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NASA plans to send crewed missions to Mars over the next decade—but the 140 million-mile (225 million-kilometer) journey to the red planet could take several months to years round trip.

This relatively long transit time is a result of the use of traditional chemical rocket fuel. An alternative technology to the chemically propelled rockets the agency develops now is called nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses nuclear fission and could one day power a rocket that makes the trip in just half the time.

Nuclear fission involves harvesting the incredible amount of energy released when an atom is split by a neutron. This reaction is known as a fission reaction. Fission technology is well established in power generation and nuclear-powered submarines, and its application to drive or power a rocket could one day give NASA a faster, more powerful alternative to chemically driven rockets.

Supramolecular metal-based structures have immense potential for biomedical applications as multimodal theranostic platforms. This Review gives an overview of the design principles and synthetic strategies; it also highlights the achievements in the field of radiochemistry.

In 2017, Jacob Haendel was living a normal life as a head chef in…


A paralysed man who had an extreme form of locked-in syndrome and heard a nurse say he was “brain dead” has become the first ever to recover after hearing medical professionals debating whether or not to switch off his life support.

In 2017, Jacob Haendel was living a normal life as a head chef in Boston, Massachusetts but in the space of a few weeks, his life was turned upside down after he was diagnosed with acute toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy, which progressed into locked-in syndrome and forced his body would slowly shut down. An extreme form of locked-in syndrome is a condition where a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis and can be caused by brain trauma, infection or exposure to toxins.

It is not known exactly how Jacob developed the condition, though he says his life as a chef consuming certain chemicals “wilfully and otherwise” may have been a factor. He ended up paralysed, unable to talk or blink within a few months and, could hear hospital staff deliberating over switching off machines.

Haven’t heard from Bill Andrews in awhile.


BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough 10% with code Modern10 https://bioptimizers.com/modern. This video brought to you by BiOptimizers.
Here we talk with Dr Bill Andrews all about telomeres, why they are on the critical path of aging and finding a way to lengthen them is required in an complete longevity solution.
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It is well-established that chronic MSK pain is the key factor for physical disability in the adult population. 19 The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 20–33% (over 1.71 billion individuals) of the global population suffers from chronic MSK pain. 20 This type of disorder is characterized by acute or chronic pain in MSK structures, which involve muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, and nerves. 21 The most common conditions responsible for visits to a physician’s office are OA, rheumatoid arthritis, myofascial pain syndrome (MPS), and low back and neck pain. 22 Less common incidents are generally accompanying with injuries like of tendon sprains, ligament tears, muscle tears, fractures, and similar damage during sports. 20

If left untreated, these conditions progressively increase suffering, disability, and drug consumption, which subsequently diminish an individual’s quality of life. 23 This also translates to a main community health problem due to significant high expenses for health-care systems and insurance for disability. Advanced age may remain the top variable associated with the increased risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and MSK pain; however, these conditions may still unfold at any given age for various reasons. Therefore, every individual is at risk of experiencing MSK pain throughout an entire lifetime. 24 Acute pain can become chronic due to numerous factors. The level of intensity, site, and time of noxious stimuli are dictated by the interplay between mechanical, chemical, and thermal receptors and immune cells. 25 Under standard conditions, noxious stimuli and painful sensations gradually decrease with the progression of healing.

Imagine owning a camera so powerful it can take freeze-frame photographs of a moving electron – an object traveling so fast it could circle the Earth many times in a second. Researchers at the University of Arizona have developed the world’s fastest electron microscope that can do just that.

They believe their work will lead to groundbreaking advancements in physics, chemistry, bioengineering, materials sciences and more.

“When you get the latest version of a smartphone, it comes with a better camera,” said Mohammed Hassan, associate professor of physics and optical sciences. “This transmission electron microscope is like a very powerful camera in the latest version of smartphones; it allows us to take pictures of things we were not able to see before – like electrons. With this microscope, we hope the scientific community can understand the quantum physics behind how an electron behaves and how an electron moves.”

The search for new elements comes from the dream of finding a variant that is sufficiently stable to be long-lived and not prone to immediate decay. There is a theory in nuclear physics about an island of stability of superheavy elements. This is a potential zone in the upper part of the periodic table of as-yet-undiscovered elements that could remain stable for longer than just a few seconds. The aim is to explore the limits of stability of atomic nuclei.

The demand for lithium, essential for powering sustainable technologies, is rising quickly, yet current methods leave up to 75% of the world’s lithium-rich saltwater sources inaccessible.

With some predicting global lithium supply could fall short of demand as early as 2025, the innovative technology – EDTA-aided loose nanofiltration (EALNF) – sets a new standard in lithium processing. The technology uniquely extracts both lithium and magnesium simultaneously, unlike traditional methods that treat magnesium salts as waste, making it smarter, faster and more sustainable.

The work, co-led by Dr Zhikao Li, from the Monash Suzhou Research Institute and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor Xiwang Zhang from the University of Queensland, promises to meet the surging demand for lithium and paves the way for more sustainable and efficient extraction practices.

The reason? While sunny regions naturally provide enough light to grow crops, areas with colder winters often need grow lights and greenhouses part of the year. This increases energy consumption, logistical headaches, and ultimately, food costs.

In their paper, Jiao and colleagues argue for a new method that could dramatically revamp farming practices to reduce land use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Dubbed “electro-agriculture,” the approach uses solar panels to trigger a chemical reaction that turns ambient CO2 into an energy source called acetate. Certain mushrooms, yeast, and algae already consume acetate as food. With a slight genetic tweak, we could also engineer other common foods such as grains, tomatoes, or lettuce to consume acetate.

Absorption of light initiates many natural and artificial chemical processes, for example, photosynthesis in plants, human vision, or even 3D printing. Until now, it seemed impossible to control a light-driven chemical reaction at the atomic scale, where only a specific part of one molecule is addressed.