With the covid-19 virus spreading in a growing number of countries, many of us are wondering if and how we should prepare. Here’s what to do.
The oldest known tree in the world is an unnamed Great Basin bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California. At 5,064 years old, this tree has seen things, man. Though not even remotely as majestic or gigantic as the mighty Redwoods, the bristlecone pines, which claim the top three spots on the list of the world’s oldest trees, look the part of their ancient age: round, wise, and a little scraggly around the edges, like crotchety old grandmothers.
So will there come a time when these sage trees die from old age?
Two unmanned commercial satellites have docked in orbit for the first time. On February 25, Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle-1 (MEV-1) linked up with the Intelsat 901 (IS-901) communication satellite at an altitude of 22,416 mi (36,076 km) above the Earth as part of a project to extend the service life of satellites that are running low on propellants.
The building and launching of satellites is extremely expensive, so it’s more than just frustrating when a perfectly good spacecraft has to be disposed of or abandoned simply because it has run out of the propellants needed to keep it in its proper orbit and pointed at Earth. There have been a number of solutions proposed for this problem – in this case Northrop’s MEV-1 is designed to match orbits with aging satellites, dock, and take over the job of maintaining orbit and attitude.
Continue reading “Space docking first gives commercial satellites a new lease of life” »
SpaceX has announced March 6 for the launch of its 20th contracted cargo mission to the International Space Station. Its Dragon resupply ship will arrive March 9 with over 5,600 pounds of science hardware, research samples and supplies to the Expedition 62 crew.
Meanwhile, NASA Flight Engineers Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan are tending to a new experiment, which was delivered early last week aboard Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft. The astronauts are exploring the differences between bone cells exposed to microgravity versus samples magnetically levitated on Earth.
Doctors will use the comparisons to gain a deeper understanding of bone diseases. Space-caused bone loss is similar to the symptoms of Earth-bound conditions such as osteoporosis. Astronauts exercise daily keeping track of their diet to counteract the effects of microgravity and maintain healthy bones and muscles.
How is a pharmaceutical giant using a food & snack manufacturing process to speed up the making of medicine?
The very nature of the human race is about to change. This change will be radical and rapid beyond anything in our species’ history. A chapter of our story just ended and the next chapter has begun.
This revolution in what it means to be human will be enabled by a new genetic technology that goes by the innocuous sounding name CRISPR, pronounced “crisper”. Many readers will already have seen this term in the news, and can expect much more of it in the mainstream media soon. CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and is to genomics what vi (Unix’s visual text editor) is to software. It is an editing technology which gives unprecedented power to genetic engineers: it turns them into genetic hackers. Before CRISPR, genetic engineering was slow, expensive, and inaccurate. With CRISPR, genome editing is cheap, accurate, and repeatable.
Continue reading “Hacking DNA: The Story of CRISPR, Ken Thompson, and the Gene Drive” »
It’s been with us for three years, astronomers say. Sadly, it’ll probably be gone by spring.
Astronomers discovered a ‘minimoon’ that’s been orbiting Earth for about three years, and may soon leave our planet’s orbit.
Pope Francis has come down with a “slight indisposition,” forcing him to cancel a planned Mass in Rome, just a day after he expressed his solidarity with coronavirus sufferers around the world — and as the disease continues to spread across Italy.
The illness has forced the 82-year-old pontiff to nix a penitential Mass, marking the start of Lent, that he’d planned to celebrate at the St. John Lateran basilica across town with Roman clergy, the Vatican said.
Francis will proceed with the rest of his planned work Thursday, but “preferred to stay near Santa Marta,” the Vatican hotel where he lives, officials said.
China could effectively shut down America’s healthcare system within months given the one-party state’s “global chokehold” on the manufacturing of medicines and medical supplies, explained Rosemary Gibson, author of China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.
Gibson, senior adviser at the Hastings Center, offered her remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Ed Martin.
Mansour noted how the coronavirus outbreak in China has exposed America’s dangerous dependence on Chinese production of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for domestic drug production.
