July 2023 – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:27:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Clever DNA tricks https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/clever-dna-tricks Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:27:35 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/clever-dna-tricks

Every person starts as just one fertilized egg. By adulthood, that single cell has turned into roughly 37 trillion cells, many of which keep dividing to create the same amount of fresh human cells every few months.

But those cells have a formidable challenge. The average dividing cell must copy — perfectly — 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA, about once every 24 hours. The cell’s replication machinery does an amazing job of this, copying genetic material at a lickety-split pace of some 50 base pairs per second.

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Complex brain cell connections in the cerebellum more common than believed https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/complex-brain-cell-connections-in-the-cerebellum-more-common-than-believed Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:26:54 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/complex-brain-cell-connections-in-the-cerebellum-more-common-than-believed

The STAR party’s vision for Canada includes the research and development of self sustainable Mobile Airborne Cities; or Airborne Arcologies. Being an obviously semi-long term goal, the objective would be to at first, allocate budgeting towards research and development of components to build this project in a phased manner… and the scaling of the project as technology allows for it.

Phase I: research and development of scalable micro-prototypes.

Phase II: multiple prototype development / testing stages.

Phase III: Final modifications, and testing of Finished Model.

Phase IV: aircity one digital-testing / infrastructure development.

Phase V: aircity production facility development.

Phase VI:… More


In 1906, Spanish scientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering studies of the microscopic structures of the brain. His famous drawings of Purkinje cells in the cerebellum show a forest of neuron structures, with multiple large branches sprouting from the cell body and splitting into beautiful, leaf-like patterns.

Although these early depictions captured multiple dendrites extending from the cell body, the prevailing wisdom among neuroscientists to this day is that Purkinje cells have just one primary that connects with a single climbing fiber from the brain stem. New research titled, “Climbing fiber multi-innervation of mouse Purkinje dendrites with arborization common to human,” from the University of Chicago published in Science shows that Cajal’s drawings were accurate all along, however—nearly all Purkinje cells in the human cerebellum have multiple primary dendrites.

Further studies in mice showed that about 50% of their Purkinje cells have this more complex structure too, and of these cells, 25% receive input from multiple climbing fibers that connect with different primary dendrite branches. Experiments recording in live mice also revealed that the primary branches can be activated independently, responding to different stimuli from the environment.

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Paralyzed NY man can move and feel again — thanks to AI ‘miracle’ surgery https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/paralyzed-ny-man-can-move-and-feel-again-thanks-to-ai-miracle-surgery Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:24:58 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/paralyzed-ny-man-can-move-and-feel-again-thanks-to-ai-miracle-surgery

A Long Island man who was paralyzed in a diving accident has regained motion and feeling in his body after a breakthrough, machine learning-based surgery that successfully “connected a computer to his brain” through microelectrode implants.

Now, the successful case of Massapequa’s Keith Thomas, 45, is being heralded throughout the medical world as a “pioneer” case for AI-infused surgeries to treat or cure impassible illnesses like blindness, deafness, ALS, seizures, cerebral palsy and Parkinson’s, experts at Manhasset’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research boast.

“This is the first time a paralyzed person is regaining movement and sensation by having their brain, body and spinal cord electronically linked together,” Chad Bouton, a professor at Feinstein’s Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine, told The Post.

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Scientists Create New Material Five Times Lighter and Four Times Stronger Than Steel https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/scientists-create-new-material-five-times-lighter-and-four-times-stronger-than-steel Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:23:24 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/scientists-create-new-material-five-times-lighter-and-four-times-stronger-than-steel

Materials possessing both strength and lightness have the potential to enhance everything from automobiles to body armor. But usually, the two qualities are mutually exclusive. However, researchers at the University of Connecticut, along with their collaborators, have now crafted an incredibly strong yet lightweight material. Surprisingly, they achieved this using two unexpected building blocks: DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

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In Search of Future Life https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/in-search-of-future-life Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:22:54 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/in-search-of-future-life

614 — In Search of Future Life.
Airdate: December 6, 1981
Writer and Director: Greg Goldman.

What might the world be like for our children?

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Symptoms of Cancer https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/symptoms-of-cancer Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:25:03 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/symptoms-of-cancer

Cancer can cause different, such as abnormal bumps, night sweats, or unexplained weight gain or loss. Only a doctor can tell if are caused by cancer or some other problem.

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Stanford Medicine researchers map morphing placenta https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/stanford-medicine-researchers-map-morphing-placenta Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:24:49 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/stanford-medicine-researchers-map-morphing-placenta

The STAR party’s vision for Canada includes the research and development of self sustainable Mobile Airborne Cities; or Airborne Arcologies. Being an obviously semi-long term goal, the objective would be to at first, allocate budgeting towards research and development of components to build this project in a phased manner… and the scaling of the project as technology allows for it.

Phase I: research and development of scalable micro-prototypes.

Phase II: multiple prototype development / testing stages.

Phase III: Final modifications, and testing of Finished Model.

Phase IV: aircity one digital-testing / infrastructure development.

Phase V: aircity production facility development.

Phase VI:… More


Early in pregnancy, something strange happens in the uterus: Cells from the fetal side of the developing placenta invade the uterine endometrium and work with the mother’s immune system to remodel the arteries.

“When I first read about it, I thought, ‘This is so bizarre,’” said Stanford Medicine pathologist Michael Angelo, MD, PhD.

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Is AI up to snuff? Cardiac clinical trial points to yes https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/is-ai-up-to-snuff-cardiac-clinical-trial-points-to-yes Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:24:34 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/is-ai-up-to-snuff-cardiac-clinical-trial-points-to-yes

There’s a lot of talk about the potential for artificial intelligence in medicine, but few researchers have shown through well-designed clinical trials that it could be a boon for doctors, health care providers and patients.

Now, researchers at Stanford Medicine have conducted one such trial; they tested an artificial intelligence algorithm used to evaluate heart function. The algorithm, they found, improves evaluations of heart function from echocardiograms — movies of the beating heart, filmed with ultrasound waves, that show how efficiently it pumps blood.

“This blinded, randomized clinical trial is, to our knowledge, one of the first to evaluate the performance of an artificial intelligence algorithm in medicine. We showed that AI can help improve accuracy and speed of echocardiogram readings,” said James Zou, PhD, assistant professor of biomedical data science and co-senior author on the study. “This is important because heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world. There are over 10 million echocardiograms done each year in the U.S., and AI has the potential to add precision to how they are interpreted.”

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Omega-3 fatty acids appear promising for maintaining lung health https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/omega-3-fatty-acids-appear-promising-for-maintaining-lung-health Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:23:57 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/omega-3-fatty-acids-appear-promising-for-maintaining-lung-health

NIH-funded study supports new role for nutrient found in fish, dietary supplements.

Omega-3 fatty acids, which are abundant in fish and fish oil supplements, appear promising for maintaining lung health, according to new evidence from a large, multi-faceted study in healthy adults supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study provides the strongest evidence to date of this association and underscores the importance of including omega-3 fatty acids in the diet, especially given that many Americans do not meet current guidelines. Funded largely by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH, the study results were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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How Old Can Humans Get? https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/how-old-can-humans-get Tue, 01 Aug 2023 01:23:19 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/07/how-old-can-humans-get

An expert on aging thinks humans could live to be 1,000 years old—with a few tweaks to our genetic “software”.

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