Lifeboat Foundation

As a Master’s student at University of Houston’s Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA), I was exposed to many interesting aspects of space exploration. One that I’m particularly intrigued about is the daily lives of astronauts, and their most mundane activities — how they sleep, eat, shower, exercise, work, etc. When the time came to choose what to focus on for my design thesis, I knew it would have something to do with habitation, community, and daily lives in space.

My undergrad was in architecture and urban studies with an equal emphasis on both. This gave me an understanding of how dwellings changed throughout the centuries in relation to the evolution of cities. I think in most cases, our definition of “home” is very intertwined with our definition of “city”. And I believe as humans set sail for the stars, this intertwining will stay strong. What defines a home and a city varies greatly from culture to culture, and changes with time. However, in a broad sense, a home is for your personal and intimate activities, alone or with close family members, and a city is a collection of private and public areas where the community can interact and coexist.

When it comes to venomous snake bites, time is tissue. Even non-fatal snake bites still rapidly kill skin and muscle in a gruesome process called necrosis, often leaving victims permanently disfigured. In an effort to help reduce the global health burden of these bites, a team of scientists has developed an antivenom cocktail that saves tissue after a snake bite, sparing survivors a lifetime of disability.

In a paper published Thursday in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, researchers demonstrate that their formula, when injected into mice that had been exposed to venom from a black-necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis), protected against any tissue-killing effects. What’s unique about their new treatment is that it’s not made up of any one substance but a mixture of nanoparticles, which can target the individual compounds that make up a snake’s poison.

“If this is achieved, then the progression of this local necrosis would be halted, and then the person can be transported to a health facility to receive the antivenom, but the local tissue damage would have been controlled and the frequency of permanent tissue damage and sequelae would be reduced,” José María Gutiérrez, Ph.D.. a senior professor of microbiology at Instituto Clodomiro Picado (the University of Costa Rica) and one of the paper’s authors, tells Inverse.

Continue reading “New Weapon Against Gruesome Venomous Snakebites Is Invisible to the Eye” »

By Christian Jarrett. The cognitive benefits of brief exercise seem to be due to how it makes us feel more energetic.

Spend months in space, and you could develop cancer.

To study the effects of deep space radiation exposure on astronaut health, researchers exposed mice to comparable levels of radiation. It hurt their guts.

And yet, today, the struggle against HIV may be undergoing a sea change.

U.S. health officials and HIV experts are beginning to talk about a future in which transmission in the United States could be halted. And that future, they say, could come not within a generation, but in the span of just a few years.

“We have the science to solve the AIDS epidemic,” Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, himself a longtime HIV researcher and clinician, told STAT in a recent interview. “We’ve invested in it. Let’s put it into action.‘’

Continue reading “The end of HIV transmission in the U.S.: A once-unthinkable dream becomes an openly discussed goal” »

With the introduction of more products aimed at gauging the effectiveness of mental health treatments, science is getting left behind, some experts say.

The new digital communications policy (NDCP) 2018, approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday, looks too good to believe. It has promised to create an additional four million jobs in five years and reskill another one million people in new-age skills and sectors such as 5G LTE and artificial intelligence. Six lakh villages will be connected which will eventually lead to creating jobs and several earning avenues such as managing WiFi hotspots and laying optical fibre, among others. The policy will give an impetus to the job market.

NDCP is bound to create a massive infrastructure and help the debt-ridden telecom sector emerge from its current turbulence. The policy document envisages the reduction in levies and ease of doing business, and this will help restore the financial health of the long-bleeding sector. The focus will be on the proliferation of telecom services and facilitating low-cost financing. The government’s ambitious plan of Digital India will get a booster shot. Thanks to the promise of 50 Mbps speed in the broadband connection, the consumer will be the ultimate beneficiary.

Plans are afoot to reform the licensing and regulatory regime to facilitate investments and innovation, besides promoting ease of doing business. The success of the policy will depend on the execution of the policy.

Continue reading “DNA Money Edit: Telecom sector awaits a turnaround” »

Biohacking for cures: what you need to know.