Lifeboat Foundation

No vaccines exist that protect people against infections by coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, or the ones that cause SARS and MERS. As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc, many labs around the world have developed a laser-like focus on understanding the virus and finding the best strategy for stopping it.

This week in mBio, a journal of the American Society of Microbiology, a team of interdisciplinary researchers describes a promising vaccine candidate against the MERS virus. Since the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak began in 2012, more than 850 people have died, and studies suggest the virus has a case fatality rate of more than 30%.

In the new paper, the researchers suggest that the approach they took for a MERS virus vaccine may also work against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine’s delivery method is an RNA virus called parainfluenza virus 5 (PIV5), which is believed to cause a condition known as kennel cough in dogs but appears harmless to people. The researchers added an extra gene to the virus so that infected cells would produce the S, or spike, glycoprotein known to be involved in MERS infections.

The satellite captured a Pakistani Navy hovercraft approaching Manora beach. This is a convenient location, right next to a a major Marines base known as PNS Qasim. From other sources we know that the hovercraft was carrying both Pakistani and Chinese marines. The troops ran down the ramp and across the beach side by side, a formation designed for the cameras. In combat conditions the troops would probably not be deployed in this manner.

The joint exercise was not just for the cameras however. It underscores the close defense relationship which extends into industry. China is a major arms supplier to Pakistan, and has been helping better establish local shipbuilding. The exercise in question, Sea Guardian 2020, took place in January.

(8 April 2020 — ESA) Astronomers have assumed for decades that the Universe is expanding at the same rate in all directions. A new study based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton, NASA’s Chandra and the German-led ROSAT X-ray observatories suggests this key premise of cosmology might be wrong.

Konstantinos Migkas, a PhD researcher in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Bonn, Germany, and his supervisor Thomas Reiprich originally set out to verify a new method that would enable astronomers to test the so-called isotropy hypothesis. According to this assumption, the Universe has, despite some local differences, the same properties in each direction on the large scale.

Widely accepted as a consequence of well-established fundamental physics, the hypothesis has been supported by observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). A direct remnant of the Big Bang, the CMB reflects the state of the Universe as it was in its infancy, at only 380 000 years of age. The CMB’s uniform distribution in the sky suggests that in those early days the Universe must have been expanding rapidly and at the same rate in all directions.

Presence and location of gray matter in the brain may indicate whether acupuncture is an effective method of treating migraine without aura, according to a study published in Frontiers in Neurology.

Presence and location of gray matter (GM) in the brain may indicate whether acupuncture is an effective method of treating migraine without aura (MwoA), according to a study published in Frontiers in Neurology.

In many countries acupuncture is used as a treatment for migraine, but there is insufficient evidence to claim it is effective for all migraineurs. According to researchers, “about 50% of patients do not achieve substantial improvement after acupuncture.” However, determining which patients may benefit from acupuncture will prevent nonresponders from undergoing time-consuming and unsuccessful treatment.

NASA has released a detailed plan for an ‘Artemis Base Camp’ that will be home to first woman and next man on the moon in 2024.

The 13-page document highlights elements such as a terrain vehicle for transporting the astronauts around the landing zone, a permanent habit and a mobility platform to travel across the lunar surface.

Continue reading “NASA reveals its plan for ‘Artemis Base Camp’ on the moon” »

These days, neural networks, deep learning and all types of sensors allow AI to be used in healthcare, to operate self-driving cars and to tweak our photos on Instagram.

In the #future, the ability to learn, to emulate the creative process and to self-organize may give rise to previously unimagined opportunities and unprecedented threats.

Continue reading “The Future is Now | Life after Artificial Intelligence” »

Massaging key parts of the brain with a pulsating magnetic field can do wonders for some living with chronic depression. For others, it falls well short of promising a life without a debilitating mood disorder.

The overwhelmingly positive results of an unblinded experiment on a small group of volunteers suggests some tweaks to the protocol might improve the odds of it working for people who have failed to find a solution elsewhere.

Researchers from Stanford and Palo Alto University in the US have shown in an open study on 21 people that administering five times the overall dosage of pulses across a higher number of daily sessions not only seems safe, but could achieve much better results.

Three people will launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) in the predawn hours Thursday (April 9), and you can watch their departure from Earth live.

As we enter our third decade in the 21st century, it seems appropriate to reflect on the ways technology developed and note the breakthroughs that were achieved in the last 10 years.

The 2010s saw IBM’s Watson win a game of Jeopardy, ushering in mainstream awareness of machine learning, along with DeepMind’s AlphaGO becoming the world’s Go champion. It was the decade that industrial tools like drones, 3D printers, genetic sequencing, and virtual reality (VR) all became consumer products. And it was a decade in which some alarming trends related to surveillance, targeted misinformation, and deepfakes came online.

For better or worse, the past decade was a breathtaking era in human history in which the idea of exponential growth in information technologies powered by computation became a mainstream concept.