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A short gamma ray burst left the most-distant optical afterglow ever detected –incredibly faint and fast signals sometimes lasting mere hours–some 10 billion light years away, 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Astronomers suspect that up to one-third of all short gamma ray bursts come from merging neutron stars in globular clusters of old stars blinding whole galaxies with light and destroying millions of worlds. Known as SGRB181123B, it is the second most-distant well-established SGRB ever detected and the most distant event with an optical afterglow.

The appearance of an SGRB at such an early time, report astronomers at the Keck Observatory and Northwestern University could alter theories about their origins, particularly the length of time it takes two neutron stars to merge and produce these powerful explosions, as well as the rate of neutron star mergers in the young universe.

“This was a very exciting object to study,” said Kerry Paterson, a postdoctoral associate at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and lead author of the study. “Our research now suggests neutron star mergers could occur surprisingly quickly for some systems — with neutron star binaries spiraling together in less than a billion years to create an SGRB.”

It turns out the moon is a little younger than scientists previously thought — about 85 million years younger, to be precise.

The PLA Navy may be poised to overcome a technological and tactical defect that has plagued it since its founding.

By James Holmes

Here’s What You Need To Remember: American submariners long lampooned Soviet and Chinese nuclear boats for being noisy and easy to detect. PLA Navy boats remained backward long after the Cold War. Ultraquiet propulsion, though, would put an end to unquestioned U.S. acoustic supremacy, opening up new operational and strategic vistas before the PLA Navy while ushering in a deadlier phase of U.S.-China strategic competition.

When NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover launches to the Red Planet, an innovative experiment will ride along: the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter — the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet.

Get up to speed with these key facts about its plans: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/6-things-to-know-about-nasa…helicopter #CountdownToMars

An existing medicine can “downgrade” the danger-level of coronavirus to that of a common cold, a Jerusalem researcher is claiming, after testing it on infected human tissue.

Prof. Yaakov Nahmias says that his research shows that the novel coronavirus is so vicious because it causes lipids to be deposited in the lungs, and that there is a solution to undo the damage: a widely-used anti cholesterol drug called fenofibrate.

Hebrew University professor says he’s worked out what makes the raging virus so vicious, and how to fix it using an anti-cholesterol med; no human testing done yet.

Continue reading “Existing drug may downgrade COVID threat to common cold level — Jerusalem study” »

In 2003, history was made. For the first time, the human genome was sequenced. Since then, technological improvements have enabled tweaks, adjustments, and additions, making the human genome the most accurate and complete vertebrate genome ever sequenced.

Nevertheless, some gaps remain — including human chromosomes. We have a pretty good grasp of them in general, but there are still some gaps in the sequences. Now, for the first time, geneticists have closed some of those gaps, giving us the first complete, gap-free, end-to-end (or telomere-to-telomere) sequence of a human X chromosome.

The accomplishment was enabled by a new technique called nanopore sequencing, which enables ultra-long-reads of DNA strands, providing a more complete and sequential assembly.

Microsoft is urging system administrators to urgently install updates to fix a 17-year-old Windows DNS Server vulnerability. Microsoft has rated the flaw at the highest level for remote code execution, but exploits haven’t yet been developed.

DARPA is running a bug bounty aimed at further hardening new malware-proof architectures.

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Boosting seedling survival rates from 10% to at least 90%.

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