Lifeboat Foundation

In 2016, a mysterious illness spread inside the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, the U.S. government’s most prominent research hospital, in Bethesda, Maryland. Patients were somehow being sickened by an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria that practically never causes disease in humans. Two years later, a new study seems to finally have confirmed where this bug likely came from: the hospital’s own plumbing.

During a six-month period in 2016, six patients came down with infections caused by Sphingomonas bacteria. Four of the patients had an antibiotic-resistant strain of a particular species, Sphingomonas koreensis, which was first discovered in some of Korea’s natural mineral water spots in the early 2000s.

German scientists have found a way to determine a chick’s sex while it is still an embryo. This could help end the culling of billions of male chicks.

Water flowing through the city’s pipes will generate electricity like a dam with none of the environmental consequences.

Great for a spaceship?

It cleans the air five times as efficiently as normal plants.

Uppsala University researchers have devised a new model for the universe – one that may solve the enigma of dark energy. Their new article, published in Physical Review Letters, proposes a new structural concept, including dark energy, for a universe that rides on an expanding bubble in an additional dimension.

Archaeologists in London have re-discovered a subterranean ice house near Regent’s Park. Dating back to the 1780s, the egg-shaped cavern was used to store ice, which was imported from as far away as Norway.

Made from brick, the structure would have been one of the largest of its kind at the time, according to the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA). The egg-shaped chamber measures 25 feet (7.5 meters) wide and 31 feet (9.5 meters) deep. Archaeologists with MOLA found the ice house, also known as an ice well, along with its entrance chamber and vaulted ante-chamber, during preparations for the development of the Regent’s Crescent residential project.

Quadcopters with thermal imagery cameras can help detect vicious mini-mines that often kill or maim children.

• By Jeremy Hsu on December 28, 2018

Humans have struggled with bed bugs for thousands of years. Despite our best efforts and technological advances, infestations are only getting worse.

Their pilot system absorbs excess nutrients, sequesters carbon dioxide and re-oxygenates the water, all while producing an efficient form of energy.