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Asteroid Bennu was in the news recently for an astonishing discovery. NASA scientists revealed that the asteroid has a surface that appears similar to plastic balls. The discovery dates back to October 2020, when NASA successfully collected a sample from the asteroid.

During the sampling event, the sampling head of the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft had sunk by 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) into the surface of the asteroid. The space agency found that Bennu’s exterior is made of loosely packed particles that are haphazardly packed together. The spacecraft would have sunk right into the asteroid if it hadn’t fired its thruster to back away after collecting dust and rocks.

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The Ukraine army had a few satellite images to share.

A Russian airbase in Crimea was recently attacked Russia initially downplayed the attack It has now been revealed that at least 7 aircraft were destroyed, and significant damage to the base also inflicted.

Recently released satellite photographs show as many as 7 warplanes were destroyed at a Russian airfield in Crimea on Tuesday. While the precise details of the operation remain unknown, Ukraine’s air force shared a triumphant picture of the downed aircraft on July 11th, 2022, on its Twitter account.

Russia has insisted that the damage was accidental and that nothing substantial was lost, but photography from several sources refutes this. At least three structures at the Saki naval airbase in Crimea, the peninsula Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, looked to have been damaged, in addition to the aircraft.

Continue reading “Russia reportedly lost at least 7 warplanes in Crimean airbase attack” | >

Water is the most essential resource for life, for both humans and the crops we consume. Around the world, agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater use.

I study computers and information technology in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and direct Purdue’s Environmental Networking Technology (ENT) Laboratory, where we tackle sustainability and environmental challenges with interdisciplinary research into the Agricultural Internet of Things, or Ag-IoT.

The Internet of Things is a network of objects equipped with sensors so they can receive and transmit data via the internet. Examples include wearable fitness devices, smart home thermostats and self-driving cars.

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The new method could be the key to getting oxygen to Mars and beyond.

The study was conducted in a special drop tower facility that simulates microgravity conditions. The research proved magnets were effective at producing oxygen. The new method removes gas bubbles from liquids. Producing enough oxygen for astronauts in space is a complicated affair that is only set to become more difficult as we travel to Mars and beyond.

Now, researchers have invented a new way to make oxygen for astronauts using magnets, according to a University of Warwick statement.

Getting oxygen in space using magnets On the International Space Station, oxygen is generated using an electrolytic cell that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, but then you have to get those gasses out of the system.

A relatively recent analysis from a researcher at NASA Ames concluded that adapting the same architecture on a trip to Mars would have such significant mass and reliability penalties that it wouldn’t make any sense to use, said lead author Álvaro Romero-Calvo, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Continue reading “In a first, researchers produce oxygen from magnets for space exploration” | >

Circa 2019 This could lead to reactors that last nearly forever and spaceships that do not run out of fuel.

Deep under an Italian mountainside, a giant detector filled with tons of liquid xenon has been looking for dark matter—particles of a mysterious substance whose effects we can see in the universe, but which no one has ever directly observed. Along the way, however, the detector caught another scientific unicorn: the decay of atoms of xenon-124—the rarest process ever observed in the universe.

The results from the XENON1T experiment, co-authored by University of Chicago scientists and published April 25 in the journal Nature, document the longest half-life in the universe—and may be able to help scientists hunt for another mysterious process that is one of particle physics’ great mysteries.

Not all atoms are stable. Depending on their makeup, some will stabilize themselves by releasing subatomic particles and turning into an atom of a different element—a process called radioactive decay.

Continue reading “Scientists measure half-life of element that’s longer than the age of the universe” | >

Circa 2021 immortality of the pancreas by inducing pluripotent cells of the pancreas.

A microwell chip facilitates the single-cell characterization of the differentiation of aggregates of human induced pluripotent stem cells into pancreatic duct-like organoids and the discovery of secreted markers of pancreatic carcinogenesis.

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Circa 2000

Immortal epithelial cell lines were previously established after transduction of the HPV16-E6E7 genes into primary cultures of normal pancreatic duct epithelial cells. Single clones were isolated that demonstrated near normal genotype and phenotype. The proliferation of HPDE6-E6E7c7 and c11 cells is anchorage-dependent, and they were nontumorigenic in SCID mice. The cell lines demonstrated many phenotypes of normal pancreatic duct epithelium, including mRNA expression of carbonic anhydrase II, MUC-1, and cytokeratins 7, 8, 18, and 19.

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Circa 2021 Basically this article details cannabinoids that have been successfully synthesized which can lead to even greater psychiatric medicine aswell as many of other types of uses.

Abstract Cannabis has been integral to Eurasian civilization for millennia, but a century of prohibition has limited investigation. With spreading legalization, science is pivoting to study the pharmacopeia of the cannabinoids, and a thorough understanding of their biosynthesis is required to engineer strains with specific cannabinoid profiles. This review surveys the biosynthesis and biochemistry of cannabinoids. The pathways and the enzymes’ mechanisms of action are discussed as is the non-enzymatic decarboxylation of the cannabinoic acids. There are still many gaps in our knowledge about the biosynthesis of the cannabinoids, especially for the minor components, and this review highlights the tools and approaches that will be applied to generate an improved understanding and consequent access to these potentially biomedically-relevant materials. Graphical abstract.

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Powerful cosmic radio pulses originating deep in the universe can be used to study hidden pools of gas cocooning nearby galaxies, according to a new study that was published last month in the journal Nature Astronomy.

So-called fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are pulses of radio waves that typically originate millions to billions of light-years away. (Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation like the light we see with our eyes but have longer wavelengths and lower frequencies). The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds more have been detected. In 2020, Caltech’s STARE2 instrument (Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2) and Canada’s CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) detected a massive FRB that went off in our own Milky Way galaxy. Those earlier findings helped confirm the theory that the energetic events most likely originate from dead, magnetized stars called magnetars.

As more and more FRBs roll in, scientists are now investigating how they can be used to study the gas that lies between us and the bursts. Specifically, they would like to use the FRBs to probe halos of diffuse gas that surround galaxies. As the radio pulses travel toward Earth, the gas enveloping the galaxies is expected to slow the waves down and disperse the radio frequencies. In the new study, the research team looked at a sample of 474 distant FRBs detected by CHIME, which has discovered the most FRBs to date. They showed that the subset of two dozen FRBs that passed through galactic halos were indeed slowed down more than non-intersecting FRBs.

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