Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists on an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider see massive W particles emerging from collisions with electromagnetic fields. How can this happen?

In The Martian, Matt Damon’s character is able to survive being marooned on Mars by growing potatoes in the Martian soil. While fictional, this plot point reflects a real need for in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) to support long-term human space exploration missions. A new study by a team from the Florida Institute of Technology suggests that the Martian soil may be more hostile to plant life than previously thought and that the capability of growing Martian potatoes will require additional development to make agriculture feasible.

The researchers studied three examples of Martian regolith simulants. These simulants are produced from materials found on Earth to reproduce the mineralogy and chemistry of the soil we expect to find on Mars. They found that none of these simulants were able to support plant life on their own, partly due to nitrogen deficiency, and only two were able to do so when nutrient supplements were added. More crucially, none of these simulants could support plant life at all when calcium perchlorate — a common, and toxic, substance on Mars’s surface — was added. Their results suggest that any scheme for ISRU agriculture on the surface of Mars must plan to remediate, or otherwise avoid, the toxic effects of perchlorate before attempting an extraterrestrial harvest.

Scientists at University College London have achieved a data transmission rate of 178 terabits per second (tbps) – a speed at which you could download the entire Netflix library in less than a second.

The breakthrough involved a collaboration between University College London (UCL) and two companies, Xtera and KDDI Research. The technology used a much wider range of colours of light, or wavelengths, than is typically found in optical fibre. Most of today’s infrastructure has a limited spectrum bandwidth of 4.5THz, with 9THz commercial systems entering the market. The researchers in this study, however, used a bandwidth of 16.8THz.

The hyperfast speed – around three million times faster than conventional broadband – was made possible by combining different “amplifier” technologies to boost signals over this wider bandwidth, and then maximised by developing new Geometric Shaping (GS) constellations. The latter are signal combinations that make best use of the phase, brightness and polarisation properties of light, manipulating the properties of each individual wavelength.

The Amazon is burning again, and the fires this year could be even more devastating than in 2019.

Our muscles start to shrink and weaken when we reach our 50s and 60s in a process called sarcopenia, but new research in mice from the University of Michigan offers new insights into why this loss may occur, and how we might begin to prevent it.

Sarcopenia is the progressive loss of muscle mass in aging, and it’s linked to other age-related pathologies such as osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as an overall reduction in function and independence.

The research, led by Carlos Aguilar, a U-M assistant professor of biomedical engineering, focused on muscle stem cells since they are dedicated solely to keeping muscles healthy. And to better understand stem cell function during aging, testing was conducted on two sets of mice, one “young” and one “old,” before and after muscle injury.

The belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations,…

Mysterious stone structures that dot lava fields and deserts across Saudi Arabia may be some of the oldest monuments in the world, scientists say.

APIs make your systems easier to run — and make it easier for hackers, too.

Researchers have designed a simple, low-cost device for subcutaneous injection of viscous formulations.

MIT researchers have developed a simple, low-cost technology to administer powerful drug formulations that are too viscous to be injected using conventional medical syringes.

The technology, which is described in a paper published today in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials, makes it possible to inject high-concentration drugs and other therapies subcutaneously. It was developed as a solution for highly effective, and extremely concentrated, biopharmaceuticals, or biologics, which typically are diluted and injected intravenously.