Science fiction is often seen as an anticipation – a fiction peculiarly expected to graduate into fact. But if technologies once found only in SF do sometimes become real they do not, in so doing, always cease to be science fictional. SF is not, after all, simply a literature about the future; it is a literature about the shock of new capacities and new perspectives, about transcendence, estrangement and resistance in the face of the inhuman. Its ideas shape and constrain the ways in which technological possibilities are seen, understood and experienced long after those possibilities are first tentatively realised. It illuminates the dreams of Musk, Bezos and all the other new moon-rushers.

Fifty years after the first moon landings, a new generation of space travellers, from Xi Jinping’s taikonauts to Jeff Bezos, are racing to colonise our nearest neighbour. Is reality catching up with sci-fi?

Researchers have created carbon nanosheets for use as supercapacitors with waste hemp fibres, and can do this at 1/1000th of the cost of graphene!

http://xhne.ws/wvqF1

Can we create people who are optimized for ultra-long space travel?

But don’t linger in the interstellar vacuum, or hold your breath.

• By Anna Gosline on February 14, 2008

Jalila Essaïdi is a Dutch artist and entrepreneur focused on biotech applications of spider silk, which she makes using the milk of genetically engineered goats.

Spider silk is one of the strongest materials in nature. Jalila Essaïdi had her curiosity piqued when she read about the work of Randolph Lewis, a Professor at Utah State University, who had developed a method to create synthetic spider silk from goat milk.

“We genetically engineered the goats so that they produced a spider protein in their milk. We then purify that protein from the milk and spin it into fibers,” Lewis told CNN in an interview.

Abstract: This report focuses on the effect of the surface topography of the substrate on the behavior of human mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow (MSCs) before and after co-differentiation into adipocytes and osteoblasts. Picosecond pulsed laser ablation technology was applied to generate different microstructures (microgrooves and microcavities) on poly (L-lactide) (PLLA), where orientation, cell shape and MSCs co-differentiation were investigated. On flat PLLA, the undifferentiated MSCs showed rounded or elongated shapes, the latter being randomly oriented. On PLLA microgrooves however, MSCs adapted their shape to the groove size and direction and occasionally anchored to groove edges. It was found that adipocytes, contrary to osteoblasts, are highly sensitive to topological cues. Adipocytes responded to changes in substrate height and depth, by adapting the intracellular distribution of their lipid vacuoles to these physical constraints. In addition, the modification of PLLA by laser ablation enhanced the adherence of differentiated cells to the substrate. These findings show that picosecond pulsed laser micromachining can be applied to directly manufacture 3D microstructures that guide cell proliferation, control adipocyte morphology and improve the adhesion of bone and fat tissue.

From: Jose L. Toca-Herrera [view email]

[v1] Thu, 25 Jan 2018 23:56:53 UTC (1,069 KB)

Volume 32 Issue 1 — Sangmo Koo, Samantha M. Santoni, Bruce Z. Gao, Costas P. Grigoropoulos, Zhen Ma.

An international team of scientists has created tiny droplets of the ultra-hot matter that once filled the early universe, forming three distinct shapes and sizes: circles, ellipses and triangles.

The study, published December 10, 2018 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Physics, focuses on a liquid-like state of matter called a quark gluon plasma. Physicists believe that this matter filled the entire universe during the first few microseconds after the Big Bang when the universe was still too hot for particles to come together to make atoms.

The researchers used a massive collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, to recreate that plasma. In a series of tests, the researchers smashed packets of protons and neutrons in different combinations into much bigger atomic nuclei. They discovered that by carefully controlling conditions, they could generate droplets of quark gluon plasma that expanded to form three different geometric patterns.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is nothing if not a master innovator. After every single battle he’s had in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character has used his book smarts and technical wherewithal to better his suit so that it can defend against any threat the Avengers may run into. That includes the introduction of yet another suit in Avengers: Endgame after his first nano-tech based armor was destroyed in the Battle of Titan that took place in Avengers: Infinity War.

