Lifeboat Foundation

Mental health issues are one of the most common causes of disability, affecting more than a billion people worldwide. Addressing mental health difficulties can present extraordinarily tough problems: what can providers do to help people in the most precarious situations? How do changes in the physical brain affect our thoughts and experiences? And at the end of the day, how can everyone get the care they need?

Answering those questions was the shared goal of the researchers who attended the Mental Health, Brain, and Behavioral Science Research Day in September. While the problems they faced were serious, the new solutions they started to build could ultimately help improve mental health care at individual and societal levels.

“We’re building something that there’s no blueprint for,” said Mark Rapaport, MD, CEO of Huntsman Mental Health Institute at the University of Utah. “We’re developing new and durable ways of addressing some of the most difficult issues we face in society.”

Extremely thin materials consisting of just a few atomic layers promise applications for electronics and quantum technologies. An international team led by TU Dresden has now made remarkable progress with an experiment conducted at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR): The experts were able to induce an extremely fast switching process between electrically neutral and charged luminescent particles in an ultra-thin, effectively two-dimensional material.

Amazing success at reversing Type 1 diabetes.

A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells.

She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body.

Continue reading “Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first” »

Starship is the world’s largest and most powerful rocket and is shaping up to be the rocket that will finally realize the company’s dream, sourced from Elon Musk, of making humans a multi-planetary species. With a few Starship launches under its belt SpaceX is full steam ahead to achieving its goal, but it appears its being blocked by US regulators more than necessary, at least according to SpaceX.

Despite its goals, we have now learned an approximate figure SpaceX has spent on Starship’s development, with the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Gwynne Shotwell, saying in front of the Texas Appropriations Committee for Texas Space Commission that SpaceX has invested $3 billion into developing Starship and its surrounding facilities. Shotwell also pointed out SpaceX is about to break through the four million mark for Starlink customers and that as the network grows, it plans to expand its facilities and put more Starlink satellites in orbit.

The Menlo Park-based molecular diagnostics company is expanding to Austin, with eyes set on completing a 220,000-square-foot facility in EastVillage by 2026.

Its 1 million-square-foot facility promises to become more efficient at manufacturing printed circuit boards than rival factories in Southeast Asia, SpaceX’s president tells Texas lawmakers.

Year 2023 once again nad helps even in Parkinson’s being a neuroprotective for the mitochondria.

Zhang, X., Xu, S., Hu, Y. et al. Irisin exhibits neuroprotection by preventing mitochondrial damage in Parkinson’s disease. npj Parkinsons Dis. 9, 13 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-023-00453-9

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Continue reading “Irisin exhibits neuroprotection by preventing mitochondrial damage in Parkinson’s disease” »

A Spain-based startup has successfully demonstrated the capability of its graphene-based brain-computer interface (BCI) to perform precise tumor surgery.

INBRAIN Neuroelectronics, a company specializing in brain-computer interface therapies, successfully implanted its cortical interface in a human patient.

Continue reading “‘World’s first’ graphene brain chip implanted in a cancer patient” »

The decision locks libraries into an ecosystem that is not in readers’ interests. Congress must act.