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Jul 25, 2023

Lab-grown meat just reached a major milestone. Here’s what comes next

Posted by in category: futurism

Just last week, the US Department of Agriculture gave the green light to two companies to make and sell their cultivated chicken products in the US. This is a major moment for the field—even if a lot of milestones are left ahead. In a stroke of luck, this week I’m at a conference called Future Food Tech, where people are talking about the biggest news and challenges for alternative proteins of all types. So for the newsletter this week, let’s check in on the world of lab-grown meat.


Reaching commercial production won’t be easy.

Jul 25, 2023

Researchers build a DNA structure and coat it with glass, creating a very low density, very strong material

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

Materials that are both strong and lightweight could improve everything from cars to body armor. But usually, the two qualities are mutually exclusive. Now, University of Connecticut researchers and colleagues have developed an extraordinarily strong, lightweight material using two unlikely building blocks: DNA and glass.

“For the given density, our material is the strongest known,” says Seok-Woo Lee, a materials scientist at UConn. Lee and colleagues from UConn, Columbia University, and Brookhaven National Lab reported the details on July 19 in Cell Reports Physical Science.

Strength is relative. Iron, for example, can take seven tons of pressure per square centimeter. But it’s also very dense and heavy, weighing 7.8 grams/cubic centimeter. Other metals, such as titanium, are stronger and lighter than iron. And certain alloys combining multiple elements are even stronger. Strong, lightweight materials have allowed for lightweight body armor, better medical devices and made safer, faster cars and airplanes.

Jul 25, 2023

“And Yet It Moves” — Galileo, the Planets, and the Church

Posted by in category: space

Galileo was famously forced to deny his observations as they conflicted with Catholicism, defiantly saying “and yet it moves.” But did he really say this?

Jul 25, 2023

Sustained Neutron Production from a Sheared-Flow Stabilized $Z$ Pinch

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Year 2019 mini fusion device 😗😁.


Researchers spot the signatures of nuclear fusion in a table-top-sized setup commonly used to study the plasmas found in stars and other astrophysical objects.

Jul 25, 2023

Artificial intelligence and molecule machine join forces to generalize automated chemistry

Posted by in categories: chemistry, robotics/AI

Year 2022 😗😁


Better chemistry through computing: #ILLINOIS researchers led an international team that combined powerful AI and a molecule-making machine to automate complex chemistry.

Jul 25, 2023

Proteins Protect Heart Cells from Chemotherapy Damage

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

“We really didn’t know which way it would go,” he said.

To find out, the researchers generated versions of the enzymes that would specifically move into the nucleus and bypass the mitochondria. They discovered that this relocation fortified the cells, keeping them alive. They demonstrated that this process worked in both heart cells generated from human stem cells and in mice exposed to chemotherapy.

“This seems to be a new mechanism by which heart cells can defend themselves against chemotherapy damage,” noted Rehman, who is also a member of the University of Illinois Cancer Center.

Jul 25, 2023

A Signal Hidden in Your Blood Predicts Dementia Risk Decades in Advance

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

The earlier that Alzheimer’s disease and other similar conditions can be spotted, the better the treatment options are, and scientists have discovered a blood biomarker that could signal the risk of dementia many years in advance.

A team from the National Institute on Aging, the University of Texas, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US, as well as other institutions across the world, looked at data on 10,981 individuals collected across the course of 25 years.

In particular, the researchers analyzed the proteome of these individuals: the complete set of proteins expressed in a body, driving all kinds of biological processes from cell communication to hormone levels.

Jul 25, 2023

So-called “smart” drugs increase cognitive effort but decrease its quality in healthy individuals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

The use of “smart drugs” to enhance productivity in academic and workplace settings is on the rise. A recent study published in Science Advances examined the effects of three popular smart drugs – methylphenidate, modafinil, and dextroamphetamine – on real-life tasks. The researchers hypothesized that these drugs, which affect dopamine and norepinephrine, would influence motivation and effort, ultimately leading to improved performance.

The study involved forty participants between the ages of 18 and 35. The participants were randomly assigned to four groups and attended four testing sessions. In each session, they were given one of three popular smart drugs or a placebo. The drugs were administered in a double-blinded manner, meaning neither the participants nor the researchers knew which drug was being given.

The researchers used a task called the “knapsack task” to evaluate the participants’ cognitive performance. This task involves solving a complex optimization problem where participants have to select items with certain weights and values to maximize the overall value while staying within a weight limit. The difficulty of the task was designed to simulate real-life complex tasks that people encounter.

Jul 25, 2023

Potent anti-cancer therapy created using ‘click chemistry’

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry

A potent anti-cancer therapy has been created using Nobel prize-winning “click chemistry,” where molecules click together like LEGO bricks, in a new study by UCL and Stanford University researchers.

The study, published in Nature Chemistry, opens up new possibilities for how cutting-edge cancer immunotherapies might be built in future.

The research team created an anti-cancer therapy with three components: one targeting the cancer cell, another recruiting a white blood cell called a T cell to attack the cancer cell, and a third knocking out part of the cancer cell’s defenses.

Jul 25, 2023

‘Quantum avalanche’ explains how nonconductors turn into conductors

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics, supercomputing

Looking only at their subatomic particles, most materials can be placed into one of two categories.

Metals—like copper and iron—have free-flowing electrons that allow them to conduct electricity, while —like glass and rubbe r— keep their electrons tightly bound and therefore do not conduct electricity.

Insulators can turn into metals when hit with an intense electric field, offering tantalizing possibilities for microelectronics and supercomputing, but the behind this phenomenon called resistive switching is not well understood.

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