Lifeboat Foundation

The gene-editing tool has been used in a trial to enhance the blood cells of two patients with cancer.

The trial: The experimental research, under way at the University of Pennsylvania, involves genetically altering a person’s T cells so that they attack and destroy cancer. A university spokesman confirmed it has treated the first patients, one with sarcoma and one with multiple myeloma.

Slow start: Plans for the pioneering study were first reported in 2016, but it was slow to get started. Chinese hospitals, meanwhile, have launched a score of similar efforts. Carl June, the famed University of Pennsylvania cancer doctor, has compared the Chinese lead in employing CRISPR to a genetic Sputnik.

Continue reading “CRISPR has been used to treat US cancer patients for the first time” »

We’ve seen autonomous aircraft doing everything from spraying crops to surveying wildlife, and now the Swiss air rescue organization Rega has announced a drone that’s capable of searching for and finding missing people all on its own.

Back in the ancient universe, shortly after the Big Bang, the first atoms formed out of free particles. Only light elements like hydrogen and helium could form at high temperatures, but as the universe cooled, those atoms turned into every single thing we see in our world today. And now, scientists have spotted the type of molecule that formed the very first time two atoms combined.

Theories have predicted for decades that the first molecule that could form would be between the first two elements: hydrogen and helium. But the “helium hydride” molecule, as it’s known, had never been spotted before, Gizmodo explained. This led to some doubt as to whether this theory could even be true. But thanks to a modified Boeing 747 dubbed SOFIA, or Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, we have finally detected the elusive molecule in a far-off nebula called NGC 7027.

Now that it’s confirmed that the universe is capable of forming the helium hydride molecule naturally, this knowledge is helping astronomers better understand how the universe worked in the time just after the Big Bang. The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, has made sense of the “dawn of chemistry,” the authors state. Read more about this exciting find at Gizmodo. Shivani Ishwar.

Continue reading “Scientists detect the oldest type of molecule in the universe” »

Pig Brains Partly Revived By Scientists Hours After Animals Died : Shots — Health News The cells regained a startling amount of function, but the brains didn’t have activity linked with consciousness. Ethicists see challenges to assumptions about the irreversible nature of brain death.

Unusual Trajectory

The new research hasn’t yet been published, but it’s available on the preprint server ArXiv as of Monday. In it, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb — the same dude who doubled down on the idea that ‘Oumuamua could be an alien spacecraft — suggests that a three-foot-wide interstellar meteor flew over Papa New Guinea’s Manus Island before crashing down.

Because of the meteor’s high speed and particular trajectory past Earth, Loeb and his student Amir Suraj suggest that it couldn’t have been bound in an orbit about the Sun. Rather, they argue, it might have come from somewhere beyond our solar system.

Continue reading “An Interstellar Rock Like ‘Oumuamua May Have Hit Earth In 2014” »

A new study suggests that 40 percent of insect species are in decline, a sobering finding that has jarred researchers worldwide.

“To me, it’s very simple. If a rogue nation or other entity shoots an ICBM, inter-continental ballistic missile, at us, we intercept it.” — #USArmy Maj. Jason Brewer, Colorado National Guard #CombatReadyForce

US scientists have partially revived pig brains four hours after the animals were slaughtered.

The findings could fuel debate about the barrier between life and death, and provide a new way of researching diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The study showed the death of brain cells could be halted and that some connections in the brain were restored.

Electronic devices such as transistors are getting smaller and will soon hit the limits of conventional performance based on electrical currents.

Devices based on magnonic currents—quasi-particles associated with waves of magnetization, or spin waves, in certain magnetic materials—would transform the industry, though scientists need to better understand how to control them.

Engineers at the University of California, Riverside, have made an important step toward the development of practical magnonic devices by studying, for the first time, the level of noise associated with propagation of magnon current.

Continue reading “Magnonic devices can replace electronics without much noise” »