Lifeboat Foundation

An international team of scientists have unveiled the world’s first production of a purified beam of neutron-rich, radioactive tantalum ions. This development could now allow for lab-based experiments on exploding stars helping scientists to answer long-held questions such as “where does gold come from?”

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, the University of Surrey together with its partners detail how they used a new isotope-separation facility, called KISS, which is developed and operated by the Wako Nuclear Science Centre (WNSC) in the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Japan, to make beams of heavy tantalum isotopes.

The chemical element of tantalum is extremely difficult to vaporize, so the team had to capture radioactive tantalum atoms in high-pressure argon gas, ionizing the atoms with precisely tuned lasers. A single isotope of radioactive tantalum could then be selected for detailed investigation.

Scientists have long sought a system for predicting the properties of materials based on their chemical composition. In particular, they set sights on the concept of a chemical space that places materials in a reference frame such that neighboring chemical elements and compounds plotted along its axes have similar properties. This idea was first proposed in 1984 by the British physicist, David G. Pettifor, who assigned a Mendeleev number (MN) to each element. Yet the meaning and origin of MNs were unclear. Scientists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) puzzled out the physical meaning of the mysterious MNs and suggested calculating them based on the fundamental properties of atoms. They showed that both MNs and the chemical space built around them were more effective than empirical solutions proposed until then. Their research supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation’s (RSF) World-class Lab Research Presidential Program was presented in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

Systematizing the enormous variety of chemical compounds, both known and hypothetical, and pinpointing those with a particularly interesting property is a tall order. Measuring the properties of all imaginable compounds in experiments or calculating them theoretically is downright impossible, which suggests that the search should be narrowed down to a smaller space.

David G. Pettifor put forward the idea of chemical space in the attempt to somehow organize the knowledge about material properties. The chemical space is basically a reference frame where elements are plotted along the axes in a certain sequence such that the neighboring elements, for instance, Na and K, have similar properties. The points within the space represent compounds, so that the neighbors, for example, NaCl and KCl, have similar properties, too. In this setting, one area is occupied by superhard materials and another by ultrasoft ones. Having the chemical space at hand, one could create an algorithm for finding the best material among all possible compounds of all elements. To build their “smart” map, Skoltech scientists, Artem R. Oganov and Zahed Allahyari, came up with their own universal approach that boasts the highest predictive power as compared to the best-known methods.

ReVector researchers have expertise in synthetic biology, human microbiome, and mosquito studies.

The American Society for Microbiology estimates that there are trillions of microbes living in or on the human body that constitute the human microbiome¹. The human skin microbiome (HSM) acts as a barrier between humans and our external environment, protecting us from infection, but also potentially producing molecules that attract mosquitos. Mosquitos are of particular concern to the Department of Defense, as they transmit pathogens that cause diseases such as chikungunya, Zika, dengue, West Nile virus, yellow fever, and malaria. The ReVector program aims to maintain the health of military personnel operating in disease-endemic regions by reducing attraction and feeding by mosquitos, and limiting exposure to mosquito-transmitted diseases.

Genome engineering has progressed to the point where editing the HSM to remove the molecules that attract mosquitos or add genes that produce mild mosquito repellants are now possible. While the skin microbiome has naturally evolved to modulate our interactions with the environment and organisms that surround us, exerting precise control over our microbiomes is an exciting new way to provide protection from mosquito-borne diseases.

Continue reading “DARPA Selects Teams to Modify Skin Microbiome for Disease Prevention” »

DARPA recently awarded contracts to five companies to develop algorithms enabling mixed teams of manned and unmanned combat aircraft to conduct aerial dogfighting autonomously.

Boeing, EpiSci, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Heron Systems, and physicsAI were chosen to develop air combat maneuvering algorithms for individual and team tactical behaviors under Technical Area (TA) 1 of DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program. Each team is tasked with developing artificial intelligence agents that expand one-on-one engagements to two-on-one and two-on-two within-visual-range aerial battles. The companies’ algorithms will be tested in each of three program phases: modeling and simulation, sub-scale unmanned aircraft, and full-scale combat representative aircraft scheduled in 2023.

“The TA1 performers include a large defense contractor, a university research institute, and boutique AI firms, who will build upon the first-gen autonomous dogfighting algorithms demonstrated in the AlphaDogfight Trials this past August,” said Air Force Col. Dan “Animal” Javorsek, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office. “We will be evaluating how well each performer is able to advance their algorithms to handle individual and team tactical aircraft behaviors, in addition to how well they are able to scale the capability from a local within-visual-range environment to the broader, more complex battlespace.”

