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Low-temperature plasmas offer promise for applications in medicine, water purification, agriculture, pollutant removal, nanomaterial synthesis and more. Yet making these plasmas by conventional methods takes several thousand volts of electricity, says David Go, an aerospace and mechanical engineer at the University of Notre Dame. That limits their use outside high-voltage power settings.

In work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Go and a team of researchers conducted research that explores making plasma devices that can be operated without electrical power—they need only human or .

Their paper in Applied Physics Letters introduces a strategy the scientists call “energy-conversion plasma” as an alternative to producing “transient spark” discharges without the need for a very high-voltage power supply.

Rabia Nusrat, an environmental engineering student, Global UGRAD alumni, in her final year at University of Engineering and Technology, UET, Lahore, Pakistan and the first ideaXme public interviewer, interviews Shayan Sohail Sarwar, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Innovator and Chief Technology Officer PakVitae.

PakVitae:

PakVitae, founded in 2016, is a multi-million dollar clean water technology startup based in Pakistan.

The organisation’s mission is to provide 10 Million people with access to clean drinking water by 2022. https://www.pakvitae.org through offering the “worlds first ever intrinsically antimicrobial membranes that are biofouling resistant hence are failsafe”. In this ideaXme public interview discover details of their technology, as well as Shayan’s approach to innovation — “there can be no innovation without empathy”. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayansohailsarwar/

In a recent study conducted in mice, researchers became one step closer to that understanding, discovering that exercise actually strengthens the brain’s resilience to stress. Exercise helps animals cope with stress by enabling an uptick in a crucial neural protein called galanin, the study suggests. This process influences stress levels, food consumption, cognition, and mood.

Leveraging this finding, researchers were able to genetically tweak even sedentary mice’s levels of galanin, shifts that lowered their anxious response to stress.

The study’s authors explain that this study helps pin down the biological mechanisms driving exercise’s positive effects on stress. While further human experiments are needed to confirm these findings, the researchers have practical advice for people looking to get these benefits: perform regular, aerobic exercise.

We also discovered that our protein is located at the plasma membrane, the boundary between the inside and outside of a cell. This is critical. We are putting stock in the idea that this transporter moves sucrose from the outside of cells and into the phloem. To perform this function, its location on the plasma membrane is a must.


MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) scientists have characterized a sucrose transporter protein found in common beans. The recently discovered protein could help us understand how beans tolerate hot temperatures. The transporter, called PvSUT1.1, is reported in the journal Plant Direct.

During photosynthesis, bean leaves capture carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into sugars that fuel their growth and development. Most species these sugars throughout the plant in the form of .

The sucrose travels through a system of vein-like highways, called the phloem, that permeates the entire plant body. A group of helper proteins, aptly called sucrose transporters, load that sucrose from their origin cells into the phloem for transport to growing tissues, such as flowers and fruits.

It was at this webcast that Musk unveiled the latest version of his company NeuraLink’s latest prototype, the Link VO.9 — a chip that would allow humans to control devices with their brains.

Musk said this could eventually help cure people with conditions like memory loss, hearing loss, paralysis, blindness, brain damage, depression and anxiety.

Viewers of the webcast met Gertrude, a pig that had the chip implanted in her brain two months ago. A graph shown onscreen showed the waves inside Gertrude’s brain, which fired when her brain communicated with her snout while she was eating.

Scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a novel method of using fruit peel waste to extract and reuse precious metals from spent lithium-ion batteries in order to create new batteries.

The team demonstrated their concept using orange peel, which recovered precious metals from battery waste efficiently. They then made functional batteries from these recovered metals, creating minimal waste in the process.

The scientists say that their waste-to-resource approach tackles both food waste and electronics waste, supporting the development of a circular economy with zero waste, in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible. An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food waste and 50 million tonnes of e-waste are generated globally each year.

Sixty feet beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau and industrial designer Yves Béhar are envisioning the world’s largest underwater research station and habitat.

The pair have unveiled Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus, a 4,000-square-foot modular lab that will sit under the water off the coast of Curaçao, providing a home to scientists and researchers from across the world studying the ocean — from the effects of climate change and new marine life to medicinal breakthroughs.

Designed as a two-story circular structure grounded to the ocean floor on stilts, Proteus’ protruding pods contain laboratories, personal quarters, medical bays and a moon pool where divers can access the ocean floor. Powered by wind and solar energy, and ocean thermal energy conversion, the structure will also feature the first underwater greenhouse for growing food, as well as a video production facility.

O,.o circa 2019.


PARIS (Reuters) — A Paris zoo showcased a mysterious new organism on Wednesday, dubbed the “blob”, a yellowish unicellular small living being which looks like a fungus but acts like an animal.

This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on display to the public on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect food and digest it.

The blob also has almost 720 sexes, can move without legs or wings and heals itself in two minutes if cut in half.