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May 23, 2019

SpaceX’s deploys 60-satellite Starlink blob, all spacecraft successfully phone home

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

SpaceX’s first 60 “production-design” Starlink satellites have been successfully placed in orbit, kicking off a constellation beta test at an unprecedented scale. According to CEO Elon Musk, all spacecraft also managed to successfully ‘phone home’ after separation.

The company’s Redmond satellite operators still need to verify that all spacecraft are functional and healthy after a Falcon 9 launch and chaotic deployment from the rocket’s upper stage, but the riskiest part of the mission is now arguably behind SpaceX. What remains is essentially a massive, hardware-rich test of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, ranging from granular flight testing of individual components to an effective simulation of a full constellation’s operations.

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May 23, 2019

Cloud Run: Bringing serverless to containers

Posted by in category: futurism

Run for serverless containers includes new metrics, supports Cloud SQL, and is available from new GCP regions.

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May 23, 2019

Huge Amount of Water Ice Is Spotted on Mars (It Could Be Long-Lost Polar Ice Caps)

Posted by in category: space

Researchers believe they’ve spotted the remains of ancient Martian ice caps mingled with layers of sand, all a mile below the Red Planet’s modern north pole.

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May 23, 2019

Amazon is reportedly working on an Alexa-powered wearable that reads human emotions

Posted by in categories: health, wearables

Amazon is reportedly developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions.

If successful, the health product could help the company improve its targeted advertisements and make better product recommendations, reports Bloomberg. The unnamed device could also advise humans on how to better interact with others.

A source showed Bloomberg internal Amazon documents that revealed a few details about the futuristic health and wellness product.

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May 23, 2019

The Government Is Serious About Creating Mind-Controlled Weapons

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, drones, genetics, government, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research arm, is paying scientists to invent ways to instantly read soldiers’ minds using tools like genetic engineering of the human brain, nanotechnology and infrared beams. The end goal? Thought-controlled weapons, like swarms of drones that someone sends to the skies with a single thought or the ability to beam images from one brain to another.

This week, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced that six teams will receive funding under the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program. Participants are tasked with developing technology that will provide a two-way channel for rapid and seamless communication between the human brain and machines without requiring surgery.

“Imagine someone who’s operating a drone or someone who might be analyzing a lot of data,” said Jacob Robinson, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, who is leading one of the teams. [DARPA’s 10 Coolest Projects: From Humanoid Robots to Flying Cars].

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May 23, 2019

For this metal, electricity flows, but not the heat

Posted by in category: materials

There’s a known rule-breaker among materials, and a new discovery by an international team of scientists adds more evidence to back up the metal’s nonconformist reputation. According to a new study led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and at the University of California, Berkeley, electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat.

The findings, to be published in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science, could lead to a wide range of applications, such as thermoelectric systems that convert waste from engines and appliances into electricity.

For most metals, the relationship between electrical and thermal conductivity is governed by the Wiedemann-Franz Law. Simply put, the law states that good conductors of electricity are also good conductors of heat. That is not the case for metallic , a material already noted for its unusual ability to switch from an insulator to a metal when it reaches a balmy 67 degrees Celsius, or 152 degrees Fahrenheit.

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May 23, 2019

Scientists solve a century-old mystery to treat asthma and airway inflammation

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Belgian research groups from the VIB, Ghent University, Ghent University Hospital, and the biotech company Argenx have solved a century-long puzzle about the presence of protein crystals in asthma. Normally, proteins do not crystallize in the body, but there are some instances when this process does occur. Charcot-Leyden crystals are made from the protein galectin-10 and were discovered in the airways of asthmatics as early as 1853.

However, the have been largely ignored by scientists, and their actual link to disease remained unknown. The Belgian research groups have now established that the crystals are highly abundant in airway mucus, stimulate the immune system and promote the and altered mucus production that is often seen in the airways of asthmatics. Together, the academic and company scientists also developed antibodies that can dissolve these crystals to reduce key features. Such antibodies could be first-in-class therapeutics that reverse protein crystals and treat asthma and other chronic inflammatory diseases of the airways. The study is published in the leading journal Science.

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May 23, 2019

Gamma Rays: The Incredible, Hulking Reality

Posted by in category: futurism

What can gamma rays really do?

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May 23, 2019

New collider concept would take quantum theories to an extreme

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

A new idea for smashing beams of elementary particles into one another could reveal how light and matter interact under extreme conditions that may exist on the surfaces of exotic astrophysical objects, in powerful cosmic light bursts and star explosions, in next-generation particle colliders and in hot, dense fusion plasma.

Most such interactions in nature are very successfully described by a theory known as (QED). However, the current form of the theory doesn’t help predict phenomena in extremely large electromagnetic fields. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their colleagues have suggested a new particle collider concept that would allow us to study these extreme effects.

Extreme fields sap energy from colliding particle beams—an unwanted loss that is typically mitigated by bundling into relatively long, flat bunches and keeping the electromagnetic strength in check. Instead, the new study suggests making particle bunches so short that they wouldn’t have enough time to lose energy. Such a collider would provide an opportunity to study intriguing effects associated with extreme fields, including the collision of photons emerging from the particle beams.

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May 23, 2019

Natural “Fasting” Molecule Exerts Anti-Aging Effects to Protect Vascular System

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

A molecule produced by the body during fasting or calorie restriction has anti-aging effects on the vascular system, which could reduce the occurrence and severity of human diseases related to blood vessels, such as cardiovascular disease, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

“As people become older, they are more susceptible to disease, like cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Ming-Hui Zou, senior author of the study. “Age is the most important so-called risk factor for human disease. How to actually delay aging is a major pathway to reducing the incidence and severity of human disease.

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