Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 80

Animator Hashem Al-Ghaili has shown off a concept for the nuclear-powered sky hotel on YouTuber.

A video rendering shows off the vessel, called the Sky Cruise, which is described as a "futuristic hotel above the clouds. Animated by Al-Ghaili, the video features designs by Tony Holmsten of an aircraft capable of hosting 5,000 guests while remaining in the air for over a year continuously, with small aircraft able to ferry passengers and supplies to it by landing on its decks.

A study on cocaine titled "Muscarinic Acetylcholine M2 Receptors Regulate Lateral Habenula Neuron Activity and Control Cocaine Seeking Behavior" has been published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), discovered that blocking particular acetylcholine receptors in the brains of rats made it more difficult for them to resist seeking cocaine. In the experiment, rats were trained to recognize when cocaine was available based on a light being turned on or off and to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever, resulting in the injection of the drug.

The researchers blocked the receptors in the lateral habenula (LHb), a brain area responsible for balancing reward processing and inhibition. The LHb is particularly interesting because it interfaces with various brain regions associated with reasoning, reward systems, and higher-order thought processes - factors associated with substance abuse disorders.

A study on influenza vaccination and Alzheimer's disease titled "Risk of Alzheimer's Disease Following Influenza Vaccination: A Claims-Based Cohort Study Using Propensity Score Matching" has been published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) have found that people administered at least one dose of influenza vaccine are 40% less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease over the next four years compared to non-vaccinated peers. Their study involved a "large nationwide sample of U.S. adults aged 65 and older," with and without prior flu vaccination.

A study on the experiment titled "Rapid Radiolytic Degradation of Amino Acids in the Martian Shallow Subsurface: Implications for the Search for Extinct Life" has been published in the journal Astrobiology.

A recent NASA laboratory experiment indicates that potential signs of ancient life on Mars are more likely found about 6.6 feet (~2 meters) below the Martian surface. Researchers determined that ionizing radiation from space could quickly destroy small molecules like amino acids, erasing signs of life from the surface. Though amino acids can be created by non-biological chemistry or by life, their discovery on Mars would be strong evidence for terrestrial life.

Elon Musk has finally reached a milestone number of Twitter followers, and that number has arrived on Musk's birthday.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has reached 100 million Twitter followers on June 28, 2022, the day of his 51st birthday. A massive uptick in followers occurred when Musk entered into a deal to purchase Twitter, the world's second largest social media platform, for $54.20 a share, or $44 billion. However, the deal is somewhat thrown up in the air as Musk has said the acquisition won't go ahead until Twitter can prove that less than 5% of its userbase are bot/spam accounts.

Earlier this month Twitter executives said that they would comply with Musk's request to provide him with userdata, and said that Musk will receive the full "firehose" of Twitter data that consists of a staggering 500 million tweets posted each day. Since Musk announced the deal to purchase Twitter the company's stock has dropped considerably, with its current price sitting at approximately $38 a share.

SpaceX is moving forward with its preparations for Starship's first orbital test flight, following the environmental report recently conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA recently evaluated the environmental impact of SpaceX conducting orbital launches of its Starship launch vehicle in its Texas test site, and according to the regulators' recently released report, Elon Musk's vehicle and launch site were found to have "Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI)". However, the FAA did give SpaceX many requests to prevent any future environmental impact and also put a cap on the number of launches SpaceX can conduct per year - five orbital launches and five suborbital launches.

With that review by the FAA now out of the way, Elon Musk and SpaceX can move forward with getting everything in order to perform Starship's first orbital test flight, which, when achieved, will be a monumental milestone for the company and another big step on the road to getting a consistent human presence on the Mars and the moon. On June 23 SpaceX was spotted rolling out Super Heavy Booster 7 to the orbital launch site, and according to reports from NASASpaceFlight, the booster sported 33 Raptor 2 engines.

Astronomers identified Comet C/2017 K2 back in 2017, and now the extremely old comet is making its way into our inner solar system.

Researchers believe that Comet C/2017, or Comet K2, originally came from the Oort Cloud, and when it was originally found, it was approximately 1.5 billion miles away from the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. When Comet K2 was first discovered, astronomers believed it was 99 miles wide, but follow-up observations from the Hubble Space Telescope brought that number down to the agreed 11-mile-wide diameter.

It should be noted that while the diameter estimate was originally incorrect, the size of Comet K2 is still very large - being as wide as two Mount Everest's stacked on top of each other. Spaceweather.com writes that most comet nuclei are approximately 0.62 - 1.86 miles in diameter. Comet K2 harbors its own mysteries as most of the larger comets do, with researchers being perplexed at how the comet remains "active", which is a term researchers use to label comets that are producing a glow and the iconic tail.

NASA's InSight Mars Lander first landed on Mars on November 26th, 2018, and took its first selfie ten days later.

