Circa 2017
Zipline, a U.S. startup, is helping deliver life-saving blood supplies to rural areas of Rwanda by drones in record time.
đł!!!!
Researchers have just discovered a previously unknown process that makes sense of the âsecret decisionsâ plants make when releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.
âWe found that plants control their respiration in a way we did not expect, they control how much of the carbon from photosynthesis they keep to build biomass by using a metabolic channel,â University of Western Australia plant biochemist Harvey Millar told ScienceAlert.
Continue reading “Plants Appear to Be Breaking Biochemistry Rules” »
The corals we find in the worldâs reefs have their own microbiomes, and scientists are figuring out how to feed them probiotic âsupplementsâ â to try and save them for future generations.
A baby coral begins life as a swimming larva adrift in the ocean. When it is big enough, the larva sinks and secures itself to the seafloor â or, if itâs lucky, a healthy reef. Once settled, it begins to clone itself.
Shallow-water corals, made up of myriad different organisms, are essentially colonies of tiny animals collaborating with a marine algae called zooxanthellae, which feeds the coral and helps produce the calcium carbonate that forms reefs over thousands â or even millions â of years.
A $14.95 smart lamp from Ikea apparently has enough computing power to run the classic PC game Doom.
A software engineer named Nicola Wrachien removed the smart lampâs computer chip and used it to build a miniaturized Doom gaming system. Over the weekend, he uploaded a video to YouTube, showing his creation in action.
The system runs a downsized version of Doom that requires less RAM. The chip from the Ikea lamp has enough processing power to play the game at 35 frames per second over a cheap 160-by-128-pixel display.
WASHINGTON â Artificial intelligence and related digital tools can help warn of natural disasters, combat global warming and fast-track humanitarian aid, according to retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, a onetime Trump administration national security adviser.
It can also help preempt fights, highlight incoming attacks and expose weaknesses the world over, he said May 17 at the Nexus 22 symposium.
The U.S. must âidentify aggression early to deter it,â McMaster told attendees of the daylong event focused on autonomy, AI and the defense policy that underpins it. âThis applies to our inability to deter conflict in Ukraine, but also the need to deter conflict in other areas, like Taiwan. And, of course, we have to be able to respond to it quickly and to maintain situational understanding, identify patterns of adversary and enemy activity, and perhaps more importantly, to anticipate pattern breaks.â
Researchers have identified the best silicon and silicon dioxide materials for the next generation of transistors, which are expected to be just a nanometer long.
North Carolina State University researchers found they could filter carbon dioxide from air and gas mixtures at promising rates using a proposed new textile-based filter that combines cotton fabric and an enzyme called carbonic anhydraseâone of natureâs tools for speeding chemical reactions.
Circa 2020 Immortality of the heart and heart regeneration.
Cardiovascular diseases represent the major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Multiple studies have been conducted so far in order to develop treatments able to prevent the progression of these pathologies. Despite progress made in the last decade, current therapies are still hampered by poor translation into actual clinical applications. The major drawback of such strategies is represented by the limited regenerative capacity of the cardiac tissue. Indeed, after an ischaemic insult, the formation of fibrotic scar takes place, interfering with mechanical and electrical functions of the heart. Hence, the ability of the heart to recover after ischaemic injury depends on several molecular and cellular pathways, and the imbalance between them results into adverse remodeling, culminating in heart failure. In this complex scenario, a new chapter of regenerative medicine has been opened over the past 20 years with the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells share the same characteristic of embryonic stem cells (ESCs), but are generated from patient-specific somatic cells, overcoming the ethical limitations related to ESC use and providing an autologous source of human cells. Similarly to ESCs, iPSCs are able to efficiently differentiate into cardiomyocytes (CMs), and thus hold a real regenerative potential for future clinical applications. However, cell-based therapies are subjected to poor grafting and may cause adverse effects in the failing heart. Thus, over the last years, bioengineering technologies focused their attention on the improvement of both survival and functionality of iPSC-derived CMs. The combination of these two fields of study has burst the development of cell-based three-dimensional (3D) structures and organoids which mimic, more realistically, the in vivo cell behavior. Toward the same path, the possibility to directly induce conversion of fibroblasts into CMs has recently emerged as a promising area for in situ cardiac regeneration. In this review we provide an up-to-date overview of the latest advancements in the application of pluripotent stem cells and tissue-engineering for therapeutically relevant cardiac regenerative approaches, aiming to highlight outcomes, limitations and future perspectives for their clinical translation.
Cardiovascular diseases represent the major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, accounting for 31% of all deaths (Organization WH 2016). Myocardial infarction (MI) is associated with necrosis of the cardiac tissue due to the occlusion of the coronary arteries, a condition that irrevocably diminishes oxygen and nutrient delivery to the heart (Thygesen et al., 2007). While effective therapies, including surgical approaches, are currently used to treat numerous cardiac disorders, such as valvular or artery diseases, available therapeutic treatments for the damaged myocardium are still very limited and poorly effective. Furthermore, after an ischaemic insult, the formation of fibrotic scar takes place, interfering with mechanical and electrical functions of the cardiac tissue (Talman and Ruskoaho, 2016).
Mitochondrial uncoupling by agents such as BAM15 may mitigate age-related decline in muscle mass and function by molecular and cellular bioenergetic adaptations that confer protection against sarcopenic obesity.
Background Sarcopenic obesity is a highly prevalent disease with poor survival and ineffective medical interventions. Mitochondrial dysfunction is purported to be central in the pathogenesis of sarcopenic obesity by impairing both organelle biogenesis and quality control. We have previously identified that a mitochondrial-targeted furazano[3,4-b]pyrazine named BAM15 is orally available and selectively lowers respiratory coupling efficiency and protects against diet-induced obesity in mice. Here, we tested the hypothesis that mitochondrial uncoupling simultaneously attenuates loss of muscle function and weight gain in a mouse model of sarcopenic obesity.
A NASA planetary defense exercise had astronomers quickly detect a threat. How did they do?
A team of researchers at the National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge in Portugal, working with a colleague at LusĂłfona University, also in Portugal, has found that the monkeypox virus has been evolving at a faster rate than expected. In their paper published in the journal Nature Medicine, the researchers describe their genetic study of the virus collected from 15 samples.
Monkeypox is a double-stranded DNA virus from the same genus as smallpox, and it mostly infects people in Africa. Scientist have known of its existence since the 1950s. Despite its name, the virus is more commonly found in rodents than monkeys. Prior research has shown that there are two main varieties of monkeypox: West African and Congo Basinâthe former is far less deadly and is the clade that has infected several thousand people outside Africa. Prior research has also shown that viruses like monkeypox typically only mutate once or twice in a given year.
In this new effort, the researchers collected samples from 15 patients and subjected them to genetic analysis to learn more about how quickly the virus is evolving. They found the virus has mutated at a rate six to 12 times as high as was expected. The researchers suggest the sudden accelerated rate of mutation in the virus may be a sign that the virus has developed a new way to infect peopleâcurrently, it is believed to move from person to person through close contact with open lesions, through body fluids or by airborne droplets.
