Lifeboat Foundation

DARPA-funded chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have devised a way to rapidly synthesize and screen millions of novel proteins that could be used as drugs against Ebola and other viruses. The team supports DARPA’s Fold F(x) synthetic chemistry program.

MIT News Office • Building 11–400 Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Cambridge, MA 02139–4307.

Certain plants, insects, crustaceans and fish possess the uncanny ability to change the sex of their offspring before they are born. Mammals have never before demonstrated this genetic skill, until now.

A new Tel Aviv University study reveals a genetic system in mammals that enables two animals to mate and produce only females. A similar system based on identical principles would produce only males.

Research for the breakthrough study was led by Prof. Udi Qimron, Dr. Ido Yosef and Dr. Motti Gerlic and conducted by Dr. Liat Edry-Botzer, Rea Globus, Inbar Shlomovitz and Prof. Ariel Munitz, all of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine. The research was published on July 1 in EMBO Reports.

At three o’clock in the afternoon on September 4, 1882, the electrical age began. The Edison Illuminating Company switched on its Pearl Street power plant, and a network of copper wires came alive, delivering current to a few dozen buildings in the surrounding neighborhood.

Electroactive bacteria were running current through “wires” long before humans learned the trick.

Humanity first went to the moon to make a point. Now it’s time to overcome rivalries and pitch in together.

• By Clara Moskowitz

The former NASA astronaut has told of a conversation he had with the renowned scientist.

The hospital technology, typically used to identify human ailments, captured perhaps the world’s smallest magnetic resonance image.

UK Space Agency has confirmed that it is drafting regulations for Europe’s first spaceport set to be built in Cornwall…

The UK Space Agency has confirmed that it’s currently drawing up rules for Europe’s first ever spaceport that is set to be built in Cornwall. Flights could be operating as early as the 2020s.

Continue reading “UK Space Agency drawing up rules for Cornwall spaceport” »

The log, which is 16m long and weighs 60 tonnes, was found during excavation for a new geothermal power station near Ngāwhā Springs earlier this year.

Last week, scientists completed a radiometric analysis to reveal the kauri stood between 41,000 and 42,500 years ago – making it the only tree found anywhere in the world that was alive during a mysterious shift in the world’s magnetic field.

The link between music and better academic performance is studied in a new research study.