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Mar 8, 2018

Sculptures inspired by quantum physics appear to vanish in thin air as you walk around them

Posted by in category: quantum physics

Now you see them, now you don’t.

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Mar 8, 2018

Diamonds reveal sign of the deepest water known inside Earth

Posted by in category: futurism

A rare form of ice crystal in the gems could have formed only at the crushing pressures found in the mantle.

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Mar 8, 2018

Clocks in Europe are running late because of the Kosovo conflict

Posted by in category: energy

For weeks, digital clocks in Europe have been lagging behind. The unexpected source of the problem: Kosovo and Serbia, whose power grid operators can’t find common ground.

Clock radios and timers on microwaves and stoves have gotten out of sync in Europe in recent weeks. The reason: Coordination problems between the power grid operators of Kosovo and Serbia.

Since mid January power companies in Kosovo and Serbia have failed to mutually balance their electricity grids in the case of irregularities. According to the grid codes of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), they are obliged to maintain a mean frequency of 50 hertz (oscillations per second) and help each other out if necessary.

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Mar 8, 2018

Could mosquitoes deliver malaria vaccines?

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

While the idea of using an army of mosquitos to administer vaccines has been considered, we would first need to find a vaccine for malaria.

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Mar 8, 2018

50 Years Ago, Pulsars Burst Onto The Scene

Posted by in category: space

Thousands of pulsars have been discovered since the announcement of their detection 50 years ago.

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Mar 8, 2018

Mining asteroids mining might sound like science fiction, but it’s inching closer to reality—and it could be incredibly lucrative

Posted by in categories: energy, space

Sending a spacecraft to the far reaches of our solar system to mine asteroids might seem like an improbable ambition best left to science fiction. But it’s inching closer to reality. A NASA mission is underway to test the feasibility on a nearby asteroid, and a niche group of companies is ramping up to claim a piece of the pie.

Industry barons see a future in finding and harnessing water on asteroids for rocket fuel, which will allow astronauts and spacecrafts to stay in orbit for longer periods. Investors, including Richard Branson, China’s Tencent Holdings and the nation of Luxembourg, see a longer-term solution to replenishing materials such as iron and nickel as Earth’s natural resources are depleted.

Millions of asteroids roam our solar system. Most are thought unsuitable for mining, either because they’re too small, too inaccessible to Earth or because the materials that make up the asteroid have little value. But we know of almost 1,000 asteroids that show potential. Timing is everything, though. The varied orbits of these asteroids mean that many are nearby only once every several years.

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Mar 8, 2018

Personalized Cancer Vaccine Enhances Immune Response

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Researchers at Harvard have described a new cancer vaccine approach that uses an injectable biomaterial scaffold to deliver a payload of tumor-specific peptides that stimulate the immune system to respond rapidly to cancer cells.

Abstract

Existing strategies to enhance peptide immunogenicity for cancer vaccination generally require direct peptide alteration, which, beyond practical issues, may impact peptide presentation and result in vaccine variability. Here, we report a simple adsorption approach using polyethyleneimine (PEI) in a mesoporous silica microrod (MSR) vaccine to enhance antigen immunogenicity. The MSR–PEI vaccine significantly enhanced host dendritic cell activation and T-cell response over the existing MSR vaccine and bolus vaccine formulations. Impressively, a single injection of the MSR–PEI vaccine using an E7 peptide completely eradicated large, established TC-1 tumours in about 80% of mice and generated immunological memory. When immunized with a pool of B16F10 or CT26 neoantigens, the MSR–PEI vaccine eradicated established lung metastases, controlled tumour growth and synergized with anti-CTLA4 therapy.

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Mar 8, 2018

Nanoparticles Could Save Lives

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology

A new “drug” uses magnetically-driven nanoparticles to both stop bleeding and reduce blood loss from internal bleeding, which is often fatal.

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Mar 8, 2018

Scientists Observe Red Giant Waking Up Neutron Star in a Flash

Posted by in categories: energy, space

Neutron stars aren’t the twinkle-twinkle kind you typically see in the night sky. They’re stellar corpses, and incredibly dense sources of gravity, with perhaps 1.5 times the mass of the sun packed into an area less than a dozen miles across. Around 9,000 light years away from Earth, one neutron star seems to have befriended a red dwarf. And scientists observed the new relationship beginning in a flash of energy.

An international team of researchers first spotted what looked like the symbiotic relationship of an old red dwarf star waking up a neutron star on August 13, 2017, using an Earth-orbiting telescope called INTEGRAL. While binary stars are common, lots of things about this finding, from capturing the initial blast that signaled the start of the stellar relationship, were a surprise.

“It was a very exciting find,” study author Arash Bahramian from Michigan State University told Gizmodo, “Especially given that it’s rare to see the start of the process.”

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Mar 8, 2018

Watch: ALMA Telescopes Zoom 1,350 Light-Years into Space

Posted by in category: space

Astronomers were able to use powerful telescopes to zoom 1,350 light-years away from Earth into the Orion Nebula. Here’s what they found.

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