Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Tardigrades are undoubtedly weird. Dehydrate them into glass, then fire them out of a gun, and once you rehydrate them you can still have a living creature. Their outsides aren’t the only thing that’s tough either, with scientists finding last year that they also have special DNA armor proteins.

But if we take a step back from their immense capacity for being beaten up, there are many other mysterious things about them. For starters, how do these tiny creatures walk?

After all, they’re one of the only animals with soft little bodies like this that can walk, plus they’re one of the smallest animals with legs that we know of.

Read more | >

The launch next month of the first all-civilian mission to orbit is an ambitious test for a burgeoning space industry’s futuristic dream of sending many more ordinary people to space in the next few years.

Why it matters: Companies and nations envision millions of people living and working in space without having to become professional, government-backed astronauts. Those hopes are riding on SpaceX’s next crewed mission, called Inspiration4.

Read more | >

Global fire map and data. NASA | LANCE | Fire Information for Resource Management System provides near real-time active fire data from MODIS and VIIRS to meet the needs of firefighters, scientists and users interested in monitoring fires. Fire data is available for download or can be viewed through a map interface. Users can subscribe to email alerts bases on their area of interest.

Read more | >

Trial also will test pausing immunosuppressive medication to improve antibody response.

The National Institutes of Health has begun a clinical trial to assess the antibody response to an extra dose of an authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine in people with autoimmune disease who did not respond to an original COVID-19 vaccine regimen. The trial also will investigate whether pausing immunosuppressive therapy for autoimmune disease improves the antibody response to an extra dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in this population. The Phase 2 trial is sponsored and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, and is being conducted by the NIAID-funded Autoimmunity Centers of Excellence.

“Many people who have an autoimmune disease that requires immunosuppressive therapy have had a poor immune response to the authorized and approved COVID-19 vaccines, placing these individuals at high risk for the disease,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “We are determined to find ways to elicit a protective immune response to the vaccines in this population. This new study is an important step in that direction.”

Read more | >