This was the first time scientists were able to develop a hairpin-shaped DNA strand that can activate a natural immune response to target and kill specific cancerous cells. Tuesday 27 December 2022 10:48 A new way of using DNA to kill cancer cells which could pave the way for a cure for the disease has been created by scientists.
In November 2016, virologist David Evans traveled to Geneva for a meeting of a World Health Organization committee on smallpox research. The deadly virus had been declared eradicated 36 years earlier; the only known live samples of smallpox were in the custody of the United States and Russian governments.
Evans, though, had a striking announcement: Months before the meeting, he and a colleague had created a close relative of smallpox virus, effectively from scratch, at their laboratory in Canada. In a subsequent report, the WHO wrote that the team’s method “did not require exceptional biochemical knowledge or skills, significant funds, or significant time.”
Evans disagrees with that characterization: The process “takes a tremendous amount of technical skill,” he told Undark. But certain technologies did make the experiment easier. In particular, Evans and his colleague were able to simply order long stretches of the virus’s DNA in the mail, from GeneArt, a subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
This video gives an interesting theory as to where the lost city of Atlantis was (a location known today as the Eye of the Sahara), and it seems to be a pretty reasonable conjecture. What is relevant to this group however is how it might have been destroyed by a tsunami caused by a massive landslide in the Mediterranean — which is especially notable because the location is a great distance away from the Mediterranean, yet the evidence points to such a tsunami flooding a path all the way across Africa to the Atlantic, regardless of whether the city of Atlantis was in that path.
I think of our interconnected world today and wonder what would happen if such an unexpected event were to happen now, targeting a region that was in some way or another vital to modern civilization (such as with a concentration of all talent in an important field) without any suitable alternatives available.
This is one reason why I think it is dangerous to rely on trade networks that stretch to the opposite side of the earth for vital sectors such as food or energy.
NASA’s recent Artemis I mission has put the spotlight back on lunar exploration, so let’s take a look at the moon missions set for 2023.
The company was founded under the name Future Meat Technologies in 2018, but rebranded to Believer Meats last month. In 2021 they opened a facility to produce lab-grown meat at scale in Israel, and were aiming to secure FDA approval and start offering their products in US restaurants by the end of this year. That doesn’t seem to have happened, as the first FDA approval went to competitor Upside Foods.
But true to its name, Believer Meats hasn’t been deterred by this slower-than-anticipated series of events. Last week the company started construction of a 200,000-square-foot factory in Wilson, North Carolina, about 45 miles due east of Raleigh. In a press release the company stated, somewhat perplexingly, that it chose this location partly because of its “success in integrating technology-driven solutions to improve the lives of residents.”
With a production capacity of 10,000 metric tons, Believer says the facility will be the biggest of its type in the world. They’re putting $123 million into the plant, and say it will create more than 100 new jobs over the next three years. This huge investment seems like a bit of a leap of faith considering the company doesn’t have regulatory approval to produce and sell cultivated meat anywhere, including in the US; but co-founder Yaakov Nahmias says they’ve been working with the FDA towards gaining approval for years.
Five of our favourite interviews with thought leaders and investors on the opportunity presented by longevity.
From spending billions on research to calls for fundamental changes to way we deliver healthcare, this year we heard from a host of thought leaders who shared their views on how to make longevity a reality. Today we bring you five of the best.
When we spoke to Professor Sir John Bell, we expected to learn more about a new UK initiative to study of the health of five million citizens to enable more effective ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases. But what we got was a stirring call to action for a change in the way healthcare is conducted.
A team mapping radio waves in the universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it’s unlike anything astronomers have seen before.
EvgeniyShkolenko/iStock.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and work was forced to go remote, services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams rose to the occasion to keep people connected and work ongoing. For many, work turned into a series of online meetings to be attended day after day.
Amazon has launched drone delivery trials in a couple of new locations in California and Texas.
David Carbon, vice president of Prime Air Amazon, announced the development on LinkedIn. His post included a photo (below) showing one of its drones carrying a small box on the end of a tether.
“First deliveries from our new sites in Texas and California,” Carbon wrote in his post. “Couldn’t be prouder of the amazing people that make up Prime Air. These are careful first steps that we will turn into giant leaps for our customers over the next number of years.”
With the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) mounted on the NASA and European Space Agency Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been observing the Sun’s corona since 1995 to track space weather that may have an impact on Earth. However, LASCO has an observational gap that prevents scientists from seeing the middle solar corona, where the solar wind is generated.
A team of scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NASA, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) has discovered web-like plasma structures in the Sun’s middle corona. The researchers describe their innovative new observation method, imaging the middle corona in ultraviolet (U.V.) wavelength.
The findings could lead to a better understanding of the solar wind’s origins and interactions with the rest of the solar system.