DARPA’s SIGMA+ program conducted a week-long deployment of advanced chemical and biological sensing systems in the Indianapolis metro region in August, collecting more than 250 hours of daily life background atmospheric data across five neighborhoods that helped train algorithms to more accurately detect chemical and biological threats. The testing marked the first time in the program the advanced laboratory grade instruments for chemical and biological sensing were successfully deployed as mobile sensors, increasing their versatility on the SIGMA+ network.

“Spending a week gathering real-world background data from a major Midwestern metropolitan region was extremely valuable as we further develop our SIGMA+ sensors and networks to provide city and regional-scale coverage for chem and bio threat detection,” said Mark Wrobel, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “Collecting chemical and biological environment data provided an enhanced understanding of the urban environment and is helping us make refinements of the threat-detection algorithms to minimize false positives and false negatives.”

SIGMA+ expands on the original SIGMA program’s advanced capability to detect illicit radioactive and nuclear materials by developing new sensors and networks that would alert authorities with high sensitivity to chemical, biological, and explosives threats as well. SIGMA, which began in 2014, has demonstrated city-scale capability for detecting radiological threats and is now operationally deployed with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, helping protect the greater New York City region.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is of significant concern to the Department of Defense. Of the 337,000 Americans with serious SCIs, approximately 44,000 are veterans, with 11,000 new injuries occurring each year.¹ SCI is a complex condition – the injured often face lifelong paralysis and increased long-term morbidity due to factors such as sepsis and autonomic nervous system dysfunction. While considerable research efforts have been devoted toward restorative and therapeutic technologies to SCIs, significant challenges remain.

DARPA’s Bridging the Gap Plus (BG+) program aims to develop new approaches to treating SCI by integrating injury stabilization, regenerative therapy, and functional restoration. Today, DARPA announced the award of contracts to the University of California-Davis, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Pittsburgh to advance this crucial work. Multidisciplinary teams at each of these universities are tasked with developing systems of implantable, adaptive devices that aim to reduce injury effects during early phases of SCI, and potentially restore function during the later chronic phase.

“The BG+ program looks to create opportunities to provide novel treatment approaches immediately after injury,” noted Dr. Al Emondi, BG+ program manager. “Systems will consist of active devices performing real-time biomarker monitoring and intervention to stabilize and, where possible, rebuild the neural communications pathways at the site of injury, providing the clinician with previously unavailable diagnostic information for automated or clinician-directed interventions.”

The final €85 billion budget is €1.5 billion more than first proposed by the European Commission in 2018, but €5 billion is reserved for applied research and support for small tech firms under a postpandemic recovery fund. The remaining budget is a little larger than the current program, Horizon 2020, but European agencies receive less in the early years of a 7-year budget. That means basic science organs such as the European Research Council (ERC) could have less money in 2021 than in 2020, depending on further negotiations over the budget breakdown, to be held in the coming weeks.

European Parliament wins concessions to bring Horizon Europe budget to €85 billion—but research advocates remain unimpressed.

Admitting he was both nervous and excited about the upcoming launch aboard the Crew Dragon capsule on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the 55-year-old said, “There are risks and a fear of failure when challenging oneself but I believe the benefits far outweigh that fear.”

Noguchi will be among four astronauts, including crew commander Michael Hopkins, aboard the Crew Dragon capsule to be launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday.

He juxtaposed the mission to the Japanese hit manga and anime series “Demon Slayer,” in which astronauts use and maximize their “individual strengths” toward a “common goal.” The series follows the story of a boy who, along with his comrades, fights human-eating demons after his family is killed by them.

What we pay attention to shapes our opinions and views and our opinions and views shape our actions—well beyond clicks and taps on a screen.

But this is only the beginning. The internet and its enabling tools were the last great generation of technology. New generations are already making their presence known. In coming decades, technology will more compellingly seduce our attention, will escape its silicon-and-glass cage, will animate the inanimate, and even shape our biology.

The answer isn’t to do away with technology. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle—nor should we want to. Besides negative outcomes, technology remains a powerful tool for good too. But as individuals, as a society, we need to become far more aware of how we interact with technology, to keep a closer eye on business incentives, and to consciously employ our tools in ways that firmly align with our goals.