Weta Digital was the team behind crafting Stark’s layered nano-tech armor in addition to the third-act Endgame battle where we saw the majority of its capabilities. Recently, we had the chance to speak with Weta’s visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken, who helped detail what all went into making the latest iteration of Iron Man armor.

“Here in Infinity War, and then subsequently in Endgame, he’s got the Bleeding Edge nano-tech that he’s developed,” Aitken recounts.” And that’s about this idea that the suit is actually made up of these nanoparticles that can kind of form a fluid and move around on the surface of the suit, and reform different weapons, and then kind of solidify and crystallize into a rigid, metal suit. We developed that tech for Infinity War, and then really extended it for Endgame for two particular sequences.”

The European research institution Jülich just released new information on “zero-point energy” and its effect on the stability of nanomagnets. If scientists can determine how to magnetically store data, information can be stored in extremely small spaces.

Quantum mechanics becomes important when we’re talking about small spaces, such as nanometers. Magnetic moments are difficult to stabilize, or point in designated directions. A specific direction corresponds to effectively storing data.

In order to save data, the magnetic moments of atoms in constant motion must be counteracted by energy barriers, which is dependent on the material used. Otherwise, the magnetic moments change and any information saved is then lost.

The new method uses magnetic nanoparticles to separate 99 percent of oil droplets from water that oil wells produce. See how it works.

If plants are injured, cells adjacent to the wound fill the gaps with their daughter cells. However, which cells divide to do the healing and how they manage to produce cells that match the cell type of the missing tissue has been unclear. Scientists from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have now shown that to correctly replace dead cells, neighbors to the inside of the wound re-activate their stem cell programs.

All plant organs—from the leaves to the root—regularly endure injuries to their tissue, whether due to mechanical forces, grazing animals, or other factors. While animals rely on specialized migrating cells for wound healing, plants, whose cells are immobile, had to evolve other mechanisms.

It has been known for almost a century that in plants, cells adjacent to the wound replace harmed tissue with new daughter cells. Yet, a completely new aspect of plant wound healing in the sensitive root tip has only recently been discovered: The research team including first authors Petra Marhava, former Ph.D. student at IST Austria, current Ph.D. student Lukas Hörmayer, and former IST postdoc Saiko Yoshida reports that injured or destroyed root cells are not simply replaced by a proliferation of healthy cells from the same cell type above and below to the wound. Instead, the cells adjacent to the inner side of the injury reactivate their stem cell programs to produce de novo cells of the correct type to replace missing neighbors. The researchers termed this newly discovered restorative cell division process “restorative patterning.”

Food sticker labels could soon be a thing of the past. Brands, dates, origins, and even images could soon be laser-printed directly onto pieces of produce.

NIH-funded investigators are developing liver-on-a-chip devices to study liver function and disease modeling in order to accelerate testing and approval of new drugs.

What would happen if energy, electricity, and power were pervasive and free? When a bum all the way up to an entire country would no longer have to worry about wars over oil, flights running out of fuel, or having to build a giant rocket to carry a giant tub of rocket fuel in order to get it to escape velocity and keep it going to Mars.

When you combine those two concepts: available anywhere at zero cost, you’ve got something more valuable than when man discovered fire.

Note that humankind didn’t invent fire. We discovered it. Because it already existed.

Radiation generally comes under the heading of “things you want to stay away from,” so it’s no surprise that radiation shielding is a high priority in many industries. However, current shielding is bulky and heavy, so a North Carolina State University team is developing a new lightweight shielding based on foam metals that can block X-rays, gamma rays, and neutron radiation, as well as withstanding high-energy impact collisions.

Global Organs-on-chips Market Size, Status and Forecast 2019–2025

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According to this study, the next Y-o-Y (year over year) Organs-on-chips market will register a XX% CAGR in terms of revenue, the Astonishing Growth market size will reach US$ XX million by 2025, from US$ XX million in 2019. In particular, this report presents the global market share (sales and revenue) of key companies in the Market New Research Study.

