Lifeboat Foundation

Stroke is the leading cause of serious long-term disability in the US with approximately 17 million individuals experiencing it each year. About 8 out of 10 stroke survivors suffer from “hemiparesis”, a paralysis that typically impacts the limbs and facial muscles on one side of their bodies, and often causes severe difficulties walking, a loss of balance with an increased risk of falling, as well as muscle fatigue that quickly sets in during exertions. Oftentimes, these impairments also make it impossible for them to perform basic everyday activities.

To allow stroke patients to recover, many rehabilitation centers have looked to robotic exoskeletons. But although there are now a range of exciting devices that are enabling people to walk again who initially were utterly unable to do so, there remains significant active research trying to understand how to best apply wearable robotics for rehabilitation after stroke. Despite the promise, recent clinical practice guidelines now even recommend against the use of robotic therapies when the goal is to improve walking speed or distance.

In 2017, a multidisciplinary team of mechanical and electrical engineers, apparel designers, and neurorehabilitation experts at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Boston University’s (BU) College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College showed that an ankle-assisting soft robotic exosuit, tethered to an external battery and motor, was able to significantly improve biomechanical gait functions in stroke patients when worn while walking on a treadmill. The cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary team effort was led by Wyss faculty members Conor Walsh, Ph.D. and Lou Awad, P.T., D.P.T., Ph.D, together with Terry Ellis, Ph.D., P.T., N.C.S. from BU.

A new study, based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASAs Chandra X-ray observatories, sheds new light on a three million light-year long bridge of hot gas linking two galaxy clusters, whose shape is being bent by the mighty activity of a nearby supermassive black hole.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the Universe held together by gravity. They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, vast amounts of multi-million-degree gas that shines brightly in X-rays, and enormous reservoirs of unseen dark matter.

The team saw some early successes regarding movement — the initial goal of the BCI — allowing Burkhart to press buttons along the neck of a “Guitar Hero” controller.

But returning touch to his hand was a much more daunting task. By using a simple vibration device or “wearable haptic system,” Burkhart was able to tell if he was touching an object or not without seeing it.

“It’s definitely strange,” Burkhart told Wired. “It’s still not normal, but it’s definitely much better than not having any sensory information going back to my body.”

(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is seeking almost $656,000 in new funding from California in the midst of the billionaire’s battle over whether Tesla Inc. should be reopening its plant in the state.

SpaceX’s request for funds to train existing workers and hire new ones will go before the state’s Employment Training Panel on May 15, one week after the county that’s home to Tesla’s factory sought to block the facility from resuming operations. The company sued the next day, and its chief executive officer threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters, future programs and potentially its manufacturing out of the state.

Musk, 48, appears to be prevailing in the stand-off. He tweeted Monday that Tesla was restarting production in spite of Alameda County’s order and said that if anyone is arrested, he wanted to be the only one.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA has developed a first-of-its-kind roadmap of how human skeletal muscle develops, including the formation of muscle stem cells.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Stem Cell, identified various cell types present in skeletal muscle tissues, from early embryonic development all the way to adulthood. Focusing on muscle progenitor cells, which contribute to muscle formation before birth, and muscle stem cells, which contribute to muscle formation after birth and to regeneration from injury throughout life, the group mapped out how the cells’ gene networks—which genes are active and inactive—change as the cells mature.

The roadmap is critical for researchers who aim to develop muscle stem cells in the lab that can be used in regenerative cell therapies for devastating muscle diseases, including muscular dystrophies, and sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength.

Overview global economy.

America has dominated global finance for decades. But could covid-19 tip the balance of financial power in China’s favour?

Continue reading “How covid-19 could change the financial world order | The Economist” »

On May 12th, SpaceX released an online simulator that allows internet users to try to dock the company’s newly developed Crew Dragon with the International Space Station.

In the movie “Transformers,” cars morph into robots, jets or a variety of machinery. A similar concept inspired a group of researchers to combine gas foaming, which is a blend of chemicals that induces gas bubbling, and 3D molding technologies to quickly transform electrospun membranes into complex 3D shapes for biomedical applications.

In Applied Physics Reviews, the group reports on its new approach that demonstrates significant improvements in speed and quality compared with other methods. The work is also the first successful demonstration of formation of 3D neural tissue constructs with an ordered structure through differentiation of human neural progenitor/stem cells on these transformed 3D nanofiber scaffolds.

“Electrospinning is a technology to produce nanofiber membranes,” said co-author Jingwei Xie, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “The physics principle behind it involves applying an electrical force to overcome the surface tension of a solution to elongate a solution jet into continuous and ultrafine fibers after solvent evaporation.”

Some days I feel like I’m living under a rock. How did I miss the development of a superfast nanobot that is controlled by exterior electric fields? This is an extraordinary development.

Piecework at the nano assembly line.