Lifeboat Foundation

Today, we would like to highlight a recent study in which researchers show a way to selectively accelerate bone regeneration. They have achieved this by delivering Jagged-1 to injuries instead of the bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) that have been traditionally used.

What is jagged-1?

Jagged-1 is an osteoinductive protein that activates the Notch signaling pathway, which regulates bone healing at the site of injury. Osteoinduction is the process by which osteogenesis is induced.

The world of an atom is one of random chaos and heat. At room temperatures, a cloud of atoms is a frenzied mess, with atoms zipping past each other and colliding, constantly changing their direction and speed.

Such random motions can be slowed, and even stopped entirely, by drastically cooling the atoms. At a hair above absolute zero, previously frenetic atoms morph into an almost zombie-like state, moving as one wave-like formation, in a quantum form of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

Since the first Bose-Einstein condensates were successfully produced in 1995 by researchers in Colorado and by Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues at MIT, scientists have been observing their strange quantum properties in order to gain insight into a number of phenomena, including magnetism and superconductivity. But cooling atoms into condensates is slow and inefficient, and more than 99 percent of the atoms in the original cloud are lost in the process.

Continue reading “Physicists develop faster way to make Bose-Einstein condensates” »

Using a type of graphene called Graphair, scientists from Australia have created a water filter that can make highly polluted seawater drinkable after just one pass.

The technology could be used to cheaply provide safe drinking water to regions of the world without access to it.

“Almost a third of the world’s population, some 2.1 billion people, don’t have clean and safe drinking water,” said lead author Dong Han Seo.

Continue reading “This New Graphene Invention Makes Filthy Seawater Drinkable in One Simple Step” »

When the Chinese government released its Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Plan in July 2017, it crisply articulated the country’s ambition: to become the “world’s primary AI innovation center” by 2030. That headline goal turned heads within the global tech elite. Longtime Google CEO Eric Schmidt cited the plan as proof that China threatened to overtake the United States in AI. High-ranking American military leaders and AI entrepreneurs held it up as evidence that the United States was falling behind in the “space race” of this century. In December 2017, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology followed up with a “three-year action plan,” a translation of which was recently released by New America’s DigiChina initiative.

But how do these plans actually work? There’s a tendency to place this AI mobilization within China’s longstanding tradition of centrally planned engineering achievements that have wowed the world. The rapid build-out of the country’s bullet train network stands as a monument to the power of combining central planning and deep pockets: in the span of a decade, the Chinese central government spent around $360 billion building 13,670 miles of high-speed rail (HSR) track, more mileage than the rest of the world combined.

But putting the AI plan in this tradition can be misleading. While it follows this model in form (ambitious goal set by the central government), it differs in function (what will actually drive the transformation). The HSR network was dreamed up and drawn up by central government officials, and largely executed by state-owned enterprises. In AI, the real energy is and will be with private technology companies, and to a lesser extent academia.

Artificial Intelligence has come a long way in the last decade and still, you have to ask; Where Are We Today? In reviewing the Brief History of AI or Artificial Intelligence we see such things as Humans VS Machines Chess Champions, but the current research goes way beyond that.

The applications and uses for artificially intelligent machines are endless. Prediction software can help us in medicine, environmental monitoring, weather warnings and even streamlining our transport systems, monetary economic flows and assist us in protecting our nation. The road ahead for artificial intelligence is more like the runway ahead and you can expect us to blast off into the future within the next five years.

For instance, if you are concerned that your CEO is making too much money in your corporation, you need not worry much longer because very soon they will be replaced with an artificial business tool; that’s right, meet your new CEO.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Possible Concepts — Are You Ready for the Future” »

In just 32 years, humans won’t speak to each other and will instead communicate through a worldwide consciousness instead – using just our brains — new research shows.

According to artificial intelligence research, this “hybrid intelligence” will understand the feelings of the people connected to it, and use their minds to help it grow.

Called HIBA, which stands for Hybrid Intelligence Biometric Avatar, it will take on the personas of its users, exchange information with them and become part of the very fabric of the human brain.

Continue reading “Worldwide AI consciousness may replace human speech” »

A new ultrathin elastic display that fits snugly on the skin can show the moving waveform of an electrocardiogram recorded by a breathable, on-skin electrode sensor. Combined with a wireless communication module, this integrated biomedical sensor system, called “skin electronics,” can transmit biometric data to the cloud.

This latest research by a Japanese academic-industrial collaboration, led by Professor Takao Someya at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering, is slated for a news briefing and talk at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas on February 17th.

Thanks to advances in semiconductor technology, wearable devices can now monitor health by measuring vital signs or taking an electrocardiogram, and then transmitting the data wirelessly to a smartphone. The readings or electrocardiogram waveforms can be displayed on the screen in real time, or sent to the cloud or a memory device where the information is stored.

Continue reading “Japanese researchers develop ultrathin, highly elastic skin display” »

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have developed a CRISPR technique to efficiently correct the function of heart cells in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). It involves making a single cut at strategic points along patient’s DNA, with the team claiming their new approach has the potential to correct most of the 3,000 mutations that cause DMD.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is one of nine neuromuscular disorders that affect the strength of muscles and nerves, specifically caused by defects in the gene that makes the dystrophin protein. Typically, one in every 3,500 boys born will be diagnosed with the disease at around three to four years of age, with their ability to walk gradually decreasing until they reach young adolescence. Most patients live until their 30s, but will require a wheelchair and respirator as the muscles in vital organs deteriorate over time.

Networks that harness entanglement and teleportation could enable leaps in security, computing and science.

• By Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine on February 16, 2018