Tag: science

NASA AND CERN ARE GEARING UP FOR TESTS DURING THIS MONTH’S SOLAR ECLIPSE

What happens when NASA launches a rocket during a full solar eclipse and CERN activates its particle accelerator simultaneously? We’ll find out on April 8. 

During the once-in-a-generation celestial phenomenon, several unique scientific investigations will be focused on the solar eclipse, aiming to harness a better understanding of what happens during these events. 

A total solar eclipse is where the Moon moves between the Sun and Earth by completely blocking the Sun’s surface and casting a shadow on Earth. Millions of people across Mexico, the United States and Canada will be located in the path of totality (where the Moon’s shadow completely covers the Sun) to witness this occurrence.

As part of the experiments it will be undertaking, NASA has scheduled three sounding rocket launches, and WB-57 high-altitude planes will also take off to examine the unique conditions between the Sun and the Earth that will occur. 

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“INTELLIGENT LIQUID” CREATED BY HARVARD SCIENTISTS REPRESENTS STRANGE “NEW CLASS OF FLUID”

Harvard researchers say they have developed a programmable metafluid they are calling an ‘intelligent liquid’  that contains tunable springiness, adjustable optical properties, variable viscosity, and even the seemingly magical ability to shift between a Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid.

The team’s exact formula is still a secret as they explore potential commercial applications. However, the researchers believe their intelligent liquid could be used in anything from programmable robots to intelligent shock absorbers or even optical devices that can shift between transparent and opaque states.

“We are just scratching the surface of what is possible with this new class of fluid,” said Adel Djellouli, a Research Associate in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the first author of the paper. “With this one platform, you could do so many different things in so many different fields.”

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Scientists Put Tardigrade Proteins Into Human Cells. Here’s What Happened.

Freeze ’em, heat ’em, blast them into empty space; with survival skills unlike any other organism on the planet, those hardy critters known as tardigrades will only come back for more.

While it’s clear their ability to withstand stress is in part due to their ability to turn their insides into gel, the mechanisms behind this act of metabolic preservation haven’t yet been made clear.

A new study led by researchers from the University of Wyoming found that expressing key tardigrade proteins in human cells slowed metabolism, providing critical insights into how these virtually indestructible invertebrates can survive under the most extreme conditions.

The team focused on a particular protein called CAHS D, already known to protect against extreme drying (desiccation). Through a variety of methods, the researchers showed how CAHS D transformed into a gel-like state when under stress, keeping molecules protected and protecting against drying.

“This study provides insight into how tardigrades, and potentially other desiccation-tolerant organisms, survive drying by making use of biomolecular condensation,” write the researchers in their published paper.

“Beyond stress tolerance, our findings provide an avenue for pursuing technologies centered around the induction of biostasis in cells and even whole organisms to slow aging and enhance storage and stability.”

Tardigrades have already shown they can survive hot and cold temperatures and high levels of radiation that would be fatal to human beings, and long periods without any water – normally so essential to life. They can even survive in space.

Previous research has revealed an impressive number of tricks that tardigrades use to stay alive, built up over hundreds of millions of years. Essentially, they’re very good at slowing the processes of life right down with the help of CAHS D, and that could be useful in human cells too.

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HOLOGRAPHIC BREAKTHROUGH: SCIENTISTS CREATE FULL-COLOR 3D HOLOGRAPHIC DISPLAYS WITH ORDINARY SMARTPHONE SCREEN

A team of scientists from the University of Tokyo has revealed a major breakthrough that allows them to create realistic 3D holographic displays using an ordinary iPhone screen.

While conventional approaches to holography involve complex and expensive laser emitters that have limited their practical use, the researchers behind this novel approach say their work could lead to dramatic improvements in holographic displays for virtual reality applications, including gaming, training, and even advanced military applications.

3D HOLOGRAPHIC DISPLAYS LIMITED BY COST AND COMPLEXITY

In science fiction, holograms are used for anything from basic communications to advanced military weaponry. In the real world, 3D holographic displays have yet to break through to everyday products and devices. That’s because creating holograms that look real and have significant fidelity requires laser emitters or other advanced pieces of optical equipment. This situation has stymied commercial development, as these components are complex and expensive.

