Lifeboat Foundation

Another link on diet/healthspan.

Studies by Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI), have provided a new understanding into the roles two essential amino acids play in metabolic health, which may help scientists in the fight against obesity.

Led by Dr. Adam Rose, the recent finding, published in Nature Communications, shows that by reducing the amount of two amino acids —threonine and tryptophan—in young healthy mice, they were able to burn more calories than they consumed, without calorie reduction, keeping them lean and healthy and without the side-effect of lower muscle mass. A low-threonine diet even protected mice that were morbidly obese and prone to developing type 2 diabetes.

Continue reading “Essential components of dietary restriction revealed” »

Paved roads are nice to look at, but they’re easily damaged and costly to repair. Erik Schlangen demos a new type of porous, asphalt made of simple materials with an astonishing feature: When cracked, it can be “healed” by induction heating. (Filmed at TEDxDelft.)

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate

Continue reading “Erik Schlangen: A ‘self-healing’ asphalt” »

A Minneapolis manufacturing company whose plant was set on fire by rioters plans to leave the city, saying that city officials afforded them no assistance in handling the destruction.

“They don’t care about my business,” 7-Sigma Inc.’s president and owner, Kris Wyrobek, told The Star Tribune about Minneapolis public officials. “They didn’t protect our people. We were all on our own.”

The 7-Sigma plant in south Minneapolis, which the company has maintained since 1987, shut down several hours early around 7 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. as a precautionary measure on the first night of rioting. The company manufactures several products, including rollers for high-speed printing presses and medical training mannequins.

The personal genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe is perhaps best known for its home DNA testing kits, whereby consumers can learn about their genetic make-up or ancestry.

However, after the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic, the company switched gears and looked to see how their gene testing services could offer a helping hand in understanding the disease’s pathophysiology.

One aspect of COVID-19 that has puzzled scientists and clinicians alike is why, when infected with SARS-CoV-2, do some patients display mild to moderate symptoms (or no symptoms at all), whereas other patients develop severe symptoms that can prove fatal?

Their new approach to 3D bioprinting and allows for non-invasive tissue growth and wound healing. It works through injecting bioink cells, the additive material traditionally used in 3D bioprinting, under the skin and using near-infrared light to penetrate the tissue and transfer customizable building designs — like an ear or an abstract shape — to newly injected cells.

The ear began to form in just 20 seconds.

Using a new approach to 3D bioprinting researchers have designed a way to non-invasively grow a wide range of customizable tissue under living skin.

Everyone knows that the great and power omnipresent mushroom that lives across the universe able to survive even in space.

Researchers have elucidated the molecular mechanism of the fungus that turns ants into living zombies. The fungus specifically affects the ants’ neurobiology, odor perception and biological clock. The Utrecht microbiologist Robin Ohm publishes this, together with American and German colleagues, in G3.

The fungus Ophiocordyceps camponoti-floridani can infect ants and manipulate their behavior in a way that is beneficial for fungus growth and transmission. These infected ants are called “zombie ants.” Influenced by the fungus, the ants climb to a high point and bite into a branch, attaching themselves until death. The fungus then digests the ant and forms a fruitbody with which the fungus spreads its spores. The molecular mechanisms behind this behavioral modification are still largely unknown, as in similar parasitic interactions in which the behavior of a host is manipulated.

Continue reading “How a fungus turns ants into zombies” »

A controversial scientist had his unconventional “mushrooms on Mars” study accepted by a prestigious journal, and then things just stopped. Since Rhawn Joseph has taken matters into his own hands.

In May, NASA announced its intent to “establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space” referred to as the Artemis Accords.[1,2] The Accords were released initially as draft principles, to be developed and implemented through a series of bilateral agreements with international partners.

The Accords offer the possibility to advance practical implementations of long-held principles in the Outer Space Treaty (OST). They raise a rich set of policy questions as we begin to take the law into new levels of resolution. This bold pursuit of uncharted territories is to be applauded, and yet, there is also the risk of diverging from 53 years of international law.

One the ten principles is focused on Deconfliction of Activities, with “safety zones” named as a specific mechanism of implementation:

MR-compatible graphene fibre microelectrodes enable full activation pattern mapping during simultaneous deep brain stimulation and functional MRI.