A team of physicists thinks that they can solve a key mystery about neutrinos and their masses by scanning data from Antarctica’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch is set to complete the longest-ever single spaceflight by a woman.
When she returns to Earth on Thursday, Koch will have spent 328 days on the International Space Station (ISS), surpassing the previous record held by fellow American Peggy Whitson.
Ms Koch will come back in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, parachuting down to a landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Earlier this year, scientists brought dead pig brains back to life, provoking huge ethical quandaries in the process.
The proliferation of transhumanist thought beyond science fiction and into the public space seems, at first, a minor ideological and physical threat. Numerous concerns about the implications of transhumanism have been raised, but few regarding religious implications. Cultural anthropologist Chris Toumey notes in his article in Nature Nanotechnology the small body of literature grounded explicitly in Christian values, remarking “I would like to see religious thought on nanotechnology develop well beyond a reaction to the more sensationalist parts of the transhumanist vision.” [1] Though the quote specifies nanotechnology, it applies more broadly to non-secular works on the problem(s) with transhumanism. To find literature from Muslims, then, containing an approach to transhumanism guided by Islamic principles is a laborious endeavor. This is not to fault Muslims, but to draw observant, critical eyes to the transhumanist movement.
The existing literature must be studied in order to understand the scope of possible reconciliation/conflict as Muslims formulate their own methods of evaluation. In her book, Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman, Jeanine Thweatt-Bates, Assistant Professor of Theology at New Brunswick Theological Seminary, outlines her approach: one that is, at once, an overview of two approaches to the ‘posthuman,’ and an analysis of possible reconciliatory discourse with a Christian theological locus. To be clear, it’s not a book on the Christian perspective of the posthuman, but a Christian’s perspective.
The Cyborg
A “beating heart” of frozen nitrogen controls Pluto’s winds and may give rise to features on its surface, according to a new study.
Líthica — Pedreres de s’Hostal quarries in Menorca. The sandstone of varying hues has been used as a construction material on the island ever since the Stone Age.
Brilliant, outside-the-box ideas to help people live without illness as they live longer. That’s what Johnson & Johnson and the National Academy of Medicine are looking for through a unique collaboration—and they’re putting up millions of dollars in prize money to find them.
In a pair of related studies, a team of Yale researchers has found a way to reverse type-2 diabetes and liver fibrosis in mice, and has shown that the underlying processes are conserved in humans.
The studies appear in the Feb. 4 edition of Cell Reports and in the Jan. 17 edition of Nature Communications.
In the earlier study, researchers found an important connection between how the body responds to fasting and type-2 diabetes. Fasting “switches on” a process in the body in which two particular proteins, TET3 and HNF4α increase in the liver, driving up production of blood glucose. In type-2 diabetes, this “switch” fails to turn off when fasting ends, as it would in a non-diabetic person.
One of the many ways scientists hope to improve the performance of today’s lithium batteries is by swapping out some of the liquid components for solid ones. Known as solid-state batteries, these experimental devices could greatly extend the life of electric vehicles and mobile devices by significantly upping the energy density packed inside. Scientists at MIT are now reporting an exciting advance toward this future, demonstrating a new type of solid-state battery architecture that overcomes some limitations of current designs.
In a regular lithium battery, a liquid electrolyte serves as the medium through which the lithium ions travel back and forth between the anode and cathode as the battery is charged and discharged. One problem is that this liquid is highly volatile and can sometimes result in battery fires, like those that plagued Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.
Replacing this liquid electrolyte for a solid material wouldn’t just make batteries safer and less prone to fires, it could also open up new possibilities for other key components of the battery. The anode in today’s lithium batteries is made from a mix of copper and graphite, but if it were made of pure lithium instead, it could break the “energy-density bottleneck of current Li-ion chemistry,” according to a recent study published in Trends in Chemistry.
