Lifeboat Foundation

Inside Doris Taylor’s lab at the Texas Heart Institute are ethereal white pig hearts, stripped of their cells and now a blank slate of an organ.

Removing cells from an organ is fairly simple for scientists like Taylor. Rebuilding the organ by injecting stem cells is the tricky part.

But that’s exactly what Taylor hopes to do: grow a human heart by injecting human stem cells into a “decellularized” organ.

Continue reading “Houston establishes itself as a pioneer in regenerative medicine” »

Today ladies and gentlemen we are able to travel beyond our solar system — May i present you The Alba Clockwork — A successful approach in dealing with previously unstable Alcubierre Drive and its effect on separating space. Previous designs would be obliterated immediately after the generator is powered and would crush upon itself. This new technology creates an energy bubble that can fend off the negative mass generated by the warp field. — Ikarus Shipyards tl;dr — Personal view on a functional Alcubierre driven vehicle with shield to fend off negative mass.

Alcubierre drive : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Continue reading “The Alba Clockwork — Shielded Alcubierre drive concept” »

Human beings have an uneasy relationship with robots. We’re fascinated by the prospect of intelligent machines. At the same time, we’re wary of the existential threat they pose, one emboldened by decades of Hollywood tropes. In the near-term, robots are supposed to pose a threat to our livelihood, with automation promising to replace human workers while the steady march of artificial intelligence puts a machine behind every fast food counter, toll booth, and steering wheel.

In comes Cozmo. The palm-sized robot, from San Francisco-based company Anki, is both a harmless toy and a bold refutation of that uneasy relationship so loved by film and television. The $180 bot, which starts shipping on October 16th, is powered by AI, and the end result is a WALL-E -inspired personality more akin to a clever pet than a do-everything personal assistant.

As part of our regular “One Big Question” series, we put a very similar question to Steven Shladover at the University of California, Berkeley. Shladover is a research engineer who was instrumental in creating California’s PATH program (Partners for Advanced Transportation Technologies), whose mission is to “develop solutions that address the challenges of California’s surface transportation systems through advanced ideas and technologies and with a focus on greater deployment of those solutions throughout California.”

The exact question we put to Shladover and his response follows.

It probably goes without saying, but medicine has improved a lot in modern times. No one would willingly go back to the days of sketchy anesthetics and experimental surgery.

We know a lot more about what ails the body and how to treat disease.

But could we do better? Sure. Some conditions yet confound doctors. Patients still suffer. As much as the situation has improved—some things haven’t changed a bit.

Continue reading “We’ll Soon Trust AI More Than Doctors to Diagnose Disease” »

Physicists say they may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation.

How? They made a computer simulation of the universe. And it looks sort of like us.

A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilisation of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible.

Continue reading “Physicists May Have Evidence Universe Is A Computer Simulation” »

A robot that uses artificial sweat can cool its motors without bulky radiators.

That’s why researchers are hard at work on ways to make spacecraft power systems more efficient, resilient and long-lasting.

“NASA needs reliable long-term power systems to advance exploration of the solar system,” said Jean-Pierre Fleurial, supervisor for the thermal energy conversion research and advancement group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “This is particularly important for the outer planets, where the intensity of sunlight is only a few percent as strong as it is in Earth orbit.”

Continue reading “No extension cord is long enough to reach another planet, and there’s no spacecraft charging station along the way” »

It’s the closest we’ve come to growing transplantable hearts in the lab.