Gamma radiation is the most penetrating and energetic form of nuclear radiation. To absorb half the incoming Gamma you need two and a half inches of concrete or almost half an inch of lead. So my eyebrows went up when I saw a press release for an organization called Radiation Shielding Technologies, or RST, selling protective clothing with this startling claim:

“DemronTM not only protects against particle ionizing/nuclear radiation (such as Beta and Alpha), but does what NO OTHER full body radiation protection can do: shield against X-ray and low-energy Gamma emissions.”

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The research was published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.

Hair follicle stem cells are long-lived cells in the hair follicle; they are present in the skin and produce hair throughout a person’s lifetime. They are “quiescent,” meaning they are normally inactive, but they quickly activate during a new hair cycle, which is when new hair growth occurs. The quiescence of hair follicle stem cells is regulated by many factors. In certain cases they fail to activate, which is what causes hair loss.

Choriocapillary loss is a major cause of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (NV-AMD). Although vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) blockade for NV-AMD has shown beneficial outcomes, unmet medical needs for patients refractory or tachyphylactic to anti-VEGF therapy exist. In addition, the treatment could exacerbate choriocapillary rarefaction, necessitating advanced treatment for fundamental recovery from NV-AMD. In this study, Tie2 activation by angiopoietin-2–binding and Tie2-activating antibody (ABTAA) presents a therapeutic strategy for NV-AMD. Conditional Tie2 deletion impeded choriocapillary maintenance, rendering eyes susceptible to NV-AMD development. Moreover, in a NV-AMD mouse model, ABTAA not only suppressed choroidal neovascularization (CNV) and vascular leakage but also regenerated the choriocapillaris and relieved hypoxia. Conversely, VEGF blockade degenerated the choriocapillaris and exacerbated hypoxia, although it suppressed CNV and vascular leakage. Together, we establish that angiopoietin-Tie2 signaling is critical for choriocapillary maintenance and that ABTAA represents an alternative, combinative therapeutic strategy for NV-AMD by alleviating anti-VEGF adverse effects.

Neovascular age-related macular degeneration (NV-AMD) is a leading cause of irreversible vision loss among elderly persons in developed countries. NV-AMD is characterized by the formation of choroidal neovascularization (CNV), an ingrowth of abnormal blood vessels from the choroid through Bruch’s membrane into the sub-retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) or subretinal space. Throughout this ingrowth, abnormal leakages of fluids and bloods occur into the retina, causing vision distortion and loss of central vision (2, 3). To treat neovascular eye diseases including NV-AMD, anti–vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF) therapy has largely been used based on the fact that an excessive production of VEGF from hypoxic cells in the retino-choroidal complex is critical in the pathogenesis and features of neovascular eye diseases (3, 4).

Jetpack Aviation opens pre-orders on jet-powered flying motorcycle.

It’s been exactly one year since US scientists reported a mysterious surge in ozone-destroying chemicals, known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Banned in 1987 under the globally signed Montreal Protocol, there was only one explanation: somewhere out there, in an unknown location, someone must have gone rogue, setting back progress on the ozone hole by a decade or more.

After much speculation, the whereabouts and magnitude of these harmful emissions has been confirmed in scientific research. As earlier reporting in The New York Times had already suggested, they seem to be coming from the northeast coast of mainland China.

As living organisms eat, grow, and self-regenerate, all the while they are slowly dying. Chemically speaking, this is because life is thermodynamically unstable, while its ultimate waste products are in a state of thermal equilibrium. It’s somewhat of a morbid thought, but it’s also one of the characteristics that is common to all forms of life.

Now in a new study, researchers have created a self-replicator that self-assembles while simultaneously being destroyed. The synthetic system may help researchers better understand what separates biological matter from simpler chemical matter, and also how to create synthetic life in the lab.

The researchers, Ignacio Colomer, Sarah Morrow, and Stephen P. Fletcher, at the University of Oxford, have published a paper on the self-replicator in a recent issue of Nature Communications.

Rick and Morty is getting its own Dungeons & Dragons tabletop adventure! The news comes from Wizards of the Coast and it will be called, Dungeons & Dragons vs Rick and Morty: Tabletop Roleplaying Game Adventure.

