Lifeboat Foundation

Could speed up healing.

Wound healing in mammalian skin often results in fibrotic scars, and the mechanisms by which original nonfibrotic tissue architecture can be restored are not well understood. Here, Wei et al. have shown that pharmacological activation of the nociceptor TRPA1, which is found on cutaneous sensory neurons, can limit scar formation and promote tissue regeneration. They confirmed the efficacy of TRPA1 activation in three different skin wounding mouse models, and they also observed that localized activation could generate a response at distal wound sites. TRPA1 activation induced IL-23 production by dermal dendritic cells, which activated IL-17–producing γδ T cells and promoted tissue regeneration. These findings provide insight into neuroimmune signaling pathways in the skin that are critical to mammalian tissue regeneration.

Adult mammalian wounds, with rare exception, heal with fibrotic scars that severely disrupt tissue architecture and function. Regenerative medicine seeks methods to avoid scar formation and restore the original tissue structures. We show in three adult mouse models that pharmacologic activation of the nociceptor TRPA1 on cutaneous sensory neurons reduces scar formation and can also promote tissue regeneration. Local activation of TRPA1 induces tissue regeneration on distant untreated areas of injury, demonstrating a systemic effect. Activated TRPA1 stimulates local production of interleukin-23 (IL-23) by dermal dendritic cells, leading to activation of circulating dermal IL-17–producing γδ T cells. Genetic ablation of TRPA1, IL-23, dermal dendritic cells, or γδ T cells prevents TRPA1-mediated tissue regeneration.

This amphibious 8×8 ATV can seat your whole expedition team 😎👏

TerraVis™ system — a platform for versatile and cost-effective solar power integrations for pick-up trucks. This groundbreaking innovation is the very first to combine practical, durable tonneau covers with a cutting-edge solar generation and energy storage system. This website launch marks the first release of design and application-related details.

Terravis | the future by worksport | welcome: terravis.

Assembly of the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX) at Los Alamos National Laboratory is well underway with the installation of 18 of 36 plasma guns in an ambitious approach to achieving controlled nuclear fusion (top image). The plasma guns are mounted on a spherical chamber, and fire supersonic jets of ionized gas inward to compress and heat a central gas target that serves as fusion fuel. In the meantime, experiments performed with the currently installed plasma guns are providing fundamental data to create simulations of colliding plasma jets, which are crucial for understanding and developing other controlled fusion schemes.

Most fusion experiments employ either magnetic confinement, which relies on powerful magnetic fields to contain a fusion plasma, or inertial confinement, which uses heat and compression to create the conditions for fusion.

For the first time, pressure over 100 times that found in Earth’s core has been generated in a lab, setting a new record.

Using the highest-energy laser system in the world, physicists briefly subjected solid hydrocarbon samples to pressures up to 450 megabars, meaning 450 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level.

That’s equivalent to the pressures found in the carbon-dominated envelopes of a rare type of white dwarf star — some of the densest objects in the known Universe. It could help us to better understand the effect those pressures have on changes in the stars’ brightness.

A plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. The proposal had already won state and federal approval.

“With all the urgent crises facing our nation and the State of Florida — the Covid-19 pandemic, racial injustice, climate change — the administration has used tax dollars and government resources for a Jurassic Park experiment,” said Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety, in a statement released Wednesday.

“Now the Monroe County Mosquito Control District has given the final permission needed. What could possibly go wrong? We don’t know, because EPA unlawfully refused to seriously analyze environmental risks, now without further review of the risks, the experiment can proceed,” she added.

Off the coast of Curaçao, at a depth of 60 feet, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau is looking to create the world’s largest underwater research habitat.

Many have tried, none have succeeded in making it a practical success. Now New Zealand start-up Emrod says they are close.

Since the days of Nikola Tesla, engineers have tried to make it practical to transmit large amounts of electricity. A government-backed startup says they are close.

Glycerol, used in the past as antifreeze for cars, is produced by a range of organisms from yeasts to vertebrates, some of which use it as an osmoprotectant—a molecule that prevents dangerous water loss in salty environments—while others use it as an antifreeze. Here, scientists from the University of Nevada and Miami University in Ohio show that two species of the single-celled green algae Chlamydomonas from Antarctica, called UWO241 and ICE-MDV, produce high levels of glycerol to protect them from osmotic water loss, and possibly also from freezing injury. Presently, only one other organism, an Arctic fish, is known to use glycerol for both purposes. Both species synthesize glycerol with enzymes encoded by multiple copies of a recently discovered ancient gene family. These results, published today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant Science, illustrate the importance of adaptations that allow life to not only survive but to thrive in extreme habitats.

The researchers collected both Chlamydomonas species from depths of 13 to 17 m, a region with a steep salinity gradient, in Lake Bonney, a permanently ice-covered lake in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land, Antarctica. Previously, they showed that both species are remarkably adapted to their extreme habitat, with a photosynthetic apparatus adapted to cold, saline, and light-poor conditions, novel proteins, more fluid cell membranes that function at low temperatures, and ice-binding proteins that protect against freeze-thaw injury.

“Our overall goal is to understand how microorganisms survive in extreme environments. The Chlamydomonas species of Lake Bonney are well-suited for such studies because they are exposed to many extremes, including low light, low temperature, oxidative stress, and high salinity. The present results are the first to show that glycerol production by microorganisms, which is well-known in warm, salty environments, is also important in polar regions,” says corresponding author Dr. James Raymond, Adjunct Research Professor at the School of Life Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA.