Lifeboat Foundation

Forget the LHC – from squished electrons to self-destructing protons, careful scrutiny of everyday particles acting strangely may refresh our picture of reality.

By Lisa Grossman

FOR a few heady months last year, the door to an unknown world was nudged ajar. An anomaly in data from the Large Hadron Collider, based at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, indicated the presence of a peculiar new particle, a visitor so unexpected that it promised to transform our picture of how nature works. Then, with more data, the anomaly disappeared. The door creaked shut again.

Continue reading “5 Deviant Particles That Could Spark a Revolution in Physics” »

The birth of the first baby born using a technique called mitochondrial replacement, which uses DNA from three people to “correct” an inherited genetic mutation, was announced on Sept. 27.

Mitochondrial replacement or donation allows women who carry mitochondrial diseases to avoid passing them on to their child. These diseases can range from mild to life-threatening. No therapies exist and only a few drugs are available to treat them.

There are no international rules regulating this technique. Just one country, the United Kingdom, explicitly regulates the procedure. It’s a similar situation with other assisted reproductive techniques. Some countries permit these techniques and others don’t.

Continue reading “The next frontier in reproductive tourism? Genetic modification” »

Scientists have developed a new type of artificial muscle fibre based on nylon, which could one day render our future robot companions more realistic than ever.

Unlike previous synthetic muscles, this technology is cheap and simple to produce, which makes it a better option if we want our droids to be able to flex, move, and repair themselves in much the same way as flesh-and-blood people.

Continue reading “Artificial Humans Could Be Even More Realistic With These New Nylon Muscles” »

And leading the way is the online grocery store Ocado.

New technology driving down the cost of research and therapies!

New technology arriving that will help drive down the costs of gene therapies.

“The researchers were able to use a closed, semi-automated benchtop system to produce genetically-modified HSCs in just one night and hope that such systems will increase the availability and affordability of cell therapies”.

Continue reading “A Semi-Automated Benchtop System to Produce Genetically Modified Stem Cells: Interview with Professor Jennifer Adair” »

More developments in senescent cell signalling published this month.

Differentiated cells in a culture dish can assume a new identity when manipulated to express four transcription factors. This “reprogramming” process has sparked interest because conceivably it could be harnessed as a therapeutic strategy for tissue regeneration. Mosteiro et al. used a mouse model to study the signals that promote cell reprogramming in vivo. They found that the factors that trigger reprogramming in vitro do the same in vivo; however, they also inflict cell damage. The damaged cells enter a state of senescence and begin secreting certain factors that promote reprogramming, including an inflammatory cytokine called interleukin-6. Thus, in the physiological setting, cell senescence may create a tissue context that favors reprogramming of neighboring cells.

Efforts to explain a strange cold spot in the cosmos have led to the discovery of something even odder: a vast area with very little matter.

SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by the Mars-hungry tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, just made a big move to enshroud the planet in high-speed internet coverage.

On November 15, the company filed a lengthy application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch 4,425 satellites. (We first heard about the filing through the r/SpaceX community on Reddit.) That is a hell of a lot of satellites.

According to a database compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists, there are 1,419 active satellites currently orbiting Earth.

Continue reading “SpaceX Wants to Surround Earth With an Internet Service That’s 200 Times Faster” »

China launched a satellite this month that may be the key to a successful manned Mars mission and eventual colonization of the red planet beating out a similar NASA system scheduled to launch next year.

The world’s first X-ray navigation satellite acts like a GPS guidance system for spacecraft traveling beyond low Earth orbit and is intended to help China put rovers on the moon and Mars.

The X-ray Pulsar Navigation 1 (XPNAV) satellite measures radiation emitted by pulsars to pinpoint the exact location of a spacecraft, John Pye, manager of the Space Research Centre at the University of Leicester, told VICE News.

Continue reading “China Invents Space GPS For Mars Expedition And Interplanetary Travel” »