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There was more to this launch than met the eye.


Earth’s first-ever artificial satellite Sputnik launched on October 4, 1957. In that moment, which occurred sixty-five years ago, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union transformed into a race to dominate not only Earth but also space.

But there was more to the launch than met the eye — behind the development of satellites to orbit Earth was a more nefarious purpose.

“The other aspect of it was, of course, the race to develop the first intercontinental ballistic missile. The U.S. was working on the Atlas missile, and the Russians were working on the RS-7,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Portland General Electric (PGE), a public utility, has partnered with NextEra Energy Resources to create a 350 megawatt (MW) clean energy project that combines wind, solar, and battery storage. Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, located at the northern edge of Oregon, has the capacity to serve 100,000 homes.

Although great progress is being made with scaling up renewables, intermittency remains a significant issue – since wind does not always blow, and the Sun does not always shine. Falling costs and improvements in technology mean that batteries are increasingly a realistic option for utilities, but we are still a long way from such systems being able to fully handle the demands of national electrical grids.

The newly operational Wheatfield facility is among the most notable advances in battery storage to date in the U.S. It consists of 120 turbines (a mix of 2.3 MW and 2.5 MW machines) generating 300 MW, alongside a 50 MW photovoltaic solar array, for a total of 350 MW. An accompanying battery storage facility is charged using power from the grid and provides 30 MW of continuous power for four hours, i.e. 120 megawatt-hours (MWh). When combined, this is enough to supply nearly 60% of the power generated by the Boardman Coal Plant, which became the last coal-fired plant in Oregon before its demolition a few weeks ago.

Understanding how metastasis works.

In the universal fight against cancer, metastasis is one of the most unpleasant factors that could make matters even worse; and there is still much to comprehend in the spread process. Cambridge scientists might have unveiled a breakthrough in understanding how metastasis works.

The research has been published in the journal Nature Genetics.


Chawalit Banpot/iStock.

A team of scientists at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and the University of Cambridge has discovered that blocking a particular protein’s activity kicked off metastasis in mice with cancer.

The researchers brilliantly demonstrated, for the very first time, how to chemically transform an abundant, plant-based starting material into EBC-46.

In what can be called a major scientific breakthrough, Stanford researchers have discovered a “rapid and sustainable” way to synthetically produce a promising cancer-fighting compound, designated EBC-46, right in the lab, according to a press release published by the institution.

This was “something many people had considered impossible,” as the compound’s only currently known source is a single plant species that grows solely in a small rainforest region of Northeastern Australia.

The text was sent to none other than a long-time friend and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk.


Wikimedia Commons.

The Twitter founder, who is a long-time friend of Musk, appears to be quite welcoming of Musk’s decision to buy the company and also texted him on April 5, when he learned that Musk would join the Twitter board, the records put in Delaware Court of Chancery, where a five trial is scheduled to begin on October 17 show.

The company targets a price of $3 per passenger per mile.

The first self-flying, all-electric, four-passenger eVTOL air taxi in the world was unveiled by the California-based Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) company Wisk Aero. Generation 6 is Wisk’s go-to-market aircraft and the first autonomous eVTOL to be a candidate for type approval by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The most sophisticated air taxi in the world, Generation 6 combines one of the safest passenger transport systems in commercial aviation with industry-leading autonomous technology and software, human oversight of every trip, and a generally streamlined design.

Building A Clinically Credible Platform For Longevity Medicine — Prof. Dr. Andrea Maier MD, PhD, National University of Singapore, Centre for Healthy Longevity.


Professor Dr. Andrea B. Maier, MD, Ph.D., is the Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine, Healthy Ageing and Dementia Research, and Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity, at the National University Of Singapore (https://discovery.nus.edu.sg/19564-andrea-britta-maier).

Professor Maier also holds professorship appointments at VU University Medical Centre — https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/andrea-maier, Amsterdam, Netherlands, and University of Melbourne (https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/773728-andrea-maier), Australia, as well as is Director of Medicine and Community Care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia.

Professor Maier is also the President of the Australia and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research, as well as Founding President of the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society — https://hlms.co/.

A Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP), Professor Maier graduated in Medicine (MD) 2003 from the University of Lübeck (Germany), was registered 2009 in The Netherlands as Specialist in Internal Medicine-Geriatrics and was appointed Full Professor of Gerontology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2013 where she was the head of Geriatrics at the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center from 2012 to 2016.