Lifeboat Foundation

A new method – which has been dubbed “light beads microscopy” – is described in the journal Nature. This offers a creative solution that pushes the limits of imaging speed and is limited only by the physical nature of fluorescence itself. It eliminates the “deadtime” between sequential laser pulses when no neuroactivity is recorded and at the same time the need for scanning.

The technique breaks one strong pulse into 30 smaller sub-pulses, each at a different strength, which dive into 30 different depths of scattering but induce the same amount of fluorescence at each depth. This is accomplished with a cavity of mirrors that staggers the firing of each pulse in time and ensures that they can all reach their target depths via a single microscope focusing lens. Using this approach, the only limit to the rate at which samples can be recorded is the time it takes the fluorescent tags to flare. That means broad swathes of the brain can be recorded within the same time it would take a conventional two-photon microscope to capture a much smaller network of brain cells.

Scientists at Rockefeller University, New York, integrated their new system into a microscopy platform with access to a large brain volume. This enabled the recording of activity in more than a million neurons across the entire cortex of a mouse brain for the first time.

Ever wanted a jetpack that flies easily? A start-up from England may have just created a jetpack that requires minimal training and runs on autopilot as well.

SpaceX is about to double the size of its fleet of Crew Dragon spaceships. The company is debuting a new spacecraft for a NASA launch later this month, and is building a fourth human-rated capsule that should be ready for flight early next year, a SpaceX official said Wednesday.

Sarah Walker, director of SpaceX’s Dragon mission management office, confirmed Wednesday the company is readying a fourth Crew Dragon spacecraft for an inaugural flight next year. SpaceX and NASA officials previously announced that the next NASA crew mission, known as Crew-3, scheduled for liftoff Oct. 30 will use a new vehicle.

“It’s really exciting to introduce another Crew Dragon to our fleet to support our human spaceflight manifest,” Walker said. “We’ve got another one in the production line now. It should be ready in the spring to support more human spaceflight missions.”

Rocket Lab USA Incsoared higher in after-hours trading Wednesday, following an announcement that the company has been chosen to fly an experimental solar sail into space.

NASA signed on with Rocket Lab RKLB, +10.43% to demonstrate the U.S. agency’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, or ACS3. The solar sail will be launched into space to demonstrate the efficacy of a technology that could be an alternative to satellites for specific duties.

Cubesats going interplanetary push the constraints of spacecraft missions in dramatic ways that scientists and engineers are still learning how to navigate.

We got a sneak peek at a hologram chameleon and wristwatch from San Jose-based Light Field Lab, which expects companies to begin debuting large-scale versions of its holographic display next year.

A versatile robot inspired by birds can walk, balance on a slackline, skateboard and even fly – a mix of skills that could be useful for monitoring power lines or space exploration.

Four futurists and longevity leaders: Liz Parrish, José Cordeiro, Aubrey de Gray and David Wood, took the stage to discuss whether science and technology is heading us to the end of human death.

The discussion took place on october 6 2021, during the celebration of the event South Summit Innovation is Business that took place in Madrid from october 5 to 07.

Continue reading “Are We Reaching the End of Human Death? w/ L. Parrish, J. Cordeiro, A. de Grey and D. Wood” »

DNA contains the genetic information that influences everything from eye color to illness and disorder susceptibility. Genes, which are around 20,000 pieces of DNA in the human body, perform various vital tasks in our cells. Despite this, these genes comprise up less than 2% of the genome. The remaining base pairs in the genome are referred to as “non-coding.” They include less well-understood instructions on when and where genes should be created or expressed in the human body.

DeepMind, in collaboration with their Alphabet colleagues at Calico, introduces Enformer, a neural network architecture that accurately predicts gene expression from DNA sequences.

Earlier studies on gene expression used convolutional neural networks as key building blocks. However, their accuracy and usefulness have been hampered by problems in modeling the influence of distal enhancers on gene expression. The proposed new method is based on Basenji2, a program that can predict regulatory activity from DNA sequences of up to 40,000 base pairs.