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Category: innovation – Page 161

A team led by a Baylor University researcher has published a breakthrough article that provides a better understanding of the dynamic process by which sunlight-induced DNA damage is recognized by the molecular repair machinery in cells as needing repair.

Ultraviolet light from the sun is a ubiquitous carcinogen that can inflict structural damage to the cellular DNAs DNA carries important blueprints for cellular functions, failure in removing and restoring damaged parts of DNA in a timely fashion can have detrimental outcomes and lead to skin cancers in humans, said lead author Jung-Hyun Min, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences.

Min and her team showed how the repair Rad4/XPC would bind to one such UV-induced DNA damage—6–4 photoproduct—to mark the damaged site along the DNA in preparation for the rest of the nucleotide excision repair (NER) process in cells.

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By Justin MullinsPass a current or magnetic field through a conducting fluid and it will generate a force. Numerous aerospace engineers have tried and failed to exploit this phenomenon, known as magnetohydrodynamics, as an exotic form of propulsion for aircraft. But perhaps attempts so far have all been too big.

A very small design could have a better chance of taking off, says Subrata Roy, an aerospace engineer at the University of Florida, Gainesville, US.

With a span of less than 15 centimetres, his aircraft qualifies as a micro air vehicle (MAV), but it has an unconventional design to say the least. It is a saucer shape covered with electrodes that ionise air to create a plasma. This plasma is then accelerated by an electric field to push air around and generate lift.

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“Pillars of light” appeared again in the province of Sulu this year, and were captured in several photos shared by netizens. Current latest trending Philippine headlines on science, technology breakthroughs, hardware devices, geeks, gaming, web/desktop applications, mobile apps, social media buzz and gadget reviews.

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Every now and again, our radio telescopes capture a mystery. A single flash, as powerful in radio wavelengths as half-a-billion Suns, condensed into a burst that lasts just a few milliseconds at most. Now, for the very first time, astrophysicists have traced one of these one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) to its source.

“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007,” said astro-engineer Keith Bannister of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

The signal has been named FRB 180924 — they’re named for the date of detection — and it originated in the outskirts of a Milky Way-sized galaxy roughly 3.6 billion light-years from Earth.

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After twenty five years of research, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think that they have finally cracked the code for the commercialization for nuclear fusion reactions.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is the fruit of that research. It’s a startup building on decades of research and development that plans to harness the power of the sun to create a cleaner, stable source of energy for consumers. And the company just raised another $50 million in funding from some of the country’s deepest pocketed private investors to continue on its path to commercialization.

The company unveiled its technology and a first $64 million in financing from investors including the Italian energy company, Eni; Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the investment consortium established by the world’s richest men and women, and The Engine, MIT’s own investment vehicle for frontier technologies.

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