Lifeboat Foundation

Different African killifish species vary extensively in their lifespans—from just a few months to several years. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne investigated how different lifespans have evolved in nature and discovered a fundamental mechanism by which detrimental mutations accumulate in the genome causing fish to age fast and become short-lived. In humans, mutations accumulate mainly in the genes that are active in old age.

Ultimately, things didn’t go as he had planned.

Talented wildlife photographer David Weiller has captured absolutely gorgeous footage of a beautiful markia hystrix, better known as a lichen katydid as it delicately walked along the branch of a tree covered in the distinctive white filamentous lichen for which the graceful insect was named. The insect-focused blog Nature and Moretells has more information on these beautiful creatures.

Katydids comprise a diverse group of insects particularly well adapted to survival in rainforest because of their exceptional camouflage. Most katydids are well camouflaged with brown or leaflike green markings. The Lichen Katydid, Markia hystrix (Orthoptera – Tettigoniidae), however, has one of the most incredible camouflages of all. It resembles the pale greenish-white lichens on which it lives in rainforest treetops. Not only does the color match the lichens, but the body and legs have a bizarre assortment of spines and points that blend well with lichens, in fact, so well that this insect is extremely difficult for predator to find.

Continue reading “Gorgeous Footage of a Camouflaged Lichen Katydid Delicately Walking Along Its Matching Branch” »

Last month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrapped up the installation of the Mars 2020 rover’s 2.1-meter-long robot arm. This is the most powerful arm ever installed on a Mars rover. Even though the Mars 2020 rover shares much of its design with Curiosity, the new arm was redesigned to be able to do much more complex science, drilling into rocks to collect samples that can be stored for later recovery.

JPL is well known for developing robots that do amazing work in incredibly distant and hostile environments. The Opportunity Mars rover, to name just one example, had a 90-day planned mission but remained operational for 5,498 days in a robot unfriendly place full of dust and wild temperature swings where even the most basic maintenance or repair is utterly impossible. (Its twin rover, Spirit, operated for 2,269 days.)

To learn more about the process behind designing robotic systems that are capable of feats like these, we talked with Matt Robinson, one of the engineers who designed the Mars 2020 rover’s new robot arm.

Russian biologist Denis Rebrikov plans to help five couples who are deaf try CRISPR gene-editing to avoid having a child that inherits the condition.

The Falcon Heavy payload fairing goes blue (da ba dee, da ba daa).

It’s found everywhere we know how to look, and just might be nature’s perfect fuel. Here’s how to harness it.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY — Cancer cells use a bizarre strategy to reproduce in a tumor’s low-energy environment; they mutilate their own mitochondria! Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) also know how this occurs, offering a promising new target for pancreatic cancer therapies.

Why would a cancer cell want to destroy its own functioning mitochondria? “It may seem pretty counterintuitive,” admits M.D.-Ph. D. student Brinda Alagesan, a member of Dr. David Tuveson’s lab at CSHL.

Continue reading “Cancer cell’s ‘self eating’ tactic may be its weakness” »

A team of MIT researchers has created a set of five parts to work in an array of ways and create different robots.