Lifeboat Foundation

Abstract constellations of thought. Visualize your ideas and texts as a network, generate interesting insights along the way.

By Helen Thomson

Old age may have its downsides, but losing the ability to grow new brain cells isn’t one: healthy people in their seventies seem to produce just as many new neurons as teenagers.

The discovery overturns a decades-old theory about how our brains age and could provide clues as to how we can keep our minds sharper for longer.

Continue reading “Old people can produce as many new brain cells as teenagers” »

Australia’s New South Wales scientists have adapted single atom technology to build 3D silicon quantum chips – with precise interlayer alignment and highly accurate measurement of spin states. The 3D architecture is considered a major step in the development of a blueprint to build a large-scale quantum computer.

They aligned the different layers in their 3D device with nanometer precision – and showed they could read out qubit states with what’s called ‘single shot’, i.e. within one single measurement, with very high fidelity.

Continue reading “3D Atomic Quantum Chips and Advance to Eventual Large Scale Quantum Tech” »

Absorbent polymer sops up chemotherapy drugs from bloodstream after treatment.

Washington State University researchers have developed a novel way to deliver drugs and therapies into cells at the nanoscale without causing toxic effects that have stymied other such efforts.

UK engineers complete the build of a novel software-defined telecoms satellite called Quantum.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a revolutionary tool in part because of its versatility: created by bacteria to chew up viruses, it works equally well in human cells to do all sorts of genetic tricks, including cutting and pasting DNA, making pinpoint mutations and activating or inactivating a gene.

A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time, according to a new paper in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal. They did this by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm.

Spotless surfaces in hospitals can hide bacteria that rarely cause problems for healthy people but pose a serious threat to people with weakened immune systems. Acinetobacter baumannii causes life-threatening lung and bloodstream infections in hospitalized people. Such infections are among the most difficult to treat because these bacteria have evolved to withstand most antibiotics.