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Apr 11, 2020

A spacecraft is about to swing by Earth to get a gravity assist on its way to Mercury

Posted by in category: space

On Friday, an interplanetary spacecraft will slingshot around Earth in the super early morning hours. The spacecraft, a joint European and Japanese creation, will use our planet’s gravity to brake its speed and change its course through the Solar System, putting itself on track to reach Mercury in the next five years.

The probe whipping by our planet is called BepiColombo, which is actually two spacecraft wrapped into one package. One spacecraft, designed and operated by the European Space Agency, is equipped with 11 instruments to study Mercury from the planet’s orbit. The second comes from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and it’s designed to study Mercury while spinning in orbit. Once they reach Mercury, the two spacecraft will break apart and revolve around the planet on their own, studying the world’s exterior and its inner core.

Before all that can happen, BepiColombo needs to make it to Mercury. Launched in October 2018, BepiColombo’s route to the planet is set to last a total of seven years, and a lot of that time is spent slowing down. Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, spacecraft that travel toward the planet are constantly being tugged by our Solar System’s star, causing them to speed up. BepiColombo has to repeatedly put on the brakes to make sure it doesn’t go barreling into the Sun.

Apr 11, 2020

Coronavirus spurs police to deploy ‘talking’ drones in Florida, New Jersey to enforce social distancing

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, drones

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As authorities enforce social distancing in the battle against coronavirus, don’t be surprised if you hear reminders coming from the sky.

Police departments in Florida and New Jersey have drones with pre-recorded warnings that will be deployed if crowds are not following COVID-19 guidelines.

Apr 11, 2020

Far-Right Extremists Helped Create The World’s Most Powerful Facial Recognition Technology

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Ahhhhhh, these people scare me, more than the Virus.


Clearview AI, which has alarmed privacy experts, hired several far-right employees, a HuffPost investigation found.

Apr 11, 2020

Colchicine Efficacy in COVID-19 Pneumonia

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Worth having a look, who knows.


Cytokines and chemokines are thought to play an important role in immunity and immunopathology during virus infections [3]. Patients with severe COVID-19 have higher serum levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1 and IL-6) and chemokines (IL-8) compared to individuals with mild disease or healthy controls, similar to patients with SARS or MERS. The change of laboratory parameters, including elevated serum cytokine, chemokine levels, and increased NLR in infected patients are correlated with the severity of the disease and adverse outcome, suggesting a possible role for hyper-inflammatory responses in COVID-19 pathogenesis. Importantly, previous studies showed that viroporin E, a component of SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV), forms Ca2C-permeable ion channels and activates the NLRP3 inflammasome. In addition, another viroporin 3a was found to induce NLRP3 inflammasome activation. The mechanisms are unclear.

Colchicine, an old drug used in auto-inflammatory disorders (i.e., Familiar Mediterranean Fever and Bechet disease) and in gout, counteracts the assembly of the NLRP3 inflammasome, thereby reducing the release of IL-1b and an array of other interleukins, including IL-6, that are formed in response to danger signals. Recently, colchicine has been successfully used in two cases of life-threatening post-transplant capillary leak syndrome. These patients had required mechanically ventilation for weeks and hemodialysis, before receiving colchicine, which abruptly restored normal respiratory function and diuresis over 48 hrs [4].

Continue reading “Colchicine Efficacy in COVID-19 Pneumonia” »

Apr 11, 2020

Chinese astronomer discovers fastest rotating star in Milky Way

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, space

The Milky Way in the sky of Ali Prefecture, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, Sept.27, 2018. (Xinhua/Purbu Zhaxi)

The star, named LAMOST J040643.69+542347.8, has an estimated rotational velocity of 540 km per second, which is about 100 km per second faster than that of the previous record holder, HD 191423.

BEIJING, April 9 (Xinhua) — A Chinese astronomer has discovered the fastest rotating star in the Milky Way galaxy based on data from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) located in Xinglong, in northern China’s Hebei Province.

