Lifeboat Foundation

Video games get microscopic in an educational science outreach project.

WASHINGTON — Varda Space Industries secured a $48 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to test military payloads on the company’s reentry capsules.

A California-based startup focused on in-space manufacturing, Varda Space developed a factory-in-orbit spacecraft — a compact, 120-kilogram satellite engineered to produce high-value materials such as pharmaceuticals in zero-gravity conditions. The materials are returned to Earth in a capsule built with advanced thermal protection materials developed by NASA to withstand reentry.

The four-year deal with AFRL, announced on Nov. 26, leverages Varda’s W-Series reentry capsules as platforms to test payloads at hypersonic speeds. The spacecraft are built on Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus.

The Armenians, a population in Western Asia historically native to the Armenian Highlands, were long thought to be descendants of Phrygian settlers from the Balkans. This theory, rooted primarily in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus, stemmed from his observation that Armenians serving in the Persian army were armed in a manner similar to the Phrygians. Linguists have also bolstered this theory, noting linguistic connections between the Armenian language and the Thraco-Phrygian subgroup of Indo-European languages.

But the first whole-genome study is challenging this long-held belief, revealing no significant genetic link between Armenians and the populations in the Balkan region. The study compares newly generated modern Armenian genomes and published genetic data of ancient individuals from the Armenian highlands with both modern and ancient genomes from the Balkans.

A new quantum algorithm developed by University of Georgia statisticians addresses one of the most complex challenges in single-cell analysis, signaling significant impact in both the fields of computational biology and quantum computing.

The study, “Bisection Grover’s Search Algorithm and Its Application in Analyzing CITE-seq Data,” was published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association on Sept. 20.

While traditional approaches struggle to handle the immense amount of data generated from measuring both RNA and protein expression in individual cells, the new quantum algorithm enables analysis of data from a single-cell technology known as CITE-seq. It allows for selection of the most important markers from billions of possible combinations—a task that would be formidable using classical methods.

The simulations will be used by astronomers to test the standard model of cosmology.

How will NASA and SpaceX establish a permanent presence on the Moon? Dive into the details of the Artemis program, the Starship lunar lander, and the ambitious plans to create a lunar base. It’s the dawn of a new era in space exploration!

45K likes, — aijamayrock on November 28, 2024: These glasses allow people who have lost their vision to SEE AGAIN!

This is the 12th video in my series, Aging Around The World 🌎, where I explore how different countries and cultures tackle aging and longevity!

NASA’s Europa Clipper embarks on a 1.8 billion-mile journey to study Jupiter’s moon Europa for potential habitability.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.