Posted: 5/24/2017
- 'Smart genes' account for 20% of intelligence: study (Hope, we will be smarter soon!)
- Fullerene nanoflask captures reactivity of atomic nitrogen (This is highly promising!)
- Team cures diabetes [type 1] in mice without side effects (“... The pancreas has many other cell types besides beta cells, and our approach is to alter these cells so that they start to secrete insulin, but only in response to glucose [sugar]”... The therapy is accomplished by a technique called gene transfer. A virus is used as a vector, or carrier, to introduce selected genes into the pancreas. These genes become incorporated and cause digestive enzymes and other cell types to make insulin. Gene transfer using a viral vector has been approved nearly 50 times by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to treat various diseases … It is proven in treating rare childhood diseases, and Good Manufacturing Processes ensure safety.)
- Buried lasers will sense Earth's spin and quakes doing the twist (“.... In doing so, ROMY [the tetrahedron, Rotational Motions in Seismology] will measure minuscule changes in Earth's spin rate and spin axis. The speed and pace of those measurements promise to add an increment of precision to GPS navigation, and ROMY may even be able to detect a subtle effect predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity: the drag of the rotating planet on nearby spacetime, … ROMY also will be sensitive to the weak rotations that accompany earthquakes, long-ignored motions that contain clues to the interior structure of Earth … With its 12-meter arms, ROMY is more sensitive than previous ring lasers, capable of sensing Earth's spin to better than one part per billion. And instead of one square ring, it has four triangular ones. Three of them are required to pin down rotations in any direction, and the fourth adds redundancy. Construction began in March 2016 and finished 6 months later. Last month, engineers achieved first light in all four rings at the same time—a sign that the geometry of the tetrahedron is precise enough to keep all the lasers resonating properly.”)
- Giant space magnet may have trapped antihelium, raising idea of lingering pools of antimatter in the cosmos (If confirmed, this could be huge! “The AMS [Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. In 2011, NASA launched the 8.5-metric-ton magnet on the penultimate space shuttle flight and attached it to the International Space Station (ISS)] … has seen a handful of candidate particles of antihelium-3, made of two antiprotons and an antineutron. In labs on Earth, physicists have made antihelium for a few fleeting instants, but no one has ever detected it in space.”)
- Immune cells unexpectedly help the heart keep its beat (“The researchers then discovered that macrophages were common in AV [atrioventricular] nodes from mouse and human hearts ... When the researchers grew macrophages and heart muscle cells together in culture dishes, they found that the two types of cells were connected physically and synchronized electrically. Because of these interactions, macrophages made it easier for their muscular neighbors to fire … When the team began examining mice that lacked macrophages, a technician noticed that the electrical rhythms of the animals’ hearts were abnormal. … the rodents appeared to have an AV block, in which the AV node doesn’t forward the atrial signal to the ventricles. ...”)
- Naked mole-rats turn into plants when oxygen is low (Naked mole rats are absolutely amazing animals! They live up to 30 years (about 10 times longer than other, comparable rodents); rarely have cancer; do not feel many types of pain. “But naked mole-rats have a backup: their brain cells start burning fructose, which produces energy anaerobically through a metabolic pathway that is only used by plants ... In the new study, the researchers exposed naked mole-rats to low oxygen conditions in the laboratory and found that they released large amounts of fructose into the bloodstream. The fructose, the scientists found, was transported into brain cells by molecular fructose pumps that in all other mammals are found only on cells of the intestine. … The naked mole-rat has simply rearranged some basic building-blocks of metabolism to make it super-tolerant to low oxygen conditions," … At oxygen levels low enough to kill a human within minutes, naked mole-rats can survive for at least five hours … They go into a state of suspended animation, reducing their movement and dramatically slowing their pulse and breathing rate to conserve energy. And they begin using fructose until oxygen is available again.
- The naked mole-rat is the only known mammal to use suspended animation to survive oxygen deprivation. … an adaptation for living in their oxygen-poor burrows. Unlike other subterranean mammals, naked mole-rats live in hyper-crowded conditions, packed in with hundreds of colony mates. With so many animals living together in unventilated tunnels, oxygen supplies are quickly depleted.”)
- https://phys.org/news/2017-04-star-wars-superlaser-longer-sci-fi.html (This could be huge! But no details are provided!)
- https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-reshape-basic-plasma-physics.html (Advances in nuclear fusion!
- https://phys.org/news/2017-03-physicists-reveal-experimental-verification-key.html (More advances in nuclear fusion)
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