Lifeboat Foundation

Nuclear Nonproliferation, Cooperative Threat Reduction and WMD Terrorism — Dr. Natasha Bajema, Director, Converging Risks Lab, The Council on Strategic Risks.

Dr. Natasha Bajema, is a subject matter expert in nuclear nonproliferation, cooperative threat reduction and WMD terrorism, and currently serves as Director of the Converging Risks Lab, at The Council on Strategic Risks, a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

Continue reading “Dr. Natasha Bajema — Dir., Converging Risks Lab, Council on Strategic Risks — WMD Threat Reduction” »

Only one in three fertilizations leads to a successful pregnancy. Many embryos fail to progress beyond early development. Cell biologists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany), together with researchers at the Institute of Farm Animal Genetics in Mariensee and other international colleagues, have now developed a new model system for studying early embryonic development. With the help of this system, they discovered that errors often occur when the genetic material from each parent combines immediately after fertilization. This is due to a remarkably inefficient process.

Human somatic cells typically have 46 chromosomes, which together carry the genetic information. These chromosomes are first brought together at fertilization, 23 from the father’s sperm, and 23 from the mother’s egg. After fertilization, the parental chromosomes initially exist in two separate compartments, known as pronuclei. These pronuclei slowly move towards each other until they come into contact. The pronuclear envelopes then dissolve, and the parental chromosomes unite.

The majority of human embryos, however, end up with an incorrect number of chromosomes. These embryos are often not viable, making erroneous genome unification a leading cause of miscarriage and infertility.

Some thoughts about the genetic code aliens would use in the 2nd part of the series: The Science of Aliens:

Alien life would likely have different biochemistry, which may change the way it reproduces.

Do you like unusual clocks? We’re sure you’ll love this one!😍

This experiment is not included in the MEL Chemistry subscription and should be performed only by professionals–we just love showing you the beauty of chemistry💙 For cool and safe experiments to do at home, sign up for MEL Science here: https://mel.sc/s0X/

7:01 they talk about Church’s comments of ending aging by 2030. Also this appears to be a part one.

In this video Professor Church talks about his theory of aging and touches on his ideas on the future of aging.

Continue reading “My Theory & The Future Of Aging | Prof George Church Interview Series Episode 1” »

For the first time, a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used one of its two microphones to listen as the Ingenuity helicopter flew for the fourth time on April 30, 2021. A new video combines footage of the solar-powered helicopter taken by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z imager with audio from a microphone belonging to the rover’s SuperCam laser instrument.

The laser zaps rocks from a distance, studying their vapor with a spectrometer to reveal their chemical composition. The instrument’s microphone records the sounds of those laser strikes, which provide information on the physical properties of the targets, such as their relative hardness. The microphone can also record ambient noise, like the Martian wind.

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Many people with diabetes endure multiple, painful finger pricks each day to measure their blood glucose. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sensors have developed a device that can measure glucose in sweat with the touch of a fingertip, and then a personalized algorithm provides an accurate estimate of blood glucose levels.

According to the American Diabetes Association, more than 34 million children and adults in the U.S. have diabetes. Although self-monitoring of blood glucose is a critical part of diabetes management, the pain and inconvenience caused by finger-stick blood sampling can keep people from testing as often as they should.

The researchers made a touch-based sweat glucose sensor with a polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel on top of an electrochemical sensor, which was screen-printed onto a flexible plastic strip. When a volunteer placed their fingertip on the sensor surface for 1 minute, the hydrogel absorbed tiny amounts of sweat. Inside the sensor, glucose in the sweat underwent an enzymatic reaction that resulted in a small electrical current that was detected by a hand-held device.

Deep-tech healthcare & energy investments for a sustainable future — dr. anil achyuta, investment director / founding member, TDK ventures.

Dr. Anil Achyuta is an Investment Director and a Founding Member at TDK Ventures, which is a deep-tech corporate venture fund of TDK Corporation, the Japanese multinational electronics company that manufactures electronic materials, electronic components, and recording and data-storage media.

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Chemical organization in reaction-diffusion systems offer a strategy to generate materials with ordered morphologies and architecture. Periodic structures can be formed using molecules or nanoparticles. An emerging frontier in materials science aims to combine nanoparticles and molecules. In a new report on Science Advances, Amanda J. Ackroyd and a team of scientists in chemistry, physics and nanomaterials in Canada, Hungary and the U.S. noted how solvent evaporation from a suspension of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and L-(+)-tartaric acid [abbreviated L-(+)-TA] caused the phase separation of precipitation to result in the rhythmic alteration of CNC-rich, L-(+)-TA rings. The CNC-rich regions maintained a cholesteric structure, while the L-(+)-TA-rich bands formed via radially elongated bundles to expand the knowledge of self-organizing reaction-diffusion systems and offer a strategy to design self-organizing materials.

Chemical organization

The process of self-organization and self-assembly occurs universally in non-equilibrium systems of living matter, geochemical environments, materials science and in industry. Existing experiments that lead to periodic structures can be divided into two groups including the classical Liesegang-type experiments and chemical organization via periodic precipitation to generate materials with ordered morphologies and structural hierarchy. In this work, Ackroyd et al. developed a strategy for solvent evaporation to phase separate an aqueous solution of tartaric acid/cellulose nanocrystals [L-(+)-TA/CNC or TA/CNC] for its subsequent precipitation to result in a rhythmic alternation of CNC-rich or CNC-depleted ring-type regions. The team developed a kinetic model which agreed with the experimental results quantitatively. The work expands the range of self-organizing reaction-diffusion systems to pave the way for periodically structured functional materials.