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China’s Getting Ready to Land Astronauts on the Moon While NASA Flails Helplessly

Adding geopolitical intrigue, it’s looking more and more like NASA’s helpless flailing could position China to beat the United States in the race to return to the Moon.

China’s lunar exploration program has made massive leaps in recent years, most recently successfully testing its “Lanyue” lunar lander at a facility outside of Beijing. It was a “key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program” and the “first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft,” according to a statement by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC.)

The goal is to land the first Chinese astronauts on the Moon “before 2030” — a clear shot across the bow, considering NASA is currently hoping to launch its first crewed landing attempt, Artemis 3, no earlier than mid-2027.

Gold survives impossible heat, defying physics limits

Gold was superheated to 19,000 Kelvin without melting, defying physics and unlocking new possibilities in high-energy research. Physicists have heated gold to over 19,000 Kelvin, more than 14 times its melting point, without melting it, smashing the long-standing “entropy catastrophe” limit. Using an ultra-fast laser pulse at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, they kept the gold crystalline at extreme heat, opening new frontiers in high-energy-density physics, fusion research, and planetary science.

Scientists have simultaneously broken a temperature record, overturned a long-held theory and utilized a new laser spectroscopy method for dense plasmas in a groundbreaking article published on July 23 in the journal Nature.

In their research article, “Superheating gold beyond the predicted entropy catastrophe threshold,” physicists revealed they were able to heat gold to over 19,000 Kelvin (33,740 degrees Fahrenheit), over 14 times its melting point, without it losing its solid, crystalline structure.

PlasmaBlade-assisted surgical septal myectomy: technique and our experience

The pulsed-electron avalanche knife (PEAK) PlasmaBlade is an electrosurgical device that provides atraumatic, scalpel-like cutting precision and electrocautery-like hemostasis. Primarily, the PlasmaBlade uses pulsed radiofrequency energy to generate a plasma-mediated discharge along the exposed rim of an insulated blade. Plasma is an electrically conductive cloud created when the energy contacts tissue. The “plasma” allows the radiofrequency energy to cross the tissue at a much lower overall power level, resulting in lower operating temperatures and less thermal damage (7). The PlasmaBlade operates at 40–100°C, while the blade tip stays near body temperature. Therefore, underlying tissue damage is limited. Studies reporting the use of the PlasmaBlade during internal mammary artery harvesting or ocular surgeries have found the area of collateral damage to be only 2–10 μm with the PlasmaBlade compared to 100–400 μm with electrosurgery (7, 8).

The PlasmaBlade has been extensively used in ophthalmologic, plastic, and dermatological surgeries as precisely as a scalpel with the hemostatic control of conventional electrosurgery. Studies have also reported a reduced risk of bleeding, tissue injury, and scar formation with the PlasmaBlade (9– 11). However, experience in cardiac surgery is limited to pocket creation for the pacemaker and implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implantation (12, 13) and internal mammary artery harvesting (7).

In our institute, we have used the PlasmaBlade to perform SSM for the last 4 years. The purpose of this retrospective study is to review our clinical outcomes and the effect of PlasmaBlade cutting on the excised muscle in terms of necrosis and inflammation.

Generative AI models build new antibiotics starting from a single atom

Researchers have tapped into the power of generative artificial intelligence to aid them in the fight against one of humanity’s most pernicious foes: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. | Researchers have tapped into the power of generative artificial intelligence to aid them in the fight against one of humanity’s most pernicious foes: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Using a model trained on a library of about 40,000 chemicals, scientists were able to build never-before-seen antibiotics that killed two of the most notorious multidrug-resistant bacteria on earth.

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