We are in this together. From oxygen hoods to ventilators, our scientists and engineers across the agency are uniting to join the fight against coronavirus. Tune in to #NASAScience Live on June 25 at 3 p.m. EDT to watch this nationwide effort.
Until recently, there has not been a treatment for the deadly coronavirus. However, that is about to change with the discovery of a new compound: Dexamethosone! With this compound, the worst cases of the coronavirus have seen an increased survival rate.
PS: The stock footage from this photo comes from Videvo!
Continue reading “Dexamethosone: Upcoming Treatment for the Coronavirus | The State of Science” »
This is really old news:
Two tried-and-true vaccines — a century-old inoculation against tuberculosis and a decades-old polio vaccine once given as a sugar cube — are being evaluated to see if they can offer limited protection against the coronavirus.
The old vaccines are oddities among the cutting-edge and targeted technologies being developed to combat the novel coronavirus. New vaccines aim to teach the body’s immune system to recognize and destroy the coronavirus, but scientists are only now beginning to test them in people. Vaccines developed against TB and polio have already been used in millions of people and could offer a low-risk way to rev up the body’s first line of defense — the innate immune system — against a broad array of pathogens, including the coronavirus.
Continue reading “Can old vaccines from science’s medicine cabinet ward off coronavirus?” »
BioMed Realty, a real estate development firm that specializes in life-sciences and biotech space, is taking over development of a multi-acre site in Somerville’s Assembly Square to create a “best-in-class life science office park.”
BioMed has agreed to acquire an existing office at 5 Middlesex Ave. in Somerville, as well as 7.5 acres of land for future development, from a joint venture of Novaya Real Estate Ventures and Cresset Development. The firms did not disclose terms of the agreement.
BioMed, which investment giant Blackstone acquired in 2016, has a local portfolio spanning 3.5 million square feet, including a number of properties in Cambridge, as well as facilities in Watertown and Boston’s Longwood Medical Area. Its most recent project proposal in Cambridge is for a 16-story office and lab at 585 Third St.
Like all countries, China is facing severe economic losses from the pandemic, and that will certainly have a negative impact on scientific research, because funding will be reduced and projects will be delayed, says physicist Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing. Some universities have already announced a cut in funding. The research budget given by the education ministry to Jiangnan University in Wuxi, for example, will drop by more than 25% for 2020, and other universities are facing similar reductions. “An overall budget cutting of government spending on higher education is highly possible, though the level and scope may vary by regions, universities and fields,” says Tang Li, a science-policy scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai.
The country is rapidly gaining on the United States in research, but problems could slow its rise: part 5 in a series on science after the pandemic.
Technion Professor Ido Kaminer and his team have made a dramatic breakthrough in the field of quantum science: a quantum microscope that records the flow of light, enabling the direct observation of light trapped inside a photonic crystal.
Their research, “Coherent Interaction Between Free Electrons and a Photonic Cavity,” was published in Nature. All the experiments were performed using a unique ultrafast transmission electron microscope at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The microscope is the latest and most versatile of a handful that exist in the scientific world.
Continue reading “One-of-a-kind microscope enables breakthrough in quantum science” »
Skateboarding legend Rodney Mullen teams up with Physics Girl to explain the unusual physics behind skateboard tricks. Filmed with a phantom high speed camera at 1000fps, see Mullen’s tricks like never before.
If you liked this video check out these:
How SMOOTHNESS of a SOCCER BALL affects curve!
Crazy tic tac bounce!?
Continue reading “Why this trick should be IMPOSSIBLE ft. Rodney Mullen — Skateboarding Science” »
Circa 2015
The affordable, robust, compact (ARC) reactor is the product of a conceptual design study aimed at reducing the size, cost, and complexity of a combined fusion nuclear science facility (FNSF) and demonstration fusion Pilot power plant. ARC is a ∼200–250 MWe tokamak reactor with a major radius of 3.3 m, a minor radius of 1.1 m, and an on-axis magnetic field of 9.2 T. ARC has rare earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) superconducting toroidal field coils, which have joints to enable disassembly. This allows the vacuum vessel to be replaced quickly, mitigating first wall survivability concerns, and permits a single device to test many vacuum vessel designs and divertor materials. The design point has a plasma fusion gain of Qp ≈ 13.6, yet is fully non-inductive, with a modest bootstrap fraction of only ∼63%. Thus ARC offers a high power gain with relatively large external control of the current profile. This highly attractive combination is enabled by the ∼23 T peak field on coil achievable with newly available REBCO superconductor technology. External current drive is provided by two innovative inboard RF launchers using 25 MW of lower hybrid and 13.6 MW of ion cyclotron fast wave power. The resulting efficient current drive provides a robust, steady state core plasma far from disruptive limits. ARC uses an all-liquid blanket, consisting of low pressure, slowly flowing fluorine lithium beryllium (FLiBe) molten salt. The liquid blanket is low-risk technology and provides effective neutron moderation and shielding, excellent heat removal, and a tritium breeding ratio ≥ 1.1. The large temperature range over which FLiBe is liquid permits an output blanket temperature of 900 K, single phase fluid cooling, and a high efficiency helium Brayton cycle, which allows for net electricity generation when operating ARC as a Pilot power plant.
To encourage businesses to invest in new technologies, the European Union funds industrial research partnerships worth billions of euros in fields such as clean aviation and hydrogen fuel cells. It also offers direct grants to tech startups, and when Horizon Europe launches next year, it plans to offer them equity investments, too.
Report says scientific output is not translating into innovation.
