Li’l Kurt is a genetic marvel.
In an effort to increase genetic diversity among horses, scientists have gone sci-fi and used frozen 40-year-old cells to create Kurt, the very first clone of a Przewalski’s horse.
Continue reading “Scientists Cloned the Most Endangered Horse in the World—From 40-Year-Old DNA” »
With the onset of first snow and sub-zero temperatures in East Ladakh, the Indian Army troopers, equipped with US-made blizzard masks, have settled down for the winter against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with the focus of national security planners now shifting to beefing maritime security.
While the four-nation QUAD multilateral exercises under Malabar begin next Tuesday, the Indian military planners have decided to give top priority to Eastern Naval Command and island territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep to counter any threat from PLA Navy in Indian Ocean. The Western Naval Command has also been asked to spread out its assets with Karwar base in Karnataka as focus.
The plan follows a security assessment that pitched concern around China’s PLA Navy way over the maritime threat from the Pakistan Navy.
Continue reading “Ladakh temperature drops to sub-zero, focus shifts to countering Chinese Navy” »
When atoms get extremely close, they develop intriguing interactions that could be harnessed to create new generations of computing and other technologies. These interactions in the realm of quantum physics have proven difficult to study experimentally due the basic limitations of optical microscopes.
Now a team of Princeton researchers, led by Jeff Thompson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, has developed a new way to control and measure atoms that are so close together no optical lens can distinguish them.
Described in an article published Oct. 30 in the journal Science, their method excites closely-spaced erbium atoms in a crystal using a finely tuned laser in a nanometer-scale optical circuit. The researchers take advantage of the fact that each atom responds to slightly different frequencies, or colors, of laser light, allowing the researchers to resolve and control multiple atoms, without relying on their spatial information.
ICL’s salt ponds constitute the southern part of the Dead Sea. Many hotels and tourist attractions were built on these ponds’ shores and utilize their production of salt for the local tourism industry. Specifically, one major pond — Pond 5 — “enables the … livelihoods of thousands of people [who are] dependent on [its] stable water level,” according to ICL.
In the spirit of Halloween:
Zombies are oftentimes a common trope in science fiction and horror. In this video, we will go over why and how they are plausible.
A five-storey building in China has been relocated using an innovative system of robotic legs.
Mice who ate a diet high in fat and cholesterol were more likely to see their hair turn from black to white and experience hair loss. The diet also appeared to cause inflammation of the skin.
In the first stage of the study, the researchers genetically modified mice to develop atherosclerosis, a condition in which fat deposits form in the arteries.
They then fed mice either a Western diet high in fat and cholesterol or untreated rat chow from the age of 12 to 20 weeks. As expected, the mice who consumed the Western diet saw their hair turn white and fall out, and develop skin lesions. And the longer the mice ate the diet, the worse their symptoms became. By week 36, three quarters of the animals had skin lesions.
Nuclear power could become more accessible thanks to a new nuclear fuel called ANEEL that combines thorium with uranium.
New research[1] presented at the 29th EADV Congress, EADV Virtual, shows that socks coated in zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) can prevent bromodosis (foot odor) and pitted keratolysis (bacterial infection causing smelly feet), reducing the negative impact this embarrassing condition has on quality of life.[2]
Developed by the Royal Thai Airforce, the ZnO-NP-coated socks were trialed in a real-life setting by researchers at Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University in Thailand. They found that the antibacterial efficacy of ZnO-NPs, along with its safety and compatibility with human skin, makes it the perfect compound to incorporate into textiles, including socks, to prevent unpleasant foot odor.
The double-blinded, randomized, controlled trial was conducted with 148 cadets at the Thai Naval Rating School. Bromodosis and pitted keratolysis are a common complaint in military personnel, with foot lesions, including pitted keratosis, occurring in over a third of naval cadets in Thailand (38.5%).[2]
Continue reading “Fresh Solution for Smelly Feet From Breakthrough Nano-Particle Technology” »
There are nearly one million catalogued asteroids, but we don’t know much about many of them. Now Unistellar and its scientific partner, the SETI Institute, can count on a network of nearly 3,000 amateurs capable of observing thousands of asteroids and providing an estimate of their size and shape. With mobile stations located in Asia, North America and Europe, the Unistellar network, the largest network of citizen astronomers, participates in cutting-edge research and has delivered its first scientific results including the 3D shape model of an asteroid and the size of another one.
“The Unistellar eVscope is more than a telescope. It’s also a tool to access a network made of citizen astronomers throughout the world who can observe together and participate in scientific campaigns,” said Franck Marchis, senior planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute and Chief Scientific Officer at Unistellar. “Today more than 150 people have already contributed to our campaigns and collected valuable scientific data from their backyard.”
In addition to the SETI Institute, Marchis’ group collaborated with Josef Hanuš and Josef Ďurech of the Institute of Astronomy at Charles University to identify potential targets of interest in the asteroid population. “After having designed and validated our data analysis pipeline in 2020, we can now routinely propose campaigns to our citizen astronomers,” said Marchis.
