Lifeboat Foundation

Soviet physicist Lev Landau is being honoured with a Google Doodle on what would have been his 111^th birthday.

Research at the University of Arkansas on membrane proteins could lead to better development and testing of drugs. Chemistry researchers studied a type of membrane protein that expels drugs from a cell, contributing to drug resistance. They found that the lipid composition of the cell membrane has an effect on the behavior of these proteins, which should be taken into account when testing drugs that target membrane proteins. Their results are available open-access in the journal ACS Central Science.

Open-ended style of learning does better than traditional methods.

“It is a sad story, but unfortunately it is also the story of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers,” said one archaeologist.

By Dan Vergano

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Continue reading “Here’s How A Soldier’s Face Was Rebuilt 200 Years After He Lost A Saber Fight” »

Scientists at Oregon State University have determined why foreshocks are such common indicators of large and deadly earthquakes.

Scientists involved in groundbreaking new research at Oregon State University have determined that major earthquakes are often preceded by “silent slips” and have finally discovered why foreshocks are common indicators of large and deadly earthquakes.

According to Oregon Live, major earthquakes normally follow “shallow mantle creep” and “seismic swarms,” and researchers are much clearer in their understanding now of the “silent slip,” which is what happens when different sections of the Earth’s crust can be observed shifting along the fault line. However, when this occurs, no seismic activity is ever detected, which has been confusing to researchers in the past.

Continue reading “New Research Has Revealed That Major Earthquakes Are Often Preceded By ‘Silent Slips’” »

A team of researchers based at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh have recreated for the first time the famous Draupner freak wave measured in the North Sea in 1995.

An old thought experiment now appears in a new light. In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger formulated a thought experiment designed to capture the paradoxical nature of quantum physics. A group of researchers led by Gerhard Rempe, Director of the Department of Quantum Dynamics at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, has now realized an optical version of Schrödinger’s thought experiment in the laboratory. In this instance, pulses of laser light play the role of the cat. The insights gained from the project open up new prospects for enhanced control of optical states, that can in the future be used for quantum communications.

Aeronautics giant Airbus today announced that it is creating a global competition to encourage developers to find ways quantum computing can be applied to aircraft design.

Quantum computing is one of many next-generation computing architectures being explored as engineers worry that traditional computing is reaching its physical limits.

Computers today process information using bits, either 0s or 1s, stored in electrical circuits made up of transistors. Quantum computers harness the power of quantum systems, such as atoms that can simultaneously exist in multiple states and can be used as “quantum bits” or “qubits.” These can theoretically handle far more complex calculations.

Continue reading “Airbus wants to reinvent aircraft design with quantum computing challenge” »

London scientists are seeking to create a “Trojan horse” version of the flu virus to target advanced prostate cancer. A team at Barts Cancer Institute has won £245,000 from Prostate Cancer UK to continue pioneering research into a disease that kills 11,500 men a year. Early trials on mice have shown that the flu virus can be re-engineered to kill prostate cancer cells that have “metastasised” and spread away from the main tumour.