Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 189

A study published in the new non-alcoholic alternative has been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A common complaint about non-alcoholic beer that prevents people from changing to the healthier alternative is that the taste isn't the same. According to Sotirios Kampranis, a Professor at the University of Copenhagen, the complaint that they taste flat and watery is due to the lack of hops.

"What non-alcoholic beer lacks is the aroma from hops. When you remove the alcohol from the beer, for example by heating it up, you also kill the aroma that comes from hops. Other methods for making alcohol-free beer by minimizing fermentation also lead to poor aroma because alcohol is needed for hops to pass their unique flavor to the beer," said Kampranis.

The nonprofit organization Space for Humanity might be able to help you out.

Space for Humanity is accepting applications for its Citizen Astronaut Program, but the deadline to be accepted is only a few days away, on Tuesday, February 15th. The program will cover the expense of training and flying you on a suborbital spaceflight. The program hopes to spread the "overview effect," a phenomenon experienced by astronauts shifting their perspective about life and our planet when viewing Earth from space.

Space for Humanity seeks individuals with a strong passion, but not necessarily one that has to be directly related to space. The organization hopes that the overview effect will spur action on those passions, as it has done for others in the past. Leadership qualities and a level of influence also contribute to the selection criteria.

A study on the new material has been published in the journal Cellulose.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have engineered a new composite material made from cellulose and synthetic polymer. Cellulose fibers give all plant cells their structural rigidity and comprise cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs). On a nanoscale, these CNCs are stronger and stiffer than Kevlar.

The CNCs make up 60 to 90 percent of the composite, the highest fraction achieved to date, with the rest made up of synthetic polymer. The microscale structure of the composite is similar to a brick-and-mortar structure. The researchers say the composite is stronger and tougher than some types of bone and harder than typical aluminum alloys.

The study uncovering canine's ability to detect COVID-19 was published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy.

Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors in their noses, compared to only a measly 6 million scent receptors in humans. Forty percent more brain space in dogs is devoted to analyzing odors than humans, allowing them to detect compounds with even greater sensitivity than some analytical instruments. They detect smells from volatile organic compounds associated with a given source.

Certain volatile organic compounds, known as biomarkers, are created and exhaled by human patients afflicted with diseases like cancer or diabetes and can be detected by trained dogs. Researchers from the Florida International University confirmed that dogs could be trained to detect COVID-19.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Health on the toxic chemical's prevalence.

The chemical 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is one of the two ingredients used in making Agent Orange, which the United States military used during the Vietnam War to destroy forests and crops, but that inadvertently caused illnesses for millions of people. Used worldwide as a herbicide and defoliant, researchers from the George Washington University (GWU) have found that for 14,395 study participants, nearly 33 percent of their urine samples contained detectable amounts of 2,4-D.

"Our study suggests human exposures to 2,4-D have gone up significantly and they are predicted to rise even more in the future. These findings raise concerns with regard to whether this heavily used weed-killer might cause health problems, especially for young children who are very sensitive to chemical exposures," said Marlaina Freisthler, Ph.D. student and researcher at GWU and co-author of the study.

The new coating is described in a study recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) developed the coating, which is inexpensive and non-toxic, able to be applied to virtually any fabric. It decreases the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 disease, by up to 90 percent. The coating is also able to kill Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria.

"This coating has both passive and active antimicrobial properties, killing microbes immediately upon contact, which is then amped up when sunlight hits the cloth," says senior author Dr. Michael Wolf, a professor of chemistry.

A new paper on the curious fish has been published in the journal Science.

Researchers from Harvard University and Emory University have developed a fully autonomous biohybrid fish using cardiac muscle cells derived from human stem cells. The cells can recreate the muscular contractions of a beating heart, allowing the fish to swim and bringing scientists closer to developing artificial cardiac muscle pumps to treat heart disease.

"Our ultimate goal is to build an artificial heart to replace a malformed heart in a child. Most of the work in building heart tissue or hearts, including some work we have done, is focused on replicating the anatomical features or replicating the simple beating of the heart in the engineered tissues," said Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the paper.

A new study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics details the discovery of a new planet orbiting one of the Sun's neighboring stars.

The Sun's closest star is called Proxima Centauri, and the planet that was recently discovered orbiting this star is called Proxima Centauri d. The new planet was found using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope based in Chile, and what makes this new planet so interesting to researchers is that it resides in what is called the "habitable zone" of the star, meaning may potentially harbor liquid water and perhaps life.

Researchers found that the new planet orbits Proxima Centauri at a distance of around four million kilometers, taking the planet just five days to complete one orbit of the star. Proxima d isn't the first planet discovered orbiting the Sun's closest neighbor, as in 2016, researchers found a planet that has a mass close to Earth's, now dubbed Proxima b. This planet takes 11 days to complete an orbit around its host star. Additionally, another planet called Proxima c was found to be the smallest out of the three with a mass that's a quarter of Earth's.

A report filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) states that Elon Musk's Neuralink caused "extreme suffering" in monkeys it was tested on.

The complaint was filed with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and details experiments carried out on monkeys at the University of California at Davis from 2017 to 2020. The group behind the complaint has accused Neuralink and the university behind the experiments of nine violations of the US Federal Animal Welfare Act.

The complaint claimed that Neuralink caused "many, if not all, of the monkeys, experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive head implants during the experiments". Adding the Neuralink implant "produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research."

The Ukrainian military has started conducting military exercises within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

The soldiers have taken to Pripyat, the city nearest the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, to conduct drills such as clearing buildings, targeted mortar fire, staged evacuations, and more. Before beginning the training exercises, workers with Geiger counters assessed the area to ensure there were no radioactive hotspots, with one soldier saying, "it has all been checked and it doesn't present a danger."

"As there are no civilians around here we can conduct exercises with real ammunition in a situation as close to actual urban warfare as possible," said one National Guard serviceman, who gave only his call-sign; Litva.