Lifeboat Foundation

A new spin on the magnetic compression of plasmas could improve materials science, nuclear fusion research, X-ray generation and laboratory astrophysics, research led by the University of Michigan suggests.

The study shows that a spring-shaped magnetic field reduces the amount of plasma that slips out between the magnetic field lines.

Known as the fourth state of matter, plasma is a gas so hot that electrons rip free of their atoms. Researchers use magnetic compression to study extreme plasma states in which the density is high enough for quantum mechanical effects to become important. Such states occur naturally inside stars and gas giant planets due to compression from gravity.

Circa 2017

This bubbly concept car protects more than the driver; its next-generation rubber exterior can save pedestrians, too.

Continue reading “The Shapeshifting Car Of The Future Has Airbags On The Outside” »

CHINA’S increasingly belligerent behaviour on the world stage poses a major challenge for NATO, with Taiwan a looming flashpoint, a new report has warned.

Cooling rubidium atoms and slowing them down makes them behave like a mirror that could one day be used to explore the quantum world.

Circa 2012

Big science meets applied engineering. CERN, renowned for smashing protons, culling antimatter and the like, has put its accelerating processes to use making and commercializing solar panels.

Scattered across the world are a number of bewildering ‘mystery spots’ that appear to defy gravity — places where cars seem to drift uphill, and cyclists struggle to push themselves downhill.

Also known as gravity hills, these bizarre natural phenomena can be found in places like Confusion Hill in California and Magnetic Hill in Canada, and while they’ve inspired rumours of witchcraft and giant magnets buried in the countryside, the actual scientific explanation will have you questioning every slope you encounter from here on out.

Continue reading “These Gravity-Defying Hills Are One of The Strangest Natural Phenomena We’ve Seen” »

Under certain circumstances in patients, the human immune system can spin out of control and become highly toxic, resulting in cytokine release syndrome (CRS). CRS has been observed in certain autoimmune diseases (Grom et al. 2016), during highly infectious diseases like COVID-19 (Zhang et al. 2020), and following immune-enhancing treatments that include monoclonal or bispecific antibodies, or CAR T therapies (Shimabukuro-Vornhagen et al. 2018). CRS, which can be deadly, has been notoriously difficult to study and for which to develop novel treatments. However, encouraging new data indicates that many aspects of human CRS can be modeled in immunodeficient NSG mice engrafted with human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). This model provides hope that new immuno-modulatory therapies can be safely developed and tested before clinical trials.

Figure 1. TGN1412 analogue (anti-CD28 superagonist) mediated CRS dose response. Human PBMC engrafted NSG™-SGM3 recipient mice (stock# 013062) were treated with anti-CD28 mAb positive control or TGN1412 analogue at low, medium or high dosing. Human IFN- ɣ, TNF-α, and IL-6 were measured quantitatively at 1, 2, 4, and 6 hours post treatment. Increasing doses of TGN1412 analogue showed a progressively increased cytokine release response.

The next question was whether PBMC donor-specific differences in drug response could be observed, mimicking what is observed clinically. Cohorts of mice were engrafted with nine different human PBMC donors, and each donor cohort was tested with PBS, OKT3, or anti-CD28. In mice treated with OKT3, 7 out of 9 donors displayed a severe IFN-ɣ CRS response, 5 showed a severe IL-6 response and all exhibited a strong TNF-α response (figure 2). Donors G and H showed a milder response. When treated with anti-CD28, 2 out of 9 donors showed a severe IFN-ɣ response. Collectively, the data described in the experiments above demonstrate that specific mAbs are capable of initiating a CRS response in this model and that the response is both dose and PBMC donor dependent.

Continue reading “Battling COVID-19; A New Model of Cytokine Release Syndrome” »

The certificates do not require a college degree, can be completed in 3 to 6 months and are offered through an online learning platform.

Today, Google announced three new online certificate programs in data analytics, project management and user experience design.

The certificates are created and taught by Google employees, do not require a college degree, can be completed in three to six months and are offered through the online learning platform Coursera. Google says it will consider all of its certificates as the equivalent of a four-year college degree for related roles at the company.

Continue reading “Google announces 100,000 scholarships for online certificates in data analytics, project management and UX” »

AMD is bringing its acclaimed Ryzen Threadripper processor lineup to the workstation PC market, starting with a new Lenovo ThinkStation model that can be equipped with 64 processor cores.

The new Ryzen Threadripper Pro chips, unveiled on Tuesday, will mark the first time in three years that workstation customers can look to AMD as an alternative to Intel’s Xeon CPUs. The current Xeon W offerings for workstations max out at 28 cores, while the new flagship Threadripper Pro 3995WX has 64 cores and 128 processor threads, which AMD says is the highest number of cores and threads available in a workstation PC.

The ThinkStation P620, the first PC to offer the new Threadripper Pro, will start shipping to customers in September for a starting price of $4,599. When equipped with the 64-core chip, it will offer better performance for some processing tasks—including rendering a 3D image with Maxon’s Cinebench R20 app—than a workstation equipped with two of the 28-core Xeon W chips, AMD says.