Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, scientists have grown human eggs to full maturity in a lab, in a move that could open the doors to new fertility treatments.

This monumental feat was achieved by scientists at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Their research is published in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction. A similar venture has previously been achieved with mouse eggs, even using the lab-grown eggs to create live mice offspring. However, even after decades of work, researchers have always struggled with replicating the research with human cells.

The lab-grown human eggs start off life, so to speak, as immature egg cells that were removed from ovarian tissue at their earliest stage of development. Scientists then cultured the immature egg cells in a multi-stage process over a few weeks, sensitively controlling the fine balance of oxygen, hormones, and necessary proteins. This process matured the immature egg cells to the same stage “normal” eggs would be when released from the ovaries.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon’s planned test of its own delivery service from merchants’ warehouses to its fulfillment centers is the first step in a long-term strategy that could change how packages make the final journey to your door, possibly resulting in lower prices and faster shipping times for consumers.

The experiment is expected to launch sometime later this year in the Los Angeles area with a handful of companies that sell goods on Amazon’s site, sources familiar with the project who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly told USA TODAY.

The proposed service would allow third party sellers — whose goods make up the majority of those sold on Amazon — to have an Amazon truck come to their warehouse, pick up pallets of packages and take them to an Amazon fulfillment center where they would be inserted into Amazon’s formidable delivery system. Right now they have to ship them to Amazon centers themselves.

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Scientists studying insect vision make praying mantises watch movies at the “insect cinema.”

Scientists have demonstrated mathematical operations with a quantum gate between two trapped atoms that is mediated by photons.

Physicists have demonstrated accelerating light beams on flat surfaces.

Where acceleration has caused the beams to follow curved trajectories.

However, a new experiment has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible to demonstrate in a lab. For the first time in an expeirment, physicists have demonstrated an accelerating light beam in curved space. Instead of traveling along a geodesic trajectory (the shortest path on a curved surface) it bends away from this trajectory due to the acceleration.

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This pillow is dedicated to reducing acid reflux. This is the MedCline Reflux Relief System. It reclines your body, so stomach acid can’t reach your esophagus.

Liz Jassin, Business Insider:

I’ve had acid reflux for five years. I went to the doctor, and they gave me a long list of foods to cut out of my diet to reduce my reflux symptoms. No chocolate. No alcohol. No coffee. Which, I can’t do that. No spicy foods, to cut acidic foods. It was a ridiculous list that I couldn’t cut out.

Continue reading “This pillow claims to reduce acid reflux symptoms — I decided to try it” »

If you’ve ever tried to kill an interloping cockroach, you’ve probably noticed two things: they’re fast and nearly invincible. While those features make roaches terrifying to most people, it’s a source of bioinspiration for roboticists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

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Are you Ice cream lover? What a stupid question! We all love Ice cream and it loves us (except for those that are lactose intolerant, you have our sympathies).Scientists in Japan have come up with a ‘cool’ solution to stop ice cream from melting before you have had time to finish it. They’ve invented one that doesn’t melt.

Most ice cream starts melting just moments after it is scooped from a container and placed into a bowl or on a cone. Because of this, people have taken to eating it quickly. But now that may change, as a team in Japan has found a way to maintain the shape of ice cream no matter how slowly it is eaten.

But not all parents may want to know the results.