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The first volunteer in a Phase I clinical trial of an oral COVID-19 vaccine developed by an Israeli-American company has been screened and enrolled, according to Oravax Medical, a subsidiary of Oramed Pharmaceuticals.

The trial is taking place in South Africa.

Oramed Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company, is based on technology developed by Hadassah-University Medical Center and run by Israeli CEO Nadav Kidron.

Oravax developed a novel oral virus-like particle (VLP) COVID-19 vaccine based on the Oramed’s “POD” oral delivery technology that can be used to orally administer a number of protein-based therapies, which would otherwise be delivered by injection.

Continue reading “Israeli co. kicks off COVID oral vaccine trial in South Africa” | >

Billionaire Elon Musk is pushing ahead with an attempt to utilize emissions contributing to climate change, tweeting that his rocket company will launch a program to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to power spacecraft.

The chairman and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk announced the project on Dec. 13, shortly after being named Person of the Year by Time magazine.

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Scientists have discovered a planet 10 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting a pair of stars in another solar system, according to new research.

The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, points to the discovery of a planet named b Centauri (AB)b or b Centauri b, with an image captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

The planet is 10 times as massive as Jupiter and “one of the most massive planets ever found,” according to the observatory.

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Astronomers just found something unique in the Milky Way–a giant exoplanet in a 200-days orbit around two stars.

In a find that remind us of that binary sunset in the original Star Wars movie, the Tatooine-like “TIC 172900988b” is a Jupiter-sized planet.

Known as a “circumbinary” planet, TIC 172900988b’s existence has been revealed in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal by a team led by Veselin B. Kostov of the SETI Institute.

Although not unique in being a circumbinary planet–astronomers have found 14 such bodies so far–it’s the most massive transiting circumbinary planet to date.

It’s also the first to be found using a single set of data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) all-sky survey space telescope.

Continue reading “We’ve Found A Unique Giant ‘Tatooine’ Planet That Orbits Two Stars Say Scientists” | >

And it offers limitless range.

Zurich-based Swiss Sustainable Yachts has unveiled its new luxurious yacht that is powered by not one but two sustainable fuels, solar and hydrogen. Dubbed Aquon One, the yacht has all the amenities that your heart can desire on a yacht and comes with zero guilt, the New Atlas reported.

Even as cars are going the electric way, maritime transportation is yet to see the same kind of enthusiasm. The first electric ship may have made its maiden voyage, however, the limited range offered by electric batteries is a major challenge that still needs to be overcome. The makers of Aquon One couldn’t agree more and therefore, have opted for a hydrogen fuel cell-powered electric propulsion than massive batteries.

They have gone a step further to set up a hydrogen fuel generator on the yacht itself that completely eliminates the need for a fuelling stop, taking away any limits on its range. The hydrogen generator is powered by solar panels that occupy 689 square feet (64 square meters) on the vessel rooftop, which can output more than 75 kWh/day in the summertime. Hydrogen is generated by electrolyzing desalinated water and then compressed to be stored in carbon tanks, for long-term usage.

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Continue reading “A Luxurious Swiss Yacht Is Powered by Two Sustainable Fuels” | >

Welcome to the future of moral dilemmas.

Not a day passes without a fascinating snippet on the ethical challenges created by “black box” artificial intelligence systems. These use machine learning to figure out patterns within data and make decisions — often without a human giving them any moral basis for how to do it.

Classics of the genre are the credit cards accused of awarding bigger loans to men than women, based simply on which gender got the best credit terms in the past. Or the recruitment AIs that discovered the most accurate tool for candidate selection was to find CVs containing the phrase “field hockey” or the first name “Jared”.

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Lightning is one of the most destructive forces of nature, as in 2020 when it sparked the massive California Lightning Complex fires, but it remains hard to predict. A new study led by the University of Washington shows that machine learning—computer algorithms that improve themselves without direct programming by humans—can be used to improve lightning forecasts.

Better lightning forecasts could help to prepare for potential wildfires, improve safety warnings for lightning and create more accurate long-range climate models.

“The best subjects for machine learning are things that we don’t fully understand. And what is something in the atmospheric sciences field that remains poorly understood? Lightning,” said Daehyun Kim, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “To our knowledge, our work is the first to demonstrate that machine learning algorithms can work for lightning.”

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