Lifeboat Foundation

Our next challenge, then, was to determine the evolutionary connections between these genes. The more similar the two genes were, the more likely viruses with those genes were closely related. Because these sequences had evolved so long ago (possibly predating the first cell), the genetic signposts indicating where new viruses may have split off from a common ancestor had been lost to time. A form of artificial intelligence called machine learning, however, allowed us to systematically organize these sequences and detect differences more objectively than if the task were done manually.

We identified a total of 5,504 new marine RNA viruses and doubled the number of known RNA virus phyla from five to 10. Mapping these new sequences geographically revealed that two of the new phyla were particularly abundant across vast oceanic regions, with regional preferences in either temperate and tropical waters (the Taraviricota, named after the Tara Oceans expeditions) or the Arctic Ocean (the Arctiviricota).

The prolific Twitter user knows from experience what might be the best for the social media platform.

Elon Musk bought 73,486,938 Twitter shares on March 14, amounting to a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing reveals.

The stake makes Elon Musk one of Twitter’s largest shareholders as he now owns more than four times Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s holding of 2.25 percent, according to the BBC.

Continue reading “Elon Musk now owns 9.2% of Twitter, paying $3 billion for his shares” »

The project will also become a new tourist attraction, ready to welcome tourists in early 2022.

Despite being widely used in numerous catalytic applications, our understanding of reactive surface sites of high-surface-area γ-Al2O3 remains limited to date. Recent contributions have pointed toward the potential role of highly reactive edge sites contained in the high-field signal (−0.5 to 0 ppm) of the 1H NMR spectrum of γ-Al2O3 materials. This work combines the development of well-defined, needle-shaped γ-Al2O3 nanocrystals having a high relative fraction of edge sites with the use of state-of-the-art solid-state NMR to significantly deepen our understanding of this specific signal. We are able to resolve two hydroxyl sites with distinct isotropic chemical shifts of −0.2 and −0.4 ppm and different positions within the dipole–dipole network from 1H–1H single-quantum double-quantum NMR.

April 9 (Reuters) — The first all-private team of astronauts ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS) were welcomed aboard the orbiting research platform on Saturday to begin a weeklong science mission hailed as a milestone in commercial spaceflight.

Their arrival came about 21 hours after the four-man team representing Houston-based startup company Axiom Space Inc lifted off on Friday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, riding atop a SpaceX-launched Falcon 9 rocket.

The Crew Dragon capsule lofted into orbit by the rocket docked with the ISS at about 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on Saturday as the two space vehicles were flying roughly 250 miles (420 km) above the central Atlantic Ocean, a live webcast of the coupling from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration showed.

An international team of researchers has created a series of brain charts that show how our brains expand rapidly in early life and slowly shrink as we age.

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry is the first to look at multiple levels of biology within women with postpartum depression (PPD) to see how women with the condition differ from those without it. PPD affects 1 in 7 women and has negative mental health consequences for both mother and child. However, the precise biological mechanisms behind the disorder are unknown.

“We don’t have PPD figured out,” said lead author Jerry Guintivano, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry. “A lot of biological research focuses on candidate genes and hormones, and we do have a lead on some PPD-specific medications, but it’s important to take multiple avenues to target this condition. Not every manifestation of PPD is the same.”

That’s why Guintivano led a team of researchers from the UNC School of Medicine to conduct the largest transcriptome-wide association study for PPD to date. Previous studies have only analyzed whole blood samples. This study took a deeper look and examined the different components of blood. They took blood samples from 1,500 racially and ethnically diverse women from across North Carolina who had given birth within the past six weeks, 482 of whom were diagnosed with PPD. Researchers used RNA sequencing, DNA genotyping, and assessment of DNA methylation—amounting to three levels of basic biology evaluation—to look for differences in components of the blood samples from women with PPD versus women without PPD.

YouTuber The Action Lab is a prolific science expert who has brought us many cool videos such as this one where he made a laser microscope using just a drop of water or this one where he made a black mirror. Now, he is back with an interesting and entertaining video where he explains how shifty or color-changing glass works.

He starts by showing us examples of three types of this glass. He takes light yellow, dark yellow, and blue pieces of glass and he changes his lightbulb from a halogen one to a compact fluorescent one.

Continue reading “Here’s how color-changing glass works under different lighting” »

About 750 million people in the world do not have access to electricity at night. Solar cells provide power during the day, but saving energy for later use requires substantial battery storage.

In Applied Physics Letters, researchers from Stanford University constructed a photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, avoiding the need for batteries altogether. The device makes use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space—energy that is on the same order of magnitude as incoming solar radiation.

At night, solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. The device under development uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. This process depends on the thermal design of the system, which includes a hot side and a cold side.