Lifeboat Foundation

A five-month-old becomes the first person in England to get a drug with a list price of £1.79m.

https://2021.spacerenaissance.space/index.php/registration/

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This sample tissue was anonymously donated from patients that have undergone surgery to treat epilepsy at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (MGH). It was then given to researchers at Harvard’s Lichtman laboratory.

The Harvard researchers cut the tissue into ~5300 individual 30 nanometer sections using an automated tape collecting ultra-microtome, mounted those sections onto silicon wafers, and then imaged the brain tissue at 4 nm resolution in a customized 61-beam parallelized scanning electron microscope for rapid image acquisition.

Continue reading “Google helps map one cubic millimeter of human brain tissue” »

Mapping how humans move will help in future pandemics.

How people move around cities follows a predictable and universal pattern, scientist say, which will be crucial not only for urban planning but also controlling pandemics.

By analysing mobile-phone tracking data from across four continents, the team confirmed that people visit places more often when they don’t have to travel far to get there.

Continue reading “New universal law of human mobility” »

The first quantum error-correcting code was devised by Peter Shor 25 years ago. Ever since there have been numerous advances on both the theoretical and experimental fronts, and quantum error correction turned out to have unexpected applications.

Scientists determined that the ‘Cold Spot’ isn’t caused by a lack of galaxies, but may have been caused by our universe bumping into another universe.

The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can infect insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, reducing their ability to secrete insulin and sometimes causing cell death, a new study suggests.

Damaging these insulin-producing cells, known as beta cells, can potentially worsen symptoms of diabetes, particularly type 1 diabetes, wherein the pancreas already makes little to no insulin, according to the study authors. “If you imagine that there are some patients who already have diabetes, if the virus comes in and nails the remaining beta cells you have, that’s not good,” said co-senior author Peter Jackson, a professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

In March 2021, NASA’s Curiosity rover observed clouds made of carbon dioxide (CO₂) ice at high altitudes in the atmosphere of Mars.

But two Earth years ago, the Curiosity team members spotted clouds in the Martian atmosphere earlier than expected.

Miranda is a Solar System enigma — and maybe the most unexpected place we could actually find life.

The last time a spacecraft visited Uranus was more than 30 years ago, and scientists are arguing that it’s time to go back.