Lifeboat Foundation

Associated Press historical news archive articles dating back to 1985.

Poorly regulated stem cell treatments have blinded some macular degeneration patients. But a new technique is showing therapeutic promise.

Astronomers have long predicted that as many as 20,000 black holes could be hiding in our galaxy’s center, but so far no one has been able to spot them. Until now.

A Columbia University-led team of scientists dug through data taken with the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory to find the objects. They managed to find a dozen characteristic x-ray sources spewing energy from the galaxy’s inner three light-years. This is the first time anyone has observed these black holes.

“It’s the confirmation of several theories that predicted this ought to be the case,” study author Chuck Hailey, Columbia University astrophysics professor, told Gizmodo. “But it’s strange to have had this many and not really see them.”

Continue reading “Astronomers Find Evidence of Thousands of Black Holes at the Center of Our Galaxy” »

Artificial intelligence can create jobs, too. How else do we manage the robots?

Engineering and construction is behind the curve in implementing artificial intelligence solutions. Based on extensive research, we survey applications and algorithms to help bridge the technology gap.

The engineering and construction (E&C) sector is worth more than $10 trillion a year. And while its customers are increasingly sophisticated, it remains severely underdigitized. To lay out the landscape of technology, we conducted a comprehensive study of current and potential use cases in every stage of E&C, from design to preconstruction to construction to operations and asset management. Our research revealed a growing focus on technological solutions that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)-powered algorithms. These emerging technologies focus on helping players overcome some of the E&C industry’s greatest challenges, including cost and schedule overruns and safety concerns.

This animation gives a sense of the awe-inspiring scale of some of the known objects in our universe. It is difficult for human minds to comprehend the sheer size of distant stars, many of which completely dwarf our own Sun. Here we see some of the most famous objects displayed relative to one another. The animation begins with Earth, which has a radius of about 6.3 million metres, and ends at VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest known stars in existence, with a radius about 1420 times that of our own Sun, or 990 billion metres! Keep an eye on the changing scale underneath the objects to really appreciate the variation in size.

This animation will form part of the “The Living Universe” exhibition, to be displayed at the ESO Supernova, opening in spring 2018.

Hedrick’s close call inspired his research team to design a new molecule, called a polymer, that targets five deadly types of drug-resistant microbes and kills them like ninja assassins. Their research, a collaboration with Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, was reported recently in the journal Nature Communications.

If commercialized, the polymer could boost the fight against “superbugs” that can fend off every antibiotic that doctors throw at them. An estimated 700,000 people worldwide die every year from these untreatable infections.

New research from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the Perseus galaxy cluster is experiencing a 5 billion-year-old cold front that has plummeted through the region at speeds of 300,000 miles per hour. It stretches about 2 million light-years across, and has remained very well-defined.

If you’re of a certain age, you probably know know Huntsville, Alabama’s Space Camp best as a prize for winning a ridiculous competition show. And if you ever obsessed over going on that cosmic retreat, you probably wanted to get on that weird spinning chair they always showed in the clips. It’s a serious looking device at a serious facility–what the heck is it for?

I was recently lucky enough to make a childhood dream come true and zipped up my flight suit for a shot at Space Camp. There, as I explain in the video above, I learned that the spinning chair has a more formal name: the Multi Axis Trainer, or MAT. It’s used to give riders a feeling of what it’s like to uncontrollably tumble through space.

Continue reading “What the Spinning Chair at Space Camp is Actually For” »