Lifeboat Foundation

This device is 1,000 times more sensitive than other methods at detecting of CTCs in the blood of patients with melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer.

The Cytophone also has shown the ability to detect CTCs even when the tumor is not identifiable on the skin, either because too small (known as the T0 or TX stage) or after surgical removal, and then to destroy them without harming surrounding blood cells.

The team’s findings titled “In Vivo Liquid Biopsy using Cytophone Platform for Photoacoustic Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells in Melanoma Patients” were published in the June 12 issue of Science Translational Medicine, a prestigious scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Being a janitor is a dirty job, that just got a whole lot easier. #Robots

SOMATIC — commercial bathroom cleaning robotics
http://getsomatic.com

Continue reading “SOMATIC UPDATE: July 2019” »

Music as we know it may be on its way out, with bands and artists making way for personalized playlists and tunes generated by artificial intelligence for each individual listener.

AI killed the radio star.

Designed to explore a metal asteroid that could be the heart of a planet, the Psyche mission is readying for a 2022 launch. After extensive review, NASA Headquarters in Washington has approved the mission to begin the final design and fabrication phase, otherwise known as Phase C. This is when the Psyche team finalizes the system design, develops detailed plans and procedures for the spacecraft and science mission, and completes both assembly and testing of the spacecraft and its subsystems.

“The Psyche team is not only elated that we have the go-ahead for Phase C, more importantly we are ready,” said Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe. “With the transition into this new mission phase, we are one big step closer to uncovering the secrets of Psyche, a giant mysterious metallic asteroid, and that means the world to us.”

The mission still has three more phases to clear. Phase D, which will begin sometime in early 2021, includes final spacecraft assembly and testing, along with the August 2022 launch. Phase E, which begins soon after Psyche hits the vacuum of space, covers the mission’s deep-space operations and science collection. Finally, Phase F occurs after the mission has completed its science operations; it includes both decommissioning the spacecraft and archiving engineering and science data.

Almost everyone who has thought seriously about this has said that more automation is likely to lead to more inequality.

The robots. They’re coming for your jobs. All of you.

Continue reading “The robots are coming for your job, too” »

SAN ANTONIO — April 8, 2019 — A team of Southwest Research Institute and General Electric (GE) engineers have designed, built and tested the highest temperature supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) turbine in the world. The turbine was developed with $6.8 million of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), in addition to $3 million from commercial partners GE Research, Thar Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Aramco Services Company and Navy Nuclear Laboratory. Additionally, the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program provided financial support and extended the test program to validate advanced thermal seals.

Copyright © 2019 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

A doctor who treated survivors of a mysterious nuclear accident in Russia was told that the radioactive isotope cesium-137 must have made its way into their body due to “Fukushima crabs,” according to CNN.

The August 8 incident at the Nyonoksa testing range on a platform in the White Sea has not yet been fully explained, but at least seven individuals have been reported dead after what nuclear agency Rosatom described as an accident involving an “isotope power source for a liquid-fuelled rocket engine.” It later emerged that the incident was serious enough that Russian officials in Arkhangelsk wavered over the issue of whether to issue evacuation orders for nearby towns. While several of the personnel deaths were due to an onsite explosion, the Washington Post reported this week (citing the Novaya Gazeta newspaper) that two individuals had died of radiation exposure before they could be taken to Moscow for treatment.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the Rockefeller University say they have uncovered the basic mechanism of Piezo proteins, which function as sensors in the body for mechanical stimuli such as touch, bladder fullness, and blood pressure. The discovery opens up many new paths of investigation into the roles of Piezo proteins in human diseases and potential new therapeutic strategies, according to the scientists.

In the study (“Force-induced conformational changes in PIEZO1”), published in Nature, the team used advanced microscopy techniques to image the Piezo1 protein at rest and during the application of mechanical forces. They confirmed this complex protein’s structure and showed essentially how it can convert mechanical stimuli into an electrical signal.

“Piezo1 is a mechanosensitive channel that converts applied force into electrical signals. Partial molecular structures show that Piezo1 is a bowl-shaped trimer with extended arms. Here we use cryo-electron microscopy to show that Piezo1 adopts different degrees of curvature in lipid vesicles of different sizes. We also use high-speed atomic force microscopy to analyze the deformability of Piezo1 under force in membranes on a mica surface and show that Piezo1 can be flattened reversibly into the membrane plane,” the investigators wrote.

Bob Wright, a Trump friend and ex-NBC chair, is one of the proposal’s backers.