Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 64

Alopecia is an autoimmune disorder that causes non-scarring hair loss on the scalp and body that is experienced by almost 2% of the global population at some point in their lifetime.

A team of researchers from Australia, Singapore, and China discovered that activated hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs), crucial for hair regrowth and repair, require a powerful protector protein called MCL-1 to function successfully. Without MCL-1, these cells undergo stress and eventually die, leading to hair loss, as reported in a Nature Communications study.

Hair follicles are small tunnel-like structures in the skin where hair grows. These follicles repeatedly cycle through three : anagen, the active growth phase; catagen, a transitional phase marked by slowed growth and follicle shrinkage; and telogen, a resting phase where growth ceases and shedding occurs, after which the cycle begins afresh, driven by HFSCs.

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In an attempt to speed up quantum measurements, a new Physical Review Letters study proposes a space-time trade-off scheme that could be highly beneficial for quantum computing applications.

Quantum computing has several challenges, including error rates, qubit stability, and scalability beyond a few qubits. However, one of the lesser-known challenges faces is the fidelity and speed of .

The researchers of the study address this challenge by using additional or ancillary qubits to significantly reduce measurement time while maintaining or improving the quality of measurements.

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Hydroacoustic signals captured by the world’s international nuclear monitoring system suggest an underwater landslide may have broken communications cables and disrupted internet traffic in west African countries for several weeks in March 2024.

Researchers used data collected by hydrophones installed by the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) to determine the location of the possible , placing it along the steep slopes of Trou Sans Fond Canyon offshore of Ivory Coast.

The proposed landslide corresponds with the timing and location of four broken cables in the canyon, according to Vaibhav Vijay Ingale of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and colleagues, who shared their findings in Seismological Research Letters.

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What is Control? here is a nice definition according to Wikipedia — Control engineering or control systems engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with control systems, applying control theory to design equipment and systems with desired behaviors in control environments. The discipline of controls overlaps and is usually taught along with electrical engineering and mechanical engineering at many institutions around the world. The practice uses sensors and detectors to measure the output performance of the process being controlled; these measurements are used to provide corrective feedback helping to achieve the desired performance. Systems designed to perform without requiring human input are called automatic control systems (such as cruise control for regulating the speed of a car).

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You may have heard of the fantastic-sounding “dark side of the genome.” This poorly studied fraction of DNA, known as heterochromatin, makes up around half of your genetic material, and scientists are now starting to unravel its role in your cells.

For more than 50 years, scientists have puzzled over the genetic material contained in this “dark DNA.” But there’s a growing body of evidence showing that its proper functioning is critical for maintaining cells in a healthy state. Heterochromatin contains tens of thousands of units of dangerous DNA, known as “” (or TEs). TEs remain silently “buried” in heterochromatin in normal cells—but under many pathological conditions they can “wake up” and occasionally even “jump” into our regular genetic code.

And if that change benefits a cell? How wonderful! Transposable elements have been co-opted for new purposes through evolutionary history—for instance the RAG genes in and the genes required for driving the development of the placenta and mammalian evolution have been derived from TEs.

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Chewing gum releases hundreds of tiny plastic pieces straight into people’s mouths, researchers said on Tuesday, also warning of the pollution created by the rubber-based sweet.

The small study comes as researchers have increasingly been finding small shards of plastic called microplastics throughout the world, from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean – and even in the air we breathe.

They have also discovered microplastics riddled throughout human bodies – including inside our lungs, blood and brains – sparking fears about the potential effect this could be having on health.

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Natural biological tissues, like human skin, possess a unique combination of properties that synthetic materials struggle to replicate. Skin is strong yet flexible and, most impressively, capable of self-repair. Until now, scientists have only been able to replicate either the stiffness of biological tissues or their self-healing ability—but never both at once.

Hydrogels have many advantages, such as biocompatibility, nutrient transport, and ionic conductivity. These features make them promising materials for biomedical applications, but their mechanical limitations have kept them from reaching their full potential.

Most self-healing hydrogels are too soft, with a Young’s modulus below 100 kilopascals (kPa). Others that achieve stiffness above 100 megapascals (MPa) typically lose their ability to heal.

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