Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Since being taken over by the Volkswagen Group in 1999, every modern Bugatti has been a heavy beast. Fast, thanks to their quad-turbo W-16s, but heavy. But Bugatti made its name not just on opulent GT cars, but lightweight race cars. Maybe modern Bugatti can do the same.

The Bolide is a concept for a modern Bugatti lightweight. It takes the all-wheel-drive drivetrain from the Chiron—albeit with a hotter engine tune—and marries it with a featherweight chassis. The projected numbers are hard to conceptualize. One-thousand eight-hundred twenty-five horsepower; a 2733-pound dry weight; a top speed well above 300 mph; a Le Mans lap of 3:07, and a Nürburgring lap of 5:23. So, faster than an LMP1 car and in the league of the Porsche 919 Evo. Madness.

“We asked ourselves how we could realize the mighty W-16 engine as a technical symbol of the brand in its purest form—with solely four wheels, engine, gearbox, steering wheel and, as the only luxury, two seats,” Bugatti boss Stephan Winkelmann said in a statement. “Important aspects of our considerations were fine-tuning our iconic powertrain without any limitations as regards the weight-to-power ratio”

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Back in 1991 on September 19th in the Austro-Italian Alps, an incredibly grim discovery was made by hikers Helmut and Erika Simon. While they were strolling across the mountainside they discovered what appeared to be a body that died recently still half-frozen from the bottom down. They called in the cops but after further analyzing it was uncovered that the cadaver was at the very least 4,000 years old. Nicknamed “Otzi the Iceman”, he was later on discovered to have died sometime around 3350 and 3100 BC making him around 5,300 years old, aka the oldest preserved human being ever discovered.

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Laser it o.o

Sixty Six million years ago a 14-kilometer long, Mount-Everest sized asteroid blasted a hole in the ground, when at the moment of impact, “the top of it might have still towered more than a mile above the cruising altitude of a 747,” writes Peter Brannen in Ends of the World. “In its nearly instantaneous descent, it compressed the air below it so violently that it briefly became several times hotter than the surface of the sun, hitting Earth with enough force enough to lift a mountain back into space at escape velocity, releasing the equivalent of 100 million megatons of TNT creating a 20-mile deep, 110-mile hole and sterilizing the remaining 170 million square miles of the ancient continent of Pangaea, killing virtually every species on Earth and, oddly, paving the way for the emergence of the human species.”

Magnified Preview of a Coming Attraction?

“It would have felt like the ground beneath your feet had become a ship in the middle of the ocean,” says earth and space science professor Mark Richards at the University of Washington. “Then rocks would have bombarded you from a boiling sky that was beginning to take on a hazy glow. It would have seemed like the end of the world.”

Continue reading ““2068” –Massive Asteroid Apophis on Path for Earth Impact” | >

NASA scientists identified a molecule in Titan’s atmosphere that has never been detected in any other atmosphere. In fact, many chemists have probably barely heard of it or know how to pronounce it: cyclopropenylidene, or C3H2. Scientists say that this simple carbon-based molecule may be a precursor to more complex compounds that could form or feed possible life on Titan.

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Researchers at Uppsala University, in Sweden, in collaboration with the SciLifeLab Drug Discovery and Development Platform, have taken “a large step forward” in developing a potential CAR T-cell therapy for glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer that is often difficult to treat.

Their project is now entering the final preclinical stage of development, according to the university. The goal is to start clinical studies within four years.

“Extremely few breakthroughs have been made around treating Glioblastoma,” Magnus Essand, professor of gene therapy at Uppsala, said in a press release.

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Summary: A mutation in a gene associated with circadian rhythm extends the clock period, causing people to stay up late at night and sleep late in the mornings.

Source: UC Santa Cruz

A new study by researchers at UC Santa Cruz shows how a genetic mutation throws off the timing of the biological clock, causing a common sleep syndrome called delayed sleep phase disorder.

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