Lifeboat Foundation

In a perspective article published Sept. 26 online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists at UT Dallas’ Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute describes the path to developing a new class of artificial muscles made from highly twisted fibers of various materials, ranging from exotic carbon nanotubes to ordinary nylon thread and polymer fishing line.

Because the artificial muscles can be made in different sizes and configurations, potential applications range from robotics and prosthetics to consumer products such as smart textiles that change porosity and shape in response to temperature.

“We call these actuating fibers ‘artificial muscles’ because they mimic the fiber-like form-factor of natural muscles,” said Dr. Carter Haines, associate research professor in the NanoTech Institute and co-lead author of the PNAS article, with research associate Dr. Na Li. “While the name evokes the idea of humanoid robots, we are very excited about their potential use for other practical applications, such as in next-generation intelligent textiles.” Science Based on Ancient Art.

This computational illustration shows a graphene network structure below a layer of water.

New analysis finds way to safely conduct heat from graphene to biological tissues.

Continue reading “MIT: Powering up graphene implants without frying cells ~ For the Next Generation of Implants” »

The combination of graphene nanoribbons made with a process developed at Rice University and a common polymer could someday be of critical importance to healing damaged spinal cords in people, according to Rice chemist James Tour.

The Tour lab has spent a decade working with graphene nanoribbons, starting with the discovery of a chemical process to “unzip” them from multiwalled carbon nanotubes, as revealed in a Nature paper in 2009. Since then, the researchers have used them to enhance materials for the likes of deicers for airplane wings, better batteries and less-permeable containers for natural gas storage.

Now their work to develop nanoribbons for medical applications has resulted in a material dubbed Texas-PEG that may help knit damaged or even severed spinal cords.

ETH researchers are developing tiny, sophisticated technological and biological machines enabling non-invasive, selective therapies. Their creations include genetically modified cells that can be activated via brain waves, and swarms of microrobots that facilitate highly precise application of drugs.

Richard Fleischner, who directed the 1966 cult film Fantastic Voyage, would have been delighted with Bradley Nelson’s research: similar to the story in Fleischner’s film, Nelson wants to load tiny robots with drugs and manoeuvre them to the precise location in the human body where treatment is needed, for instance to the site of a cancer tumour. Alternatively, the tiny creatures could also be fitted with instruments, allowing operations to be performed without surgical intervention. The advantages compared with conventional treatments with drugs are clear: far more targeted therapy, and as a result, fewer side effects.

A 25-year-old student has just come up with a way to fight drug-resistant superbugs without antibiotics.

The new approach has so far only been tested in the lab and on mice, but it could offer a potential solution to antibiotic resistance, which is now getting so bad that the United Nations recently declared it a “fundamental threat” to global health.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria already kill around 700,000 people each year, but a recent study suggests that number could rise to around 10 million by 2050.

Continue reading “The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old’s answer to antibiotic resistance” »

A strong rebuttle to the sick article in the Telegraph which attempts to discredit Zuckerberg and Chan and their commitment to curing diseases.

Science and progress hardly ever stop just because a few cuckoos think we’re going too far. That’s what I tell myself most of the times when I bump into depressingly ill-informed articles about ageing and the diseases of old age. I tell myself that the best thing to do is to just let such articles disappear into oblivion and not give them any extra visibility. However, if instead of a few cuckoos we’re faced with an army of cuckoos, then we’re in for troubles.

At the time of this writing, people who are in favour of or oppose rejuvenation aren’t many, and neither are those who know about it but don’t care. Quite likely, most people in the world haven’t even heard about it yet. What I fear is that, when the advent of rejuvenation biotechnologies will be close, people who oppose rejuvenation will do their best to persuade undecided ones that disease is better than health, and ultimately, provoke an us-vs-them conflict that could jeopardise the cause of rejuvenation. The best way to avoid that conflict is to convince as many people as possible to support rejuvenation biotechnologies before they even arrive, so that when they do, those who oppose them will only be a few cuckoos indeed and not an army. Exposing the intellectual misery of deathist arguments is indubitably a good way of reaching this goal; that’s why I chose to respond to this spectacularly stupid article, instead of just ignoring it.

Continue reading “A sickeningly bad idea indeed” »

In an astonishing breakthrough, patients left paralysed by severe spinal cord injuries have recovered the ability to move their legs after training with an exoskeleton linked to their brain – with one even able to walk using two crutches.

Scientists developed the Walk Again Project, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, thinking that they could enable paraplegics to move about using the exoskeleton controlled by their thoughts. But they were surprised to discover that during the training, the eight patients all started to regain the sense of touch and movement below the injury to their spine. It was previously thought that the nerves in seven of the patients’ spines had been completely severed.

But the researchers now believe that a few nerves survived and these were reactivated by the training, which may have rewired circuits in the brain. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, they said: “While patient one was initially not even able to stand using braces when placed in an orthostatic posture, after 10 months of training the same patient became capable of walking using a walker, braces and the assistance of one therapist. “At this stage, this patient became capable of producing voluntary leg movements mimicking walking, while suspended overground.

Continue reading “Paralysed patient walks again thanks to virtual reality and brain-computer interfaces” »

The U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State along with the Kavli Foundation; the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Global Partnerships Forum hosted the event that launched the brain initiative during the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly to elevate brain science as a foreign policy priority.

The International Brain Initiative aims to foster coordination of large-scale brain projects around the world in partnership with governments, research institutions, private sector, foundations, advocacy groups, and social innovators.

Toward this end, the United States with Japan, Germany, Argentina and the UN Conference on Trade and Development announced the launch of the International Brain Initiative, part of which is a virtual International Brain Station to enhance and facilitate global collaboration on both basic and disease-focused brain science research.

Continue reading “US Launches International Brain Initiative to Coordinate Brain Mapping Efforts” »

A brief introduction about brain research.

The human brain is more complex and has far more capacity than a billion dollar computer. So far the research done on the brain is still in its nascent stages. What mysteries and secrets it holds for humanity in the future remains one of the big questions.

The 21st century has been called the “Century of the Mind”. Research into the functions and capabilities of the wonderful organ that is the human brain will skyrocket with duration as mankind enters a new era in discovery and invention.

Continue reading “Brain Research: Brain Enhancements, Treatments and More Scientific Brain Discoveries” »