Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, a human organ has been successfully transported between medical facilities by a drone. A team of scientists from the University of Maryland Baltimore used a research-qualified donor kidney as a test subject to shuffle back and forth on a remotely piloted hexacopter, testing the organ for changes throughout 14 flights. Its longest journey was 3 miles at a maximum speed of 40 mph, the duration and distance of which were suitable for demonstrating transportation between inner city hospitals.

Currently, organs have few options for transportation, and the process for moving them involves a network of couriers and commercial aircraft that are dependent on schedules and traffic patterns. When normal commercial schedules aren’t available, the cost of private charter transportation can be prohibitive. Even when cost isn’t a factor, the time involved in the process altogether can prevent a transplant from being completed as organs are very sensitive cargo.

To best ensure a successful transplant procedure, organs must be moved quickly between the donor and the recipient. The amount of time an organ can spend chilled after removal and when it’s warmed up and the blood supply restored, called cold ischemia time (CIT), is very limited. Some organs, such as the heart, only have as few as 4 hours available to be transported before they are no longer eligible for transplant. Up against airplane flight availability and traffic patterns, an improvement like what drone transportation could provide might have life saving implications.

Continue reading “Drone successfully flies human organ transplant between hospitals” »

Quasars powered by supermassive black holes have been unexpectedly vanishing. Scientists have started to figure out why.

A remarkable machine propelled by ionic wind could signal a future with cleaner aeroplanes.

Practice makes perfect when sending a robot on the perilous journey to the red planet.

Insulin will be beyond the reach of around half of the 79 million people expected to be living with diabetes in 12 years time, a new study predicts.

Researchers fly the first atmospheric aircraft to use space-proven ionic thrust technology.

• By Angus Chen on November 21, 2018

Turkish-born astrophysicist Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil shares her name with a rare double ring of stars more than 350 light-years away.

We wanted to bring your attention to a recent publication that discusses the topic of cellular senescence and the contributions of senescent cells to aging and disease [1].

What is perhaps the most interesting part of this paper is the section covering the potential future directions that researchers may take in managing senescent cell populations in order to mitigate age-related disease.

The author writes not only about the direct destruction of senescent cells via senolytic drugs but also about the modulation of the harmful secretions these cells produce, which are called the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP).

Continue reading “Senescent Cell Therapies and Future Directions” »

Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. It’s perhaps the best known law of physics, and Guido Fetta thinks he’s found a way around it.

According to classical physics, in order for something—like a spaceship—to move, conservation of momentum requires that it has to exert a force on something else. A person in roller skates, for example, pushes off against a wall; a rocket accelerates upward by propelling high-velocity combusted fuel downward. In practice, this means that space vessels like satellites and space stations have to carry up to half their weight in propellant just to stay in orbit. That bulks up their cost and reduces their useful lifetime.