Lifeboat Foundation

Gene-editing method shows promise for premature aging syndrome.

Scientists have fixed a genetic mutation in mice with progeria, a rapid aging disease. The treatment could one day be used in humans who would otherwise die in childhood.

Approximately 1 in 4 million children are diagnosed with progeria within the first two years of birth, and virtually all of these children develop health issues in childhood and adolescence that are normally associated with old age – including cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and strokes), hair loss, skeletal problems, subcutaneous fat loss and hardened skin.

It’s cause for celebration, but the mystery continues.

In exciting new research, scientists have uncovered a new phase of matter: liquid glass.

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Continue reading “How the tangles in your DNA make you age” »

Elon Musk just became the richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $185 billion.

Thursday’s increase in Tesla’s share price pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who had been the richest person since 2017 and is currently worth about $184 billion. Musk’s wealth surge over the past year marks the fastest rise to the top of the rich list in history — and is a dramatic financial turnaround for the famed entrepreneur who just 18 months ago was in the headlines for Tesla’s rapid cash burn and his personal leverage against the company’s stock.

Musk started 2020 worth about $27 billion, and was barely in the top 50 richest people.

Every year, over a million people develop health care-acquired infections during their hospital stays. And around 100000 of them die from those complications.

But researchers at the University of Georgia are determined to change that, and their new study shows a promising tool for preventing infections before they happen.

Continue reading “Building safer medical devices with innovative protective nanoparticle coating” »

“We are excited to partner with Hatzolah Air on the development of our CityHawk EMS vehicle,” says Rafi Yoeli, CEO of Urban Aeronautics. “Its compact size will enable it to land in the middle of a busy city street, making it a perfect fit for medical evacuation missions by dramatically decreasing the time it takes to arrive on-scene, treat and transport sick or injured patients to appropriate medical facilities.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the CityHawk, it’s much, much more than a few concept drawings. The vehicle has been in development since the company’s inception in 2001, and an unmanned version of the CityHawk has been flying successfully for at least a year. Successfully enough, at least, to merit an agreement of, “mutual exploration by Boeing and Tactical Robotics of Autonomous Unmanned VTOL aircraft based on Urban Aeronautics … unique Fancraft™ technology.”

A multitasking nanomachine that can act as a heat engine and a refrigerator at the same time has been created by RIKEN engineers. The device is one of the first to test how quantum effects, which govern the behavior of particles on the smallest scale, might one day be exploited to enhance the performance of nanotechnologies.

Conventional heat engines and refrigerators work by connecting two pools of fluid. Compressing one pool causes its fluid to heat up, while rapidly expanding the other pool cools its fluid. If these operations are done in a periodic cycle, the pools will exchange energy and the system can be used as either a heat engine or a fridge.

It would be impossible to set up a macroscale machine that does both tasks simultaneously—nor would engineers want to, says Keiji Ono of the RIKEN Advanced Device Laboratory. “Combining a traditional heat engine with a refrigerator would make it a completely useless machine,” he says. “It wouldn’t know what to do.”

Aaron Saunders, Boston Dynamics’ VP of Engineering, tells us where Atlas got its moves from.

During its two-year mission, SphereX will map the entire sky four times, creating an enormous database of stars, galaxies, nebulas and other celestial objects.

The space telescope will be NASA’s first to build a full-sky spectroscopy map in near-infrared, and it will observe a total of 102 near-infrared colours.

Continue reading “NASA to launch SphereX telescope into space in 2024” »