Lifeboat Foundation

“Everything about this discovery was surprising.”

The team’s research was published on Thursday (Dec. 12) in the journal Science.

This year, the sun has been particularly turbulent, blasting Earth with usually strong solar storms and ramping up auroral displays as a reminder of how violent our star can be. While scientists have been able to study this behavior and collect invaluable data, this represents the sun’s behavior over a tiny fraction of its 4.6 billion-year life so far.

Lipids, together with lipoprotein particles, are the cause of atherosclerosis, which is a pathology of the cardiovascular system. In addition, it affects inflammatory processes and affects the vessels and heart. In pharmaceutical answer to this, statins are considered a first-stage treatment method to block cholesterol synthesis. Many times, additional drugs are also used with this method to lower lipid concentrations in order to achieve certain values of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Recent advances in photodynamic therapy (PDT) as a new cancer treatment have gained the therapy much attention as a minimally invasive and highly selective method. Photodynamic therapy has been proven more effective than chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy alone in numerous studies.

A new DNA analysis has shown that the arrival of modern humans from Africa was far from smooth.

It could lead to vaccines that could be simply rubbed onto the skin like creams.

Some bacteria, like harmless Staphylococcus epidermidis, have adapted to thrive on human skin.

Continue reading “Skin bacteria turned into topical vaccine, protects mice against tetanus” »

Noting that recent advances in artificial intelligence and the existence of large-scale experimental data about human biology have reached a critical mass, a team of researchers from Stanford University, Genentech, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative says that science has an “unprecedented opportunity” to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create the world’s first virtual human cell. Such a cell would be able to represent and simulate the precise behavior of human biomolecules, cells, and, eventually, tissues and organs.

“Modeling human cells can be considered the holy grail of biology,” said Emma Lundberg, associate professor of bioengineering and of pathology in the schools of Engineering and Medicine at Stanford and a senior author of a new article in the journal Cell proposing a concerted, global effort to create the world’s first AI virtual cell. “AI offers the ability to learn directly from data and to move beyond assumptions and hunches to discover the emergent properties of complex biological systems.”

Continue reading “Beyond batteries: Researchers bring body-heat powered wearable devices closer to reality” »

The big mover in the CSIRO’s GenCost report was the plunging cost of battery storage. One major battery project may already be doing much better.

Google’s new 105-qubit quantum processor has surpassed a key milestone first proposed in 1995.

The researchers produced new materials with perovskite crystal structures and compared them with existing materials at the cell level, concluding that high efficiencies can only be achieved with lead perovskites. They then fabricated highly efficient demonstrators, such as a perovskite silicon tandem solar cell of more than 100 sq cm with screen-printed metallization.

The project also included the development of a scalable perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell that achieved a 31.6% power conversion efficiency, first announced in September. The Fraunhofer researchers used a combination of vapor deposition and wet-chemical deposition to ensure an even deposition of the perovskite layer on the textured silicon surface. “Close industrial cooperation is the next step in establishing this future technology in Europe,” said Professor Andreas Bett, coordinator of the project.

Oil and gas giant bp spins offshore wind interests into JV with another fossil major, in what the CEO describes as a “capital-light” approach to “an electrifying world.”