Lifeboat Foundation

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Scientists from the University of Adelaide’s Research Centre for Infectious Diseases have developed a single vaccination approach to simultaneously combat influenza and pneumococcal infections, the world’s most deadly respiratory diseases.

The researchers say a single vaccination—combining vaccines from the new class of vaccines they are developing—will overcome the limitations of current influenza and pneumococcal vaccines used around the world.

Published today in the prestigious journal Nature Microbiology, they have shown that the new Influenza A virus vaccine under development (based on inactivated whole influenza virus) induces enhanced cross-protective immunity to different influenza strains, when it is co-administrated with the new class of pneumococcal vaccine.

Continue reading “New single vaccination approach to killer diseases” »

Google says its AI-based lung cancer screening tool can predict cancer and reduce false positives.

By Stephen Hsu

Lev Landau, a Nobelist and one of the fathers of a great school of Soviet physics, had a logarithmic scale for ranking theorists, from 1 to 5. A physicist in the first class had ten times the impact of someone in the second class, and so on. He modestly ranked himself as 2.5 until late in life, when he became a 2. In the first class were Heisenberg, Bohr, and Dirac among a few others.

SpaceX is already a household name around the globe, but there’s no shortage of other startups vying for their slice of the private spaceflight pie. Companies like the Jeff Bezos-led Blue Origin are doing some pretty impressive things, and a relatively new startup out of Japan just hit a big milestone as well.

The company, named Interstellar Technologies Inc, launched its MOMO-3 rocket into space over the weekend, reaching an altitude of over 100 kilometers before running out of steam and tumbling back down to Earth. The rocket, which is part of the company’s long-term plan of providing satellite launch services to commercial partners, is built using many parts that are readily available from a variety of manufacturers.

Concentrated Solar Power and the better-known photovoltaic panels — what’s the difference, and is one better than the other?

Move over Spot, there’s a new four-legged flipping robot in town. Boston Dynamic’s dog-like droid has some new, friendly competition in the form of a quadruped built by undergraduate students at Stanford University, who have made the designs open source with the aim of encouraging advances through low-cost robotics.

Is it me? Or am I the only one who wishes George Church was not so secretive? https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/05/rejuvenate-bio-using-g…dogs.html?

Harvard Genetics Giant Geroge Church and Noah Davidsohn, a former postdoc in his lab, have engaged in a secretive antiaging venture called Rejuvenate Bio. They are making old dogs new. They have conducted gene therapy on beagles and are currently advertising for Cavalier King Charles spaniels to use gene therapy to fix their hearts.

They have identified many other targets for gene-based interventions, studying a database of aging-related genes.

Continue reading “Rejuvenate Bio Using Gene Therapy Has Reversed Aging Effects in Mice and Dogs” »

Researchers from Washington State University and Ohio State University have developed a low-cost, easy way to make custom lenses that could help manufacturers avoid the expensive molds required for optical manufacturing.

Led by Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and graduate student, Mojtaba Falahati, the researchers developed a liquid mold from droplets that they can manipulate with magnets to create lenses in a variety of shapes and sizes. Their work is featured on the cover of the journal, Applied Physics Letters.

High-quality lenses are increasingly used in everything from cameras, to self-driving cars, and virtually all robotics, but the traditional molding and casting processes used in their manufacturing require sophisticated and expensive metal molds. So, manufacturers are mostly limited to mass producing one kind of lens.

Continue reading “Researchers develop new lens manufacturing technique” »