Lifeboat Foundation

“I didn’t think I would be emotional about this.”

It’s not just humans that use prosthetic limbs—wounded or disabled animals can benefit from them, too. In the past, we’ve reported on cats, dogs, and even an elephant who have been fitted for prosthesis. The latest creature who’s now learning to walk on an artificial foot is an adorable duck named Waddles.

Waddles was born with a deformed leg, but his adoptive owner Ben Weinman wanted to help him live a better life. He contacted Derrick Campana, a Certified Pet Prostheticist at Bionic Pets who made a 3D-printed prosthetic leg and foot.

Continue reading “Waddles the Disabled Duck Walks for the First Time on His 3D-Printed Prosthetic Leg” »

Discovery in Salamanders by James W. Godwin, Ph.D., brings science closer to the development of regenerative medicine therapies.

Many salamanders can readily regenerate a lost limb, but adult mammals, including humans, cannot. Why this is the case is a scientific mystery that has fascinated observers of the natural world for thousands of years.

Now, a team of scientists led by James Godwin, Ph.D., of the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, has come a step closer to unraveling that mystery with the discovery of differences in molecular signaling that promote regeneration in the axolotl, a highly regenerative salamander, while blocking it in the adult mouse, which is a mammal with limited regenerative ability.

Last Tuesday, teams from Google and Harvard published an intricate map of every cell and connection in a cubic millimeter of the human brain.

The mapped region encompasses the various layers and cell types of the cerebral cortex, a region of brain tissue associated with higher-level cognition, such as thinking, planning, and language. According to Google, it’s the largest brain map at this level of detail to date, and it’s freely available to scientists (and the rest of us) online. (Really. Go here. Take a stroll.)

“The human brain is an immensely complex network of brain cells which is responsible for all human behavior, but until now, we haven’t been able to completely map these connections within even a small region of the brain,” said Dr. Alexander Shapson-Coe, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Lichtman Lab and lead author of a preprint paper about the work.

Designing an autonomous, learning smart garden.

In the first episode of Build Out, Colt and Reto — tasked with designing the architecture for a “Smart Garden” — supplied two very different concepts, that nevertheless featured many overlapping elements. Take a look at the video to see what they came up with, then continue reading to see how you can learn from their explorations to build your very own Smart Garden.

Both solutions aim to optimize plant care using sensors, weather forecasts, and machine learning. Watering and fertilizing routines for the plants are updated regularly to guarantee the best growth, health, and fruit yield possible.

Continue reading “Building a Garden that Cares for Itself” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BuY3kLfxtaY

This is an automatic hydroponics system that also has scaleable farms that use 95 percent less water.

Grow fresh herbs, vegetables, and more in 3 easy steps all year round with AeroGarden indoor garden systems. No soil, no sun, & no green thumb required!

It’s ten times more powerful than the current U.S. effort.

Earlier this month, Chinese artificial intelligence (A.I.) researchers at the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) unveiled Wu Dao 2.0, the world’s biggest natural language processing (NLP) model. And it’s a big deal.

Continue reading “Amazing New Chinese A.I.-Powered Language Model Wu Dao 2.0 Unveiled” »

Bill Gates isn’t going to use it to track you.

Your next doctor’s appointment could soon become much more informative thanks to new microchips the size of dust mites, only visible beneath a microscope.

Continue reading “Yes, Scientists Built the Worlds Smallest Implantable Chip. But Dont Freak Out” »

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.

Such a development, if flown, could usher in a new era of spaceflight. That said, it is only one of several exciting avenues in rocket propulsion. Here are some others.

The standard means of propulsion for spacecraft uses chemical rockets. There are two main types: solid-fueled (such as the solid rocket boosters on the Space Shuttle), and liquid-fueled (such as the Saturn V).

In a decade-long quest, scientists at Berkeley Lab, the University of Hawaii, and Florida International University uncover new clues to the origins of the universe – and land new chemistry for cleaner combustion engines.

For nearly half a century, astrophysicists and organic chemists have been on the hunt for the origins of C₆H₆, the benzene ring – an elegant, hexagonal molecule comprised of 6 carbon and 6 hydrogen atoms.

Astrophysicists say that the benzene ring could be the fundamental building block of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, the most basic materials formed from the explosion of dying, carbon-rich stars. That swirling mass of matter would eventually give shape to the earliest forms of carbon – precursors to molecules some scientists say are connected to the synthesis of the earliest forms of life on Earth.