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Look into the night sky and you’ll glimpse the stars from hundreds of billions of galaxies. Some galaxies are swirling blue disks like our own Milky Way, others are red spheres or misshapen, clumpy messes or something in between. Why the different configurations? It turns out that a galaxy’s shape tells us something about the events in that galaxy’s ultra-long life.

At the very basic level there are two classifications for galaxy shapes: disk and elliptical. A disk galaxy, also called a spiral galaxy, is shaped like a fried egg, said Cameron Hummels, theoretical astrophysicist at Caltech. These galaxies have a more spherical center, like the yolk, surrounded by a disk of gas and stars — the egg white. The Milky Way and our nearest galaxy neighbor Andromeda fall into this category.

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The researchers found that while equol production did not appear to impact levels of amyloid-beta deposited within the brain, it was associated with reduced white matter lesion volumes. Sekikawa’s team also discovered that high levels of isoflavones—soy nutrients that are metabolized into equol—had no effect on levels of white matter lesions or amyloid-beta when equol wasn’t produced.

According to Sekikawa, the ability to produce equol from soy isoflavones may be the key to unlocking protective health benefits from a soy-rich diet, and his team has previously shown that equol production is associated with a lower risk of heart disease. As heart disease is strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia, equol production could help protect the aging brain as well as the heart.

A metabolite produced following consumption of dietary soy may decrease a key risk factor for dementia—with the help of the right bacteria, according to a new discovery led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Their study, published today in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, reports that elderly Japanese men and women who produce equol—a metabolite of dietary soy created by certain types of gut bacteria—display lower levels of white matter lesions within the brain.

Continue reading “Bacterial metabolism of dietary soy may lower risk factor for dementia” | >

UCLA researchers have identified a compound that can reproduce the effect of exercise in muscle cells in mice. The findings are published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.

Normally, muscles get stronger as they are used, thanks to a series of chemical signals inside . The newly identified compound activates those signals, which suggests that like it could eventually be used to treat people with limb girdle , a form of adolescent-onset muscular dystrophy.

When muscles aren’t worked regularly, they gradually atrophy. (The phenomenon is familiar to anyone who’s had a cast on their leg for several weeks.) Fortunately, for people with healthy muscles, that deterioration is reversible. Muscle use stimulates chemical messengers inside the muscle cells that increase muscle mass and strength.

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Microsoft will be using Starlink broad band for their cloud services.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced today the company will collaborate with Microsoft to connect Starlink broadband internet satellites with Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. “Our new partnership with SpaceX Starlink will provide high-speed, low-latency satellite broadband for the new Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC),” Microsoft detailed in a press release. “SpaceX is of course the name that people immediately think of when they think of innovation and the evolution that’s occurring to bring space technology into the 21st century,” said Tom Keane, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Azure Global.

Starlink is SpaceX’s plan to create an internet-beaming satellite constellation in low Earth orbit to provide service globally. Primarily focused in areas where internet connection is unreliable and nonexistent. To date, SpaceX has deployed a bit over 800 satellites to orbit out of the thousands that will comprise the Starlink network. —“The collaboration that we’re announcing today will allow us to work together to deliver new offerings for both the public and the private sector to deliver connectivity through Starlink for use on Azure,” Shotwell said in a video announcement (shown below). “Where it makes sense, we will work with [Microsoft]: co-selling to our mutual customers, co-selling to new enterprise and future customers.”

Shotwell shared that over the last few months SpaceX and Microsoft have been testing the software and hardware needed to connect the Starlink satellites in orbit to the Azure cloud service. -“So, I think that’s worked out really well,” she said. The partnership will enable Microsoft to offer its cloud service in remote areas around the planet. “We can connect via satellite lengths any element on the Earth to another point on the Earth, which I think goes extremely well with the technologies you are trying to build out…” Shotwell told Keane.

Continue reading “SpaceX will collaborate with Microsoft to connect Starlink broadband with Azure cloud service” | >

A ‘robot revolution’ is underway and could lead to half of all jobs being done by machines by 2025, according to forecasters.

The World Economic Forum has said that 97 million new jobs are set to be created by increased automation of manual and routine labour in several major industries.

But they’ve warned that just as many jobs will be lost, and that the trend could worsen inequality in poorer communities as humans lose out to machines in the workplace.

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The planes of the future may have flapping wings. 😃

Is it a bird, is it a plane? Well, this new Airbus prototype aircraft is kind of both.

The plane manufacturer has unveiled a scale model aiplane that actually flaps its wings during flight. The model, named AlbatrossONE, has been going through various stages of testing since last year, and recently hit a new milestone by completing a successful ‘gate-to-gate’ proof of concept flight.

Continue reading “Airbus Tests Bird-Like Flapping Wings For Its Future Aircraft” | >

Tesla owners who are part of the limited Full Self-Driving rollout have started sharing some images and videos of the advanced driver-assist features in action. Based on videos and the Release Notes of the limited beta, it appears that Tesla is heavily emphasizing safety.

Among the lucky Tesla owners who received the update were @brandonee916 and the @teslaownerssv group, both of whom shared a images and short clips of the limited Full Self-driving beta in action.

Overall, the UI of the limited beta seems to be quite rough in its current state. With this in mind, there seems to be a good chance that the visuals of FSD will be more refined by the time it gets a wider release.

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For the first time, scientists have created pigs, goats and cattle that can serve as viable “surrogate sires,” male animals that produce sperm carrying only the genetic traits of donor animals.

The advance, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 14, could speed the spread of desirable characteristics in livestock and improve food production for a growing global population. It also would enable breeders in remote regions better access to genetic material of elite animals from other parts of the world and allow more precision breeding in animals such as goats where using is difficult.

“With this technology, we can get better dissemination of desirable traits and improve the efficiency of food production. This can have a major impact on addressing food insecurity around the world,” said Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist with WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “If we can tackle this genetically, then that means less water, less feed and fewer antibiotics we have to put into the animals.”

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Photos of touching down on an asteroid.

On Tuesday, October 20th, NASA made history when the OSIRIS-REx mission successfully completed a “touch-and-go” sample collection maneuver with asteroid 101955 Bennu over 200 million miles away from Earth. And now, we have the timelapse to prove it.

NASA shared a total of 82 images from spacecraft’s SamCam imager covering the approach, the touchdown at sample sight Nightingale, and the “back-away burn.” The slideshow was captured over the course of approximately five minutes, and covers everything from about 82 feet (25 meters) above the asteroid, through the back-away burn, and up until the craft achieved an altitude of approximately 43 feet (13 meters), kicking up a lot of material along the way.

Continue reading “NASA Shares Photos from ‘Touch-and-Go’ with Asteroid Bennu 200 Million Miles Away” | >

It looks like Australia with be exporting solar power to other countries with less space.

A major renewable energy project in Australia billed as the world’s largest solar farm in development has had its proposed location revealed.

The AUD$20 billion facility – the heart of an ambitious electricity network called the Australia–ASEAN Power Link – will be built at a remote cattle station in the Northern Territory, roughly halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs.

The gargantuan 10-gigawatt array – spread out across some 20,000 football fields’ worth of photovoltaic panels – might be situated close to the heart of the Australian outback, but the energy reaped from the plant will ultimately be transported far, far away from the sunburnt country.

Continue reading “World’s Largest Solar Farm to Be Built in Australia — But They Won’t Get The Power” | >