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Apr 23, 2021

Students make neutrons dance beneath Berkeley campus

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry

Circa 2019


To create neutrons in the high flux neutron generator, UC Berkeley researchers heat up deuterium atoms in a vacuum chamber to 50000 degrees Celsius to obtain an ionized plasma (pink glow), then accelerate the ions until they collide and fuse with other deuterium atoms implanted in the titanium cathode, releasing neutrons in the process. The spiral coil is the water-cooled radio-frequency antenna that heats the plasma, viewed through a quartz window into the vacuum chamber. (UC Berkeley photo by Cory Waltz)

In an underground vault enclosed by six-foot concrete walls and accessed by a rolling, 25-ton concrete-and-steel door, University of California, Berkeley, students are making neutrons dance to a new tune: one better suited to producing isotopes required for geological dating, police forensics, hospital diagnosis and treatment.

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Apr 22, 2021

Levitation That’s No Trick: Scientists to Perform “Touchless” Chemical Reactions

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics

Levitation has long been a staple of magic tricks and movies. But in the lab, it’s no trick. Scientists can levitate droplets of liquid, though mixing them and observing the reactions has been challenging. The pay-off, however, could be big as it would allow researchers to conduct contact-free experiments without containers or handling that might affect the outcome. Now, a team reporting in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry has developed a method to do just that.

Scientists have made devices to levitate small objects, but most methods require the object to have certain physical properties, such as electric charge or magnetism. In contrast, acoustic levitation, which uses sound waves to suspend an object in a gas, doesn’t rely on such properties. Yet existing devices for acoustic levitation and mixing of single particles or droplets are complex, and it is difficult to obtain measurements from them as a chemical reaction is happening. Stephen Brotton and Ralf Kaiser wanted to develop a versatile technique for the contactless control of two chemically distinct droplets, with a set of probes to follow the reaction as the droplets merge.

Apr 22, 2021

5,200 Tons of Extraterrestrial Dust Rain Down on Earth Every Single Year

Posted by in category: space

We’ve known for a while that Earth is under a constant rain of space dust, and that it’s copious. Given its microscopic size, however, it’s been very hard to obtain an accurate estimate of the quantity.

Such micrometeorites are no bigger than a fraction of a millimeter, shed like space dander from passing comets and asteroids.

After two decades of collecting the stuff in Antarctica, an international team of scientists now has a number: around 5200 tons of micrometeorites smaller than 700 micrometers (0.7 millimeters), every year.

Apr 22, 2021

Some of Earth’s first animals—including a mysterious, alien-looking creature—are spilling out of Canadian rocks

Posted by in category: space travel

Circa 2018


KOOTENAY NATIONAL PARK IN CANADA— The drumming of the jackhammer deepens. Then, a block of shale butterflies open, exposing to crisp mountain air a surface that hasn’t seen sunlight in half a billion years. “Woo!” says paleontologist Cédric Aria of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China, bracing the top slab of rock upright.

Its underside bears charcoal-colored smudges that look vaguely like horseshoe crabs or the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. “It’s a spaceship landing area here,” says expedition leader Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Canada.

Continue reading “Some of Earth’s first animals—including a mysterious, alien-looking creature—are spilling out of Canadian rocks” »

Apr 22, 2021

UPS agrees to buy electric vertical aircraft to speed up package delivery in small markets

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, drones

United Parcel Service is taking package delivery to new heights, literally, with the purchase of 10 electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft from Beta Technologies.

In an announcement Wednesday, Atlanta-based UPS said it will test the eVTOLs for use in its Express Air delivery network, focusing on small and medium markets. The company will operate the eVTOLs under its Flight Forward division, which is also exploring drone delivery.

The new type of aircraft, which looks like a cross between a plane and a helicopter, “unlocks new business models that don’t exist today,” Bala Ganesh, vice president of the UPS Advanced Technology Group, told CNBC. “For example, you can see a future where it’s carrying, let’s say 1000 pounds, 1500 pounds to rural hospitals,” and landing on a helipad instead of an airport.

Apr 22, 2021

10 stomachs, 32 brains and 18 testicles – a day inside the UK’s only leech farm

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, neuroscience

O, o circa 2013.


They were once used to treat everything from headaches to strangulation, and leeches are still a vital part of surgery. But how are they farmed?

Apr 22, 2021

Soft, skin-interfaced sweat stickers for cystic fibrosis diagnosis and management

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, mobile phones

Cystic fibrosis is diagnosed in infants by use of sweat testing as elevated chloride concentrations in sweat are indicative of cystic fibrosis. The current approach can have poor sensitivity and require repeated testing. Toward the goal of developing a noninvasive, simple test for cystic fibrosis, Ray et al. devised an adhesive microfluidic device, or “sweat sticker,” to capture and analyze sweat in real time with colorimetric readout. Benchtop testing and validation in patients with cystic fibrosis showed that smartphone imaging of sweat stickers adhered to the skin could monitor sweat chloride concentrations. Results support further testing of the sweat stickers in larger studies.

The concentration of chloride in sweat remains the most robust biomarker for confirmatory diagnosis of cystic fibrosis (CF), a common life-shortening genetic disorder.

Apr 22, 2021

BASP1 labels neural stem cells in the neurogenic niches of mammalian brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

In this study we aimed to generate mouse antibodies against epitopes found on NPCs. We isolated one antibody (NSC-6) and characterized it in detail. Mass spectrometry using human hippocampal tissue revealed the identity of the recognized antigen as BASP1, a signaling protein that plays a key role in neurite outgrowth and plasticity14,15,16,17,18,19, but here, we demonstrate that it might be utilized as a marker of NSCs in the adult brain.

Similar approaches to developing antibodies against mouse embryonic stem cells have been attempted in the past utilizing mice46,47 and rabbits48. Major drawbacks in mice include immune tolerance to mouse embryonic stem cell surface antigens leading to low antibody production, which could be overcome by immunizing rabbits instead. Regardless of the animal used as a host, a significant number of antibodies are typically generated against intracellular epitopes when animals are immunized with whole cells as was observed in our study.

We found that NSC-6-labeled BASP1 localizes to all radial glia at the E12 stage of brain development, while postnatally, it restricts to the neurogenic areas of the mouse brain but not the cortex. This expression pattern contrasts previous study using DAB-based immunolabeling for NAP-22 (BASP1 alias) in the adult rat brain, which demonstrated robust labeling of cerebral cortex27. While we do not know the basis of this difference in immunolabeling of cortex, possibilities include species variations between rat and mouse expression of BASP1, or differences in epitope recognition between the two antibodies used that could yield distinct patterns of immunoreactivity. Indeed, the two commercial BASP1 polyclonal antibodies did not immunolabel NSCs and in general, exhibited poor staining of the mouse brain tissue.

Apr 22, 2021

Is that a UFO? No, It’s a 600 Ton Capacity Russian Cargo Airship

Posted by in category: futurism

Russian firm Aerosmena’s plans to build enormous cargo airships may be more than just hot air.

Apr 22, 2021

Did Europe just grab the lead in A.I. in setting tough new rules?

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The European Union today proposed rules governing the use of artificial intelligence that could wind up becoming a de facto standard for how the technology is governed in much of the globe.


Or is it about to consign itself to also-ran status, as the U.S. tech lobby is arguing?