Lifeboat Foundation

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An engineered cardiac patch has been created that incorporates human cells with flexible electronics and a nanocomposite structure to not only replace damaged heart tissue, but also provide remote monitoring, electrical stimulation, and the release of medication on demand. Using electroactive polymers and a combination of biological and engineered parts, the patch contracts and expands just like normal human heart tissue, but regulates those actions with the precision of a finely-tuned machine.

Invented by Professor Tal Dvir and PhD student Ron Feiner of Tel Aviv University (TAU), this new breakthrough medical device is claimed by its creators to have capabilities that surpass those of human tissue alone. As such, this patch may give new hope to people such as those 25 percent on the US national waiting list that may die before a suitable transplant heart becomes available, by effectively offering a way to fix – rather than replace – their own heart.

Continue reading “Cyborg cardiac patch offers alternative to heart transplants” »

Musk said he thinks Neuralink will “solve a lot of brain-related diseases,” naming autism and schizophrenia as examples. Autism is not a disease.

Scientists say bioelectricity is the body’s master control. A few aim to use it to regrow limbs, treat cancer — even unlock immortality.

Tissues take shape during development through a series of morphogenetic movements guided by local cell-scale forces. While current in vitro approaches subjecting tissues to homogenous stresses, it is currently no possible to recapitulate highly local spatially varying forces. Here we develop a method for local actuation of organoids using embedded magnetic nanoparticles. Sequential aggregation of magnetically labelled human pluripotent stem cells followed by actuation by a magnetic field produces localized magnetic clusters within the organoid. These clusters impose local mechanical forces on the surrounding tissue in response to applied global magnetic fields. We show that precise, spatially defined actuation provides short-term mechanical tissue perturbations as well as long-term cytoskeleton remodeling. We demonstrate that local magnetically-driven actuation guides asymmetric growth and proliferation, leading to enhanced patterning in human neural organoids. We show that this approach is applicable to other model systems by observing polarized patterning in paraxial mesoderm organoids upon local magnetic actuation. This versatile approach allows for local, controllable mechanical actuation in multicellular constructs, and is widely applicable to interrogate the role of local mechanotransduction in developmental and disease model systems.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

The magnet coil also reached a record for stored energy by 3.7 megajoules.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems has completed testing of its Central Solenoid Model Coil, a critical component in building its SPARC tokamak reactor.

Japan’s combination of artificial intelligence and robotics may be the answer to its rapidly shrinking labor force

Todd Schneider, Gee Hee Hong, and Anh Van Le

While automation will eliminate very few occupations entirely in the coming decades, it is likely to have an impact on portions of almost all jobs to some degree—depending on the type of work and the tasks involved. Set to move beyond routine and repetitive manufacturing activities, automation has the potential to appear in a much broader range of activities than seen until now, and to redefine human labor and work style in services and other sectors. In Japan, the rapid decline in the labor force and the limited influx of immigrants create a powerful incentive for automation, which makes the country a particularly useful laboratory for the study of the future landscape of work.

The industry showed out in spades for this year’s list, highlighting devices in medical AI, surgical robotics, wearables, and femtech, among others.

Choanoflagellates, animals’ closest relatives, have pluripotency genes, reshaping views on their evolution.

The research highlights how evolution repurposes existing genetic tools, turning them into versatile drivers of innovation. This adaptability underscores how foundational processes in unicellular organisms laid the groundwork for the development of complex life forms.

Continue reading “Scientists use DNA from 422-million-year-old cells to create a mouse” »

Scientists from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences found forty new freshwater viruses infecting aquatic microorganisms this year. The first one, which they isolated and described in detail, was named Budvirus after the South Bohemian capital České Budějovice. It belongs to “Giant Viruses” and it infects unicellular algae called cryptophytes.

Researchers have confirmed that this virus has an important role in the ecosystem, as it controls algal bloom, helping to maintain balance in the aquatic environment. The discoveries of all the viruses were made at the Římov reservoir near České Budějovice, which has been regularly monitored by South Bohemian hydrobiologists for five decades and is one of the most studied freshwater reservoirs in Europe. The work is published in The ISME Journal.

Although we have freshwater ecosystems such as lakes, ponds, reservoirs and rivers all around us, their microscopic representatives, especially viruses and bacteria, are still a little-explored area. A drop of water can contain a million bacteria and ten times more viruses, but only a handful of them have been described. Recent methods, such as environmental DNA analysis, are making great strides in the study of the aquatic microworld. This is also one of the methods used by the Czech scientific team.