Lifeboat Foundation

Covid variants will be the next big challenge. Can vaccines protect us?

All viruses mutate. They do this to adapt and survive better in their specific host. The virus that causes Covid-19 is no different: it has moved from the animal realm, where it most likely originated in bats, to the human world. Since then, scientists have been locked in a battle between the spread of the virus and the ability to immunise against it. We now have the vaccines to protect us against Covid-19 – but what happens when this virus mutates further, as it likely will? {“uid”:0.9208093413637026,” hostPeerName”:” https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.

After a year of lockdown, many of us are finding it hard to think clearly, or remember what happened when. Neuroscientists and behavioural experts explain why.

A never-before-seen particle has revealed itself in the hot guts of two particle colliders, confirming a half-century-old theory.

Scientists predicted the existence of the particle, known as the odderon, in 1973, describing it as a rare, short-lived conjointment of three smaller particles known as gluons. Since then, researchers have suspected that the odderon might appear when protons slammed together at extreme speeds, but the precise conditions that would make it spring into existence remained a mystery. Now, after comparing data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) ring-shaped atom smasher near Geneva that’s famous for discovering the Higgs boson, and the Tevatron, a now-defunct 3.9-mile-long (6.3 km) American collider that slammed protons and their antimatter twins (antiprotons) together in Illinois until 2011, researchers report conclusive evidence of the odderon’s existence.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX added more money to its February equity raise, with the amended total reaching nearly $1.2 billion.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX added more money to its most recent equity raise, according to a securities filing on Wednesday.

SpaceX held a second close of about $314 million, adding to the $850 million that CNBC reported the company raised in February. The amendment brings the round’s new total equity raised to $1.16 billion, which the company raised at a valuation of about $74 billion.

Continue reading “SpaceX adds to previous equity round, pushing Elon Musk’s last raise total to nearly $1.2 billion” »

The reality is Benny and Josh both have Canavan disease, a fatal inherited brain disorder. They are buckled into wheelchairs, don’t speak, and can’t control their limbs.

On Thursday, April 8, in Dayton, Ohio, Landsman and his family rolled the older boy, Benny, into a hospital where over several hours, neurosurgeons drilled bore holes into his skull and injected trillions of viral particles carrying the correct version of a gene his body is missing.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Z_jkWzgfSk

Future Breakthroughs in Technology and in the Search for Life: Take Aways from the last two days at the Breakthrough Discuss Meeting.

Takeaways from this week’s Breakthrough Discuss meeting.

The material is one of the thinnest antimicrobial coatings developed to date and is effective against a broad range of drug-resistant bacteria and fungal cells, while leaving human cells unharmed.

Importantly, the BP also began to self-degrade in that time and was entirely disintegrated within 24 hours—an important feature that shows the material would not accumulate in the body.

The laboratory study identified the optimum levels of BP that have a deadly antimicrobial effect while leaving human cells healthy and whole.

Continue reading “Superbug killer: New nanotech destroys bacteria and fungal cells” »

At any given time, 1100 tons of microplastic are floating over the western US. New modeling shows the surprising sources of the nefarious pollutant.

If you find yourself in some secluded spot in the American West—maybe Yellowstone, or the deserts of Utah, or the forests of Oregon—take a deep breath and get some fresh air along with some microplastic. According to new modeling, 1100 tons of it is currently floating above the western US. The stuff is falling out of the sky, tainting the most remote corners of North America—and the world. As I’ve said before, plastic rain is the new acid rain.

But where is it all coming from? You’d think it’d be arising from nearby cities—western metropolises like Denver and Salt Lake City. But new modeling published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that 84 percent of airborne microplastics in the American West actually comes from the roads outside of major cities. Another 11 percent could be blowing all the way in from the ocean. (The researchers who built the model reckon that microplastic particles stay airborne for nearly a week, and that’s more than enough time for them to cross continents and oceans.)

Continue reading “Plastic Is Falling From the Sky. But Where’s It Coming From?” »

I don’t see why he needed a NASA contract when he could easily pay for this himself, but whatever.

Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, was one of three companies to land the Pentagon contract for a rocket powered by a nuclear reactor.