Lifeboat Foundation

The late 21st century belongs to Superhumans. Technological progress in the field of medicine through gene editing tools like CRISPR is going to revolutionize what it means to be human. The age of Superhumans is portrayed in many science fiction movies, but for the first time in our species history, radically altering our genome is going to be possible through the methods and tools of science.

The gene-editing tool CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, could help us to reprogram life. It gives scientists more power and precision than they have ever had to alter human DNA.

Continue reading “The Era of Genetically Modified Superhumans” »

For science.

If in space, no one can hear you scream, then what happens when DNA silently breaks in microgravity? Spoiler alert: it heals itself.

This is what a CRISPR experiment that won the Genes in Space 6 contest — SYFY WIRE was at the recent launch of the Genes in Space 8 experiment to the ISS — found out. DNA damage or breakage can mean the potential for degenerative diseases such as cancer, but the fact that it can also self-repair (and in microgravity!) has enormous implications for medical treatments above and below Earth’s atmosphere.

The authors add that the research informs fundamental scientific understanding of how face recognition works in the brain, suggesting that not only a face’s visual cues but also prior social knowledge plays an active role in perceiving faces.

Summary: Knowledge of an individual’s personality can influence the perception of a face’s identity and bias it toward unrelated people or identities, researchers report.

Source: NYU

Continue reading “People Look Alike if We Think They Have Similar Personalities” »

The Chinese proposal plans to study how to build a giant spacecraft.

A Chinese science proposal plans to study how to get a giant spacecraft into space.

Archaeologists have analysed DNA found in the remains of a woman who died 7,200 years ago in Indonesia — challenging previous theories around the migration of early humans.

The remains of the teenager, nicknamed Besse, were discovered in the Leang Panninge cave on Sulawesi in 2015.

It is believed to be the first time ancient human DNA has been discovered in Wallacea, a group of islands between mainland Asia and Australia.

A brown dwarf discovered “accidentally” by a citizen scientist appears to be somewhat of an anomaly, suggesting there might be even more lurking in our galaxy than scientists previously thought.

In a discovery published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers has described a novel molecular device with exceptional computing prowess.

Reminiscent of the plasticity of connections in the human brain, the device can be reconfigured on the fly for different computational tasks by simply changing applied voltages. Furthermore, like nerve cells can store memories, the same device can also retain information for future retrieval and processing.

“The brain has the remarkable ability to change its wiring around by making and breaking connections between nerve cells. Achieving something comparable in a physical system has been extremely challenging,” said Dr. R. Stanley Williams, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. “We have now created a molecular device with dramatic reconfigurability, which is achieved not by changing physical connections like in the brain, but by reprogramming its logic.”

China has shown off the prototype of its “Mars cruise drone” designed for surveillance work on future Mars missions, following the historic landing of a robotic rover on the Red Planet a few months ago.

The prototype of the miniature helicopter successfully passed the final acceptance, China’s National Space Science Center (CNNSC) announced on Wednesday. In the images shared by the science center, the prototype looks similar in appearance to NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, developed for its Perseverance mission this year.

The Chinese prototype sports two rotor blades, a sensor-and-camera base, and four thin legs, but there is no solar panel at the top like Ingenuity.