Blue Origin today announced TeraWave, a satellite communications network designed to deliver symmetrical data speeds of up to 6 Tbps anywhere on Earth.
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Mapping cell development with mathematics-informed machine learning
The development of humans and other animals unfolds gradually over time, with cells taking on specific roles and functions via a process called cell fate determination. The fate of individual cells, or in other words, what type of cells they will become, is influenced both by predictable biological signals and random physiological fluctuations.
Over the past decades, medical researchers and neuroscientists have been able to study these processes in greater depth, using a technique known as single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). This is an experimental tool that can be used to measure the gene activity of individual cells.
To better understand how cells develop over time, researchers also rely on mathematical models. One of these models, dubbed the drift-diffusion equation, describes the evolution of systems as the combination of predictable changes (i.e., drift) and randomness (i.e., diffusion).
High-resolution map shows dark matter’s gravity pulled normal matter into galaxies
Scientists have created the highest resolution map of the dark matter that threads through the universe—showing its influence on the formation of stars, galaxies and planets.
The research, including astronomers from Durham University, UK, tells us more about how this invisible substance helped pull ordinary matter into galaxies like the Milky Way and planets like Earth.
The findings, using new data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Webb), are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Mighty microscopic fibers are the key to cell division and life itself
Every second, millions of cells in your body divide in two. In the space of an hour, they duplicate their DNA and grow a web of protein fibers around it called a spindle. The spindle extends its many fibers from the chromosomes in the center to the edges of the cell. Then, with extraordinary force, it pulls the chromosomes apart.
How the spindle accomplishes this without destroying itself has long been a mystery.
Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered that the spindle can repair itself as it’s pulling on the DNA, replacing weak links while it’s working. This constant reinforcement ensures that the DNA is divided exactly in two. Putting just one extra chromosome in a cell could lead to cancer or birth defects.
The shape of things to come: How spheroid geometry guides multicellular orbiting and invasion
As organisms develop from embryos, groups of cells migrate and reshape themselves to form all manner of complex tissues. There are no anatomical molds shaped like lungs, livers or other tissues for cells to grow into. Rather, these structures form through the coordinated activity of different types of cells as they move and multiply.
No one is sure exactly how cells manage this collective construction of complex tissue, but a study by Brown University engineers could offer some new insights.
The study, published in Nature Physics, looked at how human epithelial cells behave as spherical aggregates confined inside a collagen matrix. The research revealed surprising ways in which cell clusters first rotate collectively within the confined space, then eventually reconfigure their surroundings to allow individual cells to venture out of the sphere.
Microgravity rewires microbial metabolism, limiting space-based manufacturing efficiency
Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have completed a spaceflight biology investigation aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that reveals how microgravity fundamentally alters microbial metabolism, limiting the efficiency of biological manufacturing processes critical to future long-duration space missions. The findings were recently published in the journal npj Microgravity.
The Melanized Microbes for Multiple Uses in Space Project (MELSP), launched to the space station in November 2023, examined how microgravity affects the ability of engineered microbes to produce melanin, a multifunctional biopolymer known for its radiation-shielding, antioxidant, and thermal stable properties.
Results from the completed mission show that while microbes remain capable of producing melanin in space, microgravity significantly interferes with substrate transport, cellular stress responses, and metabolic balance, ultimately reducing production efficiency.
Swimming in a shared medium makes particles synchronize without touching
Several years ago, scientists discovered that a single microscopic particle could rock back and forth on its own under a steady electric field. The result was curious, but lonely. Now, Northwestern University engineers have discovered what happens when many of those particles come together. The answer looks less like ordinary physics and more like mystifying, flawlessly timed choreography.
The study appears in the journal Nature Communications.
In the work, the team found that groups of tiny particles suspended in liquid oscillate together, keeping time as though they somehow sense one another’s motion. Nearby particles fall into sync, forming clusters that appear to sway in unison—rocking back and forth with striking coordination.
Collaboration of elementary particles: How teamwork among photon pairs overcomes quantum errors
Some things are easier to achieve if you’re not alone. As researchers from the University of Rostock, Germany have shown, this very human insight also applies to the most fundamental building blocks of nature.
At its very core, quantum mechanics postulates that everything is made out of elementary particles, which cannot be split up into even smaller units. This made Ph.D. candidate Vera Neef, first author of the recent publication “Pairing particles into holonomies,” wonder: “What can two particles only accomplish if they work as a team? Can they jointly achieve something, that is impossible for one particle alone?”
Software allows scientists to simulate nanodevices on a supercomputer
From computers to smartphones, from smart appliances to the internet itself, the technology we use every day only exists thanks to decades of improvements in the semiconductor industry, that have allowed engineers to keep miniaturizing transistors and fitting more and more of them onto integrated circuits, or microchips. It’s the famous Moore’s scaling law, the observation—rather than an actual law—that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit tends to double roughly every two years.
The current growth of artificial intelligence, robotics and cloud computing calls for more powerful chips made with even smaller transistors, which at this point means creating components that are only a few nanometers (or millionths of millimeters) in size. At that scale, classical physics is no longer enough to predict how the device will function, because, among other effects, electrons get so close to each other that quantum interactions between them can hugely affect the performance of the device.