Blue supergiants are the rock-and-roll stars of the universe. They are massive stars that live fast and die young which makes them rare and difficult to study, even with modern telescopes.
Before space telescopes, few blue supergiants had been observed, so our knowledge of these stars was limited.
Leading astrophysicist Dr. Tamara Rogers, from Newcastle University, UK, and her team have been working for the past five years to create simulations of stars like these to try to predict what it is that makes the surface appear the way it does.
Groupe PSA, responsible for some 25 percent of all light commercial vehicle sales in the UK, has affirmed a commitment to electrification at the Birmingham Commercial Vehicle Show, showing a new Peugeot Boxer and Citroen Relay based on an electric platform.
To kill bacteria in the blood, our immune system relies on nanomachines that can open deadly holes in their targets. UCL scientists have now filmed these nanomachines in action, discovering a key bottleneck in the process which helps to protect our own cells.
The research, published in Nature Communications, provides us with a better understanding of how the immune system kills bacteria and why our own cells remain intact. This may guide the development of new therapies that harness the immune system against bacterial infections, and strategies that repurpose the immune system to act against other rogue cells in the body.
In earlier research, the scientists imaged the hallmarks of attack in live bacteria, showing that the immune system response results in ‘bullet holes’ spread across the cell envelopes of bacteria. The holes are incredibly small with a diameter of just 10 nanometres.
Razer is building a toaster. Mattel is probably building an exascale supercomputer. I hear Raytheon just got into baby toys. Dogs and cats, living together! Chaos reigns.
Mobile World Congress this past February included the unveiling of several notable smartphones like the Nokia 9 PureView and LG G8. However, one device got an inordinate amount of attention — the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop. Hiding behind that clunky name was a phone with a gigantic 18,000 mAh battery. This brick of a phone ended up on Indiegogo, and despite all the hype, it flopped. Hard. Of the anticipated $1.2 million, the phone only pulled in pre-orders worth $15,005 — just 1 percent of the required funding.
The Energizer Power Max P18K Pop is not actually a product of the battery manufacturer. The Energizer name is merely licensed by Avenir Telecom, a French manufacturer of phones, cables, and other accessories. It has produced other Energizer phones in the past, but none of them sparked the same combination of fascination and amusement.
The phone looked like a large aluminum power bank with a 6.2-inch screen on one side. The phone had almost no front-facing bezels thanks to the inclusion of a pop-up selfie camera. The phone parts of the device were competent if not particularly exciting. The P18K was supposed to have a MediaTek Helio P70, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and Android 9 Pie.
