Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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“We were able to show that there is only a single type of microglia in the brain that exist in multiple flavours,” says project head Prof. Dr. Marco Prinz, medical director of the Institute of Neuropathology at the Medical Center — University of Freiburg. “These immune cells are very versatile all-rounders, not specialists, as has been the textbook opinion up to now,” sums up Prof. Prinz.

A team of researchers under the direction of the Medical Center — University of Freiburg has created an entirely new map of the brain’s own immune system in humans and mice. The scientists succeeded in demonstrating for the first time ever that the phagocytes in the brain, the so-called microglia, all have the same core signature but adopt in different ways depending on their function. It was previously assumed that these are different types of microglia. The discovery, made by means of a new, high-resolution method for analyzing single cells, is important for the understanding of brain diseases. Furthermore, the researchers from Freiburg, Göttingen, Berlin, Bochum, Essen, and Ghent (Belgium) demonstrated in detail how the human immune system in the brain changes in the course of multiple sclerosis (MS), which is significant for future therapeutic approaches. The study was published on 14. February 2019 in the journal Nature.

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Eight-year-old George Madden is wandering the “Moving Beyond Earth” gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on a blustery day in February. Clad in an orange spacesuit, he is examining the artifacts—the main engine from the Space Shuttle, flight suits, a rotating chair from a 1992 Spacelab mission—and lingering near a display about space travel. He gazes up at words printed in large white text on the wall: “When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.”

His father, 52-year-old Michael Madden, will soon make history as one of the first 1,000 people to travel to space. Madden is a paid customer of Virgin Galactic, one of six “future astronauts” in the crowd who will be among the first wave of passengers to be carried into space by SpaceShipTwo when the company begins its commercial flights, maybe as soon as before the end of the year. Madden and his son, along with other space aficionados, are in the museum for a donation ceremony. Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, and Enrico Palermo, president of the Spaceship Company, are turning over the hybrid engine that powered Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, on its first space flight on December 13, 2018.

The crowd hushes as Ellen Stofan, the director of the museum, steps to the podium. “SpaceShipTwo’s rocket motor is an exciting addition to the national collection of milestone spaceflight artifacts,” she says. “It is a unique piece of history that represents a new era in space travel and is sure to inspire the next generation of innovators and explorers.”

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Not all damaged cells die. Some stick around as senescent cells, unable to divide but still able to produce chemical signals — and they could play a major role in the battle against aging.

“It is thought that these cells and the substances they produce are involved in the process of aging,” longevity researcher Nicolas Musi from the University of Texas at Austin told MIT Technology Review.

“The idea is that removing these cells may be beneficial to promote healthy aging and also to prevent diseases of aging.”

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For 15 years, scientists have tried to exploit the “miracle material” graphene to produce nanoscale electronics. On paper, graphene should be great for just that: it is ultra-thin—only one atom thick and therefore two-dimensional, it is excellent for conducting electrical current, and holds great promise for future forms of electronics that are faster and more energy efficient. In addition, graphene consists of carbon atoms – of which we have an unlimited supply.

In theory, graphene can be altered to perform many different tasks within e.g. electronics, photonics or sensors simply by cutting tiny patterns in it, as this fundamentally alters its . One “simple” task, which has turned out to be surprisingly difficult, is to induce a band gap—which is crucial for making transistors and optoelectronic devices. However, since graphene is only an atom thick all of the atoms are important and even tiny irregularities in the pattern can destroy its properties.

“Graphene is a fantastic material, which I think will play a crucial role in making new nanoscale electronics. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to engineer the electrical properties,” says Peter Bøggild, professor atDTU Physics.

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