Lifeboat Foundation

Corneal blindness occurs when the transparent membrane that covers the front of the eye and acts as a lens becomes opaque and prevents the light from reaching the back of the eye, inhibiting vision. It can be solved with a transplant, but experts estimate that 12.7 million people are currently waiting for a cornea donation. These membranes are in short supply: for every 70 that are needed, only one is available. In view of this problem, especially in countries where there are fewer donations of human corneas due to limited infrastructure, a group of Swedish researchers tested corneas made from pig skin collagen in 20 people who needed transplants (all of them Iranian or Indian citizens; 14 of them were blind). After two years, they all showed improvement, and those who were blind could see again. Although more complex clinical trials are still necessary to validate the measure, the first test of this bioengineered corneal tissue has proven to be safe. The results of this pilot study were published in the Nature Biotechnology journal.

There is also a socioeconomic aspect to corneal blindness: one million new cases are diagnosed every year, but according to researchers, most are concentrated in low-and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East – precisely where it is most difficult to obtain a donated human cornea, due to endless “economic, cultural, technological, political and ethical barriers.” Finding an alternative to the human cornea transplant is key, the authors point out, to fighting keratoconus, a disease that weakens and thins the cornea, and which is the reason for most transplants.

In order to find an alternative to donated human cornea, the researchers bioengineered collagen, the main protein in the human cornea, as a raw material. “For an abundant yet sustainable and cost-effective supply of collagen, we used medical-grade collagen sourced from porcine skin, a purified byproduct from the food industry already used in FDA-approved medical devices for glaucoma surgery and as a wound dressing,” they explain in the article. Unlike the human corneas, which must be used in less than two weeks, bioengineered corneas can be stored for up to two years.

Pawpaw varieties are assessed on their flavor, yield, fruit size, texture, and disease resistance, Crabtree says. She adds that the “best varieties” would be high yield trees that produce a pawpaw with “firmness and/or creaminess that’s not watery, mushy, or gritty” as well as a lower percentage of seeds.

Hunting for pawpaw

Native to 26 states, pawpaw can be found along the East Coast between Ontario, Canada, and northern Florida west to Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas, and even Texas.

Taste matters to fruit flies, just as it does to humans: like people, the flies tend to seek out and consume sweet-tasting foods and reject foods that taste bitter. However, little is known about how sweet and bitter tastes are represented by the brain circuits that link sensation to behavior.

In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers at Brown University described how they developed a new imaging technique and used it to map the neural activity of fruit flies in response to sweet and bitter tastes.

“These results show that the way fly brains encode the taste of food is more complex than we had anticipated,” said study author Nathaniel Snell, who earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brown in 2021 and conducted the research as part of his thesis.

Floating homes with state-of-the-art technology and drones to deliver essentials like food, medicine and medical attention are under construction.

Findings suggest it is possible to treat soil and water on Mars for farming.

Star Scientific invents a catalyst that in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen heats to 700 Celsius. That’s enough heat to drive a steam turbine for power generation.

Star Scientific is a 25-year-old research laboratory north of Sydney, Australia. The company is one of many trying to make existing power plants carbon-free. This includes old coal-fired thermal power stations which remain among the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Star has invented a patented non-polluting catalyst which it calls HERO® which is an acronym for Hydrogen Energy Release Optimizer. It uses hydrogen without producing combustion.

Mars Food Australia, the subsidiary of the global food giant, is using HERO® to help decarbonize its processes. The 18-month pilot project is the first step in developing alternative heat sources for the food industry. Bill Heague who is General Manager of Mars in Australia states, “Thermal energy is crucial to the business of cooking food and this technology has the capability to create limitless heat without any combustion and zero emissions.”

Continue reading “Can We Adapt Old Power Plants to Run on Green Hydrogen?” »

Burial sites in the Eastern Mediterranean from the period around 2000 BCE show evidence of outbreaks of disease that likely contributed to the fall of three great civilizations: the Minoan on the island of Crete, the Akkadian in what is Turkey today, and Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

The pathogens found in the DNA of old bones indicate significant outbreaks of typhoid fever and the plague. The emergence of widespread disease in this area of the world at that time may be related to climate change, or pressures from new waves of human migration coming from outside the region. But a paper published in Current Biology on July 25, 2022, shows widespread infections involving the bacterium Yersinia pestis, responsible for the many incidents of plague that occurred in ancient civilizations all the way to the era of Justinian 1st in the 6th century CE Eastern Roman Empire which modern scholars labelled Byzantine. Also found in burial sites is widespread evidence of Salmonella Enterica the cause of typhoid/enteric fever.

This evidence coincides with a period of major geopolitical transformation from 2,290 to 1909 BCE. During this time the Old Kingdom, the Akkadian Empire, and the Middle Minoan civilization were all disrupted. The periods are associated with societal and population declines throughout much of the Eastern Mediterranean. Did these depopulating diseases come from elsewhere brought in by migration and invasion? Were there environmental factors such as a change in the climate? Was there degradation of agricultural lands leading to famine, and a general weakening of the local population?

Researchers have succeeded in making photosynthesis more efficient in soybean plants, in a major breakthrough that will mean less forest has to be cut down to make way for farms.

Nuclear winter visualizations made by Prof. Max Tegmark using state-of-the-art simulation data from these science papers:
* Lili Xia, Alan Robock, Kim Scherrer, Cheryl Harrison, Benjamin Bodirsky, Isabelle Weindl, Jonas Jägermeyr, Charles Bardeen, Owen Toon & Ryan Heneghan, 2022, published in Nature Food.
* Joshua Coupe, Charles Bardeen, Alan Robock & Owen Toon 2019, J. of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124, 8522–8543
* Owen Toon, Charles Bardeen, Alan Robock, Lili Xia, Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, R. Peterson, Cheryl Harrison, Nicole Lovenduski & Richard P. Turco 2019, Sci. Adv. 5: eaay5478
* Alan Robock, Luke Oman & Georgiy L. Stenchikov 2007, J. Geophys. Research 112, D13107.

Special thanks to Chuck Bardeen for data and Meia Chita-Tegmark for editing!