The game will feature an adventure for characters of the series as you take one of the most dysfunctional families in all of the parallel worlds through the realms in their own story. The campaign is set up for a five-player game for levels 1–3. They are basically building an introductory campaign for people who are just starting out and those who might only be interested in the game because it’s Rick and Morty.

The press release says that the game “[blends] the world of Dungeons & Dragons with the mad narcissistic genius of Rick Sanchez’s power-gaming sensibilities, and it includes everything a Dungeon Master needs to channel their inner mad scientist and run a rickrolling adventure.”

In November last year, geologists announced they’d picked up something really weird: a huge seismic event originating in the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, felt all across the globe, source unknown. A few months later, scientists used modelling to produce an answer — hypothesising a giant underwater volcanic eruption.

And now it seems that is pretty likely to be the case. Scientists travelled out to where they think the swarm’s epicentre is located, and they found a large active volcano, rising 800 metres (2,624 feet) from the seafloor, and sprawling up to 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) across.

A large active volcano that wasn’t there six months prior.

The scientific community is now struggling to grapple with the ethics of human germline editing as another woman pregnant with a gene-edited baby is soon due to give birth.

Circa 2017

Scientists in all areas of research must feel able to freely articulate the implications of their work without concern for causing offense.

Researchers from NYU Abu Dhabi’s (NYUAD) chemistry program and colleagues from the University’s biology program have developed and studied the biological activity of five new, metal-organic hybrid knotted molecules, termed metal-organic trefoil knots (M-TKs). These molecules can effectively deliver metals to cancer cells, demonstrating the potential to act as a new category of anti-cancer agents.

In a study published in the journal Chemical Science, NYUAD Research Scientists Farah Benyettou and Thirumurugan Prakasam from the Trabolsi Research Group, led by NYUAD Associate Professor of Chemistry Ali Trabolsi, report that these nanoscale, water-soluble M-TKs showed high potency in vitro against six cancer cell lines and in vivo in zebrafish embryos. Zebrafish-related studies were performed by NYUAD Postdoctoral Associate Anjana Ramdas Nair from the Sadler Lab.

The M-TKs, generated by metal-templated self-assembly of a simple pair of chelating ligands, were well tolerated in vitro by non-cancer cells but were significantly more potent than cisplatin, a common chemotherapy medication, in both human cancer cells—including those that were cisplatin-resistant—and in zebrafish embryos. In cultured cells, M-TKs introduce reactive oxygen species (ROS) that damage the mitochondria of cancer cells, but not the nuclear DNA or the plasma membrane.

Researchers analyze secondary school curricula from 15 countries, revealing common themes and a need for emphasizing process over facts.

So-called supercapacitors, AKA ultracapacitors, are amazing devices. While they don’t store as much total energy as a comparable battery, they can discharge this energy extremely quickly. They can also charge rapidly, as demonstrated by Mike Rigsby’s “Little Flash.” As described in his project write-up, the mini rover “runs for twenty minutes, charges in ten seconds.”

An international consortium of scientists has analyzed protein-coding genes from nearly 46,000 people, linking rare DNA alterations to type 2 diabetes. The study, one of the largest known of its type, includes data from people of European, African American, Hispanic/Latino, East Asian, and South Asian ancestries.

From this large cohort—roughly 21,000 individuals with type 2 diabetes and 25,000 healthy controls—the researchers identified four genes with rare variants that affect diabetes risk. The data suggests that hundreds more genes will likely be identified in the future.

These genes and the proteins they encode are potential targets for new medicines, and may guide researchers to better understand and treat disease.

Superbugs are bacteria that can beat modern medicine’s most powerful drugs. So doctors are racing to find new ways to fight back, such as developing “living antibiotics.”

Researchers have made a breakthrough that could eventually lead to a more effective treatment for tuberculosis.

Virtual humans are now coming for models’ jobs.

Hey Meatbags! Here you go, just what you’ve all been waiting for…

Meet “Mega-Wattson” the new singer and “Hellga Tarr” the new guitarist and backing vocalist.

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If we’re successful, this revolutionizes the treatment of infections.

For over 11 decades we have known that matter and energy are interchangeable. The development of nuclear power has shown us that matter can be converted into energy, but converting energy into matter has so far proven a lot more difficult.

