Lifeboat Foundation

Long before Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed, once-trusty proteins start to knot together in the brain in a process that may be hastened by poor sleep.

Now, scientists have uncovered a possible mechanism linking disruptions in circadian rhythms and the build-up of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, by studying the rhythmic operation of immune cells and finding the molecular ‘timers’ that control them.

Circadian rhythms are the daily rhythms of bodily functions which are tied to our natural body clock, respond to light exposure, and govern our sleep-wake cycles.

David Bennett, 57, of Maryland received a pig heart in a transplant on Jan. 7. He continues to recover and the heart is working as expected thus far.

Right above you is the sky – or as scientists would call it, the atmosphere. It extends about 20 miles (32 kilometers) above the Earth. Floating around the atmosphere is a mixture of molecules – tiny bits of air so small you take in billions of them every time you breathe.

Above the atmosphere is space. It’s called that because it has far fewer molecules, with lots of empty space between them.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel to outer space – and then keep going? What would you find? Scientists like me are able to explain a lot of what you’d see. But there are some things we don’t know yet, like whether space just goes on forever.

It’s hard to spot a black hole.

There are two different approaches to such detection. In “X-ray binary stars” — in which a star and a black hole orbit a shared center while producing X-rays — a black hole’s gravitational field can pull material from its companion. The material circles the black hole, heating up by friction as it does so.

The hot material glows brightly in X-ray light, making the black hole visible, before being sucked into the black hole and disappearing. You can also detect pairs of black holes as they merge together, spiraling inwards and emitting a brief flash of gravitational waves, which are ripples in spacetime.

Continue reading “Scientists may have just found an invisible black hole — should you be worried?” »

Can you run out of brain space? That’s the wrong way to visualize memory, scientists say. Instead, older people face the challenge of sifting through more information.

BONN, Germany — When you’re sick, you can often see it in your face that you’re not feeling well. For rare diseases, it’s usually not that easy. However, researchers in Germany say artificial intelligence may change all that. A team from the University of Bonn say a new facial analysis program can actually detect the warning signs of rare diseases by examining the features of a person’s face.

“The goal is to detect such diseases at an early stage and initiate appropriate therapy as soon as possible,” says Prof. Dr. Peter Krawitz from the Institute for Genomic Statistics and Bioinformatics (IGSB) at the University Hospital Bonn in a university release.

At least 15 out of 23 died?Monkeys are used for all kinds of experiments, but in most cases, the research they are subjected to is humane.

The Olympics in Beijing will be the first to rely entirely on artificial snow which has been used since 1980.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GE8KpPzU_rQ

We can’t make transistors any smaller, is this the end of Moore’s Law?

There has been a lot of talk about the end of Moore’s Law for at least a decade now and what kind of implications this will have on modern society. Since the invention of the computer transistor in 1947, the number of transistors packed onto the silicon chips that power the modern world has steadily grown in density, leading to the exponential growth of computing power over the last 70 years. A transistor is a physical object, however, and being purely physical it is governed by laws of physics like every other physical object. That means there is a physical limit to how small a transistor can be. Back when Gordon Moore made his famous prediction about the pace of growth in computing power, no one was really thinking about transistors at nanometer scales. But as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, our reliance on packing more transistors into the same amount of silicon is brushing up against the very boundaries of what is physically possible, leading many to worry that the pace of innovation we’ve become accustomed to might come to a screeching end in the very near future.

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Continue reading “No more transistors: The end of Moore’s law” »