Lifeboat Foundation

Fueled by the need for faster life sciences and healthcare research, especially in the wake of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, IBM and the 100-year-old Cleveland Clinic are partnering to bolster the Clinic’s research capabilities by integrating a wide range of IBM’s advanced technologies in quantum computing, AI and the cloud.

Access to IBM’s quantum systems has so far been primarily cloud-based, but IBM is providing the Cleveland Clinic with IBM’s first private-sector, on-premises quantum computer in the U.S. Scheduled for delivery next year, the initial IBM Quantum System One will harness between 50 to 100 qubits, according to IBM, but the goal is to stand up a more powerful, more advanced, next-generation 1000+ qubit quantum system at the Clinic as the project matures.

For the Cleveland Clinic, the 10-year partnership with IBM will add huge research capabilities and power as part of an all-new Discovery Center being created at the Clinic’s campus in Cleveland, Ohio. The Accelerator will serve as the technology foundation for the Clinic’s new Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, which is being developed to drive research in areas including genomics, single-cell transcriptomics, population health, clinical applications and chemical and drug discovery, according to the Clinic.

Find out how endocrine disrupting chemicals, like BPA, can render most men sterile by 2045. Learn about chemicals in our food that disrupt our immune system, about cancer causing chemical in hand sanitizers. See what these have to do with sperm counts falling. How do they affect wildlife, and food production. See what you can do about it!

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Continue reading “Men to Be Sterile by 2045 — Escape Chemicals to Thrive” »

101 quantum chemistry, how to start.

A wave function is a function defining the quantum state of an isolated system. It is generally represented by ψ(), pronounced [psi].

In a recent study led by the University of Bristol, scientists have shown how to simultaneously harness multiple forms of regulation in living cells to strictly control gene expression and open new avenues for improved biotechnologies.

Engineered microbes are increasingly being used to enable the sustainable and clean production of chemicals, medicines and much more. To make this possible, bioengineers must control when specific sets of genes are turned on and off to allow for careful regulation of the biochemical processes involved.

Their findings are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

Circa 2017

When surgeons complete a successful lung operation, everyone should breathe a sigh of relief. But real relief may not come until weeks or even months later, when doctors remove the patient’s lingering sutures or staples. And that’s assuming there were no leakages, which can send a patient right back to the hospital.

Nasim Annabi, assistant professor of chemical engineering, has a better solution: a new type of surgical glue that could replace the need for staples and sutures altogether. Annabi is leading the research, which she and her colleagues from the University of Sydney and Harvard Medical School described in a paper published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

Continue reading “Researchers develop surgical glue that seals wounds in seconds” »

Humanity has come a long way in understanding the universe. We’ve got a physical framework that mostly matches our observations, and new technologies have allowed us to analyze the Big Bang and take photos of black holes. But the hypothetical EmDrive rocket engine threatened to upend what we knew about physics… if it worked. After the latest round of testing, we can say with a high degree of certainty that it doesn’t.

If you have memories from the 90s, you probably remember the interest in cold fusion, a supposed chemical process that could produce energy from fusion at room temperature instead of millions of degrees (pick your favorite scale, the numbers are all huge). The EmDrive is basically cold fusion for the 21st century. First proposed in 2001, the EmDrive uses an asymmetrical resonator cavity inside which electromagnetic energy can bounce around. There’s no exhaust, but proponents claim the EmDrive generates thrust.

The idea behind the EmDrive is that the tapered shape of the cavity would reflect radiation in such a way that there was a larger net force exerted on the resonator at one end. Thus, an object could use this “engine” for hyper-efficient propulsion. That would be a direct violation of the conservation of momentum. Interest in the EmDrive was scattered until 2016 when NASA’s Eagelworks lab built a prototype and tested it. According to the team, they detected a small but measurable net force, and that got people interested.

Summary: Dopamine neurons largely rely on their own discharge to determine release rates of the hormone, researchers report.

Source: NYU Langone.

In addition to smoothing out wrinkles, researchers have found that the drug Botox can reveal the inner workings of the brain. A new study used it to show that feedback from individual nerve cells controls the release of dopamine, a chemical messenger involved in motivation, memory, and movement.

Glass, rubber and plastics all belong to a class of matter called amorphous solids. And in spite of how common they are in our everyday lives, amorphous solids have long posed a challenge to scientists.

Since the 1910s, scientists have been able to map in 3D the atomic structures of crystals, the other major class of solids, which has led to myriad advances in physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, geology, nanoscience, drug discovery and more. But because amorphous solids aren’t assembled in rigid, repetitive atomic structures like crystals are, they have defied researchers’ ability to determine their atomic structure with the same level of precision.

Until now, that is.

Bipolar disorder affects millions of Americans, causing dramatic swings in mood and, in some people, additional effects such as memory problems.

While bipolar disorder is linked to many genes, each one making small contributions to the disease, scientists don’t know just how those genes ultimately give rise to the disorder’s effects.

However, in new research, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found for the first time that disruptions to a particular protein called Akt can lead to the brain changes characteristic of bipolar disorder. The results offer a foundation for research into treating the often-overlooked cognitive impairments of bipolar disorder, such as memory loss, and add to a growing understanding of how the biochemistry of the brain affects health and disease.