wood where a trunk or branch splits into two – to be used as the Y-shaped nodes that connect straight building elements.

Created by the Digital Structures research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the five-step approach has already been used to install a demonstration structure on the university’s campus, with a larger pavilion now in the works.

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Fly Me to The Moon — Instrumental AI version. Powered by Artificial Intelligence.

We compose background music that can be labeled as for example: sleep music, calm music, yoga music, study music, peaceful music, beautiful music and relaxing music. These tracks are designed to be enjoyed as background music, or use them in your own videos, reels, or clips. All for free.

#music #newmusic #backgroundmusic #jazz #soundtrack.
#FrankSinatra #AI #ArtificalIntelligence

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A new smart skin developed at Stanford University might foretell a day when people type on invisible keyboards, identify objects by touch alone, or allow users to communicate by hand gestures with apps in immersive environments.

In a just-publish paper in the journal Nature Electronics the researchers describe a new type of stretchable biocompatible material that gets sprayed on the back of the , like suntan spray. Integrated in the mesh is a tiny electrical network that senses as the skin stretches and bends and, using AI, the researchers can interpret myriad daily tasks from hand motions and gestures. The researchers say it could have applications and implications in fields as far-ranging as gaming, sports, telemedicine, and robotics.

So far, several promising methods, such as measuring muscle electrical activities using wrist bands or wearable gloves, have been actively explored to enable various hand tasks and gesturing. However, these devices are bulky as multiple sensory components are needed to pinpoint movements at every single joint. Moreover, a large amount of data needs to be collected for each user and task in order to train the algorithm. These challenges make it difficult to adopt such devices as daily-use electronics.

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The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain how humans form memories and learn, and could eventually aid the development of assistive tools for people affected by neurologic disease or injury. The study was conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital in collaboration with colleagues at Brown University, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and several other institutions.

By MGH news and public affairs.

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A widely believed theory about the origins of Native Americans has been dealt a huge blow by a new genetic analysis of ancient teeth, implying the ancient inhabitants of what is now America were not who we thought they were.

The theory, largely based on archaeological evidence found at Native American sites, claims that the First Peoples came to the continent from Japan around 15,000 years ago. Stone tools and other stone artifacts used by Native Americans show similarities to those of the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer people who lived in ancient Japan from around 14,000–300 BCE.

Based on this and analysis of their migration across the continent, it’s been suggested that Native Americans made their way across the northern rim of the Pacific Ocean, across the Bering Land Bridge – dry land that connected Siberia and Alaska during the last ice age – until they reached the northwest coast of North America.

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Reposting 😗

Thanks to a new experimental gene therapy, one teen’s previously incurable leukemia is now entirely undetectable, marking an incredible breakthrough in genetic immunotherapies. Alyssa, 13, from Leicester in the UK, was told that the only remaining options were end-of-life care to ensure she was comfortable as the aggressive T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia took hold – but the experimental CAR-T base editing therapy was able to modify her immune system to clear all detectable cancer cells.

T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia is a type of cancer that affects T-lymphocytes, an immune white blood cell that is created in the bone marrow. In this type of fast-moving leukemia, these cells divide uncontrollably and enter the bloodstream, traveling to the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes. This can cause death in a short span of just months or even weeks without treatment.

Currently, standard care procedures involve chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, which is an infamously difficult procedure. In Alyssa’s case, both of these treatments failed.

Continue reading “Experimental Gene Therapy Cures Teen’s “Incurable” Cancer” | >

A true embodiment of French Gothic expression in architecture, Chartres Cathedral sits some 50 miles southwest of Paris, in the commune of Chartres. The cathedral was built to be higher and bigger than other cathedrals of the era.

One of the cathedral’s most famous features is its intricate labyrinth located in the nave. Little is known about the cathedral builders, therefore little is known about the motives behind one of the most enigmatic labyrinth depictions in the world.

Construction of the Chartres Cathedral unfolded rather faster than was the case with other cathedrals at the time. For instance, the Notre Dame in Paris took almost two centuries to accomplish, starting from 1160. On the Chartres site, activities reportedly began in 1,194 and finished in 1221.

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Most of us underestimate how quickly electric vehicles (EVs) will take over the car market. It’s mostly down to the plummeting cost of batteries. They have only become cost-competitive in the last few years and have fallen in price 98% since the 1990s. (99% if you include inflation.)

This gave me a combined series of the unit cost of lithium-ion batteries from 1991 to 2022 in $2022. I’ve plotted it as a chart here. And here is the logarithmic version.

Calculating the cost of EV batteries

Now that we have the unit cost of batteries, we can multiply it by the size of EV batteries.

Continue reading “Electric vehicle batteries would have cost as much as a million dollars in the 1990s” | >