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Anyone who has ever worked on a team knows that their strength lies in coordination and a shared vision. However, it is not always easy to provide that coordination and shared vision, and any team that lacks that cohesiveness becomes more of a hindrance than a help.

Science is not immune to the difficulties of running effective teams. There is plenty to be gained from more coordination between differing silos and physical locations. Recently a meeting in Chile prompted a group of scientists to propose a plan to change that. The result is a white paper that points out the potential benefits of coordinating ground, orbital and in situ based observations of objects. But more importantly, it suggests a different path forward where all of the space science community can benefit from the type of coordinated output that can only come from a cohesive team.

The suggested path laid out in the white paper began at the Planets2020 conference in Chile, hosted by the ALMA observatory. The meeting took place back in March, right before the Coronavirus outbreak began to restrict travel. At the conference, there was a significant amount of discussion focused on the capabilities of different Earth and space based observing platforms. The intention was to learn more about missions that coordinated ground and space-based observations, and to flesh out future ideas of how to replicate that coordination with new and existing platforms to make the best of their different capabilities. The lead author of the white paper, Vincent Kofman, a research chemist at Goddard Space Flight Center, took on that the task of coordinating that team and produced a paper that clearly lays out a better way to perform observations.

Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that late-stage clinical trials for its coronavirus vaccine are now fully enrolled, and expects to release initial data on the shot’s effectiveness by the end of January.


The pharmaceutical company’s single-dose vaccine is in Phase 3 clinical trials that are now fully enrolled, and is already being reviewed by Health Canada.

In a press release, the U.S. Army announced that initial Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) prototypes arrived at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The preproduction MPF vehicles will be put through their paces by paratroopers from the Army’s 82 Airborne.

“We are incredibly excited to see the MPF platform entering into this phase,” an Army Ground Combat Systems official stated, explaining that the “MPF represents an innovative and aggressive approach to system acquisition. The beginning of our SVA (soldier vehicle assessment) in January illustrates how hard the teams are working to keep the major events of this program on schedule,” despite the ongoing pandemic.

The Army awarded two initial prototyping contracts to both BAE Systems and General Dynamics back in 2018. The contracts, worth $376 million each, covered a total of 504 final production Mobile Protected Firepower vehicles, with initial deliveries scheduled for 2025.

“BAT said KBP had cloned a portion of the genetic sequence of coronavirus and developed a potential antigen, which is then inserted into tobacco plants for reproduction.”

😲😲😲


While large pharmaceutical companies are already producing vaccines, [the company British American Tobacco] believes its own can be produced in six weeks, compared with the several months it takes using conventional methods.

This, the company claims, is because of proprietary technology that allows elements of the vaccine to gather quickly on tobacco plants.

BAT also says its vaccine is stable at room temperature, unlike the Pfizer/BioNTech jab being administered in the UK, which must be stored and transported at about-70C.

“The research was conducted by overexpressing two different genes, the AVP1 and OsSIZ1.”

😯😯😯


One group of Texas Tech University researchers has found a way to double fiber yield for cotton in semi-arid areas like that of West Texas, where drought, heat and salinity are working against farmers.

Hong Zhang is a professor of Plant Molecular Biology and Plant Biotechnology at Texas Tech. A few years ago, his group published a paper showing that he could increase cotton yield by 35%-40% in dryland conditions.

But he has continued to work on different genetic changes to cotton that could lead to even better results, and a new paper published in “Plant Biotechnology Journal” in September details those results. During Zhang’s first year of experimenting with a new set of genetic modifications, the fiber yield from cotton crops was up 133%.

✨ ′′ Using a high speed 5 G network, a London surgeon has performed remote experimental surgery for a banana based in the U.S. state of California.

This evolution opens up prospects for complicated remote surgeries without going through the trouble of future travel.
#IEEE_BAU_RAS


✨‏باستخدام شبكة 5G فائقة السرعة قام جرّاح في لندن بإجراء عملية جراحية تجريبية عن بُعد لموزة موجودة في ولاية كاليفورنيا الأمريكية.

‏هذا التطور يفتح الآفاق لإجراء عمليات جراحية معقدة عن بعد دون تكبد عناء السفر مستقبلاً.” #IEEE_BAU_RAS

An expert panel is meeting Thursday to consider whether the Food and Drug Administration should issue a second emergency use authorization for a Covid-19 vaccine, this one made by Moderna. It is almost a foregone conclusion that it will. But the hearing still promises to tell us more about the vaccine and its use. The FDA gave Moderna’s vaccine a favorable review in the leadup to the meeting, all but guaranteeing the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will recommend an EUA be granted. It’s also widely expected the FDA will issue the EUA on Friday.


The authorization will mark the second Covid-19 vaccine cleared by the agency — and amount to one more step toward curbing the pandemic.

Mice, fruit flies and dogs are common creatures of laboratories across the country, valuable to researchers for their genetic proximity to humans. But what about lampreys?

A new Yale School of Public Health study has enlisted this unlikely and slimy ally in the fight against .

By carefully tracing the evolution of a select number of cancer-causing genes in a variety of species, the researchers evaluated which animals are—and are not—effective in gauging how an analog of those genes in humans can lead to cancer. What they found is surprising: such as lampreys share significant similarities in these certain genes compared to humans, while do not. Their findings, published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, will help molecular biologists and other scientists as they work to find potential cures to certain cancers, such as lymphoma.

Summary: A new method identified a large set of gene regulatory regions in the brain, selected throughout human evolution.

Source: Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us human is part of a fascinating and intensely debated line of research. Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Lausanne have developed a new approach to pinpoint, for the first time, adaptive human-specific changes in the way genes are regulated in the brain.