Lifeboat Foundation

Two important developers of the celebrated Crispr gene-editing technology said they will make it easier for researchers to license their intellectual property, a move aimed at hastening innovation in the burgeoning field.

MilliporeSigma, the life-sciences tools division of German pharmaceutical giant Merck KGaA, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard said researchers will be able to get nonexclusive rights to patents held by both organizations for research purposes with a single license.

Companies will have to pay a licensing fee. Nonprofit and academic institutions will be permitted to license the patents for free, the organizations said in a news release on Thursday.

People with bones damaged by accidents, cancer or aging could one day benefit from bone grafts strengthened with chicken eggshells.

It’s been almost 42 years since NASA sent its two Voyager spacecraft on record-breaking missions, and both of the decades-old robots are still alive. Voyager 1 and 2 are 13.5 billion and 11.1 billion miles from Earth, respectively, and it’s up to NASA engineers to ensure they remain up and running for as long as possible.

As the agency reveals in a new update, mission managers recently decided to shut down one of the heaters on Voyager 2 which is designed to keep its cosmic ray subsystem (CRS) instrument at a comfortable temperature. This was done to conserve energy, but the CRS itself miraculously still works, despite dipping well below the temperatures it was tested at over four decades ago.

After a thunderous launch on a Saturn V rocket, a three day journey through the unforgiving environment of space and a daring descent in the Lunar Module, you’re here: standing on the Moon. Look around and take in the sights of the surface, just as Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt saw it almost 5 decades ago. #Apollo50th

NASA imagery experts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have “stitched together” images from the Apollo landing sites on the Moon for a 50^th anniversary reminder of what the 12 humans who walked on its surface experience visually.

Individual images taken by the Apollo astronauts were pulled together by NASA imagery specialist Warren Harold at Johnson, and the accuracy of the unique perspective they represent was verified by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, the only geologist to walk on the Moon.

Continue reading “NASA Releases Stunning Panoramas of Apollo Landing Sites for 50th Anniversary” »

Generating electricity from geothermal energy requires devices that can somehow make use of the heat within the Earth’s crust.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have published a new study that sheds light on skin rejuvenation, and it shares a link with what some cosmetic companies are doing using laser therapy.

A link between cosmetics and regeneration

During their study, the researchers found that the laser treatments used by cosmetic companies and retinoic acid, which is produced by the skin and sold commercially to treat wrinkles and sun damage, also target the same pathway. In addition, they also found that the activity of this pathway is increased in mice when they regenerate their hair follicles [1].

Meet Lizzy! Also known as Owl Kitty, she is the latest sensation that has hit Instagram and you can see why. Cats are well known for their skills at hunting, manipulating humans to get treats, and winding up the family dog. But did you know they are also excellent at acting? Well, some of them are.

Her cat dad, Thibault Charroppin, is a talented video editor and he decided to put his and her skills to good use by creating these hilarious movie clips. Her amazing performances have captured the hearts of her 445k Instagram following with some of the videos gathering over one million views.

We think she’s a star in the making, take a look and I’m sure that you’ll agree.

Researchers have created a new type of tiny 3D-printed robot that moves by harnessing vibration from piezoelectric actuators, ultrasound sources or even tiny speakers. Swarms of these “micro-bristle-bots” might work together to sense environmental changes, move materials—or perhaps one day repair injuries inside the human body.

The prototype robots respond to different vibration frequencies depending on their configurations, allowing researchers to control individual bots by adjusting the vibration. Approximately two millimeters long—about the size of the world’s smallest ant—the bots can cover four times their own length in a second despite the physical limitations of their small size.

Continue reading “Tiny vibration-powered robots the size of the world’s smallest ant” »

The first programmable memristor computer—not just a memristor array operated through an external computer—has been developed at the University of Michigan.

It could lead to the processing of artificial intelligence directly on small, energy-constrained devices such as smartphones and sensors. A smartphone AI processor would mean that voice commands would no longer have to be sent to the cloud for interpretation, speeding up response time.

“Everyone wants to put an AI processor on smartphones, but you don’t want your cell phone battery to drain very quickly,” said Wei Lu, U-M professor of electrical and computer engineering and senior author of the study in Nature Electronics.