Lifeboat Foundation

Metabolism and total energy expenditure change throughout our lives, and now a new study documents a series of distinct, related changes in unprecedented detail. The data – drawn from a large cohort of humans spanning from birth to old age – shed new light on human development and aging and could help shape targeted nutrition and health strategies across the human lifespan.

The complex machine that is the human body requires a substantial amount of energy to fuel day-to-day physical activity and sustain life. However, while energy use is central to understanding many aspects of human health and physiology, including daily nutritional requirements and metabolic investment in myriad activities, very little is known about total energy expenditure in humans or how it varies over the human lifespan.

Most large-scale surveys of human energy expenditure have focused on basal expenditure, which only accounts for roughly half of total expenditure. And, while doubly labeled water (DLW) studies can provide a measure of total energy expenditure in free-living individuals, they, too, are often limited in sample size and diversity.

Here’s some beauty for your timeline: a stunning and ancient globular cluster captured by the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys was used to take this picture of ESO 520–21 (also known as Palomar 6), which is located about 25,000 light years away from Earth. Scientists say this globular cluster is probably about 12.4 billion years old.

Globular clusters are collections of tightly bound stars orbiting galaxies. Astronomers consider them as natural laboratories which enablie studies on the evolution of stars and galaxies. In particular, globular clusters could help researchers better understand the formation history and evolution of early type galaxies, as the origin of GCs seems to be closely linked to periods of intense star formation.

ESO 520–21 lies close to the center of the Milky Way, and from our vantage point on Earth, is in the constellation Ophiuchus. It’s location near the celestial equator is where interstellar gas and dust absorb starlight, which make observations more challenging.

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3D models of biological tissue that incorporate multiple cell types are the latest tools for understanding human development and disease.

Scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine have made an intriguing discovery that could see radiation therapy become a less invasive treatment for heart arrhythmia. The technique seems to activate the heart cells to revert to a younger state and repair the tissue.

Arrhythmia is a condition where the heart beats in an irregular fashion, which can lead to potentially dangerous health problems. It’s a result of issues with the way electrical signals are sent through the tissue, and one of the main treatments is called catheter ablation. This invasive procedure involves threading thin tubes through arteries into the heart, making a small burn to create scar tissue that interrupts the signals.

A few years ago, the Washington University team discovered a far less invasive alternative – radiation therapy, of the kind often used to treat cancer patients. When directed at the heart, the treatment was found to improve arrhythmia symptoms, just as well as, or perhaps even better than, catheter ablation.

Based on D-ID’s reenactment technology, Speaking Portraits enables the transformation of text or audio into videos of real people talking.

D-ID’s facial reenactment technology can generate highly realistic talking heads based just on simple inputs such as an existing audio file or even a just a text-based script.

According to a former Google executive, the singularity is coming. And, what’s more, he says that it poses a major threat to humanity.

Mo Gawdat, formerly the Chief Business Officer for Google’s moonshot organization, which was called Google X at the time, issued his warning in a new interview with The Times. In it, he said that he believes that artificial general intelligence (AGI), the sort of all-powerful, sentient AI seen in science fiction like Skynet from “The Terminator,” is inevitable — and that once it’s here, humanity may very well find itself staring down an apocalypse brought forth by godlike machines.

Gawdat told The Times that he had his frightening revelation while working with AI developers at Google X who were building robot arms capable of finding and picking up a small ball. After a period of slow progress, Gawdat said that one arm grabbed the ball and seemed to hold it up to the researchers in a gesture that, to him, seemed like it was showing off.

But the global effort to fight climate change is also causing problems. Europe’s wind farms haven’t seen a good breeze in months, and droughts in China and South America have dried up power generation from hydro dams. Meanwhile, surging prices for carbon pollution credits in Europe have made fossil alternatives even more expensive, and Chinese grid operators have come under mounting political pressure to help the country meet its carbon emissions targets by burning less coal.

The energy crisis could imperil political support for climate policies, just as the COP26 climate summit approaches in Glasgow in November. But there are steps governments can take to prevent energy market turmoil leading to sky-high electric bills and breakdowns in the global supply chain.

“What we’re seeing is an unfortunate set of circumstances during a period of transition where we haven’t fully moved from one system to another,” says James Henderson, director of the Energy Transition Research Initiative at Oxford University. “During that period, market risks are enhanced. It’s impossible to envision a world where there won’t be more volatility.”

More than eighty people have reported seeing a blazing visitor from space streak across the night sky over the United States.