Lifeboat Foundation

True stories of indefatigable researchers, heroic engineers, and champions of, neuroscience who are finally turning the corner in the effort to understand, heal, and improve the human brain.

Al has a hard time walking up the stairs to his home’s second floor these days, so he lives on the first. In a lounge chair, surrounded by pictures of his family and the homes he built, he slowly, carefully crosses one knee at the ankle like he’s in a business meeting. His legs are thin and pale and papery. His face, too, has taken on a gauntness since the photo of his daughter’s wedding, mounted on the wall right in front of him, was taken back in 2009. Al lunges forward as if he might stand. But then, when he tries to say hello, all that comes out is a guttural moan. When Al, who is sixty-eight, was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) in 2012, he was not guaranteed even this. The disease, caused by degeneration of cells in areas of the brain associated with movement, balance, and thinking, often results in death in about seven years. It has no known cause and no cure.

Engineering is often inspired by nature—the hooks in velcro or dermal denticles in sharkskin swimsuits. Then there’s DARPA’s SyNAPSE, a collaboration of researchers at IBM, XX, and XX universities. Not content with current computer architecture, SyNAPSE takes its cues from the human brain.

In a few months, a daring clinical trial may fundamentally lower heart attack risk in the most vulnerable people. If all goes well, it will just take one shot.

It’s no ordinary shot. The trial, led by Verve Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in Massachusetts, will be one of the first to test genetic base editors directly inside the human body. A variant of the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, base editors soared to stardom when first introduced for their efficiency at replacing single genetic letters without breaking delicate DNA strands. Because it’s safer than the classic version of CRISPR, the new tool ignited hope that it could be used for treating genetic diseases.

Verve’s CEO, Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, took note. A cardiologist at Harvard University, Kathiresan wondered if base editing could help solve one of the main killers of our time: heart attacks. It seemed the perfect test case. We know one major cause of heart attacks—high cholesterol levels, particularly a version called LDL-C (Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol). We also know several major genes that control its level. And—most importantly—we know the DNA letter swap that can, in theory, drastically lower LDL-C and in turn throttle the risk of heart attacks.

Nearly three years ago, OFT-1 aimed to accomplish the same goals as OFT-2. Although the Atlas V rocket inserted the Starliner capsule into a perfect trajectory, the capsule’s navigational systems believed “it was in an orbital insertion burn.” Despite this failure, mission control was able to safely return Starliner to Earth. Over the coming months, inspectors found that the capsule had encountered two critical software issues.

Comprehensively inspecting and fixing the navigation system for a complex spacecraft is no easy task, which is one of the reasons why a second orbital test has been so delayed. Unrelated issues forced Boeing to scrub the intended second launch in August 2021. Now that Starliner is back and presumably better than ever, this launch will test the complex imaging system required to dock to the ISS, along with the rest of the Starliner spacecraft.

Continue reading “Boeing Starliner OFT-2 launch date, specs, and timeline for the ISS flight” »

In 2019, U.K.-based aerospace company Orbex wowed the world with its plans to develop the largest 3D-printed rocket in the world, one that would be sustainable and environmentally friendly, being powered by ultra-low-carbon biofuel. Now we’re being presented with the first full-scale prototype of the Primex orbital space rocket proudly sitting on its dedicated launch pad.

Len RosenFalcon 9 has been a spectacular success for SpaceX. The purpose of the Falcon Heavy is likely to be superseded by Starship which likely means the Heavy will be discontinued sooner than later.

Eric KlienAuthor.

Len Rosen Actually, Starship will rapidly grab all of the Falcon 9 payloads, except for humans which will be much slower to transition. In fact, it looks like the first orbital Starship launch will try to launch some Starlink satellites.

Continue reading “U.S. health officials say a third of people live in areas with so much virus they should consider masks indoors” »

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are teaching microscopes to drive discoveries with an intuitive algorithm, developed at the lab’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, that could guide breakthroughs in new materials for energy technologies, sensing and computing.

“There are so many potential materials, some of which we cannot study at all with conventional tools, that need more efficient and systematic approaches to design and synthesize,” said Maxim Ziatdinov of ORNL’s Computational Sciences and Engineering Division and the CNMS. “We can use smart automation to access unexplored materials as well as create a shareable, reproducible path to discoveries that have not previously been possible.”

The approach, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, combines physics and machine learning to automate microscopy experiments designed to study materials’ functional properties at the nanoscale.

The traditional trial-and-error method in material research cannot meet the growing demand of various high performance materials, so developing a new effective paradigm of material science is extremely urgent. A study led by Dr. Xiao-Ming Jiang and Prof. Guo-Cong Guo (Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences) proposes a new research paradigm for material studies based on the “functional motif” concept.

Functional motif was defined as the critical microstructure units (e.g., constituent components and building blocks) that play a decisive role in generating certain material functions. These units could not be replaced with other structure units without losing or significantly suppressing the relevant functions. The functional motif paradigm starts with the main aspects of microscopic structures and the properties of materials. On the basis of this understanding, the functional motifs governing the material properties can be extracted and the quantitative relationships between them can be investigated, and the results could be further developed as the “functional motif theory.” The latter should be useful as a guideline for creating new materials and as a tool for predicting the physicochemical properties of materials.

The properties of materials are determined by their functional motifs and how they are arranged in the materials, with the latter determining the quantitative structure–property relationships. Uncovering the functional motifs and their arrangements is crucial in understanding the properties of materials, and the functional motif exploration enables the rational design of new materials with desired properties.