Lifeboat Foundation

Will drone deliveries be a practical part of our future? We visit the test facilities of Wing to check out how their engineers and aircraft designers have developed a drone and drone fleet control system that is actually in operation today in parts of the world. Here’s how their VTOL drone works and what it’s like to both load and receive a package carried by an autonomous aircraft!

Shot by Joey Fameli and edited by Norman Chan.
Additional footage courtesy of Wing.
Music by Jinglepunks.

Continue reading “How Google’s Wing Drone Delivery Aircraft Works” »

For the first time, researchers have used human data to quantify the speed of different processes that lead to Alzheimer’s disease and found that it develops in a very different way than previously thought. Their results could have important implications for the development of potential treatments.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, found that instead of starting from a single point in the brain and initiating a chain reaction that leads to the death of brain cells, Alzheimer’s disease reaches different regions of the brain early. How quickly the disease kills cells in these regions, through the production of toxic protein clusters, limits how quickly the disease progresses overall.

The researchers used post-mortem brain samples from Alzheimer’s patients, as well as PET scans from living patients, who ranged from those with mild cognitive impairment to those with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, to track the aggregation of tau, one of two key proteins implicated in the condition.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has confirmed that a massive solar flare has erupted from an Earth-facing sunspot on October 28.

Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to selectively turn on gene expression in target cells, including human cells. Their technology can detect specific mRNA sequences (represented in the center of the illustration), which triggers production of a specific protein (bottom right). Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT, with figures from iStockphoto.

“This brings new control circuitry to the emerging field of RNA therapeutics, opening up the next generation of RNA therapeutics that could be designed to only turn on in a cell-specific or tissue-specific way,” says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study.

This highly targeted approach, which is based on a genetic element used by viruses to control gene translation in host cells, could help to avoid some of the side effects of therapies that affect the entire body, the researchers say.

Even when there’s not a cloud in the sky, there’s always water circulating in the atmosphere.

Compared to all the H₂0 on Earth, there isn’t much up there – only about 0.001 percent – but in areas of high humidity, even that small amount of moisture could be enough to provide safe drinking water for a billion people.

The hydration is there for the taking. All we need to do is figure out how to get it.

A commonly available oral diuretic pill approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may be a potential candidate for an Alzheimer’s disease treatment for those who are at genetic risk, according to findings published in Nature Aging. The research included analysis showing that those who took bumetanide — a commonly used and potent diuretic — had a significantly lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease compared to those not taking the drug. The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, advances a precision medicine approach for individuals at greater risk of the disease because of their genetic makeup.

The research team analyzed information in databases of brain tissue samples and FDA-approved drugs, performed mouse and human cell experiments, and explored human population studies to identify bumetanide as a leading drug candidate that may potentially be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s.

“Though further tests and clinical trials are needed, this research underscores the value of big data-driven tactics combined with more traditional scientific approaches to identify existing FDA-approved drugs as candidates for drug repurposing to treat Alzheimer’s disease,” said NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.

Drones trained using “privileged expert” achieve amazing abilities.

This was described in his 2019 paper, “The mass-energy-information equivalence principle,” which extends Einstein’s theories about the interrelationship of matter and energy to data itself. Consistent with IT, Vopson’s study was based on the principle that information is physical and that all physical systems can register information. He concluded that the mass of an individual bit of information at room temperature (300K) is 3.19 × 10^-38 kg (8.598 × 10^-38 lbs).

Taking Shannon’s method further, Vopson determined that every elementary particle in the observable Universe has the equivalent of 1.509 bits of encoded information. “It is the first time this approach has been taken in measuring the information content of the universe, and it provides a clear numerical prediction,” he said. “Even if not entirely accurate, the numerical prediction offers a potential avenue toward experimental testing.”

While the Hubble Space Telescope ages, the James Webb Telescope prepares to launch.

With the aging Hubble space telescope experiencing another malfunction, how does the venerable telescope compare with its soon to the forthcoming James Webb?