Lifeboat Foundation

Silke Weinfurtner is trying to build the universe from scratch. In a physics lab at the University of Nottingham—close to the Sherwood forest of legendary English outlaw Robin Hood—she and her colleagues will work with a huge superconducting coil magnet, 1 meter across. Inside, there’s a small pool of liquid, whose gentle ripples stand to mimic the matter fluctuations that gave rise to the structures we observe in the cosmos.

Weinfurtner isn’t an evil genius hell-bent on creating a world of her own to rule. She just wants to understand the origins of the one we already have.

The Big Bang is by far the most popular model of our universe’s beginnings, but even its fans disagree about how it happened. The theory depends on the existence of a hypothetical quantum field that stretched the universe ultra-rapidly and uniformly in all directions, expanding it by a huge factor in a fraction of a second: a process dubbed inflation. But that inflation or the field responsible for it—the inflaton—is impossible to prove directly. Which is why Weinfurtner wants to mimic it in a lab.

Continue reading “To Understand the Universe, Physicists Are Building Their Own” »

As of this month, the US satellite Vanguard I has spent 60 years in orbit and it remains the oldest man-made object in space. Vanguard I was the fourth satellite launched into orbit — following the USSR’s Sputnik I and II and the US’ Explorer I. But none of the first three remain in orbit today and though Vanguard I can’t send signals back to Earth anymore, it’s still providing valuable data for researchers.

The first two attempts to launch the first Vanguard satellite failed, but on March 17th, 1958, Vanguard I was successfully placed into orbit. It was manufactured by the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), which published a lookback this week honoring the satellite’s 60 years of service, and was part of a project that aimed to study Earth’s geophysical phenomena from space. The Vanguard Project was established as part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical Year — a multi-national effort to study geophysical phenomena during a period of time when the sun’s sunspot activity would be at a peak.

Continue reading “Vanguard I has spent six decades in orbit, more than any other craft” »

What this means

“If we look at our best numerical simulations of a magnetic field reversal, this is the type of pattern we see right before a reversal,” says Dr. Tarduno. “We don’t know if the current [anomaly] will lead to a full reversal.” If the anomaly continues to grow, the patch in the outer core under Africa could be the trigger to a full pole reversal.

If we look at our best numerical simulations of a magnetic field reversal, this is the type of pattern we see right before a reversal.

Continue reading “Something unusual is happening with our planet’s magnetic field” »

Hey, remember that dog-like robot, SpotMini, that Boston Dynamics showed off last week, the one that opened a door for its robot friend? Well, the company just dropped a new video starring the canine contraption. In this week’s episode, a human with a hockey stick does everything in his power to stop the robot from opening the door, including tugging on the machine, which struggles in an … unsettling manner. But the ambush doesn’t work. The dogbot wins and gets through the door anyway.

The most subtle detail here is also the most impressive: The robot is doing almost all of this autonomously, at least according to the video’s description. Boston Dynamics is a notoriously tight-lipped company, so just the few sentences it provided with this clip is a relative gold mine. That information describes how a human handler drove the bot up to the door, then commanded it to proceed. The rest you can see for yourself. As SpotMini grips the handle and the human tries to shut the door, it braces itself and tugs harder—all on its own. As the human grabs a tether on its back and pulls it back violently, the robot stammers and wobbles and breaks free—still, of its own algorithmic volition.

Continue reading “Watch a Human Try to Fight Off That Door-Opening Robot Dog” »

A group of engineers have proposed a novel approach to computing: computers made of billionth-of-a-meter-sized mechanical elements. Their idea combines the modern field of nanoscience with the mechanical engineering principles used to design the earliest computers.

Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and NC State have created an injectable gel-like scaffold that can hold combination #chemo-immunotherapeutic drugs and deliver them locally to tumors in a sequential manner. The results in animal models so far suggest this approach could one day ramp up therapeutic benefits for patients bearing tumors or after removal of the primary tumors.

The research, published in Science Translational Medicine, focused on two specific types of melanoma and breast #cancer, but this approach could work in other tissue types. Also, the research showed that this localized delivery of combination therapy significantly inhibited the recurrence of cancer after the primary tumor was surgically removed.

“We’ve created a simple method to use #chemotherapy while leveraging the biology of the #tumor and our natural defense against foreign invaders to beat back tumor development with limited side effects,” said senior author Zhen Gu, PhD, associate professor in the joint UNC/NCSU Biomedical Engineering Department. “We have a lot more work to do before human clinical trials, but we think this approach holds great promise.”

Continue reading “New therapeutic gel shows promise against cancerous tumors!” »

While bee populations dwindle at an alarming rate, Walmart made a surprising move in filing a patent for robot bees to act as agricultural pollinators.

It’s not uncommon for the press to get hyped up before the long process of refinement and FDA approval. Let’s hope that this one moves along quickly — while demonstrating safety and efficacy.

https://www.troab.com/worlds-first-bionic-kidney-set-replace…-two-years

Parte 3 of the SENS Research Foundation interview by LEAF is out!

Welcome to part three and the final part of our SENS Undoing Aging 2018 interview; we have a few more scientific questions today for Aubrey and his team as well as questions about future developments and taking new therapies to market.

Dr. de Grey, has your position on the relevance of telomere attrition changed since you first devised SENS, especially in the light of the recent results with fibrosis and your involvement with AgeX?

Continue reading “Undoing Aging With Aubrey de Grey Part Three” »