Lifeboat Foundation

New long-term agreement will help provide responsive access to space for future tech demonstration spacecraft

Cedar Park, Texas, June 5, 2024 – Firefly Aerospace, Inc., an end-to-end space transportation company, today announced it signed a multi-launch agreement with Lockheed Martin for 25 launches on Firefly’s Alpha rocket through 2029. This agreement commits Lockheed Martin to 15 launch reservations and 10 optional launches.

“Firefly is honored to continue this partnership with Lockheed Martin and appreciates their confidence in our rapid launch services to support their critical missions for years to come,” said Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. “The Firefly team has scaled up Alpha production and testing and significantly streamlined our launch operations to fly Alpha more frequently and responsively. This allows us to continue delivering the one metric ton rocket the industry is demanding.”

SpaceX is targeting a launch at 8 a.m. EDT on June 6.

Making Humanity A Multi-Planetary Species — Dr. Eliah Overbey, Ph.D. — Assistant Professor, Bioastronautics, University of Austin; CSO, BioAstra.

Dr. Eliah Overbey, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Bioastronautics at The University of Austin (UATX — https://www.uaustin.org/people/eliah–…) where she is involved in pioneering research in the field of astronaut health, specializing in spaceflight-induced genomic changes. Her work focuses on mapping changes in the human body during spaceflight and developing Earth-independent laboratories to make humans a multi-planetary species (https://www.eliahoverbey.com/).

Continue reading “Dr. Eliah Overbey, Ph.D. — Assistant Prof., Bioastronautics, UATX — Making Humanity Multi-Planetary” »

The core theory, weak vs. strong emergence, micro-reductionism, and Sean Carroll’s skeptical argument against everything. Is Dr. Carroll correct in holding that physics has ruled out the afterlife, an immaterial soul, fundamental consciousness, and parapsychology?

Linktree https://linktr.ee/emersongreen.

Continue reading “Strong Emergence vs. The Core Theory (Response to Sean Carroll)” »

GCC19CART has previously been evaluated in an investigator-initiated clinical trial (ChiCTR2000040645) in China for the treatment of relapsed/refractory metastatic colorectal cancer (r/r mCRC).² Data from that trial showing improvements over standard of care (SOC) third-line therapies were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023, held April 14–19, 2023, in Orlando, Florida. Among the 21 patients included in the efficacy analysis, superior results were observed in patients (n=8) who received the higher dose level (2×10⁶ CAR-T cells/kg; DL2) than in patients (n=13) who received the lower dose level (1×10⁶ CAR-T cells/kg; DL1). The objective response rate was 50% (n=4) for DL2, 15% (n=2) for DL1, and 29% (n=6) for all patients.

“The new AE specific to this product is diarrhea because the target is guanylate cyclase 2C (GCC), which plays a role in intestinal homeostasis… So, that’s expected, theoretically,” Victor Lu, PhD, the chief technology officer of Innovative Cellular Therapeutics, who presented the data, said during his presentation.2 “Most patients treated with this product experienced diarrhea, but it can be controlled and because of the diarrhea management most of the patients actually recovered very quickly.”

GCC19CART targets both GCC and CD19.¹ It was designed using ICT’s CoupledCAR platform, which combines 2 CAR T cells engineered to release cytokines that are thought to promote proliferation and infiltration.³ The platform was designed following observations that CD19-directed CAR T cells also stimulated the immune system, which could lead to increase proliferation for other CAR T cells, specifically those directed toward solid tumor antigens, like GCC.

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Researchers in China have demonstrated how entanglement might potentially power future generations of computers, according to a story in the South China Morning Post. This advance, achieved by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Innovation Academy of Precision Measurement Science and Technology, points toward how quantum engines can use their own entangled states as a form of fuel.

Entanglement is a quantum phenomenon where a pair of separated photons seem to be intimately linked, regardless of the distance between them. Scientists have long theorized that this characteristic, once robustly managed, could hold vast potential for quantum computing, and this study adds further evidence to its viability in practical applications, the researchers suggest.

“Our study’s highlight is the first experimental realization of a quantum engine with entangled characteristics. [It] quantitatively verified that entanglement can serve as a type of ‘fuel’,” said Zhou Fei, one of the corresponding authors, as reported in the SCMP.

There’s a hot new BEC in town that has nothing to do with bacon, egg, and cheese. You won’t find it at your local bodega, but in the coldest place in New York: the lab of Columbia physicist Sebastian Will, whose experimental group specializes in pushing atoms and molecules to temperatures just fractions of a degree above absolute zero.

Writing in Nature (“Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of Dipolar Molecules”), the Will lab, supported by theoretical collaborator Tijs Karman at Radboud University in the Netherlands, has successfully created a unique quantum state of matter called a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) out of molecules.

Their BEC, cooled to just five nanoKelvin, or about-459.66 F, and stable for a strikingly long two seconds, is made from sodium-cesium molecules. Like water molecules, these molecules are polar, meaning they carry both a positive and a negative charge. The imbalanced distribution of electric charge facilitates the long-range interactions that make for the most interesting physics, noted Will.

Physicists at Columbia University have taken molecules to a new ultracold limit and created a state of matter where quantum mechanics reigns.

There’s a hot new BEC in town that has nothing to do with bacon, egg, and cheese. You won’t find it at your local bodega, but in the coldest place in New York: the lab of Columbia physicist Sebastian Will, whose experimental group specializes in pushing atoms and molecules to temperatures just fractions of a degree above absolute zero.

Writing in Nature, the Will lab, supported by theoretical collaborator Tijs Karman at Radboud University in the Netherlands, has successfully created a unique quantum state of matter called a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) out of molecules.