Lifeboat Foundation

Now, an international team of researchers say they have discovered a supermassive black hole that gobbles up the equivalent of one Earth every second.

By looking at other luminous objects that are billions of years old, the team confirmed the newly discovered behemoth was the brightest and fastest-growing supermassive black hole of the past 9 billion years (that we know of).

Located in the bright constellation of Centaurus, this luminous cosmic beast is more than 500 times larger than the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own galaxy.

An emerging way to treat diabetes is to repair or replace the cells in the body that naturally produce insulin. Swedish researchers have now identified a molecule that helps stimulate the growth of new insulin-producing cells, and uncovered how it works, opening up new potential diabetes treatments.

Diabetes is characterized by issues with insulin, the hormone that regulates blood glucose levels and allows the body’s cells to access it for energy. In type 1 diabetes, beta cells in the pancreas that normally produce insulin can’t make enough to meet demand, often because those cells have been destroyed by the immune system.

Treatment currently relies on administering insulin shots, but an emerging branch of study centers on finding ways to replenish the insulin production of those beta cells. Previous breakthroughs have included creating artificial beta cells that can pick up the slack, or using stem cells to grow new ones.

Amazon Robotics announced a three-year investment to the Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) to help support the growth of startups and… See more.

Funding will go toward assisting diverse entrepreneurs in the fields of robotics and automation.

For the first time, the Hubble Space Telescope has detected a lone object drifting through our Milky Way galaxy – the invisible, ghostly remains of a once radiant star.

When stars massive enough to dwarf our sun die, they explode in a supernova and the remaining core is crushed by its own gravity, forming a black hole.

Sometimes, the explosion may send the black hole into motion, hurtling across the galaxy like a pinball. By rights, there should be a lot of roving black holes known to scientists, but they are practically invisible in space and therefore very difficult to uncover.

Using retrospective radiocarbon birth dating, an international team of scientists shows that the human liver stays young throughout life and is on average less than three years old.

As one of the major organs of the body, the liver performs many essential biological functions. Almost all the blood in a person’s body passes through the liver, where waste products, worn-out cells, and toxins are filtered. It also produces bile, a solution that helps digest fats and eliminate waste products. Those are just a couple of the major duties it performs — more ore than 500 vital functions have been identified with the liver.

The liver is an essential organ that takes care of detoxifying our bodies. It is prone to injury because it is constantly exposed to toxic substances. To overcome this, the liver has a unique capacity among organs to regenerate itself after damage. Because a lot of the body’s ability to heal and regenerate itself decreases as we age, scientists were wondering if the liver’s capacity to renew also diminishes with age.

University of Missouri scientists are partnering with Harvard and Georgia Tech to create a new diabetes treatment that involves transplanting insulin-producing pancreatic cells. Type 1 diabetes is estimated to affect around 1.8 million Americans. Although type 1 diabetes often develops in childhood or adolescence, it can occur in adulthood…

The object could be the first isolated stellar-mass black hole identified in the Milky Way — or it might be an unusually heavy neutron star.

Study shows how a newly identified molecule stimulates the formation of new insulin-producing cells in zebrafish and mammalian tissue, through a novel mechanism for regulating protein synthesis.

Circa 2020

You’ve no doubt heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the massive particle accelerator straddling the border between France and Switzerland. The large size of this instrument allows scientists to do cutting-edge research, but particle accelerators could be useful in many fields if they weren’t so huge. The age of room-sized (and larger) colliders may be coming to an end now that researchers from Stanford have developed a nano-scale particle accelerator that fits on a single silicon chip.

Full-sized accelerators like the LHC push beams of particles to extremely high speeds, allowing scientists to study the minutiae of the universe when two particles collide. The longer the beamline, the higher the maximum speed. Keeping these beams confined requires extremely powerful magnets, as well. It all adds up to a bulky piece of equipment that isn’t practical for most applications. For example, cancer radiation treatments with a particle accelerator could be much safer and more effective than traditional methods.

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