19 Dec WIRED: SpaceX Launches—and Crashes—Its Starship Mars Rocket

The test flight didn’t come close to the edge of space, but the prototype was a big step toward the rocket’s first orbital mission.

 

Just recently, SpaceX successfully launched—and nearly landed—a fully-assembled prototype of its next generation Starship rocket on a suborbital flight from its facility in south Texas. This is the rocket that Elon Musk hopes will soon carry humans to the moon and, eventually, to Mars, but Wednesday’s launch was an unmanned test flight that lasted just a few minutes. The rocket flew to an altitude of 40,000 feet—roughly the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner—and performed what Musk has called a “belly flop” maneuver on its way back to earth. The rocket executed a controlled descent to the surface and righted itself just a few hundred feet above the ground. But it wasn’t able to slow its descent enough to safely touch down, and it exploded spectacularly near the landing pad. While the rocket made it only about a tenth of the way to space and didn’t survive the landing attempt, it’s still a major step toward a first orbital mission and a big win for Musk’s interplanetary ambitions.

 

Read the full article at: www.wired.com

19 Dec LED lights found to kill coronavirus: Global first in fight against COVID-19

Researchers from the Tel Aviv University (TAU) have shown that the coronavirus can be killed efficiently, quickly, and cheaply using ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs). They believe that the UV-LED technology will soon be available for private and commercial use.

 

This is the first study conducted on the disinfection efficiency of UV-LED irradiation at different wavelengths or frequencies on a virus from the family of coronaviruses. The article was published in November 2020 issue of the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.

 

Read the full article at: aftau.org

19 Dec Do Uranus’ Moons Have Subsurface Oceans?

Scientists tested whether a classic technique could detect subsurface oceans on the moons of Uranus. In this scenario, the planet’s oddball magnetic field offers a big advantage.

 

Uranus’s magnetic field, like so much about the planet itself, is quite odd compared with other solar system planets: The field is tilted by 59° from the planet’s spin axis, and its center is shifted by about a third of the planet’s radius from the planet’s center.

Magnetic induction confirmed the presence of Europa’s and Callisto’s subsurface oceans, but Jupiter’s very symmetric magnetic field made it impossible for the Galileo mission to figure out the oceans’ depth, thickness, or salinity with its small number of flybys.

 

Read the full article at: eos.org

11 Dec First Robotic Kitchen In The World Cooks And Cleans Up Everything – KEDLIST

A British company has claimed that they have built the world’s first robotic kitchen. The total concept consists of a robot assembled into a luxury kitchen where the robot will learn the recipe and serve you with freshly cooked food in front of you. The name of the company is Moley Robotics which was established in the year 2014. Dr. Mark Oleynik is the creator of this amazing robotic kitchen which even mimics the patterns made by human hands at the time of cooking meals.

Read the full article at: kedlist.com

11 Dec Japan’s 10-Year Cancer Survival Rate Rises to 58.3%

The 10-year survival rate for cancer, once regarded as an incurable disease, has steadily been improving in Japan and if the cancer can be detected early enough, this survival rate increases further.

 

The National Cancer Center Japan has announced that the 10-year survival rate for patients diagnosed with cancer between 2004 and 2007 was 58.3%. A study was conducted using the statistics of 94,000 cancer patients aged between 15 and 94 at 21 cancer medical facilities, where they had been diagnosed. Cases of death other than cancer were not included in the calculation of survival rates. This figure is a 1.1 percentage point increase compared to the survival rate during the previous study, based on cancer patients diagnosed from 2003 to 2006. This is the sixth time the National Cancer Center has announced the 10-year survival rate and it continues to improve due to advances in treatment, such as new medicine development.

 

A closer look at the 10-year survival rates by cancer type shows that prostate cancer had the highest rate with 98.8% and those for breast, thyroid, and uterine cancers were all above 80%. Those with a survival rate of less than 20% were gallbladder and bile duct with 19.1%, liver with 16.1%, and pancreatic with 6.2%. Meanwhile, the 5-year survival rate, based on a study of 148,000 patients diagnosed with cancer between 2010 and 2012 at 32 facilities nationwide, stood at 68.6%. This was a 0.2-point rise from the previous study based on diagnoses given between 2009 and 2011. The survival rate for prostate cancer was 100% and for breast cancer it was 93.6%.

Read the full article at: www.nippon.com

06 Dec Elephants have the highest volume of daily water loss ever recorded in a land animal

A team of researchers from Duke University, the University of the Witwatersrand and Hunter College has found that elephants have the highest volume of daily water loss ever recorded in a land animal. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes experiments they conducted with captive elephants to measure how much water they lose.

 

Many animals, such as humans, keep cool in hot weather by perspiring—as sweat evaporates, the skin is cooled down. Other animals, such as dogs, keep cool by panting—and still others, such as elephants, have large organs that work as a cooling system—their ears keep them cool when it is hot. Elephants have sweat glands, as well, but they are small and located in their feet, near their cuticles. Elephants are also known to drink an enormous amount of water—hundreds of liters every day. Such huge amounts of water help to keep elephants cool by its presence in the body, but it is also needed to break down the huge amounts of food that elephants eat—and because their digestion process is so inefficient, they defecate from 12 to 15 times a day. Elephants also lose a lot of water through urinating, as well.

