Lifeboat Foundation

What if you could travel to the country of your choice in just 1 click? If that was possible, your train of thought would be, Let’s go to Switzerland, no Iceland…you know what, let’s go everywhere. Teleportation is a common part of science fiction characters but is it achievable?

The pandemic has been hard on us and forced us to step out only when it is absolutely necessary. But you know what, Teleportation can be the perfect thing for you. And Earth is not the limit, you can put on a suit and some oxygen cylinder and you can just teleport to the moon…Elon Musk, you there?😃

But as far as we know, everyone told us while watching science fiction, this is not possible but you know what they are not entirely correct.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have designed and fabricated an untethered microrobot that can slip along either a flat or curved surface in a liquid when exposed to ultrasound waves. Its propulsion force is two to three orders of magnitude stronger than the propulsion force of natural microorganisms such as bacteria or algae. Additionally, it can transport cargo while swimming. The acoustically propelled robot hence has significant potential to revolutionize the future minimally invasive treatment of patients.

Stuttgart—Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart developed a bullet-shaped, synthetic miniature robot with a diameter of 25 micrometers, which is acoustically propelled forward—a speeding bullet, in the truest sense of the word. Less than the diameter of a human hair in size, never before has such an actuated microrobot reached this speed. Its smart design is so efficient it even outperforms the swimming capabilities of natural microorganisms.

The scientists designed the 3D-printed polymer microrobot with a spherical cavity and a small tube-like nozzle towards the bottom (see figure 1). Surrounded by liquid such as water, the cavity traps a spherical air bubble. Once the robot is exposed to acoustic waves of around 330 kHz, the air bubble pulsates, pushing the liquid inside the tube towards the back end of the microrobot. The liquid’s movement then propels the bullet forward quite vigorously at up to 90 body lengths per second. That is a thrust force two to three orders of magnitude stronger than those of natural microorganisms such as algae or bacteria. Both are among the most efficient microswimmers in nature, optimized by evolution.

From chatbots that answer tax questions to algorithms that drive autonomous vehicles and dish out medical diagnoses, artificial intelligence undergirds many aspects of daily life. Creating smarter, more accurate systems requires a hybrid human-machine approach, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine. In a study published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they present a new mathematical model that can improve performance by combining human and algorithmic predictions and confidence scores.

“Humans and machine algorithms have complementary strengths and weaknesses. Each uses different sources of information and strategies to make predictions and decisions,” said co-author Mark Steyvers, UCI professor of cognitive sciences. “We show through empirical demonstrations as well as theoretical analyses that humans can improve the predictions of AI even when human accuracy is somewhat below [that of] the AI—and vice versa. And this accuracy is higher than combining predictions from two individuals or two AI algorithms.”

To test the framework, researchers conducted an image classification experiment in which human participants and computer algorithms worked separately to correctly identify distorted pictures of animals and everyday items—chairs, bottles, bicycles, trucks. The human participants ranked their confidence in the accuracy of each image identification as low, medium or high, while the machine classifier generated a continuous score. The results showed large differences in confidence between humans and AI algorithms across images.

The team noted that although other studies have been able to create nephrons and ureteric ducts from stem cells, these didn’t fully function as they would in real kidneys due to the absence of stromal cells, which are crucial for cell signaling. The team took embryonic stem cells from mice and induced these to differentiate into kidney-specific stromal cells, using a cocktail of chemicals meant to mimic those that would occur in vivo.

When they combined the stromal cells with nephron and ureteric bud cells (which they also created from stem cells), the result was a “kidney-like 3D tissue, consisting of extensively branched tubules and several other kidney-specific structures.”

According to the researchers, this is the most complex kidney structure that’s been generated from scratch in a lab. Though this study was done in mice, the team noted that it has already created the first two kidney components—nephron progenitors and ureteric buds—from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). If they’re able to also create stromal cells from iPSCs, they said, “a similarly complex human kidney should be achievable.”

