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Category: futurism – Page 14
New antidote for cobra bites discovered by Liverpool and Sydney researchers
Cobras kill thousands of people a year worldwide and perhaps a hundred thousand more are seriously maimed by necrosis – the death of body tissue and cells – caused by the venom, which can lead to amputation.
Current antivenom treatment is expensive and does not effectively treat the necrosis of the flesh where the bite occurs.
“Our discovery could drastically reduce the terrible injuries from necrosis caused by cobra bites – and it might also slow the venom, which could improve survival rates,” said Professor Greg Neely, a corresponding author of the study from the Charles Perkins Centre and Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney.
Don’t throw away those cannabis leaves—they’re packed with rare compounds
Analytical chemists from Stellenbosch University (SU) have provided the first evidence of a rare class of phenolics, called flavoalkaloids, in cannabis leaves.
Phenolic compounds, especially flavonoids, are well-known and sought after in the pharmaceutical industry because of their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic properties.
The researchers identified 79 phenolic compounds in three strains of cannabis grown commercially in South Africa, of which 25 were reported for the first time in cannabis. Sixteen of these compounds were tentatively identified as flavoalkaloids. Interestingly, the flavoalkaloids were mainly found in the leaves of only one of the strains. The results were published in the Journal of Chromatography A recently.
Finding the shadows in a fusion system faster with AI
A public‑private partnership between Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has led to a new artificial intelligence (AI) approach that is faster at finding what’s known as “magnetic shadows” in a fusion vessel: safe havens protected from the intense heat of the plasma.
Known as HEAT‑ML, the new AI could lay the foundation for software that significantly speeds up the design of future fusion systems. Such software could also enable good decision‑making during fusion operations by adjusting the plasma so that potential problems are thwarted before they start.
“This research shows that you can take an existing code and create an AI surrogate that will speed up your ability to get useful answers, and it opens up interesting avenues in terms of control and scenario planning,” said Michael Churchill, co‑author of a paper in Fusion Engineering and Design about HEAT‑ML and head of digital engineering at PPPL.
Scientists Design Huge Spacecraft That Could Carry 2,400 Colonists to Alpha Centauri
A team of engineers has come up with designs of a 36-mile spacecraft, dubbed Chrysalis, designed to carry up to 2,400 passengers to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own.
As first spotted by Live Science, the ambitious vision recently won the team the top prize at the Project Hyperion Design Competition, which was launched last year by an international consortium of scientists, engineers, and urban planners.