 

Read the full article at: phys.org

06 Dec New AI prediction algorithm identifies previously undetected cancer driver genes

A new study, led by U.S. National Science Foundation-funded researchers at the University of California, Irvine, has deepened the understanding of epigenetic mechanisms in tumorigenesis and revealed a previously undetected repertoire of cancer driver genes. The results were published in Science Advances.

 

Using a new prediction algorithm, called DORGE (Discovery of Oncogenes and tumor suppressoR genes using Genetic and Epigenetic features), researchers were able to identify novel tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) and oncogenes (OGs), particularly those with rare mutations, by integrating the most comprehensive collection of genetic and epigenetic data.

 

“Existing bioinformatic algorithms do not sufficiently leverage epigenetic features to predict cancer driver genes, despite the fact that epigenetic alterations are known to be associated with cancer driver genes,” said Wei Li, senior author of the study. “Our computational algorithm integrates public data on epigenetic and genetic alternations to improve the prediction of cancer driver genes.”

 

Cancer results from an accumulation of key genetic alterations that disrupt the balance between cell division and apoptosis. Genes with “driver” mutations that affect cancer progression are known as cancer driver genes and can be classified as TSGs and oncogenes OGs based on their roles in cancer progression. This study demonstrated that cancer driver genes, predicted by DORGE, included both known cancer driver genes and novel driver genes not reported in current literature. In addition, researchers found that the novel dual-functional genes, which DORGE predicted as both TSGs and OGs, are highly enriched at hubs in protein-protein interaction and drug/compound-gene networks.

 

“Our DORGE algorithm successfully leveraged public data to discover the genetic and epigenetic alterations that play significant roles in cancer driver gene dysregulation,” explained Li. “These findings could be instrumental in improving cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment efforts in the future.”

Read the full article at: www.nsf.gov

06 Dec Samsung Forecasts Commercialization of Exceptionally Fast 6G Telecom Services by 2030

Samsung Electronics recently stated that it anticipates mass commercialization of sixth-generation (6G) services by 2030. It is projected that the 6G standard network could start as early as 2028 with mass commercialization of the system taking place in 2030, as stated in its publication entitled “The Next Hyper-Connected Experience for All.”

Choi Sung-Hyun, head of the Advanced Communications Research Center at Samsung Research, said that the period it takes to start preparing for 6G research and commercialization would be approximate ten years. South Korea seeks to attain the first implementation and commercialization of 6G mobile telecommunication worldwide by 2028. The country has an excellent track record and was the first to launch a 5G network commercially in April 2019. In line with this, Samsung assembled a research team for developing 6G technologies, which would ensure an advantage in the marketplace. The advancement of 5G into 6G would usher a new era of mobile technology.

Read the full article at: www.koreatechtoday.com

27 Nov Zebra finches can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 different members of their flock

If songbirds could appear on “The Masked Singer” reality TV competition, zebra finches would likely steal the show. That’s because they can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 different members of their flock, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

In recent findings published in the journal Science Advances, these boisterous, red-beaked songbirds, known as zebra finches, have been shown to pick one another out of a crowd (or flock) based on a particular peer’s distinct song or contact call. Like humans who can instantly tell which friend or relative is calling by the timbre of the person’s voice, zebra finches have a near-human capacity for language mapping. Moreover, they can remember each other’s unique vocalizations for months and perhaps longer, the findings suggest.

 

“The amazing auditory memory of zebra finches shows that birds’ brains are highly adapted for sophisticated social communication,” said study lead author Frederic Theunissen, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology, integrative biology and neuroscience. Theunissen and fellow researchers sought to gauge the scope and magnitude of zebra finches’ ability to identify their feathered peers based purely on their unique sounds. As a result, they found that the birds, which mate for life, performed even better than anticipated.

 

“For animals, the ability to recognize the source and meaning of a cohort member’s call requires complex mapping skills, and this is something zebra finches have clearly mastered,” Theunissen said.

A pioneer in the study of bird and human auditory communication for at least two decades, Theunissen acquired a fascination and admiration for the communication skills of zebra finches through his collaboration with UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Julie Elie, a neuroethologist who has studied zebra finches in the forests of their native Australia. Their teamwork yielded groundbreaking findings about the communication skills of zebra finches.

 

Zebra finches usually travel around in colonies of 50 to 100 birds, flying apart and then coming back together. Their songs are typically mating calls, while their distance or contact calls are used to identify where they are, or to locate one another. “They have what we call a ‘fusion fission’ society, where they split up and then come back together,” Theunissen said. “They don’t want to separate from the flock, and so, if one of them gets lost, they might call out ‘Hey, Ted, we’re right here.’ Or, if one of them is sitting in a nest while the other is foraging, one might call out to ask if it’s safe to return to the nest.”

Read the full article at: www.sciencedaily.com