Lifeboat Foundation

It has proposed spending a total of US$12.7 million on technical upgrades to the vault to better protect the more than 930,000 seed varieties inside. It has completed a feasibility study and plans to move ahead with the construction of a new concrete access tunnel and a new service building for the emergency power, refrigeration units and electrical equipment.

Global food security is serious business, and when you have water seeping into a doomsday facility built to shore up food supplies for the future, well, that’s hardly ideal. But such breaches should be a thing of the past, with Norwegian authorities overseeing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault planning a multi-million dollar overhaul of the structure.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows them to print circuits on flexible, stretchable substrates using silver nanowires. The advance makes it possible to integrate the material into a wide array of electronic devices.

Silver nanowires have drawn significant interest in recent years for use in many applications, ranging from prosthetic devices to wearable health sensors, due to their flexibility, stretchability and conductive properties. While proof-of-concept experiments have been promising, there have been significant challenges to printing highly integrated circuits using silver nanowires.

Silver nanoparticles can be used to print circuits, but the nanoparticles produce circuits that are more brittle and less conductive than silver nanowires. But conventional techniques for printing circuits don’t work well with silver nanowires; the nanowires often clog the printing nozzles.

Continue reading “New technique allows printing of flexible, stretchable silver nanowire circuits” »

Quantum cryptography has never been possible over long distances. But the first quantum communications satellite is rewriting the record books.

A new technique has raised the success rate of quantum memory storage from 30 to 70 percent. This leap in quantum computing could propel us closer to a future that connects us through ultra-secure quantum networks.

Speaking a second language slows brain aging and makes you smarter.

In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University (ASU) scientists, in collaboration with researchers from the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply.

Quite a number of people develop nearsightedness or farsightedness during their lifetimes. “Nanodrops,” a new eye drop developed by Israeli ophthalmologists, has successfully fixed corneas in pig eyes, and could potentially do the same for people.

New eye drops developed by researchers from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University in Israel can improve both nearsightedness and farsightedness, the inventors claim. However, so far the “nanodrops” have only been successfully tested on pigs’ corneas.

Scientists have been rejuvenating old mice with infusions of not just the blood of younger mice, but even blood from teenage human beings — and we finally have our first clues on why this strange technique works.

Researchers have discovered an enzyme that helps rescue ageing brains from cognitive decline. So far it’s only been shown in mice, but if the same mechanisms are found in humans, it could lead to a new class of anti-ageing therapies.

Four years ago, a team of researchers led by neurobiologist Saul Villeda from the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that giving older mice infusions of blood from younger mice improved their memory and learning by improving connections in the hippocampus.

Continue reading “We Might Finally Know Why The Blood of Young People Can Rejuvenate Old Brains” »