Lifeboat Foundation

Proteins can communicate through DNA, conducting a long-distance dialogue that serves as a kind of genetic “switch,” according to Weizmann Institute of Science researchers. They found that the binding of proteins to one site of a DNA molecule can physically affect another binding site at a distant location, and that this “peer effect” activates certain genes. This effect had previously been observed in artificial systems, but the Weizmann study is the first to show it takes place in the DNA of living organisms.

A team headed by Dr. Hagen Hofmann of the Chemical and Structural Biology Department made this discovery while studying a peculiar phenomenon in the soil bacteria Bacillus subtilis. A small minority of these bacteria demonstrate a unique skill: an ability to enrich their genomes by taking up bacterial gene segments scattered in the soil around them. This ability depends on a protein called ComK, a transcription factor, which binds to the DNA to activate the genes that make the scavenging possible. However, it was unknown how exactly this activation works.

TOKYO, Aug 28 (Reuters) — Two people died after receiving Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine shots that were among lots later suspended following the discovery of contaminants, Japan’s health ministry said on Saturday.

The men in their 30s died this month within days of receiving their second Moderna doses, the ministry said in a release. Each had a shot from one of three manufacturing lots suspended on Thursday. The causes of death are being investigated.

A month after New Shepard’s first flight carrying people into space, a science flight without crew onboard has launched from Blue Origin’s facility near Van Horn, Texas. The flight, the fourth of the year for the New Shepard program, was originally scheduled for August 25 2021, but was delayed due to a payload integration issue.

New Shepard flight NS-17 lifted off on Thursday, August 26 at 09:31 CDT local time (14:31 UTC) — after two unplanned holds — on a suborbital trajectory with an apogee over 100 kilometers, the boundary to space as recognized by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

Continue reading “Blue Origin launches NS-17 suborbital science mission” »

A floating nuclear power plant is a site with one or more nuclear reactors, located on a platform at sea.

It is an autonomous site that can provide electricity and heat to areas with difficult access, such as the cold Northern territories. It can also provide drinking water to dry areas, via desalination techniques.

Machines and robots undoubtedly make life easier. They carry out jobs with precision and speed, and, unlike humans, they do not require breaks as they are never tired.

As a result, companies are looking to use them more and more in their manufacturing processes to improve productivity and remove dirty, dangerous, and dull tasks.

However, there are still so many tasks in the working environment that require human dexterity, adaptability, and flexibility.

Ultrasound imaging techniques have proved to be highly valuable tools for diagnosing a variety of health conditions, including peripheral artery disease (PAD). PAD, one of the most common diseases among the elderly, entails the blocking or narrowing of peripheral blood vessels, which limits the supply of blood to specific areas of the body.

Ultrasound imaging methods are among the most popular means of diagnosing PAD, due to their many advantageous characteristics. In fact, unlike other imaging methods, such as computed tomography angiography and magnetic resonance angiography, ultrasound imaging is non-invasive, low-cost and radiation-free.

Most existing ultrasound imaging techniques are designed to capture two-dimensional images in real time. While this can be helpful in some cases, their inability to collect three-dimensional information reduces the reliability of the data they gather, increasing their sensitivity to variations in how individual physicians used a given technique.

A team of researchers at Korea’s LG Electronics, working with a group at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, has successfully sent data 100 meters over a 6G signal. Officials at LG have posted details of their test of the next step wireless transmission technology on their company news page.

As 5G networks for cellular service have slowly made their way around the globe, engineers at multiple telecommunications companies have been hard at work on next-generation 6G communications technology. Moving to the new technology is expected to push data transmission speeds to 50 times faster than 5G. It is also expected to cut latency to just 10% that of 5G, making conversations sound more natural. And the new standard is also expected to improve the accuracy of the data sent. Together, these improvements could drive a wave of new “Internet of Everything” development, with new devices aimed at both the home and workplace.

Scientists have long recognized that achieving the next step in transmission technology will be more difficult than those that came before due to a major problem with 6G signaling; it is short-range due to loss of power as it is transmitted. For this reason, the global standards body for data communications has set its commercialization date for 2,025 while most in the field do not expect actual sales to begin until2029or later.

As first responders continue to embrace drones for emergency missions across the globe, a new map dashboard hopes to facilitate communication, coordination, and collaboration between various public safety agencies. This free, interactive global map and directory of emergency services drone programs is now home to over 900 agencies from more than 20 countries – and the numbers are rising steadily.

Not only is the initiative being welcomed by the community but it has also started showing results, too. As Charles Werner, director of DRONERESPONDERS, explains:

At Google I/O today Google Cloud announced Vertex AI, a new managed machine learning platform that is meant to make it easier for developers to deploy and maintain their AI models. It’s a bit of an odd announcement at I/O, which tends to focus on mobile and web developers and doesn’t traditionally feature a lot of Google Cloud news, but the fact that Google decided to announce Vertex today goes to show how important it thinks this new service is for a wide range of developers.

The launch of Vertex is the result of quite a bit of introspection by the Google Cloud team. “Machine learning in the enterprise is in crisis, in my view,” Craig Wiley, the director of product management for Google Cloud’s AI Platform, told me. “As someone who has worked in that space for a number of years, if you look at the Harvard Business Review or analyst reviews, or what have you — every single one of them comes out saying that the vast majority of companies are either investing or are interested in investing in machine learning and are not getting value from it. That has to change. It has to change.”