Lifeboat Foundation

Telomeres are “caps” of non-coding DNA sequences present at both tips of our chromosomes, which are extremely important in the aging process. These caps protect our DNA as cells go through various life cycles of replication, however, each time a cell divides these telomeres are shortened and eventually contribute to disease and cellular aging.

Now, exciting new research published in the Journal PNAS has shown that an experimental gene therapy could be used to halt the shortening of these telomere caps in mice and by doing so increase the life span of these animals by up to 41 percent compared to controls.

Telomere length can be considered a marker of biological age and its shortening is a hallmark of a process called cellular senescence, which limits the replication of DNA in old damaged cells. As we age, telomere caps become shorter and shorter until the cell’s DNA becomes vulnerable to damage by cellular stresses that could lead to diseases such as cancer. Or the cell could ultimately reach senescence where it will no longer be able to replicate and so contribute to the aging process. For scientists looking at how to slow or even reverse aging, telomeres are of great interest.

Death may be the most uncanny topic to discuss for human beings. Even thinking about it is uncomfortable for some people.

To eliminate the mystery behind it, researchers worldwide are conducting scientific studies on death and coming up with surprising results, such as when researchers captured brainwaves during an individual’s death and found semblance to high cognition activities.

And now, a team of scientists from the U.S. may have found a way to revive a glimmer of activity in human eyes after death. According to a study published yesterday (May 11, 2022) in the journal Nature, the team has managed to revive the connections between light-sensing neurons in organ donor eyes.

Many of the new features in Unreal Engine 5 aren’t only suited to craft next-generation games, but represent new potential for other industries as well!

Today,… See more.

Continue reading “Unreal Engine 5 opens new doors for architectural visualization” »

We argue in a model-independent way that the Hilbert space of quantum gravity is locally finite-dimensional. In other words, the density operator describing the state corresponding to a small region of space, when such a notion makes sense, is defined on a finite-dimensional factor of a larger Hilbert space. Because quantum gravity potentially describes superpo-sitions of different geometries, it is crucial that we associate Hilbert-space factors with spatial regions only on individual decohered branches of the universal wave function. We discuss some implications of this claim, including the fact that quantum field theory cannot be a fundamental description of Nature.

Israeli scientists say they have opened a possible new path to fighting infertility, by identifying a mechanism that seems to harm eggs when it malfunctions.

In peer-reviewed research published on Thursday in the journal Science, a team of Hebrew University researchers outline a mechanism they identified in studies of zebrafish and mice.

They say it plays a key role in ensuring that chromosomes inside eggs are organized correctly, so that they can be fertilized and produce healthy offspring.

Please describe the mindset needed to be a roboticist.

In order to be a roboticist, you need to have an open mindset and an insatiable sense of curiosity. You need to be able to understand the needs of people and how they accomplish tasks before you can develop robots that can meet these requirements. That’s how we can maximise usefulness in the robots of tomorrow.

When you walk through our office, you will also notice that roboticists come from all walks of life and many different disciplines. So we encourage anyone who is interested in robots to apply for a job with us.

Scientists have found a new method to measure people’s mental imagery abilities, offering insight into “aphantasia”, the condition of not being able to visualize images in the mind.

An interesting photo taken on Mars by NASA.

This image was taken by Mast Camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3,466 (2022−05−07 07:58:16 UTC).

Quanta of light—photons—form the basis of quantum key distribution in modern cryptographic networks. Before the huge potential of quantum technology is fully realized, however, several challenges remain. A solution to one of these has now been found.

In a paper published in the journal Science, teams led by David Novoa, Nicolas Joly and Philip Russell report a breakthrough in frequency up-conversion of single photons, based on a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) filled with hydrogen gas. First a spatio-temporal hologram of molecular vibrations is created in the gas by stimulated Raman scattering. This hologram is then used for highly efficient, correlation-preserving frequency conversion of single photons. The system operates at a pressure-tuneable wavelength, making it potentially interesting for quantum communications, where efficient sources of indistinguishable single-photons are unavailable at wavelengths compatible with existing fiber networks.

The approach combines quantum optics, gas-based nonlinear optics, hollow-core PCF, and the physics of molecular vibrations to form an efficient tool that can operate in any spectral band from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared—an ultra-broad working range inaccessible to existing technologies. The findings may be used to develop fiber-based tools in technologies such as quantum communications, and quantum-enhanced imaging.