More recently, research scientists were able to create realistic 3D holographic images without lasers by using a white chip-on-board light-emitting diode. Unfortunately, that method required two spatial light modulators to control the wave fronts of the emitted light, adding a prohibitive amount of complexity and cost.

Now, those same scientists say they have created a simpler, more cost-effective way to create realistic-looking 3D holographic displays using only one spatial light modulator and new software algorithms. The result is a simpler and cheaper method for creating holograms that an everyday technology like a smartphone screen can emit.

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Korean Fusion Reactor Breaks Record, Staying 7 Times Hotter Than The Sun’s Core

Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research, or KSTAR, is one of the most advanced test fusion reactors on the planet. Nicknamed the Korean artificial sun, it has now demonstrated sustained fusion temperature for almost a minute and the ability to contain extremely hot plasma for over 100 seconds.

Fusion is what powers stars, but in stars, it happens at lower temperatures than we need to do it here on Earth. That’s because gravity is keeping everything packed together so fusion is more likely to happen. So the temperature required on Earth for a Tokamak system – which is a donut-shaped reactor – is about seven times the temperature at the core of the Sun: 100 million °C (180 million °F).

KSTAR first reached this threshold in 2018 but only for 1.5 seconds. A year later, they were able to keep the plasma that hot for 8 seconds, increasing it to 20 seconds in 2020. The last record was in 2021, when the plasma was kept that hot for half a minute. Since then, the team at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) has upgraded the device by building a new tungsten divertor environment and they have pushed the temperature for longer.

Now, KSTAR can sustain 100 million °C for 48 seconds – and it can keep hot plasma in the high-confinement mode (also known as H-mode) for 102 seconds. The goal is to achieve 300 seconds of burning plasma by the end of 2026. 

“Despite being the first experiment run in the environment of the new tungsten divertors, thorough hardware testing and campaign preparation enabled us to achieve results surpassing those of previous KSTAR records in a short period,” Dr Si-Woo Yoon, Director of the KSTAR Research Center, said in a statement.

“To achieve the ultimate goal of KSTAR operation, we plan to sequentially enhance the performance of heating and current drive devices and also secure the core technologies required for long-pulse high performance plasma operations.”

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Scientists Are Searching the South Pole to See if Quantum Gravity Actually Exists

Within physics, there are two enormous foundational systems—quantum mechanics and general relativity—that have been like Macs and PCs for decades. Over time, scientists on both sides have worked toward the other side, because anyone who wants to explain the entire universe has to make the two foundations work together. And, like any decent computer lab, a unifying theory has to be truly cross-platform.

In new research, researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute (NBI)—alongside 58 other member universities— revealed the secrets of 300,000 neutrinos they studied at the South Pole. Their paper (published in Nature Physics) is one step down a road that they hope will lead to quantum gravity. This hypothesized force, if it’s ever demonstrated in real life measurements, could be the physics dongle that adapts general relativity to quantum mechanics at last.

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8 Extremely Unusual Events That Will Happen During The Month Of April

When is the last time that there was so much buzz about one month?  As we enter April, there is so much anticipation in the air, and it isn’t just because of the Great American Eclipse on April 8th.  In recent days, I have heard from so many people that feel like something really big is about to happen.  I can feel it too.  It is almost as if we are all holding our breath as we wait for the next shoe to drop.  Chaos is threatening to erupt all over the globe, and meanwhile signs in the heavens are literally screaming at us to pay attention.  The following are 8 extremely unusual events that will happen during the month of April…

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Scientists Uncover Mechanism Viruses Use to Cause Cancer

Viral infections are thought to be a central cause of between 10 to 20 percent of cancers worldwide, representing a significant portion of the global cancer burden.

A recent discovery may further our understanding of how viruses cause cancer.

Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic uncovered one of the mechanisms that a type of virus called Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) uses to induce cancer.

The study, published last month in Nature Communications, found that the KSHV virus activated a specific pathway responsible for cell metabolism and the way cells grow and multiply. Using current U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved breast cancer drugs, they were able to reduce the replication of the virus, stop the progression of the lymphoma, and shrink existing tumors in preclinical models.

