Lifeboat Foundation

A young Star Wars fan and amputee has received an R2-D2 bionic limb and a phone call from Luke Skywalker himself.

Bella Tadlock, from Tallahassee, Florida, raised almost 14,000 dollars (about £11,000) for her bionic hero arm, created by Bristol company Open Bionics.

The 11-year-old started a fundraiser that first caught the eye of actor Mark Hamill in November — Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, retweeted her appeal to his 3.6 million followers.

What is dark energy? More is unknown than is known — we know how much there is, and we know some of its properties; other than that, dark energy is a mystery — but an important one. Roughly 70% of the Universe is made of dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest — everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter since it is a small fraction of the Universe!

A gene has been found that controls the conversion of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii into a form that chronically infects the human brain. The discovery could aid the design of therapies to eliminate this currently untreatable infection. A transcription factor controls Toxoplasma gondii differentiation.

CRISPR Used To Edit Genes Inside A Patient With A Rare Form Of Blindness : Shots — Health News Doctors used CRISPR to edit genes of cells inside a patient’s eye, hoping to restore vision to a person blinded by a rare genetic disorder. A similar strategy might work for some brain diseases.

What is your feline trying to tell you?

KABUL — The United States conducted an airstrike on Wednesday against Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, a U.S. forces spokesman said, the first such attack since a troop withdrawal agreement was signed between the two sides on Saturday.

The Taliban fighters were “were actively attacking an [Afghan National Security Forces] checkpoint. This was a defensive strike to disrupt the attack,” said Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan in a tweet.

He said Washington was committed to peace but would defend Afghan forces if needed.

SAN FRANCISCO – PredaSAR, a Florida startup led by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Roger Teague, raised $25 million in seed funding for its plan to build a constellation of at least 44 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites.

“The Defense Department has been after a space-based radar solution for many years,” Teague told SpaceNews. “There’s a need for a SAR moving-target indicator… I believe there is going to be strong market demand.”

PredaSAR was founded in 2019 by Marc Bell, an entrepreneur and investor who is the chairman and co-founder of Terran Orbital, which owns Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. Bell now serves as PredaSAR’s chairman. Before closing the seed funding round, PredaSAR hired Tyvak to build its first two satellites, Bell said.

Honeywell will put trapped ion computing on Microsoft’s quantum cloud.

One year ago today, SpaceX took a giant leap forward for private spaceflight with the launch of its first Crew Dragon to the International Space Station and the company is celebrating that feat with an epic new video.

The new video, which SpaceX shared on YouTube and Twitter, shows the company’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on the Demo-1 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, an uncrewed test flight, launched a spacesuit-clad dummy named Ripley and an adorable Celestial Buddy Earth plush toy to the station.