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Jan 15, 2021

Virgin Orbit targets Sunday for LauncherOne mission from California

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, satellites

ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 15 (UPI) — Virgin Orbit plans to try again Sunday to send 10 small science satellites for NASA and several universities into orbit using a rocket launched over the Pacific Ocean.

The mission is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. PST when Virgin’s Cosmic Girl aircraft, a modified Boeing 747, takes off from Mojave Air and Space Port 90 miles north of Los Angeles. The plane carries the LauncherOne rocket under its wing.

The company created a three-hour window for potential last-minute delays. Virgin scrubbed an attempt in December when employees entered quarantine because of COVID-19 exposure. The company also delayed the launch from last week.

Jan 15, 2021

AI set to replace humans in cybersecurity by 2030, says Trend Micro

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI

In 2021 Trend Micro predicts that cybercriminals will look to home networks as a critical launch pad to compromising corporate IT and IoT networks.

Jan 15, 2021

NASA Pulls Plug On InSight Lander’s Mars Mole

Posted by in category: space

NASA has finally given up on heat probe instrument on it Mars surface lander. Maybe Mark Watney will eventually find a way to fix it!


NASA has finally given up on the heat probe instrument on its Mars surface lander.

Jan 15, 2021

New Species, Devil-eyed Frog, and Satyr Butterfly Not Seen For a Century Found in Forests 30 Miles From the Capital

Posted by in category: futurism

Just 30 miles from the capital of La Paz, 20 new species were discovered by scientists from Conservation International above the Zongo Valley.

Jan 15, 2021

Robot FlyingFox

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

A very nice flying robot design! 😃

Jan 15, 2021

Scientists Develop Novel Class of Antibiotic against Wide Range of Bacteria

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics, health

Wistar Institute scientists have designed a new class of antimicrobial compound, which, they claim, uniquely combines direct antibiotic killing of pan drug-resistant pathogenic bacteria, with a simultaneous rapid immune response for combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The team claims the dual-acting immuno-antibiotics (DAIA) strategy could represent a “landmark” in the fight against AMR.

“We took a creative, double-pronged strategy to develop new molecules that can kill difficult-to-treat infections while enhancing the natural host immune response,” said Farokh Dotiwala, MBBS, PhD, assistant professor in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center and lead author of the team’s work, which is reported in Nature, in a paper titled, “IspH inhibitors kill Gram-negative bacteria and mobilize immune clearance.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared AMR to be one of the top 10 global public health threats against humanity, and it is estimated that by 2050, antibiotic-resistant infections could claim 10 million lives each year and impose a cumulative $100 trillion burden on the global economy. The list of bacteria that are becoming resistant to treatment with all available antibiotic options is growing and few new drugs are in the pipeline, creating a pressing need for new classes of antibiotics to prevent public health crises.

Jan 15, 2021

A.I. displays an unsettling skill: the ability to show empathy

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Oom Blikkies.

‘FLOKA’ SHOWS EMOTION WHILE HELPING AROUND THE HOUSE


Researchers from Columbia have designed an A.I. that can effectively feel empathy and predict another robot’s goals using only vision.

Jan 15, 2021

Superintelligent AI Cannot be Controlled, Report Warns

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Researchers from the Max Planck Society assessed humans’ capabilities for controlling killer AI. Read the details.

Jan 15, 2021

Examination of Theia 456 finds its nearly 500 stars were born at same time

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

The Milky Way houses 8292 recently discovered stellar streams—all named Theia. But Theia 456 is special.

A stellar stream is a rare linear pattern—rather than a cluster—of stars. After combining multiple datasets captured by the Gaia space telescope, a team of astrophysicists found that all of Theia 456’s 468 stars were born at the same time and are traveling in the same direction across the sky.

“Most stellar clusters are formed together,” said Jeff Andrews, a Northwestern University astrophysicist and member of the team. “What’s exciting about Theia 456 is that it’s not a small clump of stars together. It’s long and stretched out. There are relatively few streams that are nearby, young and so widely dispersed.”

Jan 15, 2021

Conductive nature in crystal structures revealed at magnification of 10 million times

Posted by in category: materials

In groundbreaking materials research, a team led by University of Minnesota Professor K. Andre Mkhoyan has made a discovery that blends the best of two sought-after qualities for touchscreens and smart windows—transparency and conductivity.

The researchers are the first to observe metallic lines in a perovskite crystal. Perovskites abound in the Earth’s center, and barium stannate (BaSnO3) is one such crystal. However, it has not been studied extensively for metallic properties because of the prevalence of more conductive materials on the planet like metals or semiconductors. The finding was made using advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a technique that can form images with magnifications of up to 10 million.

The research is published in Science Advances.