A team of scientists has discovered a brand new form of human T cell that suppresses attacks on healthy tissues, which could lead to treatments for illnesses ranging from lupus to cancer.

In case you forgot, T cells are one of the most significant white blood cells in the immune system, playing a crucial role in adaptive immune response. They can kill diseased or malignant cells; however, studies in mice have shown that some of these cells may also kill T cells responsible for orchestrating autoimmune responses.

Continue reading “A new type of killer T-cell can stop attacks on healthy tissue” »

An international team of researchers claim to have slowed the signs of aging in mice by resetting their cells to younger states, using a genetic treatment.

To the scientists, The Guardian reports, it’s a breakthrough in cell regeneration and therapeutic medicine that doesn’t seem to cause any unexpected issues in mice.

“We are elated that we can use this approach across the life span to slow down aging in normal animals,” said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Salk Institute professor and co-corresponding author of a new study published in the journal Nature Aging, in a statement. “The technique is both safe and effective in mice.”

To date, scientists have largely been in the dark with regard to how individual circuits operate in the highly branched networks of the brain. Mapping these networks is a complicated process, requiring precise measurement methods. For the first time, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, together with researchers from the Ernst Strüngmann Institute in Frankfurt and Newcastle University in England, have now functionally proven a so far poorly understood neural connection in the visual system of monkeys using optogenetic methods. To this end, individual neurons were genetically modified so that they became sensitive to a light stimulus.

For decades microstimulation was the method of choice for activating neurons – the method proved to be reliable and accurate. That is why it is also used medically for deep brain stimulation. The Tübingen-based scientists were now able to show that optogenetics, a biological technique still in its infancy, delivers comparable results.

With optogenetics it is possible to directly influence the activity of neurons by light. To do this individual neurons are genetically modified with the help of viruses to express light-sensitive ion channels in their cell membrane. Through blue light pulses delivered directly into the brain, the modified neurons can then be systematically activated.

In the midst of all the apparent tumult, intense emotion, and occasional reckless behavior characterizing the teenage years, the brain is, in fact, evolving and developing the neural circuits needed to keep emotions in check. Research in the June 8, 2016 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience describes how the ability to control emotions moves from one brain area to another as teens mature into adults, offering an opportunity to understand how disorders related to emotional control emerge.

“Our study opens the way for a better understanding of the neurobiology behind adolescent behavior in emotionally arousing situations,” said study author Anna Tyborowska of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “The findings could also have important clinical implications [as] many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence and are characterized by problems with emotional action control.”

Previous research links the spike in sensation-seeking and impulsive behavior during adolescence to the delayed maturation of the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in reasoning, planning, and decision-making. Study authors Inge Volman, Ivan Toni, and Karin Roelofs previously demonstrated the importance of the anterior prefrontal cortex in emotional control in adults. However, it has not been clear whether and how the delayed development of the prefrontal cortex affects emotional control during adolescence.

Close interactions with infectious disease set both University of California, Santa Cruz graduate student Ana Nuñez Castrejon and Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Rebecca DuBois on the path of studying respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common and sometimes dangerous respiratory disease for which there is not currently a vaccine. The two researchers recently marked a major milestone in their effort to create an effective vaccine for the virus with the publishing of their paper “Structure-based design and antigenic validation of respiratory syncytial virus G immunogens” in the Journal of Virology.

For fifth-year Baskin Engineering student and the paper’s lead author Nuñez Castrejon, a bout of pneumonia that lingered for months when she was an undergraduate student sparked her interest in studying respiratory illnesses. For DuBois, watching her child go through a serious infection of RSV, which can cause severe respiratory infections in infants/children and the elderly, led her to study the disease.

“We have all of these wonderful childhood vaccines that have eliminated so much childhood disease, but there are still a lot of infectious diseases that are really tough on children, and RSV is one of those that causes hospitalizations in children,” DuBois said.