SAN BENITO — Willie Rosales Jr. grew up in San Benito, and he never imagined the Valley would become a hub for space travel.
Inspired by all the SpaceX rocket activity near Boca Chica Beach, along with Elon Musk’s vision for the area, Rosales decided to turn his home into a tribute.
“My intentions are for travelers to visit San Benito, and I wanted to pay homage to Elon Musk,” he said.
As Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos rocket companies lead a new space race, NASA is working on AI and robotics to farm space plants and feed interplanetary humans.
One of my favorite science fiction authors is/was Isaac Asimov (should we use the past tense since he is no longer with us, or the present tense because we still enjoy his writings?). In many ways Asimov was a futurist, but — like all who attempt to foretell what is to come — he occasionally managed to miss the mark.
Take his classic Foundation Trilogy, for example (before he added the two prequels and two sequels). On the one hand we have a Galactic Empire that spans the Milky Way with millions of inhabited worlds and quadrillions of people. Also, we have mighty space vessels equipped with hyperdrives that can convey people from one side of the galaxy to the other while they are still young enough to enjoy the experience.
On the other hand, in Foundation and Empire, when a message arrives at a spaceship via hyperwave for the attention of General Bel Riose, it’s transcribed onto a metal spool that’s placed in a message capsule that will open only to his thumbprint. Asimov simply never conceived of things like today’s wireless networks and tablet computers and suchlike.
In this week’s edition of new unexplained astronomical phenomena, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Leigh Smith from Cambridge found a star 100 times larger than our sun that nearly disappears from the sky every few decades. They also have no idea why it does so.
The star, called VVV-WIT-08, is located 25000 light years away, and decreases in brightness by a factor of 30 rather than disappearing altogether. It’s not the first star to be discovered with this changing brightness pattern, but evidence is beginning to mount that this might just be another example of a new class of stars.
VVV-WIT-08’s name itself is calling out for an explanation. The “WIT” in the middle actually stands for “what is this”, which is what astronomers call stars that are difficult to classify into any particular established category.
In ‘Tsunami: The World’s Greatest Waves,’ two scientists chronical hundreds of eyewitness accounts to show the human cost of life at the water’s edge.
The search for life on exoplanets takes a fairly conservative approach. It focuses on life that is similar to that of Earth.
It’s time to think beyond “Earth-like” exoplanets and turn to some truly unusual places to find alien life: the exomoons of rogue planets in the Milky Way.
The plasticizers contained in many everyday objects can impair important brain functions in humans. Biologists from the University of Bayreuth warn of this danger in an article in Communications Biology. Their study shows that even small amounts of the plasticizers bisphenol A and bisphenol S disrupt the transmission of signals between nerve cells in the brains of fish. The researchers consider it very likely that similar interference can also occur in the brains of adult humans. They, therefore, call for the rapid development of alternative plasticizers that do not pose a risk to the central nervous system.
Bisphenols are plasticizers that are found in a large number of plastic products worldwide — for example, in food packaging, plastic tableware, drinking bottles, toys, tooth fillings, and babies’ dummies. In recent years, numerous health risks have already been associated with them, especially with bisphenol A (BPA). The Bayreuth research team led by Dr. Peter Machnik at the Animal Physiology research group (led by Prof. Dr. Stefan Schuster) has now for the first time investigated the effects of plasticizers on signal transmission between nerve cells in the adult brain. The study covers not only BPA, but also bisphenol S (BPS), which is often considered less harmful to health. Their findings: Both plasticizers impair communication between the nerve cells of the brain.
“Well, it has to do with our technology,” said Hoge. “We use something called messenger RNA, or mRNA for short. It’s really just an instruction molecule, kind of like a software program for your cells. It just sends instructions about what the virus looks like to your immune system. So just like a software program, or a Word document, we can simply edit something, change it, and then manufacture it very, very quickly.”
He makes it sound so easy, but it’s taken more than a decade of research, and many technological hurdles. Now, the company has some big plans. “We’ve had an incredible year using messenger RNA to fight a pandemic,” Hoge said. “But we think we’re just starting in the infectious disease space, And so, there’s a large number of other vaccines we’re bringing forward.”
Moderna’s research pipeline includes everything from an HIV vaccine, to heart disease treatments, to vaccines for different kinds of cancer, including lymphoma and melanoma.
Light-driven molecular motors have been around for over 20 years. These motors typically take microseconds to nanoseconds for one revolution. Thomas Jansen, associate professor of physics at the University of Groningen, and Master’s student Atreya Majumdar have now designed an even faster molecular motor. The new design is driven by light only and can make a full turn in picoseconds using the power of a single photon. Jansen says, “We have developed a new out-of-the-box design for a motor molecule that is much faster.” The design was published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters on 7 June.
The new motor molecule design started with a project in which Jansen wanted to understand the energy landscape of excited chromophores. “These chromophores can attract or repel each other. I wondered if we could use this to make them do something,” explains Jansen. He gave the project to Atreya Majumdar, then a first-year student in the Top Master’s degree program in Nanoscience in Groningen. Majumdar simulated the interaction between two chromophores that were connected to form a single molecule.
