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In physics, as in life, it’s always good to look at things from different perspectives.

Since the beginning of quantum physics, how moves and interacts with matter around it has mostly been described and understood mathematically through the lens of its energy. In 1900, Max Planck used energy to explain how light is emitted by heated objects, a seminal study in the foundation of quantum mechanics. In 1905, Albert Einstein used energy when he introduced the concept of photon.

But light has another equally important quality, known as momentum. And as it turns out, when you take momentum away, light starts behaving in really interesting ways.

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The sun is moving into the hyperactive phase of its roughly 11-year cycle when sunspots, solar flares and all other sorts of tumultuous heliocentric happenings become more common. Case in point: A vortex of fire as tall as 10 Earths stacked on top of each other could be seen doing a quick dance on the sun’s surface late Tuesday.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an eruption from the sun that swirled like a tornado as it produced a bright coronal mass ejection, or CME. Astronomer Tony Phillips clipped the below footage for Spaceweather.com.

CMEs are blasts of charged plasma that often accompany solar flares. When they’re directed at Earth, they can produce bright auroras when they collide with our magnetosphere. This particular CME that started with the rare solar twister was not directed at Earth.

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Engineers at MIT have developed an ultra-thin speaker that could be used to make entire surfaces produce sound. The unique design should be energy efficient and easy to produce at scale, the team says.

In a basic sense, speakers work by vibrating a membrane, which manipulates the air above it to produce sound waves. In speakers commonly found in audio systems or headphones, that’s done using electrical currents and magnetic fields.

But in recent years scientists have developed ways to achieve similar results in much slimmer devices. Thin film speakers work using piezoelectric materials, which vibrate in response to the application of a voltage. These have been used in phones and TVs, and even experimentally to create speakers out of things as unusual as flags.

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I have created an educational guide to the adenovirus capsid! The adenovirus is one of the most frequently used types of viruses for gene therapy (along with AAV and lentivirus). It is a powerful vehicle for delivering DNA to cells in the body. But to work with adenovirus as a technology, it is important to understand its fundamental biological structure and function. This guide will help you to gain a more holistic comprehension of a particularly important part of adenovirus biology: the capsid. I made the images using PyMol.

PDF version: Guide to the Structure and Function of the Adenovirus Capsid

For this guide, I will explain the fundamental biology of adenovirus capsid proteins with an emphasis on the context of gene therapy. While the guide is meant primarily for readers with an interest in applying adenovirus to gene therapy, it will not include much discussion of the techniques and technologies involved in engineering adenoviruses for such purposes. If you are interested in learning more about adenovirus engineering, you may enjoy my review paper “Synthetic Biology Approaches for Engineering Next-Generation Adenoviral Gene Therapies” [1]. Here, I will focus mostly on the capsid of human adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) since it is the most commonly used type of adenovirus employed in gene therapy research, but I will occasionally describe other types of adenoviruses when necessary. Many of the presented concepts remain the same or similar across other types of adenoviruses.

The adenovirus consists of an icosahedral protein capsid enclosing a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) genome. It possesses 12 fiber proteins which protrude from the capsid and helps to facilitate cellular transduction. Adenoviruses are nonenveloped and approximately 90 nm in diameter (not including the fibers). The Ad5 genome is about 36 kb in size. Major capsid proteins of the adenovirus include the hexon, penton, and fiber. The minor capsid proteins are protein IIIa, protein VI, protein VIII, and protein IX. Inside the capsid, there are core proteins including protein V, protein VII, protein μ (also known as protein X), adenovirus proteinase (AVP), protein IVa2, and terminal protein (TP) [2].

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Money manager Invesco on Wednesday launched an exchange-traded fund aimed at providing exposure to industrial metals needed to make electric vehicles, as commodity prices have surged and the market for EVs continues to expand.

The Invesco Electric Vehicle Metals Commodity Strategy No K-1 ETF began trading Wednesday under the EVMT ticker and is the first of its kind, with the non-equity fund offering investors access to key metals needed by all EV manufacturers, the company said in a press statement.

EVMT will invest in derivatives and other instruments financially linked to exposure to aluminum, cobalt, copper, iron ore, nickel, and zinc. EVMT is the “only ETF that considers metals necessary for whole car production, rather than a focus on battery production,” said Jason Bloom, head of fixed income and alternatives ETF strategy at Invesco, in the statement.

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We learned last month that Apple was tricked into releasing personal data to hackers, after they posed as law enforcement officials with emergency data requests. A follow-up report reveals that some of this data was used to sexually extort minors.

The latest report also sheds light on how the hackers were able to fool Apple and other tech giants, including Facebook, Google, Snap, Twitter, and Discord …

Usually, a company will only release customer data to law enforcement officials on receipt of a court order, and even then will scrutinize the request carefully, sometimes offering to supply only part of the data requested.

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