Lifeboat Foundation

Topology and entanglement are two powerful principles for characterizing the structure of complex quantum states. In a new paper in the journal Physical Review X, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania establish a relationship between the two.

“Our work ties two big ideas together,” says Charles Kane, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Physics in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences. “It’s a conceptual link between topology, which is a way of characterizing the universal features that quantum states have, and entanglement, which is a way in which quantum states can exhibit non-local correlations, where something that happens in one point in space is correlated with something that happens in another part in space. What we’ve found is a situation where those concepts are tightly intertwined.”

The seed for exploring this connection came during the long hours Kane spent in his home office during the pandemic, pondering new ideas. One train of thought had him envisioning the classic textbook image of the Fermi surface of copper, which represents the metal’s potential electron energies. It’s a picture every physics student sees, and one with which Kane was highly familiar.

In recent years, ribonucleic acid (RNA) has emerged as a powerful tool for the development of novel therapies. RNA is used to copy genetic information contained in our hereditary material, the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and then serves as a template for building proteins, the building blocks of life. Delivery of RNA into cells remains a major challenge for the development of novel therapies across a broad range of diseases. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden together with researchers from the global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca have investigated where and how mRNA is delivered inside the cell. They found that mRNA uses an unexpected entry door. Their results provide novel insights into the development of RNA therapeutics towards efficient delivery and lower dosages.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) contains the genetic information required for the development and maintenance of life. This information is communicated by messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) to make proteins. mRNA-based therapeutics have the potential to address unmet needs for a wide variety of diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. mRNA can be delivered to cells to trigger the production, degradation or modification of a target protein, something impossible with other approaches. A key challenge with this modality is being able to deliver the mRNA inside the cell so that it can be translated to make a protein. mRNA can be packed into lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)—small bubbles of fat—that protect the mRNA and shuttle it into cells. However, this process is not simple, because the mRNA has to pass the membrane before it can reach its site of action in the cell interior, the cytoplasm.

Researchers in the team of MPI-CBG director Marino Zerial are experts in visualizing the cellular entry routes of molecules in the cell, such as mRNA with high-resolution microscopes. They teamed up with scientists from AstraZeneca who provided the researchers with lipid nanoparticle prototypes that they had developed for therapeutic approaches to follow the mRNA inside the cell. The study is published in the Journal of Cell Biology.

Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new and potentially more effective way to deliver messenger RNA (mRNA) into cells. Their approach involves packing mRNA inside nanoparticles that mimic the flu virus—a naturally efficient vehicle for delivering genetic material such as RNA inside cells.

The new mRNA delivery nanoparticles are described in a paper published recently in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

The work addresses a major challenge in the field of drug delivery: Getting large biological drug molecules safely into cells and protecting them from organelles called endosomes. These tiny acid-filled bubbles inside the cell serve as barriers that trap and digest large molecules that try to enter. In order for biological therapeutics to do their job once they are inside the cell, they need a way to escape the endosomes.

Skin healing processes and spacewalk preparations filled the work schedule aboard the International Space Station on Friday. The Expedition 67 crew members are also readying a U.S. space freighter for its return to Earth next week.

Four astronauts aboard the orbiting lab practiced surgical techniques to heal wounds in microgravity on Friday in the Kibo laboratory module. The quartet split up in groups of two with NASA astronaut Bob Hines joining ESA (European Space Agency) Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti for the first practice session during the morning. In the afternoon, NASA Flight Engineers Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins began their session studying how to take biopsies and suture wounds inside the Life Science Glovebox.

During the middle of the day, the foursome had time set aside time for gathering frozen research samples inside science freezers and preparing them for departure back to Earth inside the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship. Dragon is due to leave the station on Aug. 18 loaded with over 4,000 pounds of station supplies and science experiments after 33 days docked to the Harmony module’s forward port. The commercial cargo craft will parachute to a splashdown off the coast of Florida the next day for retrieval by NASA and SpaceX personnel.

Human Augmentation Examples. What are examples of augmentations to the human body? Should we allow such augmentation methods and technologies? What are dangers, and risks involved? How can society benefit from these developments?

On Brave New World conference 2020 I gave this webinar with the title: ‘The Human Body. The Next Frontier’.

Continue reading “HUMAN AUGMENTATION EXAMPLES — Webinar at Brave New World | Peter Joosten MSc” »

A group of scientists from the University College London has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that can detect drug-resistant focal cortical dysplasia (FCD), a subtle anomaly in the brain that leads to epileptic seizures. This is a promising step for scientists toward detecting and curing epilepsy in its early stages.

To develop the algorithm, the Multicentre Epilepsy Lesion Detection project (MELD) gathered more than 1,000 patients’ MRI scans from 22 international epilepsy centers, which reports where anomalies are in cases of drug-resistant focal cortical dysplasia (FCD), a major reason behind epilepsy.

Specific proteins in prokaryotes detect viruses in unexpectedly direct ways.

Bacteria use a variety of defense strategies to fight off viral infection. STAND ATPases in humans are known to respond to bacterial infections by inducing programmed cell death in infected cells. Scientists predict that many more antiviral weapons will be discovered in the microbial world in the future. Scientists have discovered a new unexplored microbial defense system in bacteria.

Researchers uncovered specific proteins in prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) that detect viruses in unexpectedly direct ways, recognizing critical parts of the viruses and causing the single-celled organisms to commit suicide to stop the infection within a microbial community, according to a press release published in the official website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Thursday.

Continue reading “MIT researchers discover bacteria’s new antiviral defense system” »

Monocytes, a type of white blood cell, are alone capable of facilitating faster wound healing, says study.

Scientists from the University of Calgary, Canada, have discovered a promising new approach to treating bacterial skin infections. The research showed that monocytes alone are capable of facilitating faster wound healing. The researchers’ next step is to better understand how immune cells like neutrophils function during infection. Researchers have discovered a promising new approach to treating bacterial skin infections.

A team of scientists from the University of Calgary, Canada, revealed new insights which could lead to advancements in the treatment of bacterial infections and wounds, according to a study published in Nature science journal on Friday.

Continue reading “Researchers find new method to treat wounds and skin infections” »

The FDA will allow health-care providers to administer the shots through intradermal injection, or between the layers of the skin, for adults.