Lifeboat Foundation

For every NFT sold, there are four more that weren’t giving buyers ample choice on what they wanted to pick and at what price.

As many as 95 percent of the non-fungible tokens or NFTs created during the bull run of cryptocurrencies just a couple of years ago are now worthless, according to a new report from a website dappGambl that reviews crypto products.

NFTs were all over the news in 2021–22 when celebrities splurged millions of dollars to buy images features Bored Apes and a digital copy of events such as the completion of the code of the World Wide Web or the first tweet from Jack Dorsey on the platform that has now become X.

Mosquitoes can taste your blood using unique sensory abilities. Can we use that to keep them off us?

A new artificial intelligence program is helping scientists speedily sift through thousands of data sets and millions of papers to home in on genes that underly disease, drastically condensing a search process that once took months.

Using computer software, scientists can scan entire genomes, or an organism’s full set of DNA, of mice that model human diseases. The goal: to identify genetic mutations that cause those diseases and open new doors for scientists to better harness genetics to develop disease treatments, said Gary Peltz, MD, PhD, professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford Medicine.

But to do that, scientists must search through massive sets of genomic data, which yields more false positives than researchers care to admit. It’s also time intensive. Peltz wanted to make the genetic discovery process easier, faster and more accurate.

The genetic code of a rare form of kidney cancer, called reninoma, has been studied for the first time. In a paper, published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Great Ormond Street Hospital and The Royal Free Hospital also revealed a new drug target that could serve as an alternative treatment if surgery is not recommended.

There are around 100 cases of reninoma reported to date worldwide, and it is among the rarest of tumors in humans. Although it can usually be cured with surgery, it can cause severe hypertension or it can spread and develop into metastases. There are no existing medical treatments for reninoma and management involves surgery alone. Until now, it had been unknown what genetic error causes reninoma.

In the new study, a collaboration between the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Great Ormond Street Hospital and The Royal Free Hospital, researchers found that there is a specific error in the genetic code of a known cancer gene, NOTCH1, that is behind the development of this rare cancer.

Elon Musk claims Neuralink could produce Star Wars-style robotic hands, and help save the world from AI.

Surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital have invented a new kind of surgical robot that is extremely adept at handling brain operations.

Kool99/iStock.

“We needed to use basically hollow arms,” DuPont explained to the magazine.

Continue reading “This surgical robot can remove brain tumors from children” »

Call it the big bang for bug-sized robots.

Cornell researchers combined soft microactuators with high-energy-density chemical fuel to create an insect-scale quadrupedal robot that is powered by combustion and can outrace, outlift, outflex and outleap its electric-driven competitors.

Microsoft 365 running on microreactors, what could possibly go wrong?

YouTuber Lucas VRTech has designed and built a pair of finger-tracking VR gloves using just $22 in materials — and he’s released all the details on the build so others can make their own.

The challenge: We use our hands to manipulate objects in the real world, but in VR, users typically have to use controllers with buttons and joysticks.

That breaks some of the immersion, limiting the use of VR for not only gaming, but also applications like therapy and job training.