Its final selfie was taken on April 24, 2022, and comprises multiple images taken by its Instrument Deployment Camera and stitched together. All of the dust now covering InSight and its solar panels has dramatically reduced its power output. Therefore, it was scheduled to gradually shut down its remaining instruments until running out of power around December.

The seismometer, Insight's last operational science instrument, was to be automatically shut down by the end of June to conserve power. However, the team has decided to allow the lander to continue using the seismometer until either the end of August or early September so that it can continue to gather scientific data for longer. Unfortunately, while remaining active to detect more marsquakes, InSight's batteries will discharge more quickly, and the spacecraft will ultimately completely lose power sooner.

A study on the evolution of monkeypox titled "Phylogenomic characterization and signs of microevolution in the 2022 multi-country outbreak of monkeypox virus" has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Researchers from Portugal have completed a genetic study of 15 samples of the monkeypox virus, which has surfaced in over fifty countries so far, despite normally being relegated to Africa. Monkeypox comes from the same genus as smallpox and comes in two main varieties of monkeypox; the West African and Congo Basin forms.

Prior research has shown monkeypox ends up mutating once or twice yearly. However, new samples from 15 patients have revealed the virus is currently mutating about 6 to 12 times more frequently than expected. The accelerated mutation rate may suggest that the virus is now infecting people via a new pathway, compared to the traditional transmission methods through open wounds, bodily fluids, or airborne droplets.

A study on fasting and nerves titled "The gut metabolite indole-3 propionate promotes nerve regeneration and repair" has been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers from the Imperial College London have observed an increased ability in mice to recover from nerve damage, owing to gut bacteria changes resulting from intermittent fasting. Gut bacteria produce more of a metabolite called 3-Indolepropionic acid (IPA) in response to fasting. This metabolite is required to regenerate axons, the nerve fiber part of a neuron (nerve cell).

The particular bacteria which produces IPA, Clostridium sporogenesis, is found in both human guts and that of mice, so the mechanism will hopefully apply in potential future human trials. In the study, half of the mice ate on alternating days, while the other half ate as they pleased. The mice had their sciatic nerves, which run from the spine down the leg, severed, and within 24 to 72 hours, the fasting group experienced ~50% greater regrowth in their axons.

The International Space Station (ISS) periodically requires boosts from external spacecraft to help it maintain its orbit.

The ISS weighs 444 tonnes and continues to expand, while orbiting at an altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers). However, atmospheric drag brings the space station closer to Earth by about one mile (1.6 kilometers) each month, and consequently, it needs to be lifted back up.

The task is currently Russia's responsibility, for which they use the thrusters on the Progress cargo spacecraft and the ISS' Zvezda module. However, Russia's future with the ISS is unclear, with the nation potentially withdrawing from the space station in 2024 despite NASA's commitment to keep it operational until 2030. Therefore, the remaining countries need a way to manage the space station responsibilities currently left to Russia.

A study on organic carbon on Mars titled "Organic carbon concentrations in 3.5-billion-year-old lacustrine mudstones of Mars" has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

NASA scientists have measured the total organic carbon present in Martian rocks for the first time with the help of data from the Curiosity rover. Organic carbon refers to the carbon found in organic compounds, which consist of carbon and hydrogen, and form the basis of all known forms of life. Organic carbon does arise on Mars as a result of non-living sources, however, such as volcanic activity or meteorites.

The Curiosity rover has found organic carbon and evidence of water existing long ago on Mars in the Gale crater, where it has been exploring and collecting samples. These conditions in the crater, as well as low acidity, and the presence of chemicals like oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur, show Mars could have supported life at some point.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is closing in on its goal of calibrating all of its extremely sensitive and highly advanced instruments.

NASA has taken to its blog to update the public on the progress being made on the agency's next-generation space telescope. According to NASA, one of the four primary scientific instruments aboard the observatory is known as the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument (NIRISS), and the testing of the final "mode" on the instrument, the Single Object Slitless Spectroscopy (SOSS) capability, was recently completed - leading NASA engineers to give the thumbs up for science operations.

The space agency explains that the SOSS mode is a specifically designed prism that absorbs the light from the cosmos and splits it into three separate rainbows. The observatory will be able to capture more than 2,000 infrared colors from a single observation, which will allow researchers to lock onto planets and probe their atmosphere for certain molecules. Observing exoplanets and determining their atmospheres will be the main task of the SOSS mode, according to NASA.

A gold miner has made a shocking discovery in Yukon, Canada as a mummified baby woolly mammoth has been found in a record-breaking discovery.

The local government of the region where the fossil was found issued a press release that explains the discovery was made on June 21, 2022, when miners that were working in the Klondike gold fields within Tr'ondek Hwech' in Traditional Territory in Yukon, Canada, were removing permafrost. The fossil is described as being "near-complete", and according to Yukon's local government, the mammoth calf has been named Nun Cho ga, which translates to "big baby animal".

