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Germ-free mice (animals don’t have a microbiome) live longer than microbiome-containing mice, but it’s impractical for people to live in a bubble for their entire lifespan. As a more practical approach, which microbiome-derived factors impact lifespan, and can they be modified?

Continue reading “The Impact Of The Microbiome On Lifespan” »

Astrobotic has been awarded two contracts by NASA to support the development of payloads for future delivery on its 4U and 6U CubeRovers— presented as the world’s first line of commercial lunar rovers. CubeRovers are standardized and scalable, providing planetary surface mobility services that support a variety of scientific and commercial missions.

The first $741,000 contract will fuel work on a novel ultra-wide, non-contact Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) antenna co-developed by Astrobotic and The Ohio State University. The antenna will integrate with a prototype of Astrobotic’s 6U CubeRover, the largest of the CubeRover family, and then test its use on the ground.

Useful for both Earth and planetary science applications, the single antenna can be integrated with diverse mobile platforms to better support lightweight, affordable, subsurface science investigations. GPR tech at this small, lightweight scale is nonexistent in the space market and could enable simple and reliable characterization of lunar lava tubes, subsurface water-ice, and the location of planetary ore deposits.

Nature has spent millennia honing the virus into a ruthlessly efficient delivery vehicle for nucleic acids. Viruses have even been harnessed for our own delivery purposes. But some applications have had only mixed success. For example, commercial applications of genetic engineering, which require high scalability, low cost, and impeccable safety, remain a challenge.

Although they can easily enter the body and inject their payload into cells, viruses may stimulate a dangerous immune reaction and cause long-term medical complications. In addition, viruses can be expensive and time consuming to cultivate.

Safer and more practical alternatives to viruses are being sought by innovative companies. For example, these companies are developing nonviral gene delivery systems that incorporate nanoparticle formulations, ultrasound, and electric fields. These systems can slip bits of genetic material into cells efficiently and cost-effectively in a range of applications.

Alpha-ketoglutarate could be safer than other potential anti-aging treatments.

Tesla may be pretty far from releasing the Cyberquad to the world, but that hasn’t stopped this YouTuber from taking matters into his own hands.

Featured Image Source: SpaceX

SpaceX is building Starship in South Texas at Boca Chica Beach. The aerospace company’s founder Chief Engineer Elon Musk envisions developing a fully reusable Starship capable of transporting one hundred passengers to Mars. During the Humans To Mars conference on Monday, he shared SpaceX will have to conduct ‘hundreds of missions’ before launching astronauts aboard. – “We’ve got to first make the thing work. […] Do hundreds of missions with satellites before we put people on board,” he said.

Multiple stainless-steel Starship prototypes are under assembly and undergoing testing at a small village where Musk envisions building the ‘Gateway to Mars’ spaceport. Last month, SpaceX successfully conducted a low-altitude test flight of a scaled-down Starship prototype. The vehicle soared 150-meters off the ground powered by a single Raptor engine. The company aims to make flying stainless-steel vehicles routine in Texas before attempting to launch a Starship prototype to orbit. “We’re making good progress. The thing that we’re really making progress on with Starship is the production system,” Musk told the conference’s host. “The thing that really impedes progress on Starship is the production system … A year ago, there was almost nothing there and now we’ve got quite a lot of production capability. So, we’re rapidly making more and more ships.”

Scientists suggest that a counter-intuitive, hypothetical species of black holes may negate the standard model of cosmology, where dark energy is an inherent and constant property of spacetime that will result in an eventual cold death of the universe. “It’s the big elephant in the room,” says Claudia de Rham, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London about dark energy, the mysterious, elusive phenomena that pushes the cosmos to expand so rapidly and which is estimated to account for 70% of the contents of the universe. “It’s very frustrating.”

Generic Objects of Dark Energy

Astronomers have known for two decades that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but the physics of this expansion remains a mystery. In 1966, Erast Gliner, a young physicist at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad, proposed an alternative hypothesis that very large stars should collapse into what could be called Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs). These appear to be black holes when viewed from the outside but, unlike black holes, they contain dark energy instead of a singularity.

But U.S. is not the only country engaged in human enhancement and transhumanism, as Russia and China are also in hot pursuit with exoskeletons, vaccines and brain implants. As this competition gains traction, one wonders what the future of their militaries may look like as human beings are steadily integrated with machines to become armies of iron man.

From the blog of Christina Lin at The Times of Israel.