Lifeboat Foundation

According to Chinese state media, a natively developed ground-effect “wingship” has completed 30 critical sea trials, opening the door for further development.

The South China Morning Post claims that China’s new ground-effect “wingship” has just completed 30 sea trials. According to the state-run media company, the new vehicle could be used to airdrop supplies on islands and beaches and conduct quick search and rescue missions.

Continue reading “Chinese ‘wingship’ that can travel 20 times faster than a boat completes sea trials” »

The project aims to cut the cargo cost per kilogram to 5 percent of that of the existing Long March rockets.

In response to advancements in the United States’ reusable rocket technology, especially being offered by SpaceX, Chinese space authorities have launched a counter-offensive to lower the costs of its space programs.

According to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), a new rocket launching system in China, which is under development, aims to cut the cargo cost per kilogram to 5 percent to that of the existing Long March rockets.

Like the better-known prostate-specific antigen (PSA), prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is a biomarker that can tell physicians much about a patient’s metastatic prostate cancer. PSMA is a protein on the cell surface of most prostate cancers; scanning for it with positron emission tomography (PET) can indicate where in the body prostate cancer has spread, and it can be targeted with a newly approved radioactive therapy. In 15%–20% of patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer, however, PSMA production stops at advanced stages of the disease.

In a new study in the journal Nature Cancer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists shed new light on the mechanism that raises and lowers PSMA expression in prostate cancer cells. The findings may help physicians select PSMA-targeting therapies for specific patients.

It has long been known that the androgen receptor (AR)—a structure that triggers cell growth in response to the hormone androgen—controls the production of PSMA in prostate cancer cells. In the Nature Cancer study, researchers led by Dana-Farber’s Himisha Beltran, MD, and Martin Bakht, Ph.D., found that PSMA expression is lower in liver metastases than in other parts of the body, regardless of expression of the androgen receptor.

The circadian system of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7,942 relies on a three-protein nanomachine (KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC) that undergoes an oscillatory phosphorylation cycle with a period of ~24 h. This core oscillator can be reconstituted in vitro and is used to study the molecular mechanisms of circadian timekeeping and entrainment. Previous studies showed that two key metabolic changes that occur in cells during the transition into darkness, changes in the ATP/ADP ratio and redox status of the quinone pool, are cues that entrain the circadian clock. By changing the ATP/ADP ratio or adding oxidized quinone, one can shift the phase of the phosphorylation cycle of the core oscillator in vitro. However, the in vitro oscillator cannot explain gene expression patterns because the simple mixture lacks the output components that connect the clock to genes. Recently, a high-throughput in vitro system termed the in vitro clock (IVC) that contains both the core oscillator and the output components was developed. Here, we used IVC reactions and performed massively parallel experiments to study entrainment, the synchronization of the clock with the environment, in the presence of output components. Our results indicate that the IVC better explains the in vivo clock-resetting phenotypes of wild-type and mutant strains and that the output components are deeply engaged with the core oscillator, affecting the way input signals entrain the core pacemaker. These findings blur the line between input and output pathways and support our previous demonstration that key output components are fundamental parts of the clock.

Researchers have developed a new way to produce and shape large, high-quality mirrors that are much thinner than the primary mirrors previously used for telescopes deployed in space. The resulting mirrors are flexible enough to be rolled up and stored compactly inside a launch vehicle.

“Launching and deploying space telescopes is a complicated and costly procedure,” said Sebastian Rabien from Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. “This new approach—which is very different from typical mirror production and polishing procedures—could help solve weight and packaging issues for telescope mirrors, enabling much larger, and thus more sensitive, telescopes to be placed in orbit.”

In the journal Applied Optics, Rabien reports successful fabrication of parabolic membrane mirror prototypes up to 30 cm in diameter. These mirrors, which could be scaled up to the sizes needed in space telescopes, were created by using chemical vapor deposition to grow membrane mirrors on a rotating liquid inside a vacuum chamber. He also developed a method that uses heat to adaptively correct imperfections that might occur after the mirror is unfolded.

An international team, headed by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), has created a quantum material that allows the fabric of the space inhabited by electrons to be curved on demand.

The advent of cutting-edge information and communication technologies presents scientists and industry with new hurdles to overcome. To address these challenges, designing new quantum materials, which derive their remarkable characteristics from the principles of quantum physics, is the most promising approach.

A global collaboration headed by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and featuring researchers from the universities of Salerno, Utrecht, and Delft, has developed a material that allows for the control of electron dynamics by curving the fabric of space in which they evolve. This advancement holds promise for future electronic devices, particularly in the field of optoelectronics. The findings were published in the journal Nature Materials.

Remark: This article is from The Conversation “En Anglais” written by Victor DOS SANTOS PAULINO & Nonthapat PULSIRI (V&N) — Experts from Toulouse Business School and The SIRIUS Chair (France)

When talking about space, one might think about the stars one sees at night or a good sci-fi film. But space is also crowded with satellites, spacecrafts and astronauts, whose missions can last anywhere from several days to months. Meanwhile, 8,216 unmanned satellites revolve around Earth’s orbits to improve our daily lives. Communication satellites contribute to enhancing Internet access in regions deprived of infrastructure (so-called “white areas”); meteorology satellites have become essential for weather forecasts, while navigation satellites (including GPS) are crucial for current and future transportation needs such as automatic driving vehicles.

Technological advances in the sector have unlocked many new business opportunities. The industry can now launch constellations of thousand satellites to reach corners of the earth as it had never before (e.g., Starlink), while new markets such as space mining and space tourism are steadily growing. National champions (including the United States and France) have also framed the space sector as a top economic priority. It is thought the technological benefits accrued by companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin or OneWeb, launched by billionaires such as Elon Musk, will also be able to trickle down to non-space sectors such as the energy or freight industries.

Continue reading “How can we make the space sector more sustainable?” »

SpaceX is preparing to carry out a launch rehearsal of its next-generation Starship rocket as early as next week.

Researchers have developed a new method for creating realistic 3D holographic projections that are three orders of magnitude better than the current state-of-the-art technology. Previous attempts to improve the resolution of holograms have run into three basic roadblocks. However, this new ultrahigh-density method shows that two of those have now been solved, dramatically improving the overall quality, resolution, and appearance of holographic projections.

“Our new method overcomes two long-existing bottlenecks in current digital holographic techniques — low axial resolution and high interplane crosstalk — that prevent fine depth control of the hologram and thus limit the quality of the 3D display,” said Lei Gong, who led a research team from the University of Science and Technology of China. “Our approach could also improve holography-based optical encryption by allowing more data to be encrypted in the hologram.”

Limitations of Current Methods for Generating Holograms.