Lifeboat Foundation

After doubling its sample size, the largest study of genetic data from autistic people has identified 255 genes associated with the condition, an increase of more than 40 genes since the researchers’ 2019 update; 71 of the genes rise above a stringent statistical bar the team had not previously used. The new analysis also adds data from people with developmental delay or schizophrenia and considers multiple types of mutations.

“It’s a really significant step forward in what we do,” said Kyle Satterstrom, a computational biologist in Mark Daly’s lab at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Satterstrom presented the findings virtually on Tuesday at the 2021 International Society for Autism Research annual meeting. (Links to abstracts may work only for registered conference attendees.)

The team’s previous analyses used data from the Autism Sequencing Consortium, which enrolls families through their doctors. The researchers mainly scoured the genetic data to find rare, non-inherited mutations linked to autism.

In a study of the worm C. elegans, the team found bacteria species linked to the development of the conditions, and others that can counteract the effect.

Researcher Professor Johann de Bono said: ‘There’s a lot of evidence that prostate cancer causes what we call immune tolerance — that the cancer suppresses the body from attacking it with its immune cells.

Scientists have discovered that a key protein may be the secret to treating prostate cancer patients with ‘miracle’ immunotherapy drugs.

Clinical trials have now begun – with the goal of unleashing cancer-killing white blood cells to attack the tumour.

Continue reading “Have scientists found the key to beating prostate cancer?” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd0Ca0mbx_c&feature=share

On May 6, 2021 NASA published 4K UHD image from Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s onboard camera and video footage during flight at Airfield B. Successful 4th flight on Mars for 133 meters distance by Ingenuity happened on April 30. New Ingenuity’s location called Airfield B. Previous location is Wright Brothers Field. The helicopter climbing to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) before flying south approximately 436 feet (133 meters) and then back, for an 872-foot (266-meter) round trip. In total, we were in the air for 117 seconds. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s fourth flight path is superimposed here atop terrain imaged by the HiRISE camera aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took 4K color image during its fourth flight. “Airfield B,” its new landing site, can be seen below. The helicopter will seek to set down there on its fifth flight attempt to 10 meters altitude on May 7th.

Credit: nasa.gov, NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Continue reading “Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s onboard camera footage in 4K at Airfield B (5th flight landing site)” »

The story of the “Forest Keeper” of India.

They say it’s impossible for one person to change the world… However, the hero of our story decided to prove everyone wrong. As he believes, the main thing is to know exactly what you want from life and pursue your goal with dedication. Then you’ll be bound to succeed…

Continue reading “People laughed at him when he planted trees in a DESERT! But later they were all SHOCKED… — YouTube” »

A team of researchers from Zhejiang University, Xi’an Jiaotong University and Monash University has developed a way to bind multiple strands of graphene oxide into a thick cable. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their process and possible uses for it. Rodolfo Cruz-Silva and Ana Laura Elías with Shinshu University and Binghamton University have published a Perspectives piece in the same issue outlining the work by the researchers and explaining why they believe the technique could prove useful in manufacturing efforts.

In recent years, materials scientists have been exploring the possibility of making products using total or partial self-assembly as a way to produce them faster or at less cost. In biological systems where two materials self-assemble into a third material, scientists describe this as a fusion process, borrowing terminology from physics. So when a single material spontaneously separates into two or more other materials, they refer to it as a fission process. In this new effort, the researchers have developed a technique for creating graphene-oxide-based yarn that exploits both processes.

The work by the team is very basic. They created multiple strands of graphene oxide and then dunked them into a solvent solution for 10 minutes. When the strands were pulled from the solution, they banded together forming a cord, or single strand of yarn. They also developed a means for reversing the process—dunking the strand of yarn in a different solvent solution.

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Two new approaches allow deep neural networks to solve entire families of partial differential equations, making it easier to model complicated systems and to do so orders of magnitude faster.

“I think both with the how the workers have been treated and how the community has really been kicked aside here with the creeks, one of the problems we’re seeing is Wall Street values being applied to rural, working class communities,” said Smith. “That’s the values of ‘money first,’ and ‘consequences don’t matter.’”.

It’s sunny and in the mid-70s in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama right now. Normally, that would be prime conditions for a swim in Davis Creek or Texas Creek. But right now, both are running black, full of thick wastewater runoff.

Although nothing in the laws of quantum physics limits such quantum weirdness to subatomic particles, the theory predicts that at much larger scales — say, the size of a cat — quantum effects should be so vanishingly small as to be unobservable in practice. Physicists have long debated whether this is just a limitation of our senses and instruments, or whether macroscopic objects are governed by their own set of laws that is fundamentally different from quantum mechanics. To explore this question, researchers have been pushing to observe quantum effects at ever larger scales. “One point of our research is, is there quantum in the classical world?” says Mika Sillanpää, a physicist at Aalto University in Finland.

Quantum drums

In an experiment at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, physicist Shlomi Kotler and his collaborators built a pair of vibrating aluminium membranes akin to two tiny drums, each around 10 micrometres long.