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May 3, 2020

NASA’s Doug Hurley Will Make History in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon

Posted by in category: space travel

Hurley is one of two astronauts who will be aboard the Crew Dragon for its first manned test flight this month. He spoke to Digital Trends about the experience.

May 3, 2020

13 seconds, 67 shots, 4 dead: 50 years ago, the Kent State shootings changed the country

Posted by in category: futurism

The shootings at the Vietnam War protest was seen “as an indication that things in the U.S. — on and off campus — were spiraling out of control,” a historian said.

National Guardsmen fire a barrage of tear gas into a crowd of demonstrators on the campus of Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Bettmann Archive.

May 3, 2020

Pompeo: ‘Enormous Evidence’ Links Virus to China Lab

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said “enormous evidence” shows the novel coronavirus outbreak began in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but didn’t provide any proof for his claims.

“I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan,” Pompeo said on ABC’s “This Week.” “These are not the first times that we’ve had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”

Pompeo stopped short of saying the virus was man-made, noting that he agreed with a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that ruled out genetic modification or it having been man-made.

May 3, 2020

Window to another world: Life is bubbling up to seafloor with petroleum from deep below

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder that we move through a world shaped by unseen life. Bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic organisms regulate the Earth’s vital functions and resources, from the air we breathe to all our food and most of our energy sources. An estimated one-third of the Earth’s microbes are literally hidden, buried in sediments deep below the ocean floor. Now, scientists have shown that these “deep biosphere” microbes aren’t staying put but are bubbling up to the ocean floor along with fluids from buried petroleum reservoirs. These hitchhikers in petroleum seeps are diversifying the microbial community that thrives at the seafloor, impacting deep-sea processes, such as carbon cycling, that have global implications.

“This study confirms that seeps are a conduit for transporting life from the deep biosphere to the seafloor,” says co-author Emil Ruff, a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole. The study, led by Anirban Chakraborty and Casey Hubert of the University of Calgary, is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team analyzed 172 seafloor samples from the eastern Gulf of Mexico that had been collected as part of a 2011 survey for the oil industry. A fraction of these samples contained migrated gaseous hydrocarbons, the chief components of oil and gas. These petroleum seeps on the harbored distinct featuring bacteria and archaea that are well-known inhabitants of deep biosphere sediments.

May 3, 2020

Kim Jong Un surfaces — North Korea leader spotted at factory visit on May Day

Posted by in categories: existential risks, military

Seoul/New York: Kim Jong Un ended his almost three-week absence from public events with a factory visit, an appearance that will ease, but not end, concern about the stability of the North Korean regime and control of its nuclear arsenal.

Kim presided over a May Day ceremony to mark the completion of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory northeast of the capital Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency reported early Saturday. State media released photos showing the North Korean leader in a black Mao suit cutting a ribbon outside the facility, which non-proliferation experts say could be used to help produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.

U.S. President Donald Trump declined to comment on Kim’s reemergence besides telling reporters before heading to Camp David for the weekend that he “may” speak with the North Korean leader. “We’ll have something to say about it at the appropriate time,” Trump said.

May 3, 2020

Can Estrogen and Other Sex Hormones Help Men Survive Covid-19?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, sex

As the novel coronavirus swept through communities around the world, preying disproportionately on the poor and the vulnerable, one disadvantaged group has demonstrated a remarkable resistance. Women, whether from China, Italy or the U.S., have been less likely to become acutely ill — and far more likely to survive.

Which has made doctors wonder: Could hormones produced in greater quantities by women be at work?

Now scientists on two coasts, acting quickly on their hunches in an effort to save men’s lives, are testing the hypothesis. The two clinical trials will each dose men with the sex hormones for limited durations.

Continue reading “Can Estrogen and Other Sex Hormones Help Men Survive Covid-19?” »

May 3, 2020

Stretchable lithium-ion battery based on new micro-honeycomb structure

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, wearables

A Korean research team has developed a lithium-ion battery that is flexible enough to be stretched. Dr. Jeong Gon Son’s research team at the Photo-Electronic Hybrids Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they had constructed a high-capacity, stretchable lithium-ion battery. The battery was developed by fabricating a structurally stretchable electrode consisting solely of electrode materials and then assembling with a stretchable gel electrolyte and stretchable packaging.

Rapid technological advancements in the electronics industry have led to a fast-growing market for high-performance wearable devices, such as smart bands and body-implantable electronic devices, such as pacemakers. These advancements have considerably increased the need for energy storage devices to be designed in flexible and stretchable forms that mimic human skin and organs.

However, it is very difficult to impart stretchability to the because the solid inorganic material occupies most of the volume, and other components such as current collectors and separators must also be made stretchable. In addition, the problem of liquid electrolyte leakage under deformation must also be solved, as well as the problem of leaking liquid .

May 3, 2020

How Time Is Encoded in Memories

Posted by in categories: information science, neuroscience

Rats and equations help researchers develop a theory of how our brains keep track of when events took place.

May 3, 2020

SpaceX, NASA hold press conference, historic astronaut launch clears final hurdles before readiness

Posted by in category: space travel

With less than a month to go before the historic first crewed flight – and final human rating certification test – of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demonstration 2 mission, NASA and SpaceX jointly held a full day of pre-mission press conferences on Friday, May 1st. Throughout the day many minor, but crucial, details were revealed.

Two primary technical concerns remained prior to Crew Dragon’s debut astronaut mission- the final drop test of the Crew Dragon Mark III parachutes and NASA’s clearance of SpaceX’s resolution of an in-flight engine-out anomaly suffered during the ascent phase of a previous Starlink mission.

May 3, 2020

Philip W. Anderson (1923–2020)

Posted by in category: particle physics

Nobel winner who transformed condensed-matter and particle physics.