Lifeboat Foundation

For Karen Uhlenbeck, winner of the Abel Prize for math, a whimsical phenomenon offers a window onto higher dimensions.

Credit Credit Kym Cox/Science Source

Though signs point to bispecifics, like other immunotherapies, eliminating cancer in a small fraction of people, there are hints they could help many more.

Manfred Eigen, who has died aged 91, was a phenomenally versatile German chemist and physicist who founded two major scientific disciplines, first in chemical reaction kinetics and later in the development of a molecular approach to evolutionary biology.

He also co-founded two biotechnology companies – Evotec, now a €3.29 billion concern, and Direvo, which was acquired by Bayer Healthcare for $300 million in 2008.

The memory of older people has been returned to the state of someone in their 20s for the first time by applying electrical stimulation to the brain to reconnect faulty circuits.

Scientists at Boston University in the US have proven it is possible to restore working memory by ‘recoupling’ areas of the brain which have become out-of-sync as people grow older.

Short-term working memory is crucial for everyday life, storing information for around 10 — 15 seconds to allow problem solving, reasoning, planning and decision making, allowing someone, for example, to keep a telephone number in mind while writing it down.

Continue reading “Memory of older people returned to state of someone in their 20s” »

They could tell if blood was from a person with lung cancer.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has successfully completed its second close approach to the Sun.

At 6:40 p.m. EST on April 4, the spacecraft—traveling at 213,200 mph—passed within 15 million miles of our star, tying its own distance record as the closest-ever ship to the Sun.

The mission team at John’s Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., kept a close eye on the spacecraft via the Deep Space Network: They were tuned in for four hours before, during, and after approach, monitoring the probe’s health during the critical moments.

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Utilizing tape to repair or reinforce concrete structures may seem like some hillbilly fix-it joke, but in fact that’s just what fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets are used for. Now, scientists have developed what they say is a better FRP, that halves the number of people and amount of time required for application.

Scientists report the world’s first fully computer-generated genome of a living organism.

To do so, they used a new method that greatly simplifies the production of large DNA molecules containing many hundreds of genes. They report their work in PNAS.

All the genome sequences of organisms known throughout the world are stored in a database belonging to the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the United States. Now, the database has an additional entry: Caulobacter ethensis-2.0.

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Imagine Big Brother, but an entire town. Welcome to 2025, a show in Israel that explores the ideas of social currency and transparency–while watching its residents’ every move.

[Photo: courtesy of Keshet International].