Lifeboat Foundation

Yes, black holes get all of the attention. They’re mysterious, they lurk in the shows of interstellar space, they break the laws of known physics, they can trap you forever, they have a cool-sounding and easy-to-understand name. They’ve got great branding.

But some things are even weirder and scarier than black holes. And what makes them weirder and scarier is that they’re weird and scary within the known laws of physics. Which means we understand them. Which means we can explain, in great and gruesome detail, just how awful they are.

Take, for example, the neutron star.

Continue reading “Say Hello To Neutron Stars, Your Worst Nightmare” »

UK-based design agency Layer has teamed up with Chinese electric car maker Nio to create a smart scooter that can learn where you want to go.

Once “Pal” learns your preferred routes, the smart scooter can autonomously take you to your destination. On its website, Layer calls the scooter a “near-future prototype” that “embraces AI and machine learning to offer flexible and convenient ‘last mile’ travel.”

It’s a stunning example of industrial design that could make short-distance travel much more convenient — whether it will ever actually be sold to the public or not.

Continue reading “Autonomous Scooter Uses AI to Learn Your Favorite Routes” »

Without ensuring high levels of accuracy, any proposed CRISPR gene therapy becomes a genetic crapshoot.

Now, a team from Duke University may have found a universal workaround—a trick to fundamentally boost CRISPR’s accuracy in almost all its forms. Published this month in Nature Biotechnology, the team’s study tweaked the design of guide RNAs, the indispensable targeting “blood hound” of the CRISPR duo that hunts down specific DNA sequences before its partner Cas makes the cut.

The upgrade is deceptively simple: tag a “locking” structure to one end of the guide RNA so that only the targeted DNA can unleash the power of the Cas scissors. Yet exactly because the tweak is so easy, guide RNA 2.0 can fundamentally tune the accuracy of multiple CRISPR systems—not just those relying on the classic Cas9, but also newer diagnostic systems that deploy Cas12a and other flavors—by as much as 200-fold.

Continue reading “A Deceptively Simple Tweak to CRISPR Makes It 50 Times More Accurate” »

For the first time ever, a drone delivered a human organ for transplant.

The doctor who performed the kidney transplant surgery explains why it’s such a big deal.

Jeff Bezos and his rocket company have an odd way of building anticipation.

Star Trek’s famous holodeck is a virtual reality stage that simulates any object in 3D as if they were real. However, 3D holographic projection has never been realized. A team of scientists from Bilkent University, Turkey, has now demonstrated the first realistic 3D holograms that can be viewed from any angle.

When it reopens in 2021, the Large Hadron collider should be able to detect rare particles with possible links to the world of dark matter and energy.

We need more than engineers and computer scientists shaping the future of AI.

In 2022, if all goes well, NASA will launch Psyche, a space probe intended to visit the asteroid of the same name (16 Psyche is its formal designation). It’s a particularly exciting mission given Psyche’s unique nature and highly unusual composition.

The asteroid belt is composed of three types of asteroid: C-type (carbonaceous, ~75 percent of all asteroids), S-type (silicate-rich, ~17 percent of asteroids) and M-type (metal-rich), which are roughly 10 percent of the total population. The numbers, in this case, don’t add up to 100 percent because we aren’t sure of the exact ratios. 16 Psyche is an M-type asteroid made of iron-nickel. What makes it unusual is that it’s believed to be the now-exposed core of a protoplanet. It’s also estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion dollars, if anybody has a towing hitch handy.

Continue reading “NASA Preps Mission to Most Interesting Asteroid in Our Solar System” »