Posted in biotech/medical
Pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan, known to have discovered the SARS virus in 2003, reported that the pathogen is three times more contagious than common influenza; however, he admits that its spread is likely to slow with the onset of summer.
BERLIN: The European Space Agency said Friday that human urine could one day become a useful ingredient in making concrete to build on the moon.
The agency said researchers in a recent study it sponsored found that urea, the main organic compound in urine, would make the mixture for a “lunar concrete” more malleable before it hardens into its sturdy final form.
In the middle of an international pandemic, VICE News goes straight to people who spent years learning how outbreaks work and how humans will respond.
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A team at UPV’s Nanophotonics Technology Center has discovered a new fundamental symmetry in electromagnetism, acoustics and elasticity laws: a temporal supersymmetry.
According to Carlos García Meca and Andrés Macho Ortiz, researchers at NTC-UPV, this new symmetry allows the conservation of the linear moment between dramatically different physical systems. This paves the way to designing pioneering optical, acoustic and elastic devices, including invisible omnidirectional, polarization-independent materials, ultra-compact frequency shifters, isolators and pulse-shape transformers.
“These devices allow us to unusually modify different properties of light signals inside photonic circuits to process the spread of information. This is vital in communication systems. Moreover, we can adapt the functionality of those devices to the requirements at any time, as they are dynamically configurable,” explained Carlos García Meca.
Form Energy, which is developing what it calls ultra-low-cost, long-duration energy storage for the grid, has signed a contract with the Minnesota-based Great River Energy to develop a 1 megawatt, 150 megawatt hour pilot project.
The second-largest electric utility in the Minnesota, Great River Energy’s installation in Cambridge, Minn. will be the first commercial deployment of the venture-backed battery technology developer’s long-duration energy storage technology.
From Energy’s battery system is significant for its ability to deliver 1 megawatt of power for 150 hours — a huge leap over the lithium ion batteries currently in use for most grid-scale storage projects. Those battery systems can last for two- to four-hours.
O,.o…
Organoids have become an important tool for studying many disease processes and testing potential drugs. Now, they are being used in a surprising and unexpected way: for the production of snake venom. On January 23 in the journal Cell, researchers are reporting that they have created organoids of the venom glands of the Cape coral snake (Aspidelaps lubricus cowlesi) and that these glands are capable of producing venom.
“More than 100,000 people die from snake bites every year, mostly in developing countries. Yet the methods for manufacturing antivenom haven’t changed since the 19th century,” says senior author Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “It’s clear there is a huge unmet medical need for new treatments.”
He adds: “Every snake has dozens of different components in their venom. These are extremely potent molecules that are designed to stop prey from running away. They affect systems as varied as the brain, neuromuscular junctions, blood coagulation, and more. Many of them have potential bioprospecting applications for new drugs.”
Circa 2016 o,.o.
It is possible large, winged dragons could be created using cutting-edge genome editing, academics have suggested.
The cost of producing the enzyme was just four percent of the cost of making brand new plastic using oil.
Crispr could lead to skin that color changes for humans in the military.
The masters of marine masquerade can morph from rough to smooth in less than a second.
This could allow for nanosuit armor :3.
Imagine if there were a metallic device that could be transported all squished down into a compact ball, but that would automatically “bloom” out into its useful form when heated. Well, that may soon be possible, thanks to a newly developed liquid metal lattice.
Led by Asst. Prof. Pu Zhang, a team of scientists at New York’s Bingham University started by 3D printing lattice-type structures out of an existing metal known as Field’s alloy. Named after its inventor, chemist Simon Quellen Field, the alloy consists of a mixture of bismuth, indium and tin. It also melts when heated to just 62 °C (144 °F), but then re-solidifies upon cooling.
Utilizing a combination of vacuum casting and a technique known as conformal coating, those alloy lattices were subsequently covered with a layer of rubber. As long as the ambient temperature stayed below 62 degrees, the resulting structures remained rigid.
