Suseela Santhosh, director of Vishwa Vidyapeeth school in Bengaluru started an organic farm in her school that feeds its 1,400 students and staff for free.
As the world gets warmer, the use of power-hungry air conditioning systems is projected to increase significantly, putting a strain on existing power grids and bypassing many locations with little or no reliable electric power. Now, an innovative system developed at MIT offers a way to use passive cooling to preserve food crops and supplement conventional air conditioners in buildings, with no need for power and only a small need for water.
The system, which combines radiative cooling, evaporative cooling, and thermal insulation in a slim package that could resemble existing solar panels, can provide up to about 19 degrees Fahrenheit (9.3 degrees Celsius) of cooling from the ambient temperature, enough to permit safe food storage for about 40 percent longer under very humid conditions. It could triple the safe storage time under dryer conditions.
The findings are reported today in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, in a paper by MIT postdoc Zhengmao Lu, Arny Leroy PhD ’21, professors Jeffrey Grossman and Evelyn Wang, and two others. While more research is needed in order to bring down the cost of one key component of the system, the researchers say that eventually such a system could play a significant role in meeting the cooling needs of many parts of the world where a lack of electricity or water limits the use of conventional cooling systems.
Research from the Babraham Institute has developed a method to ‘time jump’ human skin cells by 30 years, turning back the ageing clock for cells without losing their specialised function. Work by researchers in the Institute’s Epigenetics research programme has been able to partly restore the function of older cells, as well as rejuvenating the molecular measures of biological age. The research is published today in the journal eLife and whilst at an early stage of exploration, it could revolutionise regenerative medicine.
What is regenerative medicine?
As we age, our cells’ ability to function declines and the genome accumulates marks of ageing. Regenerative biology aims to repair or replace cells including old ones. One of the most important tools in regenerative biology is our ability to create ‘induced’ stem cells. The process is a result of several steps, each erasing some of the marks that make cells specialised. In theory, these stem cells have the potential to become any cell type, but scientists aren’t yet able to reliably recreate the conditions to re-differentiate stem cells into all cell types.
Researchers have discovered a type of white blood cell in the lungs, called senescent macrophages, that promote tumor growth.
MIT researchers have found a new mechanism by which the superconductor iron selenide transitions into a superconducting state. Unlike other iron-based superconductors, iron selenide’s transition involves a collective shift in atoms’ orbital energy, not atomic spins. This breakthrough opens up new possibilities for discovering unconventional superconductors.
Under certain conditions — usually exceedingly cold ones — some materials shift their structure to unlock new, superconducting behavior. This structural shift is known as a “nematic transition,” and physicists suspect that it offers a new way to drive materials into a superconducting state where electrons can flow entirely friction-free.
But what exactly drives this transition in the first place? The answer could help scientists improve existing superconductors and discover new ones.
Three days ago CNBC reporters visited Pepsi’s Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, California, where it is using Tesla Semi’s new electric trucks. CNBC wanted to see whether the Semis live up to the hype. Watching that report I learned a couple of very interesting details about Pepsi Tesla Semi operations and here I wanted to share with you.
Tesla is preparing to open to its previously exclusive Supercharger network via partnerships with Ford, GM, and Rivian. That could help EV adoption.
Note: June 23 is Alan Turing’s birth anniversary.
Alan Turing wore many scientific hats in his lifetime: a code-breaker in World War II, a prophetic figure of artificial intelligence (AI), a pioneer of theoretical biology, and a founding figure of theoretical computer science. While the former of his roles continue to catch the fancy of popular culture, his fundamental contribution to the development of computing as a mathematical discipline is possibly where his significant scientific impact persists to date.
You’re familiar with the states of matter we encounter daily – such as solid, liquid, and gas – but in more exotic and extreme conditions, new states can appear, and scientists from the US and China just found one.
They’re calling it the chiral bose-liquid state, and as with every new arrangement of particles we discover, it can tell us more about the fabric and the mechanisms of the Universe around us – and in particular, at the super-small quantum scale.
States of matter describe how particles can interact with one another, giving rise to structures and various ways of behaving. Lock atoms in place, and you have a solid. Allow them to flow, you have a liquid or gas. Force charged partnerships apart, you have a plasma.
Some mutations were like a tax rebate and raised the propensity of TAR to adopt its biologically active structures, while other modifications raised the tax and decreased the odds that TAR would adopt a biologically active structure.
Hidden mechanism may lead to new drugs
“What we found was a hidden mechanism for controlling the activity of a molecule in a cell,” says Al-Hashimi. By altering the propensity of TAR to form biologically active states—by changing the tax rate—the researchers could fine-tune the molecule’s activity in cells.
