Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 4838

Taste matters to fruit flies, just as it does to humans: like people, the flies tend to seek out and consume sweet-tasting foods and reject foods that taste bitter. However, little is known about how sweet and bitter tastes are represented by the brain circuits that link sensation to behavior.

In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers at Brown University described how they developed a new imaging technique and used it to map the neural activity of fruit flies in response to sweet and bitter tastes.

“These results show that the way fly brains encode the taste of food is more complex than we had anticipated,” said study author Nathaniel Snell, who earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brown in 2021 and conducted the research as part of his thesis.

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A new AI-enabled, optical fiber sensor device developed at Imperial College London can measure key biomarkers of traumatic brain injury simultaneously.

The “promising” results from tests on animal tissues suggest it could help clinicians to better monitor both and patients’ response to treatment than is currently possible, which indicate the high potential for future diagnostic trials in humans.

People who experience a serious blow to the head, such as during road traffic accidents, can suffer (TBI)—a leading cause of death and disability worldwide that can result in long-term difficulties with memory, concentration and solving problems.

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It’s been over a month since we last updated our blog about our winter warrior, currently around 96 million miles away. At present the team is preparing for Ingenuity’s next flight, which could take place as early as this weekend. This 30th sortie will be a short hop – which will check out our system’s health after surviving 101 sols of winter, collect landing delivery data in support of NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign, and potentially clear off dust that has settled on our solar panel since Flight 29.

What’s Happened Lately

It’s still winter at Jezero Crater, which means overnight temperatures are as low as -124 degrees Fahrenheit (−86 Celsius). Winter at Mars also means the amount of solar energy hitting our solar panel remains below what is needed to maintain charge in our batteries both day and night. However, during the day the panel continues to create enough charge to make shorter hops possible. That’s what we did on Flight 29 and is our plan for Flight 30.

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Constructing a tiny robot out of DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

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It isn’t alive, and has no structures even approaching the complexity of the brain, but a compound called vanadium dioxide is capable of ‘remembering’ previous external stimuli, researchers have found.

This is the first time this ability has been identified in a material; but it may not be the last. The discovery has some pretty intriguing implications for the development of electronic devices, in particular data processing and storage.

“Here we report electronically accessible long-lived structural states in vanadium dioxide that can provide a scheme for data storage and processing,” write a team of researchers led by electrical engineer Mohammad Samizadeh Nikoo of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland in their paper.

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It can also solve the carbon intensity problem in the construction industry.

Researchers at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have invented an invisible coating that can be applied to wood to make it fireproof.

Modern-day buildings are built largely using concrete, steel, and glass, which are at low risk from fires. However, the production of these materials is a carbon-intensive process. Mass-engineered timber is a solution to this problem as wood harvested from sustainably managed forests has a lower carbon footprint than steel and concrete. Additionally, it allows for faster construction at lower costs, making it the ideal component for future constructions.

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And their method is faster, cheaper, and more sustainable.

Recently, many projects have been carried out using recyclable materials for sustainability. One of these projects was implemented by the Los Angeles-based architectural startup Azure.

Azure is using recycled plastic to 3D print prefab homes. The startup is now selling many house models ranging from a backyard studio to a two-bedroom ADU.

Azure is reshaping the way we build Homes, ADUs and Backyard Studios and Sheds by bringing 3D printing technology and recycled materials together to create truly sustainable living in a modern and beautiful design.

Continue reading “Backyard Studios, ADUs & Homes” | >