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Sep 17, 2020

The Army wants to build a brand new exoskeleton to help soldiers ruck faster and harder

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, robotics/AI

The Army is formally moving ahead with the development and fielding of a powered exoskeleton to help soldiers move faster and carry more while reducing overall fatigue after years of experimentation and testing.

Officials with Army Futures Command are currently in the process of drafting formal requirements for an infantry exoskeleton ahead of a defense industry day sometime in November, said Ted Maciuba, deputy director of the robotic requirements division for Army Futures Command.

Breaking Defense first reported news of the fresh exoskeleton effort.

Sep 17, 2020

Scientists: We Could Build Mars Shelters Out of Insect Polymers and Martian Soil

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, space

Like Concrete

In simpler terms: the resulting material “feels like concrete but much lighter,” Fernandez told CNN. “Very light rock.”

“We have a route to… manufacturing buildings to tools from 3D printing to mold casting with just one single material,” he added.

Sep 17, 2020

Moderna Shares the Blueprint for Its Coronavirus Vaccine Trial

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The biotech company Moderna released a 135-page document on Thursday that spells out the details of how it is conducting the late-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine.


The company hopes to earn the trust of the public and of scientists who have clamored for details of its study.

Sep 17, 2020

Chinese pharma leak infects thousands with bacterial disease

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The disease is caused by a bacteria that commonly infects livestock.

Sep 17, 2020

A 13-Micron High “Mountain” on a Neutron Star 4,500 Light-Years Away

Posted by in category: space

Is it possible to discover an asymmetry of a few thousandths of a millimeter on a neutron star 42 million billion km from Earth?

Sep 17, 2020

Common drugs linked to increased risk of Alzheimer’s

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, health, neuroscience

A new study suggests anticholinergic medications may increase the risk of accelerated cognitive decline, especially in older adults at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Anticholinergic drugs block the action of acetylcholine, a chemical messenger that controls a range of automatic bodily functions and plays a vital role in memory and attention.

Doctors prescribe these drugs for a variety of conditions, including urinary incontinence, overactive bladder, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), seasonal allergies, and depression.

Sep 17, 2020

Space Travel Reality Show Set To Send Contestant To ISS In Works From Space Hero Company & Propagate

Posted by in category: space travel

EXCLUSIVE: Following the success of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon mission, which marked the return of the U.S.’ capability for manned flights and the first private company to get people into orbit, a reality series wants to send a civilian into space.

Space Hero Inc., a U.S.-based production company founded by Thomas Reemer and Deborah Sass and led by former News Corp Europe chief Marty Pompadur, has secured a seat on a 2023 mission to the International Space Station. It will go to a contestant chosen through an unscripted show titled Space Hero. Produced by Ben Silverman and Howard OwensPropagate, the series will launch a global search for everyday people from any background who share a deep love for space exploration. They will be vying for the biggest prize ever awarded on TV.

Sep 17, 2020

Physicists make electrical nanolasers even smaller

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, physics, supercomputing

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and King’s College London cleared the obstacle that had prevented the creation of electrically driven nanolasers for integrated circuits. The approach, reported in a recent paper in Nanophotonics, enables coherent light source design on the scale not only hundreds of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair but even smaller than the wavelength of light emitted by the laser. This lays the foundation for ultrafast optical data transfer in the manycore microprocessors expected to emerge in the near future.

Light signals revolutionized information technologies in the 1980s, when optical fibers started to replace copper wires, making data transmission orders of magnitude faster. Since optical communication relies on light— with a frequency of several hundred terahertz—it allows transferring terabytes of data every second through a single fiber, vastly outperforming electrical interconnects.

Fiber optics underlies the modern internet, but light could do much more for us. It could be put into action even inside the microprocessors of supercomputers, workstations, smartphones, and other devices. This requires using optical communication lines to interconnect the purely , such as processor cores. As a result, vast amounts of information could be transferred across the chip nearly instantaneously.

Sep 17, 2020

Away | Netflix

Posted by in category: space

What’s it like to live in space? To get some insight on playing an astronaut going to Mars, Hilary Swank visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and spoke with astronaut Jessica Meir, who lived aboard the International Space Station for over 200 days. Bonus: Mission Control cartwheel.

Sep 16, 2020

A pandemic is no time to cut the European Research Council’s funding

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

About 25% of all patents filed by projects supported by Horizon 2020 have come from ERC projects, even though commercialization of research is not the agency’s main aim. Bourguignon and his colleagues rightly argue that many advances in fundamental research ultimately contribute to innovation and benefit society. But that is a hard message to get across at a time of constrained funding and competing priorities.


Europe’s flagship science agency will be crucial to a post-coronavirus world. Slashing its budget will be a senseless act.