Lifeboat Foundation

Ow they are coming for you.

You can add giant swarms of flying ants to your 2020 scary-sounding insects Bingo card alongside murder hornets and hordes of noisy cicadas.

The UK’s Met Office shared radar imagery that showed the ants flying over the southeast part of the country.

“It’s not raining in London, Kent or Sussex, but our radar says otherwise,” it said in a tweet on Friday.

While the issue of aging and DNA methylation is an area that is well-studied, modifications of DNA to reduce or reverse aging remains an area in need of exploration. Studies in mice utilizing interventions such as caloric restriction and the drug rapamycin have reversed and/or slowed age-related DNA methylation by up to 40%. Understanding the cross-species aging based on similar DNA behaviors may open more doors to investigating therapeutics to minimize lifetime risks of age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease and cancers.

A recent study published in Cell Systems sought to debunk one of the most common myths about dogs: much to our surprise, one “dog year” does not equal seven “human years.” As described in a recent Forbes piece by Sara Tabin, the relationship between dog years and human years is not linear, but is based on a logarithmic formula. The research group, based at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), created the formula as follows:

Age in human years = 16 ln(age in dog years) +31. (ln means “natural logarithm).

Continue reading “The Answer To Anti-Aging Therapies May Lie In Your Aging Dog” »

The Fermilab magnet team has done it again. After setting a world record for an accelerator magnet in 2019, they have broken it a year later.

In a June 2020 test, a demonstrator magnet designed and built by the magnet team at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab achieved a 14.5-tesla field strength for an accelerator steering dipole magnet, surpassing their previous record of 14.1 T.

This test is an important step toward addressing the demanding magnet requirements of a future hadron collider under discussion in the particle physics community. If built, such a collider would be four times larger and almost eight times more powerful than the 17-mile-circumference Large Hadron Collider at the European laboratory CERN, which operates at a steering field of 7.8 T. Current future-collider designs estimate the field strength for a steering magnet — the magnet responsible for bending particle beams around a curve — to be up to 16 T.

New research shows that neuroscientists can identify us from our distinct brain signatures, much like a thumbprint. Will this procedure be used someday to improve hiring procedures, reduce absenteeism or predict job performance, productivity and career success?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KxGWye97ytk

Scientists and historians working at McMaster University, the Mütter Museum and the University of Sydney have pieced together the genomes of old viruses that were used as vaccination strains during and after the American Civil War ultimately leading to the eradication of smallpox.

Smallpox was one of the most devastating viral diseases ever to strike humankind, killing about three out of every 10 people who were infected. Those who survived were frequently disabled, blind or disfigured.

Continue reading “Scientists Trace Origin of Smallpox Vaccine Strains Used in the Civil War” »

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This week, Jupiter and Saturn appear at their very best, with Jupiter having just arrived at opposition July 14 and Saturn to reach its own opposition July 20.

The first Arab space mission to Mars, an unmanned probe dubbed “Hope”, blasted off from Japan on Monday, in a bid to reveal more about the atmosphere of the Red Planet.

The Japanese rocket carrying the probe developed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan right on schedule at 6:58 am local time (2158 GMT Sunday).

The launch of the probe, known as “Al-Amal” in Arabic, had twice been delayed because of bad weather, but the Monday liftoff appeared smooth and successful.

Geneva (AFP)

Astrophysicists on Monday published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than four million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars.

The efforts of hundreds of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a “complete story of the expansion of the universe”, said Will Percival of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.