Lifeboat Foundation

The program was established in the mid-2000s under the Bush administration, and it was set up to boost the US biofuel industry in order to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. In the process, it created a strange situation where a ton of farmland started being used by ethanol producers who are now heavily subsidized by the program. Since electric vehicles would also help accomplish this goal, it has been proposed that they could be included in the program, and the Biden administration is expected to review the proposal.

Tesla has reportedly applied to enter the profitable renewable fuel credit market that is currently dominated by ethanol producers as it is expected to be opened to electric vehicles.

There are currently at least eight companies who applied with the Environmental Protection Agency to be included in the multi-billion dollar US renewable credit market, but the agency did not release their names.

Continue reading “Tesla prepares to disrupt ethanol producers” »

To combat this, Li and his team at Harvard have designed their solid-state battery with a multilayer approach that stacks its materials of varying stabilities between the anode and cathode. Much like a sandwich. This multi-material battery sandwich helps alleviate the penetration of lithium dendrites by controlling and containing them rather than preventing them altogether.

As you can see from the image above, the Harvard team has simplified its battery design to a form that’s more our speed. In this case, a BLT sandwich. The top slice of bread represents the lithium-metal anode, followed by lettuce appropriately representing a coating of graphite. The two layers of tomatoes represent the first electrolyte, protecting the delicious middle layer of bacon as the second electrolyte. Everything sits upon the bottom slice of bread, or the cathode. Is anyone else suddenly hungry for batteries?

In this design, dendrites are able to grow through the graphite (lettuce) and first electrolyte (tomato) but are halted when they reach the second electrolyte (bacon), thus preventing the dendrites from shorting the entire battery. This multilayer approach provokes chemistry that makes the second electrolyte too tight for the dendrites to penetrate. Furthermore, the Harvard researchers say this same chemistry can backfill the holes made by dendrites, essentially making the solid-state battery self-healing. Is there anything better than a sandwich that can regenerate itself? Honestly.

Great new episode with renowned geneticist Christopher Mason who talks about his book on how we will need to bioengineer our own species in order to expand beyond our solar system.

Geneticist Christopher Mason chats about his new book, “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds” from MIT Press. We discuss both the nuts and bolts and the philosophy driving our expansion offworld. Mason’s goal is to preserve our species by expanding to an Earth 2.0 in order to avoid our star’s own Red Giant endgame.

Continue reading “Episode 50 --- Bioengineering Our Human Species To Reach The Stars” »

While the mitochondrion has long fascinated biologists and the sheer diversity of druggable targets has made it attractive for potential drug development, there has been little success translatable to the clinic. Given the diversity of inborn errors of metabolism and mitochondrial diseases, mitochondrially mediated oxidative stress (myopathies, reperfusion injury, Parkinson’s disease, ageing) and the consequences of disturbed energetics (circulatory shock, diabetes, cancer), the potential for meaningful gain with novel drugs targeting mitochondrial mechanisms is huge both in terms of patient quality of life and health care costs. In this themed issue of the British Journal of Pharmacology, we highlight the key directions of the contemporary advances in the field of mitochondrial biology, emerging drug targets and new molecules which are close to clinical application. Authors’ contributions are diverse both in terms of species and organs in which the mitochondrially related studies are performed, and from the perspectives of mechanisms under study. Defined roles of mitochondria in disease are updated and previously unknown contributions to disease are described in terms of the interface between basic science and pathological relevance.

Can We Immunize The World Against Future Pandemics? Dr Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine — Global Virome Project.

Dr. Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD, is a Professor of Epidemiology and Disease Ecology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Founding Executive Director of the UC Davis One Health Institute, and Vice Provost For Grand Challenges At UC Davis.

Continue reading “Dr. Jonna Mazet, DVM, MPVM, PhD — One Health — Can We Immunize The World Against Future Pandemics?” »

Nuclear Nonproliferation, Cooperative Threat Reduction and WMD Terrorism — Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director, Converging Risks Lab, The Council on Strategic Risks.

Dr. Natasha Bajema, is a subject matter expert in nuclear nonproliferation, cooperative threat reduction and WMD terrorism, and currently serves as Director of the Converging Risks Lab, at The Council on Strategic Risks, a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

Continue reading “Dr. Natasha Bajema — Dir., Converging Risks Lab, Council on Strategic Risks — WMD Threat Reduction” »

Getting older is a fact of life. As we age, we can grow bigger, smarter and stronger. But at a certain point, our bodies often start to slow down. The idea behind why we age and why our bodies slow down is that we start to lose the ability to make enough energy to support all the different functions that our body carries out.

Hazel H. Szeto, MD, PhD, is a medical doctor and a research scientist. She may have found the answer to reversing the aging process by restoring a person’s ability to make energy. Szeto presented her work last month at Experimental Biology 2021.

To better understand Szeto’s discovery, we must first understand how the body makes energy. We produce energy in the form of a small molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. When ATP is broken down, it releases energy that allows our bodies to do work, such as contracting the muscles in our arms and legs so we can lift a box. Mitochondria are small structures in the cells that make ATP from the food we eat.

The UK’s decision to delay second doses of coronavirus vaccines has received fresh support from research on the over-80s which found that giving the Pfizer/BioNTech booster after 12 weeks rather than three produced a much stronger antibody response.

A study led by the University of Birmingham in collaboration with Public Health England found that antibodies against the virus were three-and-a-half times higher in those who had the second shot after 12 weeks compared with those who had it after a three-week interval.

Symptoms include hallucinations, muscle and brain atrophy and Capgras delusion, a belief that family members have been replaced by impostors.