Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 944

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem, and it’s expected to worsen with the production of new kinds of flexible electronics for robotics, wearable devices, health monitors, and other new applications, including single-use devices.

A new kind of flexible substrate material developed at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta has the potential to enable not only the recycling of materials and components at the end of a device’s useful life, but also the scalable manufacture of more complex multilayered circuits than existing substrates provide.

The development of this new material is described in the journal RSC Applied Polymers (“Photopatternable, Degradable, and Performant Polyimide Network Substrates for E-Waste Mitigation”), in a paper by MIT Professor Thomas J. Wallin, University of Utah Professor Chen Wang, and seven others.

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Researchers led by the University of California, Irvine have discovered how the TREM2 R47H genetic mutation causes certain brain areas to develop abnormal protein clumps, called beta-amyloid plaques, associated with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Leveraging single-cell Merfish spatial transcriptomics technology, the team was able to profile the effects of the mutation across multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions, offering first-of-their-kind insights at the single-cell level.

The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, compared the brains of normal mice and special mouse models that undergo changes like those in humans with Alzheimer’s.

Findings revealed that the TREM2 mutation led to divergent patterns of beta-amyloid plaque accumulation in various parts of the brain involved in higher-level functions such as memory, reasoning and speech. It also affected certain and their gene expression near the plaques.

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“This study has changed the picture of the environments around stars less massive than our Sun, which emit very little UV light outside of flares,” said Jason Hinkle.

How can red dwarf stars, which are both smaller and cooler than our Sun, influence the habitability potential for exoplanets orbiting them? This is what a recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society hopes to address as a team of international researchers led by the University of Hawai’i investigated how stellar flares emanating from red dwarf stars could help ascertain the habitability potential for exoplanetary systems. This study holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems throughout the cosmos and the conditions necessary for life to exist on these worlds.

For the study, the researchers analyzed near-ultraviolet (near-UV) and far-ultraviolet (far-UV) data obtained from the now-retired NASA GALEX space telescope of 182 stellar flares emitting from 158 stars within 100 parsecs (326 light-years) from Earth. The goal of the study was to ascertain how UV emissions influence whether a planet can host life.

In the end, the researchers found that UV radiation can either contribute to or dampen the possibility of life forming on such worlds, and specifically challenges previous hypotheses pertaining to far-UV radiation, which the researchers estimate can range between 3–12 times the energy levels compared to previously assertions. However, the team notes the processes responsible for the stronger far-UV radiation remains a mystery.

Continue reading “Impact of Intense UV Radiation on Planet Habitability Around Red Dwarf Stars” | >

A discovery that uncovered the surprising way atoms arrange themselves and find their preferred neighbors in multi-principal element alloys (MPEA) could enable engineers to “tune” these unique and useful materials for enhanced performance in specific applications ranging from advanced power plants to aerospace technologies, according to the researchers who made the finding.

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