Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: A new robotic system can identify volatile organic compounds associated with diseases by analyzing bodily emissions.

Source: Tsinghua University Press.

Scientists are working on diagnostic techniques that could sniff out chemical compounds from breath, sweat, tears and other bodily emissions and that act as fingerprints of thousands of diseases.

The theory, design, and operation of a nuclear propulsion engine advantages are explained verses conventional chemical rockets such as the Saturn V.

Blockchain is a digital technology that allows a secure and decentralized record of transactions that is increasingly used for everything from cryptocurrencies to artwork. But Yale researchers have found a new use for blockchain: they’ve leveraged the technology to give individuals control of their own genomes.

Their findings are published June 29 in the journal Genome Biology.

“Our primary goal is to give ownership of genomic data back to the individual,” said senior author Mark Gerstein, the Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics and professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, of computer science, and of statistics and data science.

To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can “live” outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to try to detect a particle that has been speculated but not spotted. If found, the theorized “mirror neutron”—a dark-matter twin to the neutron—could explain a discrepancy between answers from two types of neutron lifetime experiments and provide the first observation of dark matter.

“Dark matter remains one of the most important and puzzling questions in science—clear evidence we don’t understand all matter in nature,” said ORNL’s Leah Broussard, who led the study published in Physical Review Letters.

Continue reading “Physicists confront the neutron lifetime puzzle” »

Photosynthesis has evolved in plants for millions of years to turn water, carbon dioxide, and the energy from sunlight into plant biomass and the foods we eat. This process, however, is very inefficient, with only about 1% of the energy found in sunlight ending up in the plant. Scientists at UC Riverside and the University of Delaware have found a way to bypass the need for biological photosynthesis altogether and create food independent of sunlight by using artificial photosynthesis.

The research, published in Nature Food, uses a two-step electrocatalytic process to convert carbon dioxide, electricity, and water into acetate, the form of the main component of vinegar. Food-producing organisms then consume acetate in the dark to grow. Combined with solar panels to generate the electricity to power the electrocatalysis, this hybrid organic-inorganic system could increase the conversion efficiency of sunlight into food, up to 18 times more efficient for some foods.

“With our approach we sought to identify a new way of producing food that could break through the limits normally imposed by biological photosynthesis,” said corresponding author Robert Jinkerson, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering.

😳!!!!

Researchers have just discovered a previously unknown process that makes sense of the ‘secret decisions’ plants make when releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.

“We found that plants control their respiration in a way we did not expect, they control how much of the carbon from photosynthesis they keep to build biomass by using a metabolic channel,” University of Western Australia plant biochemist Harvey Millar told ScienceAlert.

Continue reading “Plants Appear to Be Breaking Biochemistry Rules” »

Researchers have identified the best silicon and silicon dioxide materials for the next generation of transistors, which are expected to be just a nanometer long.

North Carolina State University researchers found they could filter carbon dioxide from air and gas mixtures at promising rates using a proposed new textile-based filter that combines cotton fabric and an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase—one of nature’s tools for speeding chemical reactions.

Circa 2021 First breakthrough in immortality of the eyes of rats using the inducing of pluripotent stem cells in the eye. Which will eventually lead to immortality of the human eye.

The retina is neural tissue located in the posterior part of the eye and is an extension of the central nervous system (CNS), which has limited regenerative potential once damaged¹. Therefore, to maintain homeostasis of the retinal microenvironment and protect itself from harmful stimuli, the retina has a unique structure consisting of inner and outer blood-retinal barriers (BRBs)^2,3,4. The outer BRB is mainly composed of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, which support photoreceptor cells, the primary neurons in the retina, and play a significant role in the pathogenesis of retinal degenerative disorders, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP)^5,6,7,8,9. These disorders are commonly characterized by the irreversible loss of photoreceptor cells and RPE cells, and the only fundamental treatment for these retinal degenerative disorders is replacement of damaged or atrophied cells^10,11,12. Thus, regenerative treatments, such as stem cell transplantation, are emerging as attractive options for targeting retinal degeneration that was previously considered untreatable¹³.

RP refers to a set of hereditary retinal degenerative disorders that initially involve photoreceptors and leads to subsequent RPE cell damage; it affects 1 in 4,000 individuals worldwide⁹. Due to its inherent nature, extensive genetic studies are ongoing, and more than 50 causal genes have been identified¹⁴. Among the causal genes, PDE6B is a gene that encodes rod cGMP-phosphodiesterase, which is a critical component of the biochemical light transduction pathway⁹. Although various molecular and genetic studies have identified the pathomechanisms of RP, attempts to restore vision in patients with RP have failed. To overcome this issue, preclinical stem cell-based studies involving transient dosing or permanent implantation of pluripotent stem cells are being conducted^10,11,15,16.

Continue reading “Long-term effects of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal cell transplantation in Pde6b knockout rats” »

Life (as we know it) is based on carbon. Despite its ubiquity, this important element still holds plenty of secrets, on earth and in the heavens above us. For example, astrophysicists like Columbia’s Daniel Wolf Savin who study interstellar clouds want to understand how the chemicals, including carbon, swirling within these nebulous aggregations of gas and dust form the stars and planets that dot our universe and give rise to organic life.