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What is it? MHD PROPULSION EXPLAINED

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Engineers have repaired an issue affecting data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this year, the probe’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1’s antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data.

The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information.

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager, said that when they suspected this was the issue, they opted to try a low-risk solution: commanding the AACS to resume sending the data to the right computer.

Too much screen use has been linked to obesity and psychological problems. Now a new study has identified a new problem—a study in fruit flies suggests our basic cellular functions could be impacted by the blue light emitted by these devices. These results are published in Frontiers in Aging.

“Excessive exposure to blue light from everyday devices, such as TVs, laptops, and phones, may have detrimental effects on a wide range of cells in our body, from skin and fat cells, to sensory neurons,” said Dr. Jadwiga Giebultowicz, a professor at the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University and senior author of this study. “We are the first to show that the levels of specific metabolites—chemicals that are essential for cells to function correctly—are altered in fruit flies exposed to blue light.”

“Our study suggests that avoidance of excessive blue light exposure may be a good anti-aging strategy,” advised Giebultowicz.

The thermal radiation emitted by the human body is predominantly in the long-wave infrared region (8–14 μm), which is characterized by low photon energy and low power intensity.

Recently, a research team led by Associate Prof. Lu Xiaowei, Prof. Jiang Peng and Prof. Bao Xinhe from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) designed a highly sensitive long-wave infrared detector that enables low-power non-contact human-machine interaction.

This study was published in Advanced Materials on July 11.

Starlink TV went down for users across the global from about 3AM ET to 7AM ET with the service still suffering from speed degradations.

Alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials. This breakthrough could lead to higher-performance components for applications in aerospace, medicine, energy, and transportation. The work was done by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology. It was led by Wen Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass, and Ting Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, will be published today (August 3, 2022) in the journal Nature.

High entropy alloys (HEAs) have become increasingly popular as a new paradigm in materials science over the past 15 years. They are comprised of five or more elements in near-equal proportions and offer the ability to create a near-infinite number of unique combinations for alloy design. Traditional alloys, such as brass, stainless steel, carbon steel, and bronze, contain a primary element combined with one or more trace elements.

On February 15, 2013, above Chelyabinsk in Russia’s Southern Urals, the biggest meteorite that was ever seen this century entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Unusually, the meteorite’s surface dust survived its impact and is now the subject of in-depth research. Some carbon microcrystals in this dust have odd shapes. A group led by Sergey Taskaev and Vladimir Khovaylo from Chelyabinsk State University in Russia has recently published a paper on the morphology and simulations of the formation of these crystals in the European Physical Journal Plus.

A meteor’s surface develops meteorite dust as it enters the atmosphere and is subjected to very high temperatures and tremendous pressures. The Chelyabinsk meteor was exceptional in terms of its size, the intensity of the air burst it created as it exploded, the size of the biggest pieces that fell to Earth, and the destruction it caused. More importantly, it landed on snowy terrain, and the snow helped keep the dust intact.

Taskaev, Khovaylo, and their team first observed micrometer-sized carbon microcrystals in this dust under a light microscope. They, therefore, examined the same crystals using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and found that they took up a variety of unusual shapes: closed, quasi-spherical shells and hexagonal rods. Further analysis using Raman spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography showed that the carbon crystals were, actually, exotically-shaped forms of graphite.

As a scientist, I am driven by the power of technological breakthroughs to make positive change for humanity. While I also take immense pleasure in the artistic/creative aspects of technology design, my motivation is centered on helping people and on protecting the future of the human species. For this reason, I am interested in a wide array of contemporary challenges as described in this outline. Because I am a synthetic biologist and synthetic biology has many applications, I have the ability to explore solutions to such diverse challenges despite their highly multidisciplinary nature.

That said, one of the tools in any good researcher’s repertoire is collaboration. Since I am just one person, my knowledge can only go so deep in so many areas. Interdisciplinary projects are much more likely to succeed when experts from multiple areas work together. So, I leverage collaboration extensively when carrying out my projects and will continue to do so in the future.

It should be noted that, though I am publicly presenting a number of conceptual explanations of possible solutions to important problems via this list, I have deliberately stated them in somewhat vague language to prevent their public disclosure from precluding outside investment.

T. dohrnii is the only species that is biologically immortal, and now scientists have peered into its DNA to find out what lets it live forever.