Lifeboat Foundation

This week and next, I’ll be visiting the Sonos stores in New York City (4÷12) and London (4÷17) for a free listening party celebrating the Voyager Golden Record, the iconic message for extraterrestrials launched into space 40 years ago. I’ll do a short multimedia presentation about this inspiring artifact and we’ll play the first ever vinyl release of the Voyager Golden Record that I co-produced with my friends Tim Daly and Lawrence Azerrad. Admission is free. No tickets remain for the New York City event but depending on the number of “no shows,” there may be availability at the door. And if you’re in London, please do RSVP right here! I hope to see you!

One of the ultimate goals of modern physics is to unlock the power of superconductivity, where electricity flows with zero resistance at room temperature.

Progress has been slow, but physicists have just made an unexpected breakthrough. They’ve discovered a superconductor that works in a way no one’s ever seen before — and it opens the door to a whole world of possibilities not considered until now.

In other words, they’ve identified a brand new type of superconductivity.

Continue reading “Physicists Just Discovered an Entirely New Type of Superconductivity” »

TOKYO (Reuters) — A series of shallow earthquakes shook parts of western Japan on Monday and authorities warned that further strong shaking is possible over the coming days.

A stone torii gate damaged by an earthquake is seen at Karita Shrine in Ohda, Shimane Prefecture, Japan in this photo taken by Kyodo April 9, 2018. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS.

Blood stem cells are produced in the bone marrow, yet new evidence from mice studies suggests that proteins produced in the liver help maintain the production of these critical stem cells from afar. Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which differentiate into various blood cells, are largely produced and maintained by specialised cells that also reside in the bone marrow. However, emerging evidence hints that HSC behaviour is affected via long-range signals originating from a distant part of the body in mammals. To pinpoint the origins of these mysterious signals, researchers investigated which organs in mice produced a key protein called haematopoietic cytokine thrombopoietin which is known to help maintain HSCs, called haematopoietic cytokine thrombopoietin (TPO). The protein, it emerged, was enriched in osteoblasts, mesenchymal stromal cells, and the liver. The researchers found that knocking out TPO production in osteoblasts and mesenchymal stromal cells had little effect on the maintenance of HPCs. However, when they blocked production of TPO in liver cells, this resulted in a 24-fold reduction of HPCs in the bone marrow. The findings appear in the journal Science.

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Will open avenues for drug discovery

Scientists have developed a new blood test for Alzheimer’s disease that can detect early indicators of the disease long before the first symptoms appear in patients. The blood test would thus open the door to new avenues in drug discovery, said the researchers from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany.

The blood test uses a technology called immuno-infrared sensor to measure distribution of pathological and healthy structures of amyloid-beta, according to a study published in the Molecular Cell. The pathological amyloid-beta structure is rich in a sticky, sheet-like folding pattern that makes it prone to aggregation, while the healthy structure is not.

Continue reading “Blood test to detect Alzheimer’s disease” »

Scientists at LIGO detected billion-year-old gravitational waves, and they are expecting to detect a lot more. This is an excerpt from ‘The Little Book of Black Holes’ by Frans Pretorius and Steven S. Gubser, reprinted with permission from the publisher Princeton University Press.

I t has now been decades since stem cell technology emerged as the next great breakthrough in modern medicine, with the bold potential for one day curing everything from heart disease to cancer. Today, that optimism doesn’t appear to have diminished.

It’s easy to recall the excitement. In the late 1990s, when stem cell research was still relatively unexplored but gathering pace, the hope surrounding future uses for such treatments appeared near limitless. Once greater advances had been made, it was often argued, doctors could one day inject patients with cells that have the ability to transform into any other type of cell, making it possible to grow whole new organs. In theory, any damaged area…

A split in the African plate resulted in a gaping crevice in Kenya’s Rift Valley. While it is moving slowly, it is fast in geographical terms.

3D map of all known stellar systems in the solar neighbourhood within a radius of 12.5 light-years. The Sun is at the centre and the Epsilon Indi binary system with the brown dwarf Epsilon Indi B lies near the bottom. The colour is indicative of the temperature and the spectral class — white stars are (main-sequence) A and F dwarfs; yellow stars like the Sun are G dwarfs; orange stars are K dwarfs; and red stars are M dwarfs, by far the most common type of star in the solar neighbourhood. The blue axes are oriented along the galactic coordinate system, and the radii of the rings are 5, 10, and 15 light-years, respectively.