Lifeboat Foundation

Thousands of microscopic worms will be launched into space — wriggling around in SpaceX’s next cargo shipment to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon.

But the launch, which was planned for today (Dec. 4), has been postponed to tomorrow, and scientists are now worried that the worms will be a day “too old” for some of the planned experiments, according to the BBC.

If all goes well in spite of the delay, these tiny but mighty creatures with muscle structures very similar to that of humans, might help us understand why and how astronauts lose muscle mass in space. [Photos: The First Space Tourists].

Continue reading “SpaceX delay may mean 36,000 wormy passengers are too old for their planned experiments” »

Conditions encountered in the womb — when the embryo consists of only about 100 cells — can have life-long impact on health. Scientists previously assumed that this is because embryos respond to adverse conditions by programming their gene expression. Now an international team of researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center, Wageningen University and Research, Lund University, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York propose a radically different alternative. Rather than being programmed by the environment, random differences in gene expression may provide some embryos with a survival advantage, in particular when conditions are harsh. By studying DNA methylation, an important mechanism to control gene activity, the researchers found that a specific part of the DNA methylation pattern was missing among famine-exposed individuals. The findings are published in the journal Cell Reports.

How CERN is using enterprise asset management from Infor and ramping up the automation of its IT services to plumb the depths of the universe.

An ESA-led team subjected Intel’s new Myriad 2 artificial intelligence chip to one of the most energetic radiation beams available on Earth. This test of its suitability to fly in space took place at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The AI chip is related in turn to an ESA-fostered family of integrated circuits.

A blood test can detect cancer within just 10 minutes, scientists have found, raising hopes that hard-to-spot diseases could be picked up early when treatment is most effective.

Currently doctors use symptoms and a raft of tests and biopsies to determine if cancer is present which can sometimes take months.

The new method from the University of Queensland looks for differences in the genetic code of cancerous and healthy cells.

Continue reading “Blood test to detect cancer within just 10 minutes developed by scientists” »

In May, Google made quite the splash when it unveiled Duplex, its eerily humanlike voice assistant capable of making restaurant reservations and salon appointments. It seemed to mark a new milestone in speech generation and natural-language understanding, and it pulled back the curtain on what the future of human-AI interaction might look like.

What is the coldest object in the world?

Questions have been raised recently regarding Jeanne Calment’s record as the oldest recorded human.

If you open an article dedicated to supercentenarians, it is very likely that at its very beginning, you will see the name of Jeanne Calment, the oldest known person in the world, who is believed to have lived for up to 122 years. Jeanne is not merely a unique phenomenon from the point of view of statistics; over the years, she became a symbol of extraordinary human capacities.

For a person who sticks to a healthy lifestyle or even engages in biohacking in order to live longer, Jeanne’s record is a teasing goal to achieve and surpass; however, to the researchers of aging, this extremely rare event is rather a reason for curiosity – and skepticism.

Continue reading “Valery Novoselov: Investigating Jeanne Calment’s Longevity Record” »

Five years ago, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos predicted that by now we would all be getting packages delivered by drones. Despite numerous trials and pilots around the globe, we’re still waiting. Meanwhile other companies have been nipping at Amazon’s heels, including Google’s parent company Alphabet. Its Project X drones started delivering burritos to customers in Australia’s Capital Territory last year, and has now announced that folks in Finland can look forward to package deliveries by air from early 2019.