Jun Zhao, of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center, who holds a doctorate in genetic, molecular, and cellular biology is the study’s lead author.

“Our findings have significant implications: viruses cause between 10% to 20% of cancers worldwide, a number that is constantly increasing as new discoveries are made. Treating virus-induced cancers with standard cancer therapies can help shrink tumors that are already there, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem of the virus,” Mr. Zhao explained in a news release. “Understanding how pathogens transform a healthy cell into a cancer cell uncovers exploitable vulnerabilities and allows us to make and repurpose existing drugs that can effectively treat virus-associated malignancies.”

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CERN Particle Accelerator To Go Live During Solar Eclipse After Two Year Hiatus

The European Organization for Nuclear Research’s CERN particle accelerator will be used to search for hidden particles as the upcoming April 8 solar eclipse takes place.

The machine, a Large Hadron Collider (LHC), smashes protons into each other to bust them open and study the subatomic particles inside them. 

During next month’s eclipse, the team of scientists will be trying to prove the existence of dark matter, which is estimated to make up around 28% of the universe despite never being seen.

While the LHC usually operates for one month every year, it has been two years since it was up and running after being turned off during Europe’s 2022 energy crisis.

Last week, scientists revealed a “ghost-like” structure had been discovered inside the particle collider.

Popular X account “Concerned Citizen” commented on CERN’s solar eclipse testing and also noted NASA will be launching rockets named after an Egyptian snake deity during the event.

The NASA mission, known as Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path or APEP, was given the acronym in honor of the “serpent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology,” who was a “nemesis of the Sun deity Ra.”

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Scientists Close To Controlling All Genetic Material On Earth

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine have developed a new method to create human artificial chromosomes (HACs) that could revolutionize gene therapy and other biotechnology applications. The study, published in Science, describes an approach that efficiently forms single-copy HACs, bypassing a common hurdle that has hindered progress in this field for decades.

Artificial chromosomes are lab-made structures designed to mimic the function of natural chromosomes, the packaged bundles of DNA found in the cells of humans and other organisms. These synthetic constructs have the potential to serve as vehicles for delivering therapeutic genes or as tools for studying chromosome biology. However, previous attempts to create HACs have been plagued by a major issue: the DNA segments used to build them often link together in unpredictable ways, forming long, tangled chains with rearranged sequences.

The Penn Medicine team, led by Dr. Ben Black, sought to overcome this challenge by completely overhauling the approach to HAC design and delivery. “The HAC we built is very attractive for eventual deployment in biotechnology applications, for instance, where large-scale genetic engineering of cells is desired,” Dr. Black explains in a media release. “A bonus is that they exist alongside natural chromosomes without having to alter the natural chromosomes in the cell.”

To test their idea, the scientists turned to a tried-and-true workhorse of molecular biology: yeast. They used a technique called transformation-associated recombination (TAR) cloning to assemble a whopping 750 kilobase DNA construct in yeast cells. For context, that’s about 25 times larger than the constructs used in previous HAC studies. The construct contained DNA from both human and bacterial sources, as well as sequences to help seed the formation of the centromere.

The next challenge was to deliver this hefty payload into human cells. The team accomplished this by fusing the engineered yeast cells with a human cell line, a process that had been optimized in previous studies. Remarkably, this fusion approach proved to be much more efficient than the traditional method of directly transferring naked DNA into cells.

The results were stunning. Not only did the engineered HACs form successfully, but they did so with much higher efficiency compared to standard methods. Furthermore, these designer chromosomes were able to replicate and segregate properly during cell division, a key requirement for their long-term stability and functionality.

“Instead of trying to inhibit multimerization, for example, we just bypassed the problem by increasing the size of the input DNA construct so that it naturally tended to remain in predictable single-copy form,” explained Dr. Black.

But the researchers didn’t stop there. They also devised a clever way to visualize the HACs in their native, uncompacted state. By gently lysing the cells and using a special centrifugation technique, they were able to isolate the HACs away from the rest of the cellular DNA. This allowed them to confirm that the HACs maintained their single-copy status and circular topology, without any unwanted rearrangements or additions.

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