In other words, they’re launching 🚀 to suborbital space! Liftoff aboard the Blue Origin #NewShepard reusable rocket is no earlier than 9:30 a.m. EST, Tuesday, Dec. 18. You can watch live on NASA Television: https://go.nasa.gov/2Es92Sc
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First Successful Pig-to-Baboon Heart Transplant Heralds Human Trials
“It shows that we can successfully prevent rejection,” said Mohuiddin.
One single previous attempt at replacing the function of a baboon heart with that of a pig ended after only 57 days, after which the heart failed and the recipient died.
The new work, led by Dr. Bruno Reichart and others at LMU Munich, aimed to push that limit.
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MIT Researchers Can Shrink Objects to Nanoscale
MIT researchers invented a method of shrinking objects to the nanoscale.
The team can generate structures one-thousandth the volume of the original using a variety of materials, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA.
Existing techniques—like etching patterns onto a surface with light—work for 2D nanostructures, but not 3D. And while it’s possible to make 3D nanostructures, the process is slow, challenging, and restrictive.
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UC San Diego Awarded $2 Million to Advance Algae-based Renewable Polymers
UC San Diego scientists have been granted $2 million to develop new methods for manufacturing products based on algae. Biologist Stephen Mayfield will lead efforts to develop novel platforms to produce biologically based monomers that will be used to manufacture renewable and biodegradable products.
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Progress in super-resolution microscopy
Going deeper and deeper into cells with the microscope; imaging the nucleus and other structures more and more accurately; getting the most detailed views of cellular multi-protein complexes: All of these are goals pursued by the microscopy expert Markus Sauer at the Biocenter of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany. Together with researchers from Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland, he has now shown that a hitherto uncertain method of super-resolution microscopy is reliable.
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Edible film kills bacteria in seafood
While it’s important to keep food of any type fresh, it’s particularly crucial with seafood, as it can become tainted with toxic bacteria. That’s why an international group of scientists is developing a transparent antibacterial film that gets eaten along with the seafood it’s covering.