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Category: innovation – Page 6

The direct fusion drive could cut travel to Saturn’s moon Titan to just 2 years. Here is some key information for you to watch before deciding to read the whole article. Thanks for visiting us!

Fusion Power for Fast Space Travel

Scientists at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are developing a groundbreaking propulsion system called the Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) that could drastically cut down travel time to distant planets. Using this innovative technology, spacecraft could reach Saturn’s moon Titan in just two years, compared to the many years it currently takes. Titan, with its hydrocarbon-rich surface, holds significant scientific interest and may even serve as a future refueling stop for interplanetary missions.

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Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have developed an innovative method for rapidly creating laser light sources in large quantities using an inkjet printer that ejects laser-emitting droplets.

By applying an electric field to these droplets, the researchers demonstrated that switching the emission of light on and off is possible. Furthermore, they successfully created a compact laser by arranging these droplets on a circuit board.

The study is published in Advanced Materials.

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The 2024 solar eclipse across North America spurred numerous NASA-supported research projects that observed the eclipse’s impact on the sun’s corona, Earth’s atmosphere, and radio communications.

Significant data were gathered from ground-based telescopes, aircraft, amateur radio transmissions, and student-launched high-altitude balloons.

Sweeping solar eclipse across north america.

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Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that stimulates a patient’s immune system to attack tumours.

While promising, its effectiveness varies among patients.

The new VUB technology helps identify in advance which patients are likely to benefit from this treatment.

The study introduces an innovative tracer targeting CD163, a molecular receptor on tumour-associated macrophages—immune cells that support tumour growth and protection.

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that was spun out of a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research labs, announced plans this week to break ground on what it calls “the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant.” The plant which is expected to come online sometime in the early 2030s, according to the company, will be built in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

The plan is certainly an ambitious one, starting with how the energy will be generated. Nuclear fusion is a notoriously difficult process that involves fusing together two light atomic nuclei into a single heavier one, resulting in the release of a massive amount of energy—it’s estimated to produce four times as much energy as nuclear fission reactions. The reaction that nuclear fusion generates is the same kind of reaction that powers the sun.

It’s not hard to imagine why one would want to be able to harness the energy of the sun. It is hard to actually, ya know, do that, though. To date, nuclear fusion has proven elusive—at least in a way that would produce usable energy. In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reached nuclear fusion “ignition” for the first time, meaning they successfully produced an excess of energy from the reactions. Prior to that breakthrough, which has since been replicated, it took more energy to produce the reaction than energy that came from it.

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A breakthrough in understanding how a single-cell parasite makes ergosterol (its version of cholesterol) could lead to more effective drugs for human leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that afflicts about 1 million people and kills about 30,000 people around the world every year.

The findings, reported in Nature Communications, also solve a decades-long scientific puzzle that’s prevented drugmakers from successfully using azole antifungal drugs to treat , or VL.

About 30 years ago, scientists discovered the two species of single-cell parasites that cause VL, Leishmania donovani and Leishmania infantum, made the same lipid sterol, called ergosterol, as fungi proven susceptible to azoles antifungals. These azoles antifungals target a crucial enzyme for sterol biosynthesis, called CYP51.

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Mechanical crystals, also known as phononic crystals, are materials that can control the propagation of vibrations or sound waves, just like photonic crystals control the flow of light. The introduction of defects in these crystals (i.e., intentional disruptions in their periodic structure) can give rise to mechanical modes within the band gap, enabling the confinement of mechanical waves to smaller regions or the materials—a feature that could be leveraged to create new technologies.

Researchers at McGill University recently realized a new mechanical crystal with an optically programmable defect mode. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, introduces a new approach to dynamically reprogram mechanical systems, which entails the use of an optical spring to transfer a mechanical mode into a crystal’s band gap.

“Some time ago, our group was thinking a lot about using an optical spring to partially levitate structures and improve their performance,” Jack C. Sankey, principal investigator and co-author of the paper, told Phys.org. “At the same time, we were watching the amazing breakthroughs in our field with mechanical devices that used the band gap of a phononic crystal to insulate mechanical systems from the noisy environment.”

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