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Nov 23, 2018

Physicist Wins Ig Noble Prize For Study On Whether Cats Should Be Classified As Liquids Or Solids

Posted by in categories: humor, mathematics

A French physicist has won an Ig Nobel Prize for using mathematical formulas to determine whether cats are liquid or solid.

are cats liquid nobel prize

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Nov 23, 2018

World experts heading down under to talk silicon quantum computing

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Scientists from around the world are meeting in Sydney to discuss the latest advancements in silicon quantum computing.

Scientists from around the world are landing in Sydney this week to join discussions on the latest research in silicon quantum computing with renowned physicist and Australian of the Year, Professor Michelle Simmons, and UNSW Sydney researchers from the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQCT), including Professor Andrew Dzurak, Professor Sven Rogge and Professor Andrea Morello.

Bringing together more than 200 leading researchers in the field, the Silicon Quantum Electronics Workshop is a global initiative to share research insights and technology advancements in the race to build the world’s first quantum computer – in silicon.

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Nov 23, 2018

Powdered Booze Could Fix Your Clogged Arteries

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Fats and cholesterol that build up along the insides of blood vessels can limit the flow of blood around the heart, causing heart attacks or strokes. To treat this condition, called atherosclerosis, millions of Americans take drugs every day—the most popular of these, statins, alone cost up to $13 billion per year in 2014, and these don’t work for every patient. Now scientists have discovered that a compound already approved by the FDA can dissolve away this buildup in the blood vessels more effectively than existing treatments. The researchers published their study today in Science Translational Medicine.

The compound is called beta-cyclodextrin, and it’s already used in some pharmaceuticals to bind the active drug to fatty acids in the body where it is most needed.

Now, here’s the good news: beta-cyclodextrin is also the main ingredient used to make powdered alcohol. Pour booze into a heap of cyclodextrin, and the alcohol molecules cling to the ring-shaped cyclodextrin molecules, making a fluffy dry powder that packs a punch.

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Nov 23, 2018

Meet Dawn Shaughnessy, the Real-Life Alchemist Who Expanded the Periodic Table

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics

The periodic table is chemistry’s holy text. Not only does it list all of the tools at chemists’ disposal, but its mere shape—where these elements fall into specific rows and columns—has made profound predictions about new elements and their properties that later came true. But few chemists on Earth have a closer relationship with the document than Dawn Shaughnessy, whose team is partially responsible for adding six new elements to table’s ranks.

Shaughnessy leads a team of real-life alchemists. You might be familiar with alchemy as a medieval European practice where mystics attempted to transmute elements into more valuable ones. But rather than turn the element lead into gold, Shaughnessy and her team turned plutonium into flerovium.

Shaughnessy’s parents encouraged her to pursue science from a young age—her father was an engineer, and she had an electronics kit as well as a chemistry set as a child. She’d first thought about doing orthopedic research but didn’t want to cut people open, she explained to me, and chemistry was a natural fit. But when she arrived at the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate, she learned that chemistry could be more than just mixing liquids in beakers. She could create the atoms themselves.

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Nov 23, 2018

UK radar satellite returns first images

Posted by in categories: mapping, transportation

Sydney Harbour and the Egyptian pyramids feature in the debut images from the first all-UK radar spacecraft.

NovaSAR was developed jointly by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited of Guildford and Airbus in Portsmouth, and launched to orbit in September.

Its pictures are now being assessed for use in diverse applications, including crop analysis, flood and forestry mapping, and maritime surveillance.

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Nov 23, 2018

New blood test can detect ovarian cancer in its early stages

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Ovarian cancer is rarely detected in its early stages, which makes treatment less effective. A new blood test, however, may become a game-changer.

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Nov 23, 2018

A Break in the Quest for the Quantum Speed Limit

Posted by in category: quantum physics

When you see that, you know you’re touching on something very, very deep and fundamental.

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Nov 23, 2018

Parkinson’s Disease Patient in World First Stem Cell Therapy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

In a world first, a patient with Parkinson’s disease has undergone transplant therapy, which uses reprogrammed stem cells to replace neurons destroyed by the disease.

Stem cell therapy is part of the toolkit

The stem cell field is an area of science that is relatively well funded and, out of all the branches of medical science relevant to aging, is probably the most understood by the public. In the last decade or so, progress in stem cell research has been rapid, and scientists now have a wide range of cell types they can create on demand via cellular programming.

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Nov 23, 2018

Space Station Crew Message for Thanksgiving

Posted by in category: space

Join crew members Alexander Gerst and Serena Auñón-Chancellor as they get ready for #Thanksgiving aboard the International Space Station with poundcake and candied yams. Watch: https://go.nasa.gov/2qZt4LY

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Nov 23, 2018

Scientists may have found a way to treat cancer without chemotherapy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

As advanced as medicine is today, the incidence of cancer diagnoses continues to rise.

Scientists at the International Agency for Cancer Research estimate that, this year, around 18 million people will be diagnosed with cancer, and around 10 million people will die of tumours— while these are the highest figures to date, researchers all over the world are looking for new therapeutic options.

Scientists from Northwestern University in the US recently discovered a kind of genetic “kill code” in cells that could theoretically be used to treat cancer without chemotherapy.

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