Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: A new blood test can distinguish the severity of a person’s depression and their risk for developing severe depression at a later point. The test can also determine if a person is at risk for developing bipolar disorder. Researchers say the blood test can also assist in tailoring individual options for therapeutic interventions.

Source: Indiana University.

Worldwide, 1 in 4 people will suffer from a depressive episode in their lifetime.

Slick, viral videos from Boston Dynamics are impressive but teaching a robot to walk by itself is a lot harder.

LIVERMORE (CBS SF) — It sounds like a scene from a Hollywood sci-fi thriller, but researchers from Lawrence Livermore National lab have joined with an Air Force team of technologists to test if a nuclear blast could be used to deflect an earth-threatening asteroid.

Whether it be Bruce Willis and his crew of oil drillers taking on an asteroid as it approaches earth in ‘Armageddon’ or Tia Leoni and her father awaiting a massive tidal wave from an asteroid strike in ‘Deep Impact,’ Hollywood has been fascinated by the threat from space.

Circa 2009

(PhysOrg.com) — Scientists have managed to levitate young mice in research carried out for NASA. Levitated mice may help research on bone density loss during long exposures to low gravity, such as in space travel and missions to other planets.

The researchers worked from a number of laboratories around the U.S., including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and the University of Missouri. The research was done on behalf of NASA, and was published in the online journal Advances in Space Research on 6 September 2009.

Continue reading “Mice Levitated for Space Research” »

However, two rival teams, one in France and one in Switzerland, are now striving relentlessly towards the same goal: to create the fastest sailboat ever built.

One is headed by the former world title holder, and there are two brothers involved — but on opposing teams.

Paul Larsen is a sailing speed freak. His Vestas Sailrocket 2 boat broke the world speed sailing record for a mile in 2012: 78.26 mph! What’s he up to now?

Three years of underground robotics competitions culminate in a final event in September with $5 million in prize money.

The DARPA Subterranean Challenge Final Event is scheduled to take place at the Louisville Mega Cavern in Louisville, Kentucky, from September 21 to 23. We’ve followed SubT teams as they’ve explored their way through abandoned mines, unfinished nuclear reactors, and a variety of caves, and now everything comes together in one final course where the winner of the Systems Track will take home the $2 million first prize.

It’s a fitting reward for teams that have been solving some of the hardest problems in robotics, but winning isn’t going to be easy, and we’ll talk with SubT Program Manager Tim Chung about what we have to look forward to.

Continue reading “DARPA Prepares for the Subterranean Challenge Final” »

Summary: A newly developed reparative hydrogel, which researchers are dubbing “brain glue”, protects against loss of brain tissue following a TBI and can aid in functional neural repair.

Source: University of Georgia.

At a cost of $38 billion a year, an estimated 5.3 million people are living with a permanent disability related to traumatic brain injury in the United States today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The physical, mental and financial toll of a TBI can be enormous, but new research from the University of Georgia provides promise.

Excess solar power will be converted to H2, which will be stored in a solid material called sodium borohydride, before being run through a fuel cell to generate electricity at Australian project.

A team of researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has found that the human hand can be used as a powerless infrared radiation (IR) source in multiple kinds of applications. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group notes that the human hand naturally emits IR and they demonstrate that the radiation can be captured and used.

The human body emits light in the invisible IR range, including the hands. This source of radiation, the researchers noted, could potentially be captured and used in applications ranging from signal generation to encryption systems. They further noted that because the hand has multiple fingers, the IR that it emits could be considered to be multiplexed.

IR is a form of electromagnetic radiation —its wavelengths are longer than those of visible light, which is why humans cannot see them. Prior research has shown that the human body emits such radiation due to body heat. Electromagnetic radiation carries with it radiant energy, and its behavior is classified as both a quantum particle and a wave. Prior research has also shown that electromagnetic radiation can be used in a variety of applications, including microwaves, radios and medical imaging devices. And infrared light, in particular, enables night vision goggles, spectroscopy devices and medical devices used to treat burn victims. In this new effort, the researchers have found that the very small amount of IR emitted by the human hand is sufficient to use in various devices.