Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 8986

X3 is a powerful ion thruster that could one day propel humans beyond Earth. The thruster was successfully tested few months ago, and could be selected by NASA as a crucial component of propulsion system for future Mars missions.

X3 is a Hall-effect thruster—a type of ion thruster in which the propellant (most commonly xenon) is accelerated by electric and magnetic fields. Such thrusters are safer and more fuel efficient than engines used in traditional chemical rockets. However, they currently offer relatively low thrust and acceleration. Therefore, engineers are still working to make them more powerful.

Nearly 31.5 inches (80 centimeters) in diameter and weighing around 507 lbs. (230 kilograms), X3 is a three-channel nested thruster designed to operate at power levels up to 200 kW. The thruster is jointly developed by the University of Michigan (U-M), NASA and the U.S. Air Force. The project is funded through NASA’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership (NextSTEP).

Read more | >

This 2-part series on “Regenerative Medicine” shows how it is possible to replace lost or damaged body parts by using human cells. Surviving a disease such as cancer can leave scars, both physical and emotional. Whether it’s due to a mastectomy or radiation therapy, scars are hard to avoid. Fat-derived stem cells can help patients return close to their original state, providing peace of mind. We also look at the benefits of using oil to balance the amount of fat in a body.

Read more | >

If you’ve been a grunt, then you probably have a love-hate relationship with body armor. You love having it in a firefight — it can save your life by stopping or slowing bullets and fragments — but you hate how heavy it is — it’s often around 25 pounds for the armor and outer tactical vest (more if you add the plate inserts to stop up to 7.62 mm rounds).

It’s bulky — and you really can’t move as well in it. In fact, in one firefight, a medic removed his body armor to reach wounded allies, earning a Distinguished Service Cross.

Imagine if the body armor were just another part of your clothes, like a light jacket. Imagine not having to haul around those extra 30 pounds. Well, troops may not have to imagine much longer. According to a release from the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York, body armor could soon have the thickness of just two atoms. This is due to how graphene acts under certain conditions.

Read more | >

Physicists in the US have discovered a material that could qualify as the first known three-dimensional example of a quantum spin liquid — an exotic theoretical phase of matter.

Quantum spin liquids were first predicted by scientists back in the 1970s. While researchers have studied them for decades, these phases largely remain a theoretical concept, although that’s not the same as saying they don’t exist.

To confuse you further, quantum spin liquids aren’t actually liquids, but a kind of solid, magnetic matter that exhibits a strange form of behaviour at the subatomic particle level, specifically in terms of its electrons.

Read more | >

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), the major stem cells for cell therapy, have been used in the clinic for approximately 10 years. From animal models to clinical trials, MSCs have afforded promise in the treatment of numerous diseases, mainly tissue injury and immune disorders. In this review, we summarize the recent opinions on methods, timing and cell sources for MSC administration in clinical applications, and provide an overview of mechanisms that are significant in MSC-mediated therapies. Although MSCs for cell therapy have been shown to be safe and effective, there are still challenges that need to be tackled before their wide application in the clinic.

Keywords: mesenchymal stem cell, cell therapy, tissue injury, degenerative disease, immune disorder, graft-versus-host disease, immunomodulation, trophic factor.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells with the ability to renew themselves for long periods without significant changes in their general properties. They can differentiate into various specialized cell types under certain physiological or experimental conditions. Cell therapy is a sub-type of regenerative medicine. Cell therapy based on stem cells describes the process of introducing stem cells into tissue to treat a disease with or without the addition of gene therapy. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have been widely used for allogeneic cell therapy. The successful isolation of pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells from the inner cell mass of early embryos has provided a powerful tool for biological research. ES cells can give rise to almost all cell lineages and are the most promising cells for regenerative medicine.

Read more | >