Lifeboat Foundation

Senescence in cancer cells

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Sometimes, too much of a good thing can turn out to be bad. This is certainly the case for the excessive cell growth found in cancer. But when cancers try to grow too fast, this excessive speed can cause a type of cellular aging that actually results in arrested growth. Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School have now discovered that a well-known signaling pathway helps cancers grow by blocking the pro-growth signals from a second major cancer pathway.

Continue reading “Getting it just right: The Goldilocks model of cancer” »

An exercise in pure mathematics has led to a wide-ranging theory of how the world comes together.

In the near future, large vessels carrying vehicles or other cargo across the ocean could be powered by wind, thanks to innovative sail technology.

Oceanbird, designed by Swedish engineering company, Wallenius Marine, is a futuristic concept for a PCTC (Pure Car and Truck Carrier) with capacity to carry 7,000 cars on long-distance ocean journeys. The project aims to prove that the global shipping community can transport goods in a sustainable way, and that low or zero-emission shipping is possible by using wind as the main energy source.

“We are proud to present our third iteration of our design, which we have worked with for several years,” said Per Tunell, COO of Wallenius Marine. “Shipping is a central function in global trade and stands for 90% of all transported goods, but it also contributes to emissions. It is critical that shipping becomes sustainable. Our studies show that wind is the most interesting energy source for ocean transports and with the 80-metre-high wing sails on Oceanbird, we are developing the ocean-going freighters of the future.”

In 2019, Switzerland-based Flyability had a mystery to solve at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Was nuclear waste still present in one of the plant’s decommissioned reactors?

“At the time of the disaster, the fifth block of the Chernobyl Plant was under construction and nearing completion,” a Flyability spokesperson said. “Given the rush to leave, there was no record of whether the holding pools in Reactor Five had ever received the depleted uranium fuel bars for which they had been made.”

Continue reading “Drones Solve a Nuclear Waste Mystery at Chernobyl” »

Johns Hopkins University study of 10 billion years of microwaves reveals a warming predicted by dark matter theory.

Who says you can’t get hotter with age?

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions have found that, on average, the temperature of galaxy clusters today is 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. That is 10 times hotter than 10 billion years ago, and four times hotter than the Sun’s outermost atmosphere called the corona. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

An epic photo shows the ESO’s Very large Telescope firing four orange lasers at a distant star system.

Viral stowaways could be enhancing survival of algae, and even their evolution.

This discovery opens the door to topological quantum computing. Current quantum computing systems, where the elemental units of calculation are qubits that perform superfast calculations, require superconducting materials that only function in extremely cold conditions. Fluctuations in heat can throw one of these systems out of whack.

“The properties inherent to materials such as TaP could form the basis of future qubits,” says Nguyen. He envisions synthesizing TaP and other topological semimetals — a process involving the delicate cultivation of these crystalline structures — and then characterizing their structural and excitational properties with the help of neutron and X-ray beam technology, which probe these materials at the atomic level. This would enable him to identify and deploy the right materials for specific applications.

“My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer,” says Nguyen. “With infinitely better heat management, these quantum computing systems and devices could prove to be incredibly energy efficient.”

Amazon has announced a second-generation version of its Echo Frames smart glasses for Alexa, adding longer battery life, better sound quality, and an end to the previous invite-only availability. It’s also discontinuing the Echo Loop smart ring.