Lifeboat Foundation

Stem cells are a promising experimental treatment for a variety of diseases. Now researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that transplanting neurons grown from stem cells into the brains of mice with Parkinson’s disease repaired the damaged brain circuits, improving the animals’ motor skills.

In people afflicted with Parkinson’s, neurons that produce dopamine begin to break down and die. The disease gradually presents as tremors, involuntary movements, and trouble with walking, speaking and other actions. While it currently can’t be cured, studies are suggesting new ways to slow progression and reduce severity of symptoms through new drugs or repurposed old ones, deep brain stimulation or probiotic treatments.

But an emerging and potentially ground-breaking treatment involves stem cells. In several studies, researchers have used stem cells to grow new dopamine-producing neurons, and then transplant them into animals. And now the UW-Madison team’s work has shown that doing so can help restore brain circuits damaged by Parkinson’s.

Researchers have shown how to effectively transform one material into another using a finely shaped laser pulse.

A new bipartisan #congressionalreport calls for the #DefenseDepartment to get a lot more serious about the race to acquire #artificialintelligence and #autonomouscapabilities, modeling efforts to become dominant in these spheres after the “Manhattan Project” initiative to test and develop nuclear weapons in the 1940s.

On Tuesday, the House Armed Services Committee released the results of a yearlong review, co-led by Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., aimed at assessing #U.S. #militarycapabilities and preparedness to meet current threats. The 87-page #Future of Defense Task Force Report contains some expected findings — #China and #Russia are identified as the top security threats to the U.S. and modernization is described as an urgent need — but there are surprising points of emphasis.

A bipartisan congressional report calls for the DoD to get more serious about the race to acquire artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities, modeling efforts to become dominant in these spheres after the “Manhattan Project” initiative to test and develop nuclear weapons in the 1940s.

Continue reading “Congress Wants a ‘Manhattan Project’ for Military Artificial Intelligence” »

A two-in-one software module could improve many applications built on top of popular deep learning architectures.

The future of Transportation Earth 2 Eath suborbital crafts.

SpaceX also has big ambitions for Starship to send passengers around the world.
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Continue reading “How SpaceX Will Use Starship for Earth to Earth Travel” »

Gryphon provides digital engineering, analytics, cyber and cloud solutions to U.S. security organizations. It was awarded a $14million DARPA task order to support the development and demonstration of an uranium-based Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) System.

The system is a part of the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program and will enable the U.S. military to operate spacecraft in cislunar space, Gryphon said. The cislunar space is the region outside the Earth’s atmosphere and just beyond the Moon’s orbit.

“A successfully demonstrated NTP system will provide a leap-ahead in space propulsion capability, allowing agile and rapid transit over vast distances as compared to present propulsion approaches,” said Gryphon’s Chief Engineer Dr. Tabitha Dodson.

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India is not proposing the same open-access terms for articles that its researchers publish. Instead, the researchers advising the government want authors to archive their accepted manuscripts in public online repositories. This is often described as ‘green’ open access, which differs from the ‘gold’ route of publishing in open-access journals.

Researchers will also recommend an open-access policy that promotes research being shared in online repositories.

Summary: Novel technology allows researchers to understand how a fruit fly’s brain processes color.

Source: University of Minnesota

Through the development of new technology, University of Minnesota researchers have developed a method that allows scientists to understand how a fruit fly’s brain responds to seeing color. Prior to this, being able to determine how a brain responds to color was limited to humans and animals with slower visual systems. A fruit fly, when compared to a human, has a visual system that is five times faster. Some predatory insects see ten times faster than humans.

SpaceX has a busy schedule of Dragon missions carrying cargo and crew to the ISS through next year, with some use of reused spacecraft.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX is preparing for a busy schedule of Dragon missions carrying cargo and crew to the International Space Station through next year, a manifest that will make at least some use of reused spacecraft.

At a Sept. 29 NASA briefing, Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, said that schedule of missions means there will be at least one Dragon spacecraft, and sometimes two, docked to the station continuously through the end of 2021 after the launch of the Crew-1 Crew Dragon mission, currently scheduled for Oct. 31.

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