Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

The U.S. Army is expected to announce that it has developed a vaccine that protects against omicron and other COVID-19 variants. The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) has been developing a Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle (SpFN) since early 2020, and began early-stage human trials of the vaccine in early April. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of WRAIR’s infections disease branch, said that the early-stage trials ended this month, and yielded positive results that are currently under review.

-a slight correction, but still promising.

Correction: This headline and story have been corrected to reflect that the COVID-19 vaccine the Army is developing has not been tested against omicron.

The U.S. Army is expected to announce that it has developed a vaccine that protects against an array of COVID-19 variants, Defense One reported.

The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) has been developing a spike ferritin nanoparticle (SpFN) vaccine since early 2020 and began early-stage human trials of the vaccine in early April.

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Japan’s Yamagata University said Friday it has found that a drug being developed for the treatment of Alzheimer’s is also effective in treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The drug has been found capable of curbing the abnormal agglomeration of protein that causes the progressive neurodegenerative disease, the state-run university in northeastern Japan said.

People with ALS lose their ability to walk, talk, eat and eventually breathe as the disease kills motor neurons, causing muscles to weaken and eventually paralyze.

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4D printing works the same as 3D printing, the only difference is that the printing material allows the object to change shape based on environmental factors.

In this case, the bots’ hydrogel material allows them to morph into different shapes when they encounter a change in pH levels — and cancer cells, as it happens, are usually more acidic than normal cells.

The microrobots were then placed in an iron oxide solution, to give them a magnetic charge.

This combination of shape-shifting and magnetism means the bots could become assassins for cancer — destroying tumors without the usual collateral damage on the rest of the body.

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A school of fish-y microbots could one day swim through your veins and deliver medicine to precise locations in your body — and cancer patients may be the first people to benefit from this revolution in nanotechnology.

How it works: Scientists recently printed teeny tiny microbots in the shape of different animals, like fish, crabs, and even butterflies. But the coolest thing with these bots is that they don’t stay in one shape — they can morph into different shapes because they are 4D-printed.

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Scientists have succeeded in cultivating an archaeon that converts oil into methane. They describe how the microbe achieves the transformation and that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.

Microorganisms can convert oil into natural gas, i.e. methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible through the cooperation of different organisms. In 2019, Rafael Laso-Pérez and Gunter Wegener from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology suggested that a special archaeon can do this all by itself, as indicated by their genome analyses. Now, in collaboration with a team from China, the researchers have succeeded in cultivating this “miracle microbe” in the laboratory. This enabled them to describe exactly how the microbe achieves the transformation. They also discovered that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.

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In a bit of good news, the spot price for solar grade polysilicon is dropping quite rapidly. If the trend holds, the cost of solar panels in Australia should follow suit soon-ish.

Polysilicon is used in the manufacture of conventional photovoltaic cells used in solar panels. The sought-after stuff was as cheap as chips in July last year, when it was below USD $7/kg. But a series of events including impacts from the pandemic and a couple of factory fires saw it skyrocket.

Polysilicon spot prices were as high as US$36.64/kg at the beginning of this month. But here’s what’s happened in the last few weeks as reported by Bernreuter Research.

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Summary: A new study brings understanding how the brain processes information one step closer.

Source: friedrich miescher institute for biomedical research.

For amplifying sensory stimuli quickly and accurately, neuronal circuits require specific wiring. Some 70 years ago, the compelling idea that “neurons that fire together wire together” emerged. Yet, in computational models, neurons that wire together tend to succumb to an explosion of activity and instability not observed in neurobiology. The lab of Friedemann Zenke now characterized a plausible yet straightforward mechanism that biology may use to avoid this issue.

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A new vaccine for COVID-19, using a multi-faced nanoparticle, could offer protection against many different strains of the virus simultaneously.

The news has been filled with doom and gloom lately, as the latest variant of COVID-19, called Omicron, becomes dominant in many countries. This follows the previous Delta variant, which followed earlier strains such as Alpha, which derived from the original “wildtype” virus. As 2021 draws to a close and the world prepares for yet another year of the pandemic, many people are understandably anxious and weary.

There is reason for optimism, however. Scientists are now talking about a pan-coronavirus vaccine development strategy, to offer protection from all current and even future variants of COVID-19. Last week, the U.S. National Institute of Health published a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine calling for such an approach, as a way of breaking the cycle of new strains emerging.

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“Each of these mutations teach us something, and point to a particular gene as a potential target for new and more effective pain medications,” said Dr. Stephen G. Waxman, a neurologist at Yale, told the New York Times.

The hope is that discoveries like these lead to better treatments for chronic pain, which affects about 50 million U.S. adults and is often the reason people become addicted to opioids. Scientists also plan to investigate how Cameron’s wounds seem to heal quickly and leave little scarring.

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The 2021 Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award has been given to Martine Rothblatt who has devoted her life to moving humanity towards a positive future.

Martine was the 500th person to join our Advisory Board, has contributed to our blog, and has generously supported the Lifeboat Foundation’s goal of “Safeguarding Humanity”.

Martine is cofounder of the Terasem Movement Foundation. Their mission is to promote the geoethical (world ethical) use of nanotechnology for human life extension. They conduct educational programs and support scientific research and development in the areas of cryonics, biotechnology, and cyber consciousness. This foundation is related to the Lifeboat Foundation programs LifePreserver and PersonalityPreserver (which Martine contributed text to).

The Terasem Movement Foundation publishes “The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness” and “The Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology”.

Martine Rothblatt is winner of the 2021 Guardian Award.

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