Lifeboat Foundation

UIUC Editor’s note: Health authorities believe COVID-19 spreads by the transmission of respiratory droplets, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends homemade cloth face coverings for use in public spaces. Starting today, Illinois joins many other states in requiring people to wear masks while out. However, initial uncertainty regarding the masks’ effectiveness in reducing exhaled droplets leaves some people unsure or skeptical of their usefulness during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Mechanical science and engineering professor Taher Saif spoke with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about a study that he and his graduate students, Onur Aydin and Bashar Emon, performed on the effectiveness of common household fabrics for use in homemade masks.

Physically speaking, are the respiratory droplets produced by talking and breathing the same as those that come from a cough or a sneeze?

The droplets released during sneezing and coughing are larger than those released while speaking and breathing, and any of these droplets may carry many virus particles. The larger droplets tend to fall nearby due to gravity, but the smaller ones can go far, with the majority of them remaining within six feet of the infected individual. Unfortunately, because symptomatic, presymptomatic and asymptomatic carriers can shed the coronavirus, we cannot tell without testing which individuals are the sources of infection. Hence, a physical barrier, such as a mask, can prevent the spreading.

A key epigenetic mark can block the binding of an important gene regulatory protein, and therefore prohibit the gene from being turned off, a new UNSW study in CRISPR-modified mice—published this month in Nature Communications —has shown.

The study has implications for understanding how epigenetics works at a molecular level—and down the track, the scientists hope the research will help them to investigate new treatments for blood disorders.

“Epigenetics looks at how non-permanent, acquired chemical marks on DNA determine whether or not particular genes are expressed,” study leader and UNSW Professor Merlin Crossley says.

Scientists from Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) have developed a novel technique that can produce pure therapeutic drugs without the associated side effects.

The approach, which uses a nanostructure fabrication device, can manipulate the chirality of drug molecules by controlling the direction a substrate is rotated within the device, thus eliminating the possible side effects that can arise when people take drugs containing molecules with the incorrect chirality.

Published in the renowned international scientific journal Nature Chemistry, the research findings pave the way towards the mass production of purer, cheaper, and safer drugs that can be made in a scalable and more environmentally-friendly way.

Are you interested in having children, but turned off by the whole pregnancy thing? Well, there may be an option available in the not-too-distant future. The artificial womb — or at least the ability to create one — is inching its way toward us. The big question is whether or not society is ready for it.

The obstacles to ectogenesis — development of the fetus outside of a mother from fertilization to full-term infancy — will soon be dominated more by legal and ethical matters than by technological and medical limitations. Those who embrace technology without reservation may be waiting with open arms. But there will certainly be others who find the prospect disturbing.

Samsung has launched a new secure element (SE) chip to protect private and sensitive data on mobile devices, the company said on Tuesday.

The chip, dubbed S3FV9RR, will be offered as a standalone turnkey with security software, Samsung said.

Common Criteria, which certifies the security level of IT products from EAL0 to EAL7 with seven being the most secure, gave the security chip a Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (CC EAL) 6+ certification.

Circa 2018

In June 2017, physicists achieved ‘liquid light’ at room temperature for the first time ever, making this strange form of matter more accessible than ever.

This matter is both a superfluid, which has zero friction and viscosity, and a kind of Bose-Einstein condensate — sometimes described as the fifth state of matter — and it allows light to actually flow around objects and corners.

Continue reading “For The First Time, Scientists Achieve ‘Liquid Light’ at Room Temperature” »

http://www.ted.com Strapped to a jet-powered wing, Yves Rossy is the Jetman — flying free, his body as the rudder, above the Swiss Alps and the Grand Canyon. After a powerful short film shows how it works, Rossy takes the TEDGlobal stage to share the experience and thrill of flying.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

“It’s not just about the smell,” said Adrian Cheok, one of the scientists behind the experiments. “It is part of a whole, integrated virtual reality or augmented reality. So, for example, you could have a virtual dinner with your friend through the internet. You can see them in 3D and also share a glass of wine together.”

In real life, odors are transmitted when airborne molecules waft into the nose, prompting specialized nerve cells in the upper airway to fire off impulses to the brain. In the recent experiments, performed on 31 test subjects at the Imagineering Institute in the Malaysian city of Nusajaya, researchers used electrodes in the nostrils to deliver weak electrical currents above and behind the nostrils, where these neurons are found.

The researchers were able to evoke 10 different virtual odors, including fruity, woody and minty.

Essentially a quantum radar teleportation device could entangle objects anywhere in the universe.

Last year, a Long March 2D rocket took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert carrying a satellite called Micius, named after an ancient Chinese philosopher who died in 391 B.C. The rocket placed Micius in a Sun-synchronous orbit so that it passes over the same point on Earth at the same time each day.

Micius is a highly sensitive photon receiver that can detect the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. That’s important because it should allow scientists to test the technological building blocks for various quantum feats such as entanglement, cryptography, and teleportation.

Continue reading “First Object Teleported from Earth to Orbit” »