Lifeboat Foundation

Music: Glen Canyon

The idea of growing babies outside the body has inspired novels and movies for decades.

Now, research groups around the world are exploring the possibility of artificial gestation. For instance, one group successfully grew a lamb in an artificial womb for four weeks. Australian researchers have also experimented with artificial gestation for lambs and sharks.

And in recent weeks, researchers in The Netherlands have received €2.9 million to develop a prototype for gestating premature babies.

In the Marshall Islands, locals have a nickname for the Runit Dome nuclear-waste site: They call it ‘The Tomb’.

The sealed pit contains more than 3.1 million cubic feet (87,800 cubic meters) of radioactive waste, which workers buried there as part of efforts to clean hazardous debris left behind after the US military detonated nuclear bombs on the land.

From 1977 to 1980, around 4,000 US servicemen were tasked with cleaning up the former nuclear testing site of Enewetak Atoll. They scooped up the contaminated soil, along with other radioactive waste materials such as military equipment, concrete, and scrap metal.

Through early adulthood, exposure to new experiences—like learning to drive a car or memorizing information for an exam—triggers change in the human brain, re-wiring neural pathways to imprint memories and modify behavior. Similar to humans, the behavior of Florida carpenter ants is not set in stone—their roles, whether it is protecting the colony or foraging for food, are determined by signals from the physical and social environment early in their life. But questions remain about how long they are vulnerable to epigenetic changes and what pathways govern social behavior in ants.

Now, a team led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that a protein called CoRest, a neural repressor that is also found in humans, plays a central role in determining the social behavior of ants. The results, published today in Molecular Cell, also revealed that worker ants called Majors, known as “brawny” soldiers that protect colonies, can be reprogrammed to perform the foraging role—generally reserved for their sisters, the Minor ants—up to five days after they emerge as an adult ant. However, the reprogramming is ineffective at the 10-day mark, revealing how narrow the window of epigenetic plasticity is in ants.

“How behavior becomes established in humans is deeply fascinating—we know it’s quite plastic especially during childhood and early adolescence—however, of course, we cannot study or manipulate this experimentally,” said the study’s senior author Shelley Berger, Ph.D., the Daniel S. Och University Professor in the departments of Cell and Developmental Biology and Biology, and director of the Penn Epigenetics Institute. “Ants, with their complex societies and behavior, and similar plasticity, provide a wonderful laboratory model to understand the underlying mechanisms and pathways.

!!

Q beta prototype — with integrated power source. Silicon Crystal Graphite Powercells run this entire machine without external input.

Continue reading “WORLD’S FIRST — SELF POWERED Q Beta Prototype with Silicon Crystal Graphite Powercells” »

The combination treatment reversed diabetes and obesity while improving heart and kidney function—even when those organs had already begun failing.

On this episode of Anti-Aging Hacks show, we get into the following topics:

1. What is Gene Therapy and how Practical is it?

Continue reading “How Gene Therapy can Help You Stop Aging, Build Muscles, and Fight Diseases” »

Not an endorsement of this; But interesting concept and claims for a graphene coat.

An all-around graphene-based 3-layer jacket: Breathable, Waterproof, Ultralight & Durable + state-of-the-art technology.

Continue reading “Graphene-X | The jacket you won’t want to take off” »

In a new study, scientists observed several simultaneous reactions in mice given a common chemotherapy drug: Their gut bacteria and tissue changed, their blood and brains showed signs of inflammation, and their behaviors suggested they were fatigued and cognitively impaired.

The research is the first to show these combined events in the context of chemotherapy, and opens the door to the possibility that regulating gut bacteria could not only calm chemo side effects like nausea and diarrhea, but also potentially lessen the memory and concentration problems many cancer survivors report.

More research is needed to further understand how the chemo-modified gut influences the brain in a way that can have an impact on behavior. The same lab at The Ohio State University is continuing mouse studies to test the relationship and running a parallel clinical trial in breast cancer patients.