Lifeboat Foundation

A new study published in Nature reveals the likely impacts of climate change on cacti by mid-century.

Founded by MIT scientists, the clinical-stage biotech company Frequency Therapeutics discovered a way to reverse hearing loss without hearing aids or implants. Focusing on progenitor cells (which reside in the inner ear and turn into hair cells when humans are in utero, before going dormant) the company injects small molecules into the cochlea, which transform these cells into hair cells that help us hear. During their 200-person trial, the company saw meaningful improvement in patients’ hearing, with some reporting improved speech perception after a single injection that lasted nearly two years. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 10 or 15 years, because of the resources being put into this space and the incredible science being done, we can get to the point where [reversing hearing loss] would be similar to Lasik surgery, where you’re in and out in an hour or two,” says Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology affiliate faculty member Jeff Karp. While the drug still needs to undergo further testing, the breakthrough is a hopeful milestone for the field of regenerative medicine. Read more about it at SciTechDaily.

The Essential Beauty exhibition of Obel Award-winning architect Anna Heringer’s work is currently on show at Madrid’s Museo ICO. Here, curator Luis Fernández-Galiano selects five highlights from the exhibition.

First opened in February as part of the 2022 edition of Madrid Design Festival, the retrospective exhibition curated by Spanish architect Luis Fernández-Galiano showcases the breadth of German architect Heringer’s work.

Working across the world, she aims to use architecture as a tool to improve lives – using local materials and labour to support and empower communities and people.

This video was produced on April 15, 2022 for the Future of Life Insititute’s Worldbuilding program.

Please support the Future of Life Institute: https://futureoflife.org.

Continue reading “Imagine — Worldbuilding Edition” »

The wave likely scoured the surface of the weakly magnetic planet.

Previously, scientists were unsure if Mercury’s magnetic field was strong enough to induce geomagnetic storms. However, research published in two papers in the journals Nature Communications and Science China Technological Sciences in February has proved that the magnetic field is, indeed, strong enough. The first paper showed that Mercury has a ring current, a doughnut-shaped stream of charged particles flowing around a field line between the planet’s poles, and the second paper pointed to this ring current being capable of triggering geomagnetic storms.

“The processes are quite similar to here on Earth,” Hui Zhang, a co-author of both studies and a space physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, said in a statement. “The main differences are the size of the planet and Mercury has a weak magnetic field and virtually no atmosphere.”

Continue reading “The sun has blasted Mercury with a plasma wave” »

The wildflower Gasteranthus extinctus in western Ecuador had been spotted by scientists for the first time since 1985. The elusive tropical plant is endangered due to the mass deforestation of its environment.

It was cute⁠—even though LaMDA went on to make a few errors. The AI language model that powers it is still in development, Pichai explained. And Google says it has no plans yet to use LaMDA in its products. Even so, the company is using it to explore new ways to interact with computers—and new ways to search for information. “LaMDA already understands quite a lot about Pluto and millions of other topics,” he said.

The vision of a know-it-all AI that dishes out relevant and accurate information in easy-to-understand bite-size chunks is shaping the way tech companies are approaching the future of search. And with the rise of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, language models are becoming a go-to technology for finding stuff out in general.

Summary: Tau-tangles trigger the inflammatory activation of microglia via the NF-κB pathway. Inhibiting the microglia NF-κB signaling pulled the immune cells out of their inflammatory state and reversed learning and memory problems in tau-based Alzheimer’s mouse models.

Source: Weill Cornell Medicine.

Inhibiting an important signaling pathway in brain-resident immune cells may calm brain inflammation and thereby slow the disease process in Alzheimer’s and some other neurodegenerative diseases, suggests a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

Elon Musk referred to Mark Zuckerberg as ‘Zuckerberg the 14th’ – an apparent allusion to the famed Louis XIV nicknamed the Sun King – and accused him of exerting too much influence over platforms controlled by him. Twitter’s new owner insists that his bid to purchase the microblogging service isn’t about making money, but rather about broadening Twitter’s appeal and safeguarding free expression. A more accessible social media platform was one of Musk’s goals, he said.

“When Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all owned by Mark Zuckerberg, the 14th generation of Zuckerbergs will still be in charge. Actually, this is what I mean. On Twitter, you won’t see that ” Zuckerberg was ridiculed by Musk. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that he prefers to maintain the largest number of Twitter stockholders in the company, rather than monopolizing it. He presently has a 9.1 percent stake in Twitter.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, holds a 12.8 percent stake in Meta, the parent company of social media platforms. This is not the first time that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have taken shots at one other. When in doubt, leave the speech as is. Let the tweet live if it’s in a grey area When discussing censoring specific subjects and tweets, Musk stated this. In my opinion, we should be extremely cautious about deleting anything.