Lifeboat Foundation

With the rise of the lithium-based battery, demand for this soft, silvery-white metal – the lightest solid element in the periodic table – has exploded. With the race to zero carbon by 2050 gathering steam, forcing the electrification of transport, lithium will be an even more valuable asset in the next 30 years.

The supply of raw materials for batteries could even end up being a national security issue, too; China’s global leadership on high-volume EV production has put it ahead of the game, and while the majority of ground-based lithium reserves are in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, China controls more than half’s the world’s supply simply through investments and ownership. It has shown in the past that it’s not afraid to wield commodity supplies as a weapon.

But as with other metals like uranium, land-based lithium reserves pale in comparison to what’s out there in the sea. According to researchers at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), there’s about 5000 times as much lithium in the oceans as there is in land deposits, and a newly developed technology could start extracting it cheaply enough to make the big time – while producing hydrogen gas, chorine gas and desalinated water as a bonus.

A dozen states — many of them in the Northeast, including Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut — have already reached a benchmark of at least 70 percent of adults with at least one vaccine dose, a goal President Biden has set for the nation to make by July 4. But in the South, that marker is nowhere in sight for several states.

In 15 states — including Arkansas, the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana — about half of adults or fewer have received a dose, according to a New York Times analysis. In two states, Alabama and Mississippi, it would take about a year to get one dose to 70 percent of the population at the current pace of distribution.

Public-health experts and officials in states with lower vaccination rates say the president’s benchmark will help reduce cases and deaths but is somewhat arbitrary — even if 70 percent of adults are vaccinated, the virus and its more contagious variants can spread among those who are not.

Summary: Study identifies genes that become activated in the brain prior to the initiation of severe repetitive behaviors associated with addiction, ASD, and schizophrenia.

Source: MIT

Extreme repetitive behaviors such as hand-flapping, body-rocking, skin-picking, and sniffing are common to a number of brain disorders including autism, schizophrenia, Huntington’s disease, and drug addiction. These behaviors, termed stereotypies, are also apparent in animal models of drug addiction and autism.

To test the Standard Model of particle physics, scientists often collide particles using gigantic underground rings. In a similar fashion, high-pressure physicists compress materials to ever greater pressures to further test the quantum theory of condensed matter and challenge predictions made using the most powerful computers.

Pressures exceeding 1 million atmospheres are capable of dramatically deforming atomic electronic clouds and alter how atoms are packed together. This leads to new chemical bonding and has revealed extraordinary behaviors such as helium rain, the transformation of sodium into a transparent metal, the emergence of superionic water ice and the transformation of hydrogen into a metallic fluid.

With new techniques constantly advancing the frontier of high–pressure physics, terapascal (TPa) pressures that were once inaccessible can now be achieved in the laboratory using static or dynamic compression (1 TPa is equivalent to approximately 10 million atmospheres).

In about three years, NASA plans to launch a robotic orbiter that will study Jupiter’s mysterious moon Europa.

In three years, NASA will launch an orbiter to study Jupiter’s mysterious moon Europa. It is possible that Europa harbors hydrothermal vents and even life.

Mark my words. When the first real treatment happens people will change their tune. They need to see it work and see that it’s safe.

A new study of about 900 U.S. adults has found that only 33% would use a hypothetical life extension treatment that would allow them “to live forever,” even if it were available today. About 42% said they would not use it, and 25% said they were unsure.

The study, published by University of Texas researchers Michael Barnett and Jessica Helphrey, appeared in the Journal of Aging Studies on April 21.

Continue reading “New study finds most adults would not take a life extension pill, even if it existed” »

China’s economy is facing several risks: an aging population, less working-age people, and rising wages. So how is the country responding to these threats? A big part of the answer is automation. From factories to warehouses, several industries are pushing to automate more of their workforce. CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal spoke to China’s largest retailer, JD.com about its new smart logistics center, and examined what comes next for the world’s second largest economy.
–

Like our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/cnbcinternational.

Continue reading “How China is using automation to reshape its economy | CNBC Reports” »

The hard, magnetic teeth of a leathery red-brown mollusk nicknamed “the wandering meatloaf” possess a rare mineral previously seen only in rocks. The mineral may help the mollusk — the giant Pacific chiton (Cryptochiton stelleri) — meld its soft flesh to the hard teeth it uses for grazing on rocky coastlines, researchers report online May 31 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

C. stelleri is the world’s largest chiton, reaching up to roughly 35 centimeters long. It is equipped with several dozen rows of teeth on a slender, flexible, tonguelike appendage called a radula that it uses to scrape algae off rocks. Those teeth are covered in magnetite, the hardest, stiffest known biomineral to date: It’s as much as three times as hard as human enamel and mollusk shells.

Materials scientist Derk Joester and colleagues analyzed these teeth using high-energy X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. They discovered that the interface between the teeth and flesh contained nanoparticles of santabarbaraite, an iron-loaded mineral never seen before in a living organism’s body.

Circa 2019

Several recent studies have claimed that cancer cells can be reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). However, in most cases, cancer cells seem to be resistant to cellular reprogramming. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms of limited reprogramming in cancer cells are largely unknown. Here, we identified the candidate barrier genes and their target genes at the early stage of reprogramming for investigating cancer reprogramming.

We tried induction of pluripotency in normal human fibroblasts (BJ) and both human benign (MCF10A) and malignant (MCF7) breast cancer cell lines using a classical retroviral reprogramming method. We conducted RNA-sequencing analysis to compare the transcriptome of the three cell lines at early stage of reprogramming.

Continue reading “Reprogramming of Cancer Cells into Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Questioned” »