Lifeboat Foundation

Microscopic robots, powered by bacterial flagellation, are a curious branch of robotics research, potentially leading to devices that can deliver drugs, perform surgical tasks, and help out with diagnostics. While bacteria has been harnessed in the past to power small devices, having those devices actually navigate to a desired target has been a challenge. At Drexel University researchers are now using electric fields to help their bacterial biobots detect obstacles and float around them on their way to the final destination.

The electric fields don’t actually control the bots, but allow the bots to sense their environment and to move around. The devices are powered by rod-shaped S. marcescens bacteria that are normally negatively charged. The researchers positioned two electric fields orthogonally to each other, creating a grid. Obstacles within the grid slightly affect the fields’ shape, which the robot recognizes and uses to avoid the obstacles.

Here are a couple videos demonstrating the bacterial powered microbot:

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Now this is a cool concept; a studio that allows others to experiment and build their own Biocomputer, and other biotechnologies.

How does a leopard get its spots? A new exhibit at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose has some clues about that.

If I am not mistaken she edited The Three Body Problem, she did not write it.

In what seems like a story ripped straight from the pages of an Isaac Asimov novel, a recently deceased Chinese woman named Du Hong just had her brain cryogenically frozen in hopes that, in the future, the technology to bring her back to life will be created. No joke. Hong, a science fiction author herself, paid upwards of $120k to have her brain sent from China to Scottsdale, Arizona to undergo a freezing procedure at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Her idea is that while modern tech doesn’t allow for the reanimation of her brain today, inevitable advancements in cryonics will one day bring her back to life.

Before passing away last May from pancreatic cancer, the 61-year-old Du decided she wanted to allow her brain to be the subject of experiments after her death. Though it took some time before the team at Alcor actually conducted the procedure, doctors in Beijing prepped Du’s brain after her official time of death on May 30. Despite the Alcor Life Extension Foundation agreeing to freeze Du’s brain, the organization made it clear that it wouldn’t be the one to actually attempt to bring Du back to life in the future.

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In a controversial move, Kuwait has passed a law making it mandatory for all its 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents to have their DNA entered onto a national database.

Anyone who refuses to submit their DNA for testing risks one year in prison and a fine of up to US$33,000, and those who provide a fake sample can be jailed for seven years.

The decision came after an Islamic State-led suicide bombing in Kuwait City on 26 June, which killed 26 people and wounded 227 more. The government hopes that the new database, which is projected to cost around US$400 million, will make it quicker and easier to make arrests in the future.

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Biohacker Andrew Pelling has figured out a way to create living, functional biological objects that don’t exist in nature — without deliberately modifying DNA in any way. In one experiment, h…

SCIENTISTS are one step closer to cloning dinosaurs after the discovering the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex that was pregnant when it died.

Physicists say a supercomputer simulation of blood flow around the entire human body is showing promise, based on an experimental test.

This one kind of gives me the heebie geebies.

DNA sequencing of the deceased could lead to a number of advances in health care. A group of scientists in Denmark have launched a proposal to create the world’s first national necrogenomic database.

The idea that dead men tell no tales is about to be seriously put to shame, should a newly suggested DNA registry in Denmark become reality.

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A team of Yokohama City University biologists has successfully created a tiny liver that functions as efficiently as a human one, NHK reported on Thursday.