07 Apr Tesla Ventilator | Elon Musk Ventilators | Auto Parts Ventilators

In this video, Tesla engineers break down how they’re repurposing Tesla parts to build ventilators for COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients.

Two weeks after an Elon Musk ventilator snafu that saw Tesla ship out about 1,000 B-PAP machines—which do not include the necessary ventilation tubes that the life-saving breathing machines require—the luxury car manufacturer has gone back to the drawing board.

Now, Tesla is giving us a glimpse into its process. In a new video (seen above), company engineers break down how they’re repurposing Tesla parts to build ventilators for COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients—something that Ford and General Motors have also been doing, thanks to the stockpiles of parts that auto manufacturers keep on hand to maintain a buzzing assembly line.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.popularmechanics.com

03 Apr Mercury may paradoxically use intense heat to make huge amounts of ice

Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is home to a surprising amount of ice. Now, researchers at Georgia Tech have put forward an explanation for how at least some of it got there – and it turns out, the heat plays an important role.

Most of Mercury is a broiling hot hell, where daytime temperatures peak at a toasty 427 °C (800 °F). But with no atmosphere to spread the heat around, the poles remain chilly, and the floors of some deep craters never see sunlight. There, temperatures can be as low as -170 °C (-274 °F) – the perfect conditions for ice to form.

And form it does, with spacecraft observations and other calculations showing large deposits at both poles of the planet. How it actually got there in the first place has remained a mystery, but now the Georgia Tech team has proposed at least a partial explanation.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: newatlas.com

03 Apr Old human cells rejuvenated with stem cell technology

Old human cells return to a more youthful and vigorous state after being induced to briefly express a panel of proteins involved in embryonic development, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers also found that elderly mice regained youthful strength after their existing muscle stem cells were subjected to the rejuvenating protein treatment and transplanted back into their bodies.

The proteins, known as Yamanaka factors, are commonly used to transform an adult cell into what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells can become nearly any type of cell in the body, regardless of the cell from which they originated. They’ve become important in regenerative medicine and drug discovery.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: med.stanford.edu

29 Mar Human genome editing – the issues explained

Hayley Clissold from the Sanger Institute’s policy team team explores the issues surrounding gene editing and human embryos.

Genome editing is a technique used to modify a specific section of DNA. As all living things contain DNA, genome editing has an almost unlimited range of applications in organisms including bacteria, plants, animals and humans.

Genome editing is not a new technology. In fact, it has been around for decades. Genome editing has only recently taken the scientific world by storm because of the discovery of a new tool called CRISPR. CRISPR is simpler, faster, cheaper and much more efficient than any of its predecessor genome editing tools and because of its accessibility, CRISPR is now used in a vast spectrum of applications in labs all around the world.

CRISPR was originally discovered as a bacterial immune system. Some bacteria deploy CRISPR as a defense mechanism to chop up the DNA of an invading virus. Because of its ability to target and cut specific stretches of DNA, CRISPR is capable of removing any particular sequence – for example, disease-causing gene variants can be taken out of a genome. The technology also allows DNA sequences to be added or changed – so a disease-causing variant can be replaced with a ‘healthy’ one. Clearly, this technology offers almost limitless possibilities for science and in particular for healthcare.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: sangerinstitute.blog

29 Mar Can distributed computing help speed up the coronavirus vaccine search?

The computing power needed to create models and simulations of the coronavirus is vast, but so is the potential pool of volunteers who could help.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.weforum.org

29 Mar Coronavirus won’t make a dent in the growing climate problem our planet has

The surge in New York City’s coronavirus infections is already so critical that the chief medical officer at a major hospital system warned staff of the grim reality: "…there will be loss, and suffering, and at times perhaps each of us will question our will to fight."

The coronavirus — which is hospitalizing severely sick young and old people alike — has already had a punishing, paramount influence on human civilization, and it will get much worse. But today’s wide-scale shutdown of cities, extreme social distancing measures, and plummeting transportation usage will have no immediate, meaningful impact on Earth’s colossal carbon dioxide woes or the planet’s relentless warming trend.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: mashable.com

27 Mar Can a face mask protect me from coronavirus? Covid-19 myths busted | World news | The Guardian

The truth about how you can catch coronavirus, who is most vulnerable and what you can do to avoid infection

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.theguardian.com

27 Mar Best Coronavirus maps to update you about the global cases of COVID-19

Track the spread of coronavirus around the world using these live maps

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.t3.com

27 Mar Towards an unhackable quantum internet | Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

A quantum internet could be used to send un-hackable messages, improve the accuracy of GPS, and enable cloud-based quantum computing. For more than twenty years, dreams of creating such a quantum network have remained out of reach in large part because of the difficulty to send quantum signals across large distances without loss. 

Now, Harvard and MIT researchers have found a way to correct for signal loss with a prototype quantum node that can catch, store and entangle bits of quantum information. The research is the missing link towards a practical quantum internet and a major step forward in the development of long-distance quantum networks.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.seas.harvard.edu

21 Mar NASA Makes Their Entire Media Library Publicly Accessible And Copyright Free

No matter if you enjoy taking or just watching images of space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made their entire collection of images, sounds, and video available and publicly searchable online. It’s 140,000 photos and other resources available for you to see, or even download and use it any way you like.

You can type in the term you want to search for and browse through the database of stunning images of outer space. Additionally, there are also images of astronauts, rocket launches, events at NASA and other interesting stuff. What’s also interesting is that almost every image comes with the EXIF data, which could be useful for astrophotography enthusiasts.

NASA recently launched a GIPHY account full of awesome animated gifs. It’s also great that photography is an important part of their missions, and so it was even before “pics or it didn’t happen” became the rule. The vast media library they have now published is available to everyone, free of charge and free of copyright. Therefore, you can take a peek at the fascinating mysteries of space, check out what it’s like inside NASA’s premises, or download the images to make something awesome from them. Either way, you will enjoy it!

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.physics-astronomy.com