Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 6

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Researchers pinpoint key early-universe measurement with record precision

An international team, including researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has reached a major milestone in “precision cosmology” by measuring the amount of helium created in the universe’s first five minutes with unprecedented accuracy.

The series of five papers published in The Astrophysical Journal details how the team was able to leverage 130 hours of observation time on the Large Binocular Telescope to reduce the uncertainty of this fundamental cosmic value to just 0.5%—three times better than previous standards.

The study’s findings provide new clues about the beginning of the universe and help researchers better understand the fundamentals of physics. This experiment follows the tradition of testing the Standard Model in physics, which historically has led to technological breakthroughs.

An 18.7-foot drone boat has brought back its first seabed maps for an Italian survey crew

So companies have spent the last few years shrinking the boat and leaving the people on the beach. Most of the ones that reach the news are military, like the 17-foot aluminum drone boat that ran two weeks of a Navy electronic warfare exercise in Michigan. This one’s a commercial survey boat, which is a duller job and, I’d argue, a much bigger market.

Make the 👌 sign at a stranger

In parts of the world, you just called him an ass.

Same gesture. Same content. Opposite meaning.

I built a five-minute keynote around that gap because it quietly decides almost everything we fight about.

Why two people can look at the same war, the same election, the same climate data, and honestly see opposite things.

Why 200 pieces of worthless thrift store junk suddenly sold for many times their price after 200 strangers each did one small thing to them. Nothing was added. Nothing was repaired.

Why your brain is not the content machine you think it is, and what it was actually built to do.

Why #AI has all the data and still needs us, and what exactly it is borrowing every time you write a prompt.

Continue reading “Make the 👌 sign at a stranger” | >

Targeted nanoparticles strengthen anti-cancer immune responses in tumors

Adelaide University researchers have developed a new way of using mRNA technology to reprogram tumor-supporting immune cells and strengthen the body’s anti-cancer immune response.

The scientific team, spanning engineering, biomedical, oncology and immunology experts, has developed tiny, targeted particles that could help the immune system fight cancer by reprogramming immune cells within the tumor environment.

The findings have been published in Science Advances today.

Scientists melted a diamond and cracked a secret of ice giants

Ask a planetary scientist, and they will tell you that diamonds aren’t really all that uncommon. In fact, there are billions of tons of them hiding away in the deep interiors of planets in our solar system and beyond. The most enthusiastic will tell you about diamond rain—where a planet’s temperature and pressure are so great that diamond literally melts and forms a liquid, dropping toward the planet’s core.

The friction and heat these diamond raindrops generate are among the primary drivers of Neptune’s excess energy, which it then radiates back out into space. For the first time, the LLNL paper provides solid experimental data on the precise pressures and temperatures needed for such an awe-inspiring event to occur.

FDA authorizes first wearable to track both ketones and blood sugar

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday authorized the first wearable sensor that continuously tracks ketones—chemicals the body makes when it burns fat instead of sugar for fuel.

It is also the first device anywhere to monitor ketones and blood sugar at the same time, the FDA said.

When ketones climb too high, they can cause diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA. The American Diabetes Association warns that DKA can worsen within hours and lead to coma or death if it goes untreated.

Cardioprotective properties of empagliflozin and other SGLT2 inhibitors

In this Review, Zelniker and Braunwald summarize the cardioprotective effects of empagliflozin and other sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors and discuss the underlying mechanisms of these effects, including haemodynamic modulation, improved mitochondrial bioenergetics and activation of cytoprotective pathways that inhibit oxidative stress, inflammation and fibrosis.

HDAC10 promotes Th17 differentiation and IL17Adriven neutrophilic airway inflammation in severe asthma

To delineate HDAC10’s function in T cells, we engineered CD4+ T cell-specific Hdac10 knockout (KO) mice (Hdac10fl/fl-CD4Cre) by crossing Hdac10fl/fl mice with CD4Cre mice (Figure S2 A), which were genotyped using PCR (Figure S2 B). The deletion of HDAC10 in CD4+ T cells was confirmed by western blotting (WB) and RT-qPCR (Figures S2 C and S2D). We observed that Hdac10 absence in CD4+ T cells had no effects on T cell development and differentiation in thymus (Figure S2 E and S2F) and T cells composition, apoptosis, or proliferation in spleen and mesenteric lymph nodes (mLN) (Figures S2 G–S2R) at steady state. Collectively, these data demonstrate that HDAC10 is dispensable for steady-state T cell development.

To determine HDAC10’s role in CD4+ T cells during allergic airway inflammation, we employed a neutrophilic asthma mouse model. Hdac10fl/fl-CD4Cre asthmatic mice exhibited lowered airway resistance compared with Hdac10fl/fl asthmatic mice (Figure 2A). Total cell counts and the number of neutrophils in BALF were profoundly reduced in Hdac10fl/fl-CD4Cre asthmatic mice compared with the littermates (Figures 2B and 2C). Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining confirmed attenuated inflammation score in Hdac10fl/fl-CD4Cre asthmatic mice (Figures 2D and 2E). Peribronchial trichrome (Masson) and periodic acid Schiff (PAS) staining showed a reduction in collagen deposition and mucus production in Hdac10fl/fl-CD4Cre asthmatic mice (Figures 2F–2I). Furthermore, IHC for myeloperoxidase (MPO) showed reduced neutrophil infiltration in lung tissues of Hdac10fl/fl-CD4Cre asthmatic mice (Figures 2J and 2K).

/* */