During an upcoming NASA mission, currently scheduled for an October lift-off, a spacecraft called Lucy will be the first to visit a fleet of primordial bodies trailing behind Jupiter. It will launch on the Atlas V 401 rocket.
The Lucy mission will be the first to explore the Trojan asteroids, a large group of asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun.
Okay, maybe not as big as the one in the picture.
Potatoes are my favorite vegetable; you can turn them into fries, bake them for an exquisite dish or mash them and eat them as a side dish. There are endless possibilities to cook a potato and what can be better than adding human fat gene in them to make them bigger and juicier?
Scientists have been experimenting with growing larger crops and it seems like they found the perfect solution; adding the human gene related to obesity and fat mass into the plants to yield super crops. The potato plants were inserted with a fat-regulating protein called FTO which changed the genetic code into producing extra proteins which resulted in large potatoes that were almost twice the size of regular ones grown from the same plant crop. “It [was] really a bold and bizarre idea. To be honest, we were probably expecting some catastrophic effects,” said Chuan He, a chemist at University of Chicago.
Longevity expert Sergey Young has spent his career gathering insights from health researchers, doctors and dietitians about how to live a longer and stronger life. He shares his top health rules, including his diet, exercise routine and how much sleep he gets.
Circa 2020 o.o!
Researchers have created a miniature version of supernova shock waves in a lab here on Earth to solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.
When stars die and explode in supernovas, they create shock waves that emanate across the surrounding plasma. These powerful shock waves blast out cosmic rays, or highly energetic particles, out into the universe. The waves act almost like particle accelerators, pushing these particles out so fast that they approach the speed of light. However, scientists have yet to fully understand exactly how and why the shock waves accelerate these particles.
Magnetic excitations in multiferroic materials accompany electric polarization, known as electromagnons. The authors develop here a general framework to study electric polarization and nonlinear optical responses of noncentrosymmetric magnets based on spin models. They theoretically demonstrate the optical excitation of electromagnon-induced dc current generation (i.e., a photovoltaic effect) from the so-called shift current mechanism.
ACS Meeting News.
Molecules work as quantum bits.
Tunable structures could function as sensors or as logic bits in quantum computing by.
Israel-based AI healthtech company, DiA Imaging Analysis, which is using deep learning and machine learning to automate analysis of ultrasound scans, has closed a $14 million Series B round of funding.
Backers in the growth round, which comes three years after DiA last raised, include new investors Alchimia Ventures, Downing Ventures, ICON Fund, Philips and XTX Ventures — with existing investors also participating, including CE Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Defta Partners, Mindset Ventures, and Dr Shmuel Cabilly. In total, it has taken in $25 million to date.
The latest financing will allow DiA to continue expanding its product range and go after new and expanded partnerships with ultrasound vendors, PACS/Healthcare IT companies, resellers and distributors while continuing to build out its presence across three regional markets.
Water is the most abundant yet least understood liquid in nature. It exhibits many strange behaviors that scientists still struggle to explain. While most liquids get denser as they get colder, water is most dense at 39 degrees Fahrenheit, just above its freezing point. This is why ice floats to the top of a drinking glass and lakes freeze from the surface down, allowing marine life to survive cold winters. Water also has an unusually high surface tension, allowing insects to walk on its surface, and a large capacity to store heat, keeping ocean temperatures stable.
Now, a team that includes researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and Stockholm University in Sweden have made the first direct observation of how hydrogen atoms in water molecules tug and push neighboring water molecules when they are excited with laser light. Their results, published in Nature today, reveal effects that could underpin key aspects of the microscopic origin of water’s strange properties and could lead to a better understanding of how water helps proteins function in living organisms.
“Although this so-called nuclear quantum effect has been hypothesized to be at the heart of many of water’s strange properties, this experiment marks the first time it was ever observed directly,” said study collaborator Anders Nilsson, a professor of chemical physics at Stockholm University. “The question is if this quantum effect could be the missing link in theoretical models describing the anomalous properties of water.”
In ‘Flashes of Creation,’ author Paul Halpern tells the story of George Gamow, Fred Hoyle and their decades-long sparring match about the Big Bang.
Flashes of Creation Paul Halpern Basic Books, $30
The Big Bang wasn’t always a sure bet. For several decades in the 20th century, researchers wrestled with interpreting cosmic origins, or if there even was a beginning at all. At the forefront of that debate stood physicists George Gamow and Fred Hoyle: One advocated for an expanding universe that sprouted from a hot, dense state; the other for a cosmos that is eternal and unchanging. Both pioneered contemporary cosmology, laid the groundwork for our understanding of where atoms come from and brought science to the masses.
Continue reading “‘Flashes of Creation’ recounts the Big Bang theory’s origin story” »
A Norwegian company called Yara International claims to have created the world’s first zero-emission ship that can also transport cargo autonomously. The Yara Birkeland electric cargo ship was first conceptualized in2017but now looks to make its first voyage with no crew members onboard later this year in Norway.
Yara International is a Norwegian company that was founded in1905to combat the rising famine in Europe at the time. The company created the world’s first nitrogen fertilizer, which remains its largest business focus today.
In addition to its perpetual battle against hunger, Yara focuses on emissions abatement and sustainable agricultural practices. While the company wants to continue finding success in feeding the planet, it believes it can also do so sustainably.
