Lifeboat Foundation

NASA has tested the functions of Lucy, the agency’s first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, filled it with fuel, and is preparing to pack it into a capsule for launch Saturday, October 16 2021. Named after characters in Greek mythology, these asteroids circle the Sun in two swarms, with one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trailing behind it. Lucy will be the first spacecraft to visit these asteroids. By studying these asteroids up close, scientists hope to hone their theories on how our solar system’s planets formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they ended up in their current configuration.

Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners launched the first ever global strategy to defeat meningitis — a debilitating disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. By 2,030 the goals are to eliminate epidemics of bacterial meningitis – the most deadly form of the disease – and to reduce deaths by 70% and halve the number of cases. The organizations estimate that in total, the strategy could save more.

Than 200,000 lives annually and significantly reduce disability caused by the disease. This strategy, the Global Roadmap to Defeat Meningitis by 2,030 was launched by a broad coalition of partners involved in meningitis prevention and control at a virtual event, hosted by WHO in Geneva. Its focus is on preventing infections and improving.

Care and diagnosis for those affected.“Wherever it occurs, meningitis can be deadly and debilitating; it strikes quickly, has serious health, economic and social consequences, and causes devastating outbreaks,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

When people think about the search for life beyond Earth they often think about looking beyond our solar system and even beyond our galaxy. But what about looking closer to home? Titan, Saturn’s largest moon has a dense atmosphere, an internal liquid water ocean, and stable bodies of liquid methane on its surface. While we have not found any evidence of life on Titan, its chemistry and environment make it an interesting place to explore. Europa is a moon of Jupiter with a water-ice crust and liquid ocean underneath. Its atmosphere is very thin, but it’s composed mostly of oxygen.

Zibi (Elizabeth) Turtle is the principal investigator of the Dragonfly mission which will land a drone-like vehicle on Titan to conduct sorties to sample and examine sites around Titan. Morgan Cable is also on the Dragonfly Team, and both Zibi and Morgan are working on the Europa Clipper mission which will perform reconnaissance of Europa to investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life. Join Zibi and Morgan, along with SETI Institute planetary astronomer Franck Marchis for their discussion about what makes Titan and Europa such intriguing places to search for clues about the origins of life in our solar system.

Continue reading “Clues to the Origins of Life in Our Solar System” »

The mouse study even offers a possible explanation as to why: Childhood infections may cause the body to over-express genes that code for microglia, the central nervous system’s primary immune cells. That, in turn, can affect brain development, which could be at play in some traits commonly associated with autism, such as difficulty communicating verbally or recognizing familiar faces.

So the researchers experimented with drugs that target microglia, and found that they not only prevented those social issues in adult mice — they might have reversed them.

Among boys genetically predisposed to autism, a severe childhood infection could make that diagnosis more likely.

Amazingly, nacre has the rigidity of a stiff material and durability of a soft material, giving it the best of both worlds,” he explains. “It’s made of stiff pieces of chalk-like matter that are layered with soft proteins that are highly elastic. This structure produces exceptional strength, making it 3,000 times tougher than the materials that compose it.

Scientists from McGill University develop stronger and tougher glass, inspired by the inner layer of mollusk shells. Instead of shattering upon impact, the new material has the resiliency of plastic and could be used to improve cell phone screens in the future, among other applications.

While techniques like tempering and laminating can help reinforce glass, they are costly and no longer work once the surface is damaged. “Until now there were trade-offs between high strength, toughness, and transparency. Our new material is not only three times stronger than the normal glass, but also more than five times more fracture resistant,” says Allen Ehrlicher, an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at McGill University.

Continue reading “Unbreakable glass inspired by seashells” »

An international team of researchers has used liquid gallium to create an antiviral and antimicrobial coating and tested it on a range of fabrics, including facemasks. The coating adhered more strongly to fabric than some conventional metal coatings, and eradicated 99% of several common pathogens within five minutes.

“Microbes can survive on the fabrics hospitals use for bedding, clothing and face masks for a long time,” says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and Camille & Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. “Metallic surface coatings such as copper or silver are an effective way to eradicate these pathogens, but many metal particle coating technologies have issues such as non-uniformity, processing complexity, or poor adhesion.”

Dickey and colleagues from NC State, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Korea and RMIT University in Australia set out to develop a simple, cost-effective way to deposit metal coatings on fabric.

On Wednesday, researchers revealed the first evidence that the approach appears to be working — improving vision for at least some patients with the condition, known as Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA, a severe form of vision impairment.

So doctors genetically modified a harmless virus to ferry the CRISPR gene editor and infused billions of the modified viruses into the retinas of Knight’s left eye and Kalberer’s right eye, as well as one eye of five other patients. The procedure was done on only one eye just in case something went wrong. The doctors hope to treat the patients’ other eye after the research is complete.

Once the CRISPR was inside the cells of the retinas, the hope was that it would cut out the genetic mutation causing the disease, restoring vision by reactivating the dormant cells.

Continue reading “A Gene-Editing Experiment Let These Patients With Vision Loss See Color Again” »

Air pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows.

Global analysis of indoor and outdoor pollution also finds link to low birth weight.

Unprecedent measurements confirm galaxies idle when they run out of cold gas.

New research, published in Nature and led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has just answered one of the fundamental questions about our universe: Why did some of the oldest, most massive galaxies go quiescent early in their formation? The answer, we now know, is because they ran out of cold gas.

The most massive galaxies in our universe formed incredibly early, just after the Big Bang.