Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 5062

A team of University of Kentucky researchers led by College of Engineering Professor Dibakar Bhattacharyya, Ph.D., and his Ph.D. student, Rollie Mills, have developed a medical face mask membrane that can capture and deactivate the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on contact.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Bhattacharyya, known to friends and colleagues as “DB,” along with collaborators across disciplines at UK set out to create the material. Their work was published in Communications Materials on May 24.

SARS-CoV-2 is covered in spike proteins, which allow the virus to enter host cells once in the body. The team developed a membrane that includes that attach to the protein spikes and deactivates them.

Read more | >

Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, and in its pure form the material has become the foundation of much of modern technology, from solar cells to computer chips. But silicon’s properties as a semiconductor are far from ideal.

For one thing, although silicon lets electrons whizz through its structure easily, it is much less accommodating to “holes”—electrons’ positively charged counterparts—and harnessing both is important for some kinds of chips. What’s more, silicon is not very good at conducting heat, which is why overheating issues and expensive cooling systems are common in computers.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions has carried out experiments showing that a material known as cubic arsenide overcomes both of these limitations. It provides to both electrons and holes, and has excellent thermal conductivity. It is, the researchers say, the best semiconductor material ever found, and maybe the best possible one.

Read more | >

Theoretical physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have demonstrated how the coupling between intense lasers, the motion of electrons, and their spin influences the emission of light on the ultrafast timescale.

Electrons, which are present in all kinds of matter, are charged particles and therefore react to the application of light. When an intense light field hits a solid, electrons experience a force, called the Lorentz force, that drives them and induces some exquisite dynamics reflecting the properties of the material. This, in turn, results in the emission of light by the electrons at various wavelengths, a well-known phenomenon called high-harmonic generation.

Exactly how the electrons move under the influence of the light field depends on a complex mixture of properties of the solid, including its symmetries, topology, and band structure, as well as the nature of the light pulse. Additionally, electrons are like spinning tops. They have a propensity to rotate either clockwise or counter-clockwise, a property called the “spin” of the electrons in quantum mechanics.

Read more | >

Scientists have developed artificial intelligence software that can create proteins that may be useful as vaccines, cancer treatments, or even tools for pulling carbon pollution out of the air.

This research, reported today in the journal Science, was led by the University of Washington School of Medicine and Harvard University. The article is titled “Scaffolding functional sites using deep learning.”

“The proteins we find in nature are amazing molecules, but designed proteins can do so much more,” said senior author David Baker, an HHMI Investigator and professor of biochemistry at UW Medicine. “In this work, we show that machine learning can be used to design proteins with a wide variety of functions.”

Read more | >

Proteins serve a variety of purposes in plants in addition to being the fundamental building blocks of life. More than 20 billion protein molecules make up a typical plant cell, helping to stabilize its structure and sustain cellular metabolism.

Researchers at Heidelberg University’s Centre for Organismal Studies have shed light on a biological process that increases the life of plant proteins. They have now discovered a crucial protein, called N-terminal acetylation, that controls this mechanism. The study’s findings were published in the journals Molecular Plant and Science Advances.

N-terminal acetylation is a chemical marker that develops during the production of proteins. Plants do this by affixing an acetic acid.

Read more | >

Circa 2021

Mycelium is very light in weight, it naturally floats on water, it can withstand the cold of space where we don’t have to worry about cold welding, and we can add in fine strains of metal material which is used to transmit almost any type of signal. As you can see, there are numerous reasons why mycelium is quite suitable for our satellites in space, on land, and in the air on its way to space.

Of course, there’s also the all-important issue of space debris, which is projected to become a severe hazard to satellites and spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in the coming years.

Continue reading “Mushrooms could solve a huge problem in outer space” | >

On Monday, SpaceX was spotted loading some of the first Starlink V2 satellite prototypes into a custom mechanism designed to refill Starship’s magazine-like payload bay.

While it’s not the first time SpaceX has used the dispenser, the photos captured by photographer Kevin Randolph are the first to clearly show real prototypes of the next generation of Starlink satellites. According to CEO Elon Musk, those Starlink Gen2 or V2 satellites will be “at least 5 times better”, “an order of magnitude more capable,” and about four times heavier than current (V1.5) Starlink satellites.

The potential of the new satellite bus design paired with Starship’s massive fairing and lift capacity could dramatically improve the viability and cost-effectiveness of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. First, though, the company needs to launch and qualify prototypes of the new satellite design and verify that all associated ground support equipment works as expected.

Read more | >