Apr 11, 2020

Suppression of NLRP3 Inflammasome

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, electronics

This is a good one pass it on

This study aimed to explore whether the therapeutic effects of EPO rely on the suppression of the NLRP3 inflammasome and the specific mechanisms in an LPS-induced ALI mouse model. ALI was induced in C57BL/6 mice by intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of LPS (15 mg/kg). EPO was administered intraperitoneally at 5 U/g after LPS challenge. The mice were sacrificed 8 h later. Our findings indicated that application of EPO markedly diminished LPS-induced lung injury by restoring histopathological changes, lessened lung wet/dry (W/D) ratio, protein concentrations in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) levels. Meanwhile, EPO evidently decreased interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-18 (IL-18) secretion, the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome components including pro-IL-1β, NLRP3, and cleaved caspase-1 as well as phosphorylation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) p65, which may be associated with activation of EPO receptor (EPOR), phosphorylation of Janus-tyrosine kinase 2 (JAK2) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3)

Taken together, this study indicates that EPO can effectively attenuate LPS-induced lung injury in mice by suppressing the NLRP3 inflammasome, which is dependent upon activation of EPOR/JAK2/STAT3 signaling and inhibition of the NF-κB pathway.

Continue reading “Suppression of NLRP3 Inflammasome” »

Apr 10, 2020

Pollution made COVID-19 worse. Now, lockdowns are clearing the air

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, sustainability

Even before the coronavirus, air pollution killed seven million people a year. Will today’s cleaner air inspire us to do better?

Apr 10, 2020

Awakening volcanic region in Iceland ‘could cause disruption for centuries’

Posted by in category: futurism

Mmm, 👍


Reykjanes peninsula’s last active period started in 10th century and lasted 300 years.

Kate Ravilious

Continue reading “Awakening volcanic region in Iceland ‘could cause disruption for centuries’” »

Apr 10, 2020

Germany Breaks Record: Produces 35% of Electricity From Renewables so Far This Year

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

Germany has broken another renewable energy record but officials say there’s still room for improvement. The German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) reported Sunday that the combined share of renewable energy in the electricity, transport and heating sectors was 15.2 percent in the first half of 2017, up from 14.8 percent during the same period last year.

For the electricity sector alone, renewables supplied a record 35 percent of the country’s power in the first six months of 2017, about a 2 percent increase from 2016’s numbers. To compare, renewables accounted for only 15 percent of the United States’ total electricity generation in 2016.

Despite the new benchmark, BEE acting managing director Harald Uphoff told DW that Germany’s transition to clean energy across all sectors is not happening fast enough. The BEE report showed that renewables provided only 5.1 percent of energy consumed in the transport sector and 13.6 percent in heating.

Apr 10, 2020

Chichi-shima, Japan

Posted by in category: climatology

TSUNAMI WARNING NEAR JAPAN, PLEASE TAG YOUR JAPANESE FRIEND O 👍👀


The Philippine Sea plate is bordered by the larger Pacific and Eurasia plates and the smaller Sunda plate. The Philippine Sea plate is unusual in that its borders are nearly all zones of plate convergence. The Pacific plate is subducted into the mantle, south of Japan, beneath the Izu-Bonin and Mariana island arcs, which extend more than 3,000 km along the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea plate. This subduction zone is characterized by rapid plate convergence and high-level seismicity extending to depths of over 600 km. In spite of this extensive zone of plate convergence, the plate interface has been associated with few great (M8.0) ‘megathrust’ earthquakes. This low seismic energy release is thought to result from weak coupling along the plate interface (Scholz and Campos, 1995). These convergent plate margins are also associated with unusual zones of back-arc extension (along with resulting seismic activity) that decouple the volcanic island arcs from the remainder of the Philippine Sea Plate (Karig et al., 1978; Klaus et al., 1992).

South of the Mariana arc, the Pacific plate is subducted beneath the Yap Islands along the Yap trench. The long zone of Pacific plate subduction at the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea Plate is responsible for the generation of the deep Izu-Bonin, Mariana, and Yap trenches as well as parallel chains of islands and volcanoes, typical of circum-pacific island arcs. Similarly, the northwestern margin of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the Eurasia plate along a convergent zone, extending from southern Honshu to the northeastern coast of Taiwan, manifested by the Ryukyu Islands and the Nansei-Shoto (Ryukyu) trench. The Ryukyu Subduction Zone is associated with a similar zone of back-arc extension, the Okinawa Trough. At Taiwan, the plate boundary is characterized by a zone of arc-continent collision, whereby the northern end of the Luzon island arc is colliding with the buoyant crust of the Eurasia continental margin offshore China.

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