Lifeboat Foundation

The original post is in Hebrew, I hope you manage, but the gist is simple — since summer we’ve started receiving reports from the Southern Hemisphere of almost-if-not-completely eradicated flu. Yeap, in less than one year the flu was completely gone in Australia, New Zealand, and others.

Ok, everyone said just wait, it might be a fluke. Let’s see what happens in the norther hemisphere. Alrighty, it’s Christmas, the peak of flu … See More.

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Continue reading “Lifeboaters, help me understand these graphs” »

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as drones, may prove to be a valuable tool in the battle against pandemics like COVID-19. Researchers at the University of Calgary, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), Alberta Health Services (AHS) and Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL) are partnering with the Stoney Nakoda Nations (SNN) to deliver medical equipment and test kits for COVID-19 to remote areas, and to connect these communities to laboratories more quickly using these remotely piloted aircraft.

Access for all

“We know that testing for COVID-19 is one of our most effective tools against its spread. Many remote communities in Canada do not have easy access to testing centres and medical supplies to support rapid testing and containment. Drones can help us respond to that need,” says Dr. John Conly, MD, medical director of the W21C Research and Innovation Centre at the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) and co-principal investigator on the project.

Bats are the second most diverse mammalian group, playing keystone roles in ecosystems but also act as reservoir hosts for numerous pathogens. Due to their colonial habits which implies close contacts between individuals, bats are often parasitized by multiple species of micro-and macroparasites. The particular ecology, behavior, and environment of bat species may shape patterns of intra-and interspecific pathogen transmission, as well as the presence of specific vectorial organisms. This review synthetizes information on a multi-level parasitic system: bats, bat flies and their microparasites. Bat flies (Diptera: Nycteribiidae and Streblidae) are obligate, hematophagous ectoparasites of bats consisting of ~500 described species. Diverse parasitic organisms have been detected in bat flies including bacteria, blood parasites, fungi, and viruses, which suggest their vectorial potential. We discuss the ecological epidemiology of microparasites, their potential physiological effects on both bats and bat flies, and potential research perspectives in the domain of bat pathogens. For simplicity, we use the term microparasite throughout this review, yet it remains unclear whether some bacteria are parasites or symbionts of their bat fly hosts.

Bats are the second most diverse mammalian group after rodents, with ~1390 recognized species across 227 genera (1). Many bat species play keystone roles in ecosystems, where they are essential to pollination, seed dispersal, and pest control (2). Several studies have also highlighted their prominent role as pathogen-reservoirs (3, 4); viruses being the best studied due to their potential as human pathogens (3, 5 – 8). Bats host more viruses per species than rodents, making them an interesting system for both disease ecology and public health research (4, 9).

Bacteria (such as Bartonella spp. and Borrelia spp.) and protozoans (such as Trypanosoma spp. and Plasmodium spp.) have also been detected in bats (8, 10, 11). In recent years, bat-associated Bartonella genotypes have been found in humans, indicating the public health importance of this parasite in bats (12 – 14). Bartonella and other pathogen transmission from bats to humans may occur through religious activities in caves, bat consumption or contact with contaminated products (12, 15). There are documented cases of bat-specific ectoparasites biting humans (16, 17), increasing the potential of bat-born pathogen transmission. Additionally, bat-associated pathogen, such as Trypanosoma cruzi genotype has also been found in humans (18).

A test firing of Europe’s Helicon Plasma Thruster, developed with ESA by SENER and the Universidad Carlos III’s Plasma & Space Propulsion Team (EP2-UC3M) in Spain. This compact, electrodeless and low voltage design is ideal for the propulsion of small satellites, including maintaining the formation of large orbital constellations.

While traditional chemical propulsion have fundamental upper limits, electric propulsion pumps extra energy into the thrust reaction to reach much higher propellant velocities by accelerating propellant using electrical energy. There are many methods of electric propulsion, many of which require electrodes to apply a current, increasing thruster cost and complexity.

By contrast the Helicon Plasma Thruster uses high power radio frequency waves to excite the propellant into a plasma.

Clean, highly energetic reaction delivers a lot of drive from a drop of fuel.

Some robot dancing.

Our whole crew got together to celebrate the start of what we hope will be a happier year: Happy New Year from all of us at Boston Dynamics. www.BostonDynamics.com.

The Orion is a sub-orbital electric aircraft equipped with an air-breathing magneto-plasma jet propulsion engine that could go from the tarmac to an altitude of 24000 metres and cruise at about 800 km/h.

It would bring passengers to the edge of black space with stunning views from its ultra-wide panoramic windows. Its new plasma pulse detonation engine could become the standard of this nascent industry.

It’s obvious that sub-orbital jets will become in demand as Earth’s population and wealth continues to rise. There’s already a lot of demand for jets capable of reaching this kind of altitude, but one major barrier has been the engine’s performance and overall costs. The Orion concept is all about introducing a new type of propulsion (plasma jet) and seeing how it could benefit various industries.

The European Food Safety Authority has taken in more than 156 innovative food applications for substances such as apple cell cultures and mung bean proteins since January 2018, when new EU legislation took effect, aiming to make it easier for businesses to bring their unusual products to market. Of those 156114 are still under consideration, 39 were approved and three were rejected, officials said.

More products have been submitted for approval since 2018 than in prior 14 years combined.

MIT anthropologist Amy Moran-Thomas reflects on the deep connection between planetary and human well-being.

When anthropologist Amy Moran-Thomas first went to Belize to begin ethnographic research in 2008, she planned to chronicle human health concerns, focusing on diabetes. Then she learned that local diets contributing to such chronic conditions were changing, in part due to losses in ocean food webs, and kept hearing stories about how local plants were in trouble.

“Listening and trying to learn from what people were saying, over the years I came to see human health and planetary health as deeply interconnected,” says Moran-Thomas, the Morrison Hayes Career Development Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT. “When I think of health now, I think of disarray in bigger ecosystems and infrastructures that’s also landing in human bodies.”