Lifeboat Foundation

NASA has recently invested in a class of small, low-cost planetary missions called SIMPLEx, which stands for Small, Innovative Missions for PLanetary Exploration. These missions save costs by tagging along on other launches as what is called a rideshare, or secondary payload.

One example is the Lunar Trailblazer. Like VIPER, Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the moon.

But while VIPER will land on the Moon’s surface, studying a specific area near the south pole in detail, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the moon, measuring the temperature of the surface and mapping out the locations of water molecules across the globe.

This will go down as the year of AI.

Hard-to-detect colorectal pre-cancerous lesions known as serrated polyps, and the aggressive tumors that develop from them, depend heavily on the ramped-up production of cholesterol, according to a preclinical study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding points to the possibility of using cholesterol-lowering drugs to prevent or treat such tumors.

In the study, published Oct. 13 in Nature Communications, the researchers analyzed mice that develop serrated polyps and tumors, detailing the chain of molecular events in these tissues that leads to increased cholesterol production.

They confirmed their findings in analyses of human serrated polyps and tumors, and showed in mouse models that replicate the human cancer that blocking cholesterol production prevented the progression of these types of intestinal tumors.

A study published today (Dec. 15) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics reveals the discovery of two new planetary systems orbiting stars similar to our sun, also known as solar analogs.

The study was led by Dr. Eder Martioli, a full researcher at the Laboratório Nacional de Astrofísica (LNA/MCTI) and an associate researcher at the Institut d’astrophysique de Paris (IAP), and by Dr. Guillaume Hébrard, a researcher at the Institut d’astrophysique de Paris (IAP).

Observations responsible for detecting these two systems, named TOI-1736 and TOI-2141, were conducted using NASA’s TESS space telescope and the SOPHIE spectrograph installed on the 1.93 m telescope at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP) in southern France, both illustrated in Figure 1.

A team of engineers, materials scientists and chemists at Nankai University, in China, has developed a microfiber-based meta-fabric that provides full-day thermoregulation of body temperature during periods of changing external temperatures.

In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how they developed their fabrics, how they work and how well they performed when tested. Xingyi Huang and Pengli, both with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in China, have published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team.

As the researchers note, clothing keeps people warm when it is cold, and in some cases, can help people stay cool in hot temperatures. Prior research efforts have attempted to extend the capabilities of clothing by adding heating or cooling elements, but thus far, most such products have proven to be too bulky for general use.

The 2024 nuclear doomsday clock has been reset, but there is still time for final revisions.

The clock was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit that was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project. It began because of escalated fears of a potentially catastrophic nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It has been reset 25 times since its creation.

Viewed as a visual representation to warn the global populace about multiple factors that could negatively affect the planet, the clock was last changed on January 24 and moved forward to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. The reasoning cited the Russia-Ukraine war that, as of this February, will have lasted for two years and has led to nuclear threats from Russia.

“Dynamic Functional Connectivity Methods” Thomas Liu, Ph.D. from @UCSDHealth From the 2018 ISMRM-ESMRMB Joint Annual Meeting: https://www.ismrm.org/18m/This v…

A system that detects forces and interprets which stimuli have the potential to cause harm could imbue robots with a sense akin to pain.

By Alex Wilkins

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