The newly discovered fossil has since been quickly examined, and according to the press release, it was a female mammoth that died during the ice age approximately 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Notably, the press release states that Nun Cho ga is about the same age as "Lyuba", a 42,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth that was discovered in Siberia back in 2007. Furthermore, Nun Cho ga is now renowned as the best preserved mummified woolly mammoth found in North America.

A team of researchers have discovered a bacteria that has broken the theoretical limits of how big bacteria can grow.

The bacteria was found swimming in the French Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, and according to a study that has been published in Science, the bacteria measured more than a centimeter in length. The researchers describe the bacteria in their paper as "unusually large" and wrote that it's a sulfur-oxidizing bacterium that has a complex membrane organization.

For reference, the cells in most bacterial species are approximately two micrometers in length, with some of the larger specimens reaching up to 750 micrometers. The researchers were able to measure the cells in the bacteria that was found in Guadeloupe and discovered it was a whopping 9,000 micrometers - even visible to the naked eye. Jean-Marie Volland, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said that the bacteria is 5,000 times bigger than most bacteria.

A team of researchers have located a sunken vessel that is now the deepest shipwreck ever located. The USS Samuel B Roberts has been found.

The USS Samuel B Roberts was destroyed on October 25, 1944, when it engaged in a conflict off the coast of Samar with Japan. At the time, the US was trying to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation, and now for the first time, the Samuel B (Sammy B) navy destroyer has been documented in a series of photographs that illustrate the rich history of time. According to a Texas-based undersea technology company Caladan Oceanic, the photographs were taken by a crewed submarine that traveled to a depth of 23,000 feet.

The team inspected the fallen vessel over eight separate dives with a submersible that were conducted over a month. According to Caladan Oceanic founder Victor Vescovo, who piloted the submersible vehicle that took the team down to the shipwreck, the small vessel rests at 22,621 feet and is "now the deepest shipwreck ever located and surveyed". Vescovo also said that Sammy B "took on the finest of the Japanese Navy, fighting them to the end".

The European Space Agency (ESA) will be rolling out an update for the Mars Express spacecraft that will bring massive improvements to the orbiter's science capabilities.

The Mars Express space exploration mission conducted by the European Space Agency launched on June 2, 2003, and since then, the orbiter has been exploring the surface of the Red Planet from above. The orbiter has been operating for more than 19 years and uses its Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument to bounce low-frequency radio waves off the surface of Mars to see what is beneath.

Researchers prospect areas of the Red Planet, looking for underground water and any atmospheric changes. The MARSIS instrument is a 130-foot antenna that can see as far as 3 miles below the surface of the planet. The instrument was built on Windows 98, and according to the ESA, the coming software update with improve the antenna's performance drastically as it will increase signal reception, onboard data processing and increase the consistency of data that is sent back to Earth.

Astronomers have locked on to a comet that is estimated to be twice the size of Mount Everest - comet C/2017 K2.

Researchers have used the Pan-STARRS survey instrument located in Hawaii to hone in on the massive comet. According to astronomers, C/2017 K2 is an Oort Cloud comet that was first discovered in 2017 when it was 1.5 billion miles away from the Sun, but now the comet is on its way to the inner solar system, where it will make an approach with Earth. When the comet was first discovered, it was located between Saturn and Uranus.

C/2017 K2 comes with many mysteries that astronomers are yet to figure out, and one of those mysteries is how the comet remains "active" so far away from the Sun. When a comet is "active" it's energized by rays from the Sun that produce that iconic glow and tail on a comet. What confuses researchers is how C/2017 K2 appears to be active but is still very far away from the Sun - making it a record-breaking comet in its own right.

Impossible Mining is looking somewhere completely different to find some battery metals, used in electric cars and many other battery-driven industries: the seafloor.

During the recent TechCrunch Climate event, Impossible Mining CEO Oliver Gunasekara said his company has developed a method that can mine the battery metals on the seafloor -- polymetallic nodule rocks to be precise -- all without hurting the ecosystem. This is a big deal for environmentalists, governments, and everyone in between.

Oliver Gunasekara, CEO & Co-Founder of Impossible Mining said: "The US needs independent, secure access to critical battery metals. We are excited to accelerate the production of our deep water robots with this injection of capital, and to prove to both regulators and stakeholders that we can achieve what dredge-based technology can't - the preservation of the seafloor environment".

A farm in Lampang, Thailand, is experimenting with feeding its free-range chickens cannabis as an alternative to antibiotics.

Researchers from the Department of Animal and Aquatic Sciences at Chiang Mai University have been studying the experiment's results, which has been running since January 2021. Less than ten percent of the 1,000 chickens on the farm have died since the dietary change, matching the mortality rate of prior seasons where no severe outbreaks of disease threatened the flock.

Crushed cannabis is added to the chickens' feed and water while medicines and antibiotics have been taken out of their diet, allowing the farm to sell their meat as organic poultry for higher prices. Consumers looking for chickens that weren't fed antibiotics are paying about $1.50 per pound for the organic alternative, about double the usual cost. The product has been called "GanjaChicken," and is allegedly more tender and better tasting.