Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, an artificial molecular motor has been created that can ‘talk’ to living cells – by gently pulling their surface with enough physical force to elicit a biochemical response. The approach could help scientists decode the language that cells use to communicate with each other in tissues.

‘There is a mechanical language in the form of physical forces applied by the cells themselves, and we want to understand what information is communicated and what the consequences are,’ explains Aránzazu del Campo, who led the study at the Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Germany. ‘Ultimately, we want to be able to provide signals to cells and guide their function when they are not able to do that by themselves in disease cases.’

Usually, studying how cells communicate by sensing mechanical stimuli and producing biochemical responses requires prodding them with pipettes or the tip of an atomic force microscope. However, this doesn’t work at the more complex tissue level.

US$8.5 Billion In Funding — 150+ Projects

Dr. Maria Millan, MD, is the President and CEO of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM — https://www.cirm.ca.gov/), an organization that was created in 2004 when voters initially approved a state Proposition which allocated US$3 billion to fund this fascinating area of medicine, and which recently received an additional US$5.5 billion in renewed funding.

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The researchers were inspired by bone and cartilage when designing the new membrane.

You’ve likely heard of solar energy, but what is osmotic energy?

A new theory explains the seemingly irreversible arrow of time while yielding insights into entropy, quantum computers, black holes, and the past-future divide.

In an early trial, patients received a single infusion of a CRISPR-based therapy to knock out the mutated gene responsible for their disease.

Zhurong Mars rover — video, audio, and science images.

China’s Zhurong Mars rover sent back its first video and audio from the Red Planet this week as scientists made strides in research on brains and artificial organs.

Overview of what GitHub Copilot is, what it does, how it works, and whether programmers should be worried about their jobs now…

As smart watches are increasingly able to monitor the vital signs of health, including what’s going on when we sleep, a problem has emerged: Those wearable, wireless devices are often disconnected from our body overnight, being charged at the bedside.

“Quality of sleep and its patterns contain a lot of important information about patients’ health conditions,” says Sunghoon Ivan Lee, assistant professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences and director of the Advanced Human Health Analytics Laboratory.

Continue reading “Skin in the game: Transformative approach uses the human body to recharge smartwatches” »

Over the past few decades, roboticists have created increasingly advanced and sophisticated robotics systems. While some of these systems are highly efficient and achieved remarkable results, they still perform far poorly than humans on several tasks, including those that involve grasping and manipulating objects.

Researchers from Guangdong University of Technology, Politecnico di Milano, University of Sussex and Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) at University of the West of England have recently developed a model that could help to improve robot manipulation. This model, presented in a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, draws inspiration from how humans adapt their manipulation strategies based on the task they are trying to complete.

“Humans have the remarkable ability to deal with physical contact and complete dynamic tasks, such as curving, cutting and assembly, optimally and compliantly,” Professor Chenguang Yang, the corresponding author for the paper working at BRL, told TechXplore. “Although these tasks are easy for humans, they are quite challenging for robots to perform, even advanced ones.”