Lifeboat Foundation

Restorative neuroscience, the study to identify means to replace damaged neurons and recover permanently lost mental or physical abilities, is a rapidly advancing scientific field considering our progressively aging society. Redirecting immature neurons that reside in specific brain areas towards the sites of brain damage is an appealing strategy for the therapy of acute brain injury or stroke. A collaborative effort between the Center for Brain Research of Medical University of Vienna and the National Brain Research Program of Hungary/Semmelweis University in Budapest revealed that some mature neurons are able to reconfigure their local microenvironment such that it becomes conducive for adult-born immature neurons to extensively migrate. Thus, a molecular principle emerges that can allow researchers to best mobilize resident cellular reserves in the adult brain and guide immature neurons to the sites of brain damage.

The adult brain has limited capacity of self-repair.

In the aging Western society, acute brain damage and chronic neurodegenerative conditions (e.g. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases) are amongst the most debilitating diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people world-wide. Nerve cells are particularly sensitive to microenvironmental insults and their loss clearly manifests as neurological deficit. Since the innate ability of the adult human brain to regenerate is very poor and confined to its few specialized regions, a key question in present-day neurobiology is how to establish efficient strategies that can replace lost neurons, guide competent cells to the sites of injury and facilitate their functional integration to regain lost functionality. “Cell replacement therapy” thus offers frontline opportunities to design potent therapeutic interventions.

Continue reading “Study offers novel principle to reroute neurons for brain repair” »

This is one breakthrough we need badly to help finally solve Dystonia, and other Central Nervous System disorders and diseases.

Researchers squeeze a three-step optogenetics process into one nifty probe and demonstrate it in mice.

Researchers have shown that mice without the gene for PLCγ1 in their forebrains exhibit manic-like behaviors.

ESA’s XMM-Newton satellite has detected the most ultra x-ray bright and most distant pulsar yet known.

(Phys.org)—Physicists are getting a little bit closer to answering one of the oldest and most basic questions of quantum theory: does the quantum state represent reality or just our knowledge of reality?

George C. Knee, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford and the University of Warwick, has created an algorithm for designing optimal experiments that could provide the strongest evidence yet that the quantum state is an ontic state (a state of reality) and not an epistemic state (a state of knowledge). Knee has published a paper on the new strategy in a recent issue of the New Journal of Physics.

While physicists have debated about the nature of the quantum state since the early days of quantum theory (with, most famously, Bohr being in favor of the ontic interpretation and Einstein arguing for the epistemic one), most modern evidence has supported the view that the quantum state does indeed represent reality.

Continue reading “Proposed test would offer strongest evidence yet that the quantum state is real” »

A team of researchers led by physics professor Immanuel Bloch has experimentally realized an exotic quantum system which is robust to mixing by periodic forces (Nature Physics, “Periodically driving a many-body localized quantum system”).

When James Bond asks the barkeeper for a Martini (“shaken, not stirred”), he takes it for granted that the ingredients of the drink are miscible. If he were to place the order in a bar in the quantum realm, however, Agent 007 might be in for a surprise!

Combines, space, poetry, optics, stories, TV, cognitive computing, atomic food safety, astrophysics and quantum biology in a fun-packed programme for everyone.

Published: 2012/11/01 | ISBN: 311027325X | PDF | 349 pages | 12.06 MB

The subject of this book is theory of quantum system presented from information science perspective. The central role is played by the concept of quantum channel and its entropic and information characteristics. Quantum information theory gives a key to understanding elusive phenomena of quantum world and provides a background for development of experimental techniques that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems. This is important for the new efficient applications such as quantum computing, communication and cryptography. Research in the field of quantum informatics, including quantum information theory, is in progress in leading scientific centers throughout the world. This book gives an accessible, albeit mathematically rigorous and self-contained introduction to quantum information theory, starting from primary structures and leading to fundamental results and to exiting open problems.

Scientists theorised, disproved, revamped and finally created a bizarre new form of matter in just five years.