Lifeboat Foundation

Two planets that astronomers discovered on the Kepler mission may not be the rocky, Earth-like bodies that we originally believed. Instead, a new study suggests that they could be two water worlds, and that they are less dense than astronomers originally posited. What’s intriguing about these worlds is that they are believed to be somewhat similar to Europa, which is a rocky core encased in water and capped in ice.

The cloud condensation nuclei activation of sea spray aerosol (SSA) is tightly linked to the hygroscopic properties of these particles and is defined by their physical and chemical properties. While hygroscopic sea salt in SSA strongly influences particle water uptake, the marine-derived components that make up the organic fraction of SSA constitute a complex mixture, and their effect on hygroscopic growth is unknown. To constrain the effect of organic compounds and specifically surface-active compounds that adsorb on particle interfaces, particle hygroscopic growth studies were performed on laboratory-generated model sea salt/sugar particles. For sea salt/glucose particles, ionic surfactants facilitated water uptake at low relative humidity (RH), increasing the particle growth factor (GF) by up to 7.61%, and caused a reduction in the deliquescence relative humidity (DRH), while nonionic surfactants had a minimal effect. Replacing glucose with polysaccharide laminarin in sea salt/sugar/surfactant particles caused a reduction in GF at low RHs and minimized the effect of ionic surfactants on the DRH. At RHs above the DRH, the addition of anionic or nonionic surfactants caused a decrease in GF for both sea salt/glucose and sea salt/laminarin particles. The addition of cationic surfactants, however, did not have a dampening effect on water uptake of sea salt/sugar particles and even showed a GF increase of up to 3.7% at 90% RH. An increase in the complexity of the sugar dampens the water uptake for particles containing nonionic surfactants but increases the water uptake for cationic surfactants. The cloud activation potential for 100 nm particles analyzed in this study is higher for ionic surfactants and decreases with an increase in surfactant molecular size when particle interfacial tension is considered. The surfactant effect on the hygroscopic growth and cloud activation potential of the particles containing sea salt/sugar is dependent on the surfactant ionicity and molecular size, the particle size and interfacial tension, and the interactions between inorganic salt and organic species under different RH conditions.

Summary: Findings support the theory that microRNAs are essential for the development and evolution of intelligent life.

Source: Dartmouth College.

Octopuses have captured the attention of scientists and the public with their remarkable intelligence, including the use of tools, engaging in creative play and problem-solving, and even escaping from aquariums.

The past and the future are tightly linked in conventional quantum mechanics. Perhaps too tightly. A tweak to the theory could let quantum possibilities increase as space expands.

New therapeutic has the potential to treat inflammatory bowel disease by targeting a molecule that keeps order in the intestines.

Salk Institute scientists have developed a new drug that acts like a master reset switch in the gut. Called FexD, the compound has previously been found to burn fat, lower cholesterol, and ward off colorectal cancer in mice. Now, the team reports that FexD can also prevent and reverse intestinal inflammation in mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease. The study was published on December 12, 2022, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The Salk-developed drug FexD provides a new way to restore balance to the digestive system and treat inflammatory diseases that are currently very difficult to manage,” says Salk Professor Ronald Evans, senior author of the study. Evans is also director of Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology.

Astronomical winter officially begins this Wednesday and Jack Frost will arrive in full force.

Temperatures will take a polar plunge this week, and even Florida won’t be spared, thanks to a strong high-pressure system sliding south from Canada.

“Very cold Arctic air masses will envelop much of the central and eastern half of the nation during the two week period, including the busy holiday travel season,” the Climate Prediction Center said.

Structures made out of building blocks can shift their shape and autonomously self-organize to a new configuration. The physicists Saeed Osat and Ramin Golestanian from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) revealed this mechanism which may be used to actively manipulate molecular organization. A seed of the novel desired configuration is sufficient to trigger reorganization.

This principle can be applied on to biological building blocks which are constantly recycled to form new structures in living systems.

The concept of remodeling is familiar to most people: those who have ever played with Lego bricks know that many combinations and structures possible from the same components.

Soft robots have phenomenally advanced in recent years. Microscale soft robots designated to navigate difficult paths and perform biological functions in the human body could have profound potential biomedical applications such as surgery, prosthetics, and pain relief.

Currently, the intrinsic functionalization of bio-inspired soft robots is based on elastomeric materials such as silica gel, which requires introducing bulky components and extensive processing steps. They have major limitations in their extent of deformability as compared to their natural biological counterparts.

Continue reading “Researchers pioneer biocompatible all-water ‘Aquabots’” »

It takes chemist Liaisan Khasanova less than a minute to turn an ordinary silica glass tube into a printing nozzle for a very special 3D printer. The chemist inserts the capillary tube—which is just one millimeter thick—into a blue device, closes the flap and presses a button. After a few seconds there is a loud bang and the nozzle is ready for use.

“A laser beam inside the device heats up the tube and pulls it apart. Then we suddenly increase the tensile force so that the glass breaks in the middle and a very sharp tip forms,” explains Khasanova, who is working on her Ph.D. in chemistry in the Electrochemical Nanotechnology Group at the University of Oldenburg, Germany.

Khasanova and her colleagues need the minuscule nozzles to print incredibly tiny three-dimensional metallic structures. This means the nozzles’ openings must be equally tiny—in some cases so small that only a single molecule can squeeze through. “We are trying to take 3D printing to its technological limits,” says Dr. Dmitry Momotenko, who leads the junior research group at the Institute of Chemistry. His goal: “We want to assemble objects atom by atom.”