Lifeboat Foundation

You’ve probably heard about SpaceX’s plans to use its giant new Starship vehicle to land people on the Moon and Mars, send numerous Starlink satellites or large telescopes into space, or perhaps even serve as a high-speed point-to-point terrestrial transport for equipment or people.

There’s another application for SpaceX’s Starship architecture that the company is studying, and NASA is on board to lend expertise. Though still in a nascent phase of tech development, the effort could result in repurposing Starship into a commercial space station, something NASA has a keen interest in because there are no plans for a government-owned research lab in low-Earth orbit after the International Space Station is decommissioned after 2030.

The space agency announced last month a new round of agreements with seven commercial companies, including SpaceX. The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) program is an effort established to advance private sector development of emerging products and services that could be available to customers—including NASA—in approximately five to seven years.

“The new research program, led by Associate Professor Adeel Razi, from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, in collaboration with Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs, involves growing around 800,000 brain cells living in a dish, which are then “taught” to perform goal-directed tasks. Last year the brain cells’ ability to perform a simple tennis-like computer game, Pong, received global attention for the team’s research.”

Monash University-led research into growing human brain cells onto silicon chips, with new continual learning capabilities to transform machine learning, has been awarded almost $600,000 AUD in the prestigious National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants Program.

According to Associate Professor Razi, the research program’s work using lab-grown brain cells embedded onto silicon chips, “merges the fields of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create programmable biological computing platforms,” he said.

Continue reading “Research to merge human brain cells with AI secures national defence funding” »

A team of ingenious bioengineers at Arizona State University (ASU) has harnessed the power of childhood nostalgia, unveiling a creative solution to a long-standing challenge in DNA origami research.

They’ve successfully employed a LEGO robotics kit to build an affordable, highly effective gradient mixer for purifying self-assembling DNA origami nanostructures. This innovative breakthrough, detailed in a paper published one PLOS ONE, promises to revolutionize how scientists approach DNA origami synthesis.

The creation of DNA origami structures is an intricate process, requiring precise purification of nanostructures. Traditionally, this purification step involved rate-zone centrifugation, relying on a costly piece of equipment called a gradient mixer. However, the maverick minds at ASU have demonstrated that even the iconic plastic bricks of LEGO can be repurposed for scientific advancement.

To celebrate National Moth Week, bask in the beautiful variety of these oft-overlooked insects.

July 24 (Reuters) — Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched on Monday.

The project’s core offering is its World ID, which the company describes as a “digital passport” to prove that its holder is a real human, not an AI bot. To get a World ID, a customer signs up to do an in-person iris scan using Worldcoin’s ‘orb’, a silver ball approximately the size of a bowling ball. Once the orb’s iris scan verifies the person is a real human, it creates a World ID.

The company behind Worldcoin is San Francisco and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity.

Researchers identified a brain region that can create sensations of weightlessness or falling, and it could help develop new forms of anesthesia.

A young galaxy cluster spotted by the Chandra X-ray Observatory may have gotten a head start on “relaxing” before is galactic siblings.

With breakthroughs in astronomical observation, scientists now have confirmed the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. The recent release of black hole images has further charged people’s curiosity about black holes while providing additional evidence to support Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

These supermassive black holes range in mass from millions to billions of solar masses. Astonishingly, some of these black holes have formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Understanding how these black holes formed and grew to such enormous mass in such a short period of time has always been an important topic in modern astrophysics.

A research team composed of Chi-Hong Lin and Ke-Jung Chen from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA) and Chorng-Yuan Hwang from the Institute of Astronomy at National Central University has made significant new advances in the formation theory of supermassive black holes. The research results have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Elon Musk recently stated SpaceX made ‘well over a thousand changes’ to Starship since its debut flight.

SpaceX continues to prepare for the second orbital launch attempt of Starship despite concerns over a potential delay caused by the ongoing environmental lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

Elon Musk’s private space company, likely eager to show that preparations continue uninterrupted, has shared a number of images on Twitter of Booster 9, the Super Heavy prototype that will be used for the massive rocket’s second test flight.