The battlefield for such an achievement is at the end of the most powerful lasers ever envisioned, currently being planned and built in a number of different countries. Three projects top the “gone to watch list” of the laser world, prepared by the journal Science. They are China’s Station of Extreme Light (SEL), Russia’s Exawatt Center for Extreme Light Studies (XCELS), and the Department of Energy’s Optical Parametric Amplifier Line (OPAL).

These three lasers are planned to completely annihilate the current record for laser power, which is 5.3 million billion watts or 5.3 petawatts (PW) and obtained by Ruxin Li and colleagues at the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). Li is also behind SEL and hopes that by 2023 his team could reach the goal of a 100-PW laser.

Two weeks ago, cybercriminals used ransomware known as RobinHood to seize control of about 10,000 of the city’s computers, saying they won’t relinquish access unless Baltimore hands over about $100,000 worth of bitcoin.

Baltimore is refusing the meet the ransom demand. However, it also isn’t equipped to crack the ransomware, meaning it’s been forced to go largely offline — another disturbing example of modern government’s inability to keep up with the evolving threat of cybercrime.

Scientists have unearthed fossilised fungi dating back up to one billion years, in a discovery that could reshape our understanding of how life on land evolved, research showed Wednesday.

uneasy

They never entered American or Canadian airspace, according to NORAD.

The power consumption of data centers around the world is increasing. This creates a high demand for new technologies that could lead to energy-efficient computers. In a new study, physicists at Radboud University have demonstrated that this could also be achieved by using chips whose operation is inspired by that of the human brain. The study was published in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters on 16 May.

Compared to our current computers, the human brain uses a fraction of the energy to process the same amount of data. This is possible due to the fact that our brains can process data in parallel and store it as well by making connections stronger or weaker.

“We wanted to see if we could implement this property of plasticity in an artificial system and combine it with the rapid and energy-efficient technique to control magnetism using light, which has been applied for some time already,” say Johan Mentink and Theo Rasing, both physicists at Radboud University. “This should eventually lead to energy-efficient and smart computers.”

A dental investigator with the National Institutes of Health will begin clinical human trials this year of a laser technique that stimulates stem cells for the regeneration of teeth and, possibly, other human body parts.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), the Georg August University of Göttingen, and the Sonneberg Observatory have discovered 18 Earth-sized planets beyond the solar system. The worlds are so small that previous surveys had overlooked them. One of them is one of the smallest known so far; another one could offer conditions friendly to life. The researchers re-analyzed a part of the data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope with a new and more sensitive method that they developed. The team estimates that their new method has the potential of finding more than 100 additional exoplanets in the Kepler mission’s entire data set. The scientists describe their results in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Somewhat more than 4000 planets orbiting stars outside our solar system are known so far. Of these so-called exoplanets, about 96 percent are significantly larger than our Earth, most of them more comparable with the dimensions of the gas giants Neptune or Jupiter. This percentage likely does not reflect the real conditions in space, however, since small planets are much harder to track down than big ones. Moreover, small worlds are fascinating targets in the search for Earth-like, potentially habitable planets outside the solar system.

The 18 newly discovered worlds fall into the category of Earth-sized planets. The smallest of them is only 69 percent of the size of the Earth; the largest is barely more than twice the Earth’s radius. And they have another thing in common: all 18 planets could not be detected in the data from the Kepler Space Telescope so far. Common search algorithms were not sensitive enough.

Digit the robot will place orders right on customers’ doorsteps.

University of Chicago scientists are part of an international research team that has discovered superconductivity—the ability to conduct electricity perfectly—at the highest temperatures ever recorded.

A cache of microscopic fossils from the Arctic hints that fungi reached land long before plants.

More than 130 years after its discovery, scientists just got their first high-tech peek at the unexpected crystal structure inside the Ram’s Horn.

The nonprofit Allen Institute in Seattle has produced a visualization of human cell division that promises to be useful for professional scientists and curious amateurs alike.

By just our Words and other outside Frequencies THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and can be reprogrammed.