Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Month: January 2019

The U.K.’s Telegraph reports that the new treatment, devised by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London, uses implanted immune system cells from strangers to fight tumors, instead of old-school cancer treatments like chemotherapy — a new tack in oncology that the researchers say could boost cancer ten-year cancer survival rates from 50 percent to 75 percent.

Immune System

The scientists behind the project explained it as a “do-it-yourself” approach to cancer treatment in interviews with the Telegraph. Instead of relying on chemicals or radiation outside the body to fight tumors, the transplants aim to help the bodies of cancer patients fight the tumors on their own.


An exciting new study, led by a team of Australian researchers, has uncovered how the immune system can keep cancer cells in a dormant state. It’s hoped the breakthrough insight will offer new pathways for research into immunotherapy techniques that can essentially stop a tumor’s growth for an indefinite period of time.

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A compelling study from the Weizmann Institute of Science has revealed a new anti-aging strategy designed to help the immune system remove old and dysfunctional cells from the body. The initial animal experiments promisingly restored youthful characteristics in old mice, suggesting improving immune system surveillance may be an effective anti-aging therapy.


The Cray-1 supercomputer, the world’s fastest back in the 1970s, does not look like a supercomputer. It looks like a mod version of that carnival ride The Round Up, the one where you stand, strapped in, as it dizzies you up. It’s surrounded by a padded bench that conceals its power supplies, like a cake donut, if the hole was capable of providing insights about nuclear weapons.

After Seymour Cray first built this computer, he gave Los Alamos National Laboratory a six-month free trial. But during that half-year, a funny thing happened: The computer experienced 152 unattributable memory errors. Later, researchers would learn that cosmic-ray neutrons can slam into processor parts, corrupting their data. The higher you are, and the bigger your computers, the more significant a problem this is. And Los Alamos—7,300 feet up and home to some of the world’s swankiest processors—is a prime target.

The world has changed a lot since then, and so have computers. But space has not. And so Los Alamos has had to adapt—having its engineers account for space particles in its hard- and software. “This is not really a problem we’re having,” explains Nathan DeBardeleben of the High Performance Computing Design group. “It’s a problem we’re keeping at bay.”

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Most of us take our vision for granted. As a result, we take the ability to read, write, drive, and complete a multitude of other tasks for granted. However, sight is not so easy for everyone. Indeed, for many people, simply seeing is a struggle.

There are more than 285 million people worldwide who have vision problems. According to the Fred Hollows Foundation, an estimated 32.4 million people around the world are blind. Ultimately, 90% of these people live in developing countries, and more than half of these cases of blindness are caused by cataracts. Indeed, cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the world.

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William Falconer-Beach has rendered some images of the SpaceX Starship with a mirror polished stainless steel body.

Elon Musk has reported that SpaceX is building the body of the Starship out of stainless steel and that it will be polished to a mirror finish.

A hopper version of the Starship should have its first test flights by April 2019. The Super Heavy should reach orbit in 2020.

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