Lifeboat Foundation

Certain plants, insects, crustaceans and fish possess the uncanny ability to change the sex of their offspring before they are born. Mammals have never before demonstrated this genetic skill, until now.

A new Tel Aviv University study reveals a genetic system in mammals that enables two animals to mate and produce only females. A similar system based on identical principles would produce only males.

Research for the breakthrough study was led by Prof. Udi Qimron, Dr. Ido Yosef and Dr. Motti Gerlic and conducted by Dr. Liat Edry-Botzer, Rea Globus, Inbar Shlomovitz and Prof. Ariel Munitz, all of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine. The research was published on July 1 in EMBO Reports.

The hospital technology, typically used to identify human ailments, captured perhaps the world’s smallest magnetic resonance image.

I’m super excited to share this new Quartz article of mine, part of an ongoing personal debate about #transhumanism, #kids, and #education in my family:

But the age of downloading experience and expertise directly into our brain mainframe is coming. So is downloading professional training, including everything from becoming a police officer to practicing medicine or investigative journalism.

For many in the audience, I think that was the first time considering this could become a reality in our lifetime.

Continue reading “In 15 years we’ll be able to upload education to our brains. So can I stop saving for my kids’ college?” »

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Researchers at MIT in the US and DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Germany have developed a technology that could shrink particle accelerators by a factor of 100 or more. The basic building block of the accelerator uses high-frequency electromagnetic waves and is just 1.5 cm (0.6 in) long and 1 mm (0.04 in) thick, with this drastic size reduction potentially benefitting the fields of medicine, materials science and particle physics, among others.

But could the technology that gave us Spidergoat really create a superhero?

It’s called cognitive reserve, and it’s the phenomenon of the mind’s resistance to damage of the brain. It’s also the subject of not only an upcoming new data and biomedical sample resource, but also a related request for information (RFI) from the NIA and a first-of-its-kind workshop in September.

The push to study cognitive reserve in more depth across the scientific disciplines was born out of recommendations from the Cognitive Aging Summit III. Some 300 researchers attended the summit in Bethesda, Maryland in 2017. Coordinated by the NIA of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and supported by the McKnight Brain Research Foundation, the summit centered on age-related brain and cognitive changes, with a particular focus on issues related to cognitive resilience and reserve. According to the NIA, investigators from around the world delivered presentations and engaged in discussion “about some of the most important scientific questions relating to the biological, physiological, social and behavioral aspects of reserve and resilience in aging individuals. Attendees also discussed strategies to preserve and bolster cognitive function during aging.”

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found a gene that gives Salmonella resistance to antibiotics of last resort in a sample taken from a human patient in the U.S. The find is the first evidence that the gene mcr-3.1 has made its way into the U.S. from Asia.

The news comes as a new Salmonella outbreak has hit the US, leaving 62 people ill across eight states.

There are more than 2,500 known serotypes of Salmonella. In the U.S., Salmonella enterica 4,[5],12:i:- ST34 is responsible for a significant percentage of human illnesses. The drug resistance gene in question – known as mcr-3.1 – gives Salmonella resistance to colistin, the drug of last resort for treating infections caused by multidrug-resistant Salmonella.

Continue reading “NCSU scientists find antibiotic resistant Salmonella; new outbreak hits 62 people in US” »