Lifeboat Foundation

Sydney — Post-mortem examinations have found a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head in two elite Australian rugby league players, the first cases found in the sport, researchers said on Thursday.

The researchers said the players both had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has been widely diagnosed among former US National Football League (NFL) players but is little studied elsewhere.

The Sydney-based study said the condition, once known as ‘punch drunk syndrome’ occurred when repeated brain trauma led to a long-term decline in cognitive function.

The story of the RD-180, the big rocket engine that could.

Epicentre of quake at shallow depth of 14km.

Long-dormant bacteria and viruses, trapped in ice and permafrost for centuries, are reviving as Earth’s climate warms.

During the series of tests at the High Energy Laser System Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range, the Demonstrator Laser Weapon System (DLWS), acting as a ground-based test surrogate for the SHiELD system, was able to engage and shoot down several air launched missiles in flight. The demonstration is an important step of the SHiELD system development, by validating laser effectiveness against the target missiles. The final SHiELD system, however, will be much smaller and lighter, as well as ruggedized for an airborne environment.

https://www.wpafb.af.mil/News/Art/igphoto/2002127367/

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SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket in the early hours of Tuesday morning, delivering 24 satellites into orbit and making many of its clients very happy in the process. The company nailed the landing of both side boosters, but the center core booster narrowly missed its landing and splashed down in the ocean instead.

In the hours following the launch, SpaceX boss Elon Musk weighed in on the unfortunate fate of the core booster, offering a bit of an explanation as to why it missed its mark.

Nano Lett. 2017 Sep 13;17:5836–5842. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b03081. Epub 2017 Aug 14.

Syringe-injectable mesh electronics represent a new paradigm for brain science and neural prosthetics by virtue of the stable seamless integration of the electronics with neural tissues, a consequence of the macroporous mesh electronics structure with all size features similar to or less than individual neurons and tissue-like flexibility. These same properties, however, make input/output (I/O) connection to measurement electronics challenging, and work to-date has required methods that could be difficult to implement by the life sciences community. Here we present a new syringe-injectable mesh electronics design with plug-and-play I/O interfacing that is rapid, scalable, and user-friendly to nonexperts. The basic design tapers the ultraflexible mesh electronics to a narrow stem that routes all of the device/electrode interconnects to I/O pads that are inserted into a standard zero insertion force (ZIF) connector.

Payload fairings protect satellites during launch and are jettisoned after rockets reach space. The fairings SpaceX uses for the Heavy and the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which fall back to Earth in two pieces, cost about $6 million each, company founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.

There’s thus ample motivation to recover and reuse this expensive hardware. Indeed, SpaceX equips both fairing halves with parachutes and small steering thrusters, to bring the gear down softly and under control.

And that’s where Ms. Tree comes in: Snagging the fairing halves before they hit corrosive seawater makes reuse more feasible and cost effective, Musk has said.