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When plants first ventured onto the land, evolving from freshwater-dwelling algae, more than 500 million years ago, they transformed the planet. By drawing carbon dioxide from the air, they cooled Earth, and by eroding rock surfaces they helped build the soil that now covers so much land.

These changes to the planet’s atmosphere and land surface paved the way for the evolution of the biosphere we know. Land plants make up around 80 percent of Earth’s biomass.

The pioneering plants were small and moss-like, and they had to overcome two big challenges to survive on land: avoiding drying out, and surviving the Sun’s harsh ultraviolet light.

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I think I posted about the work in Texas, but here is more work.

Israeli and American researchers have discovered a nanobody cocktail that could neutralize coronavirus, including the Delta mutation.

Nanobodies are single domain antibodies derived from llamas — or other members of the camel family.

The discovery of the cocktail and their effectiveness in combating coronavirus was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.

“If we can produce an innovative drug through the cocktail, it will be a life-saving treatment — if given early in the disease,” according to Hebrew University School of Engineering and Computer Science Dr. Dina Schneidman-Duhovy, who helped lead the study with University of Pittsburgh researcher Dr. Yi Shi.

Continue reading “Israeli researchers say llama nanobodies could help stop COVID” | >

NASA has selected two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, to study the “lost habitable” world of Venus. Each mission will receive approximately $500 million for development and both are expected to launch between 2,028 and 2030.

It had long been thought there was no life on Venus, due to its extremely high temperatures. But late last year, scientists studying the planet’s atmosphere announced the surprising (and somewhat controversial) discovery of phosphine. On Earth, this chemical is produced primarily by living organisms.

The news sparked renewed interest in Earth’s “twin,” prompting NASA to plan state-of-the-art missions to look more closely at the planetary environment of Venus—which could hint at life-bearing conditions.

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“We showed that cholesterol is acting essentially as a signal in neurons that determines how much Aβ gets made—and thus it should be unsurprising that apoE, which carries the cholesterol to neurons, influences Alzheimer’s risk,” says study co-senior author Scott Hansen, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research, Florida.

Summary: A new advanced imaging technique shows how cholesterol regulates the production of Alzheimer’s associated amyloid beta proteins in astrocytes.

Source: Scripps Research Institute

A team co-led by scientists at Scripps Research has used advanced imaging methods to reveal how the production of the Alzheimer’s-associated protein amyloid beta (Aβ) in the brain is tightly regulated by cholesterol.

Continue reading “Brain Cholesterol Regulates Alzheimer’s Plaques” | >

These researchers recently published a study on VDAC2, a protein that helps regulate calcium signaling within heart cells. Blockage of the signals causes severe impairment of heart cell contraction, making it harder for the organ to push blood through the body.

Taking away this protein made heart function sharply decline in laboratory mice, eventually leading to their death, while reintroduction of VDAC2 reversed many of the effects of heart failure. An experimental drug called efsevin was able to produce similar effects in other mice with heart failure.

With the epidemic of heart failure exacerbating the pandemic of COVID-19, the discovery by University of Utah researchers in Salt Lake City of a protein in heart cells brings the potential for a method to improve heart function in patients.

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Three groundbreaking ideas for the future of high-speed rail travel in Europe have been proposed by a number of companies. Hyperloop, Maglev trains and a single European railway area have been suggested as climate-friendly options to transform mobility on the continent in years to come. Spanish company Zeleros want to build a scalable hyperloop system capable of connecting cities in a matter of minutes, achieving speeds of 1,000km/h with zero emissions. Maglev trains have been suggested by Polish company Nevomo as a more imminent European rail transformation, with the aim of implementing hyperloop once the technology is ready.

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60 Minutes+ correspondent Laurie Segall reports on the big money being spent in a world somewhere between digital and reality. See the story, streaming now only on Paramount+.

“60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1,968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10.

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Continue reading “NFTs and the Metaverse: The internet enters a new phase” | >

But a team of physicists is proposing a radical idea: Instead of forming black holes through the usual death-of-a-massive-start route, giant dark matter halos directly collapsed, forming the seeds of the first great black holes.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) appear early in the history of the universe, as little as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. That rapid appearance poses a challenge to conventional models of SMBH birth and growth because it doesn’t look like there can be enough time for them to grow so massive so quickly.

“Physicists are puzzled why SMBHs in the early universe, which are located in the central regions of dark matter halos, grow so massively in a short time,” said Hai-Bo Yu, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside, who led a study of SMBH formation that appeared in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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