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Self replicating alien probes.

Found on Google from phys.org

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Matuskey, D., Yang, Y., Naganawa, M. et al. ¹¹ C-UCB-J PET imaging is consistent with lower synaptic density in autistic adults. Mol Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02776-2

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Generating water from thin air can solve water woes for remote communities and arid regions but the technology is too expensive for them to afford it.

Solar-driven atmospheric water extraction (SAWE) systems have the potential to address the ongoing freshwater scarcity, but they can only produce water intermittently. Here the authors developed a SAWE system with optimised architecture to achieve continuous freshwater production under sunlight.

The arrival of Paxlovid in December 2021 marked another turning point in the COVID-19 pandemic—an effective antiviral that has since successfully treated millions. But like many antivirals before it, scientists know that at some point, Paxlovid is likely to lose some efficacy due to drug resistance. Researchers working to stay ahead of such emerging threats have now identified a wholly new way to treat SARS-CoV-2 infections—work that may have even broader implications.

In fact, a new study by the Tuschl laboratory introduces a proof-of-concept for a novel class of antivirals that would target a type of enzyme essential not just to SARS, but also many RNA viruses, including Ebola and dengue, as well as cytosolic-replicating DNA viruses, including Pox viruses. The findings may pave the way for a faster and more robust response to future pandemics.

“Nobody has found a way to inhibit this enzyme before,” says Thomas Tuschl, the F. M. Al Akl and Margaret Al Akl professor at Rockefeller. “Our work establishes cap methyl transferase enzymes as therapeutic targets and opens the door to many more antiviral developments against pathogens that until now we’ve had only limited tools to fight.”

Anyone who has operated a 3D printer before, especially those new to using these specialized tools, has likely had problems with the print bed. The bed might not always be the correct temperature leading to problems with adhesion of the print, it could be uncalibrated or dirty or cause any number of other issues that ultimately lead to a failed print. Most of us work these problems out through trial and error and eventually get settled in, but this novel 3D printer instead removes the bed itself and prints on whatever surface happens to be nearby.

The printer is the product of [Daniel Campos Zamora] at the University of Washington and is called MobiPrint. It uses a fairly standard, commercially available 3D printer head but attaches it to the base of a modified robotic vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is modified with open-source software that allows it to map its environment without the need for the manufacturer’s cloud services, which in turn lets the 3D printer print on whichever surface the robot finds in its travels. The goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate printer bed problems; a robot with this capability could have many more applications in the realm of accessibility or even, in the future, printing while on the move.

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A team of Chinese researchers from Xiamen University has won the 2023 “Best Paper Prize” from Applied Optics for their groundbreaking work on a single-photon Raman lidar system. Published in June last year, their paper outshone 1,278 other submissions, securing the top spot.

The paper presented radar technology capable of detecting objects at significant depths with such clarity that it has been compared to “fishing for a needle in the sea.”

The biggest undertaking in history is currently underway: a new continent will be added to this sea. It is not just a regional project, but international.

A new class of magnetism called altermagnetism has been imaged for the first time in a new study. The findings could lead to the development of new magnetic memory devices with the potential to increase operation speeds of up to a thousand times.

Altermagnetism is a distinct form of magnetic order where the tiny constituent magnetic building blocks align antiparallel to their neighbors but the structure hosting each one is rotated compared to its neighbors.

Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy have shown that this new third class of magnetism exists and can be controlled in microscopic devices. The findings have been published in Nature.