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Researchers at Stanford University have developed a CRISPR-based “lab on a chip” to detect COVID-19, and are working with automakers at Ford to develop their prototype into a market-ready product.

This could provide an automated, hand-held device designed to deliver a coronavirus test result anywhere within 30 minutes.

In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the test spotted active infections quickly and cheaply, using electric fields to purify fluids from a nasal swab sample and drive DNA-cutting reagents within the system’s tiny passages.

Richard Branson, the thrill-seeking British billionaire, founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 on the promise that a privately developed spacecraft would make it possible for hundreds of people to become astronauts, no NASA training required. And if a 2,500-mile-per-hour ride to the edge of space sounded off-putting, Branson also pledged to take the journey himself before letting paying customers on board.

Branson is the only one among the group of the so-called space barons, the group of space-loving billionaires that includes Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who has publicly pledged to take a ride in the near future aboard a spacecraft he has bankrolled.

Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, is working on a competing suborbital space tourism rocket. Musk’s SpaceX, however, is focused on transporting astronauts and perhaps one day tourists on days-long missions to Earth’s orbit.

Summary: DMT, a natural component of ayahuasca tea, promotes neurogenesis, a new study reports. Researchers found DMT was capable of activating neural stem cells and promoted the formation of new neurons.

Source: Complutense University of Madrid.

One of the main natural components of ayahuasca tea, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), promotes neurogenesis (the formation of new neurons) according to research led by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

Dr David Sinclair (Harvard) : “I want to mention one thing that nobody except the insiders would know, is that I was at a conference a couple weeks ago with all 15 of us talking about this reprogramming work, and a lot of it is not published yet. I’ve seen things that make my head spin, the ability to turn back aging in a whole animal,…”


On October 27, 2020, Glaucoma Research Foundation presented the 2020 Weston Lecture featuring a talk by world-renowned Harvard Medical School genetics researcher and best-selling author David Sinclair, PhD, AO discussing longevity research and glaucoma.

Photographer Andrew McCarthy is known for shooting incredible astrophotography images from his backyard in Sacramento, California. He recently added two more jaw-dropping images to his portfolio: ultra-clear views of the International Space Station (ISS) crossing the Sun and Moon.

Given that the ISS whizzes across the Sun and Moon in less than a second from the perspective of someone on Earth, capturing a clear view of the transit is not an easy thing to do.

McCarthy first managed to capture the ISS transiting the Sun on Tuesday, October 6th.

Professor Emeritus Julian Beinart, an internationally celebrated architect and longtime MIT professor known for his highly influential course on urbanism, died on Oct. 2 due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 88.

“Julian Beinart’s best ideals were the best ideals of this department,” says Nicholas de Monchaux, head of the MIT Department of Architecture. “A tireless student of form, he believed architecture’s role in the city also made it inextricable from politics. His legacy — in South Africa, the U.S., and beyond — also reminds us that the professional obligation of architects to the city stands alongside the civic demands on every one of us, architect or not.”

“Julian’s strengths came from an old-school faith,” says Arindam Dutta, professor of architectural history at MIT. “He believed cities were somehow designed artifacts, and in being so, they could be designed better. It was his task to train designers for this job.”