Microbes could be used to make rocket fuel on Mars

A team of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with a concept that would see bacteria shipped to Mars produce rocket fuel and liquid oxygen from atmospheric CO2 to power a spacecraft on its return journey to Earth.

Around the end of the decade, a rocket will lift off from Mars containing about half a kilogram (1 lb) of geological samples collected by NASA's robotic Perseverance rover. Though the rocket will only be sending the samples and their container into Mars orbit for retrieval by another spacecraft for the trip home, it will weigh about 880 lb (400 kg), with most of that taken up by the solid rocket fuel needed for the ascent.
To cut down on costs and free up payload space for something more useful than fuel for the return trip, the Georgia Tech team wants to use cyanobacteria and genetically engineered E. coli to produce an alternative fuel, which is used on Earth to make synthetic rubber and other polymers.

Lucy: The First Mission to the Trojan Asteroids

During the course of its mission, Lucy will fly by seven Jupiter Trojans. This time-lapsed animation shows the movements of the inner planets (Mercury, brown; Venus, white; Earth, blue; Mars, red), Jupiter (orange), and the two Trojan swarms (green) during the course of the Lucy mission.
Time capsules from the birth of our Solar System more than 4 billion years ago, the swarms of Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter are thought to be remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets. The Trojans orbit the Sun in two loose groups, with one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trailing behind. Clustered around the two Lagrange points equidistant from the Sun and Jupiter, the Trojans are stabilized by the Sun and its largest planet in a gravitational balancing act. These primitive bodies hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system.
Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojans.

Some news from Mars: https://www.inverse.com/science/organic-molecules-found-on-mars-for-the-first-time

Scientists may have made a giant leap in fighting the biggest threat to human health by using supercomputing to keep pace with the impressive ability of diseases to evolve.

A new study by an international team, co-led by Dr Gerhard Koenig from the University of Portsmouth, tackled the problem of antibiotic resistance by redesigning existing antibiotics to overcome bacterial resistance mechanisms.

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Getting Enough Sleep? New Study May Be a Wake-Up Call For Those Who Doze This Long

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Autonomous robotic rover helps scientists with long-term monitoring of deep-sea carbon cycle and climate change.

The sheer expanse of the deep sea and the technological challenges of working in an extreme environment make these depths difficult to access and study. Scientists know more about the surface of the moon than the deep seafloor. MBARI is leveraging advancements in robotic technologies to address this disparity: https://youtu.be/Nqe6tKIn628

An autonomous robotic rover, Benthic Rover II, has provided new insight into life on the abyssal seafloor, 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) beneath the surface of the ocean. A study published today in Science Robotics details the development and proven long-term operation of this rover. This innovative mobile laboratory has further revealed the role of the deep sea in cycling carbon. The data collected by this rover are fundamental to understanding the impacts of climate change on the ocean: https://youtu.be/lM8j0rQlAuo

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Brain Implant Translates Paralyzed Man's Thoughts Into Text With 94% Accuracy

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Storing energy in plants with electronic roots

The researchers at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Linköping University investigated the possibility of using the roots to store energy, and built a root-based supercapacitor in which the roots functioned as electrodes during charging and discharging.
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-energy-electronic-roots.html

Facebook is no longer Facebook, but Meta. And what does capitalism have to do with it?

The essence of Facebook's rebranding is in the name. It reflects the new goals of the entire company and shows its transition from a simple social network to a Metaverse. You've probably already read what Zuckerberg's Metaverse is (all news portals in all languages of the world have written about it at least a couple of times in the last couple of weeks).

And here's an idea worth discussing: the metaverse can save the humanity from big conflicts that emerge from the usual development of the human society. Here's an explanation in the video (english): https://youtu.be/YvPOshlZXBg .

Basically, humanity has been developing for centuries according to the capitalist model, providing itself with new markets through various types of colonization. But, since there is nothing left to colonize, in the literal sense of the word (economically or militarily) (the Russian Federation + a couple of other countries), the drive for finding new markets should inevitably lead to a major conflict. For some reason, the Russian Federation and the remaining two or three states do not want to become colonies. And Zuckerberg sees that. His metaverse, which global business hasn't yet colonized, opens up phenomenal opportunities for the continued development of capitalism. These opportunities, in their scope and scale, are quite comparable to the colonization in the time of Columbus.

What does this mean for you and me? There is a chance that there would not be any major troubles on planet Earth for the next number of years.

However, it seems like in the nearest decades the rapid climate change will become our biggest problem.

SpinLaunch's rocket-free kinetic launch system conducts first test flight

SpinLaunch has been developing its alternative launch system since 2015, imagining a future where satellites and spacecraft can escape the Earth's atmosphere with zero emissions. It aims to achieve this with the help of a giant accelerator powered by an electric drive that it says could cut fuel use by four times and the costs by 10 times compared to traditional rocket launches, while also firing multiple payloads into orbit each day.
Initially, it is pursuing these ambitions through its Suborbital Accelerator. This consists of an upright disc-shaped, vacuum chamber that uses a carbon fiber tether to whip a projectile around to speeds of up to 8,047 km/h, before releasing it through a launch tube and upward through the atmosphere.
https://www.spinlaunch.com/

‘Dancing molecules’ successfully repair severe spinal cord injuries

Northwestern University researchers have developed a new injectable therapy that harnesses “dancing molecules” to reverse paralysis and repair tissue after severe spinal cord injuries.

In a new study, researchers administered a single injection to tissues surrounding the spinal cords of paralyzed mice. Just four weeks later, the animals regained the ability to walk.

The research will be published in the Nov. 12 issue of the journal Science. The study is now available online.
Video: https://youtu.be/Q_xvCE904YU

NVIDIA plans to build the world's most powerful Al supercomputer dedicated to predicting climate change, named Earth-2.

The earth is warming. The past seven years are on track to be the seven warmest on record. The emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of average warming since the period 1850-1900.

What we’re experiencing is very different from the global average. We experience extreme weather — historic droughts, unprecedented heatwaves, intense hurricanes, violent storms and catastrophic floods. Climate disasters are the new norm.

We need to confront climate change now. Yet, we won’t feel the impact of our efforts for decades. It’s hard to mobilize action for something so far in the future. But we must know our future today — see it and feel it — so we can act with urgency.

To make our future a reality today, simulation is the answer.

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This Volcano Erupted For 5 Years Straight, And The Photos Are Out of This World

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#health India’s Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine 77.8% effective, Lancet study finds.

A new study in The Lancet is offering the first peer-reviewed and published data on the efficacy of Covaxin, a COVID-19 vaccine developed in India. The vaccine was found to be 77.8 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in a large Phase 3 clinical trial (more than 25,000 subjects, randomly allocated either two doses of the vaccine (administered four weeks apart) or two doses of placebo). No serious adverse events were detected in the trial.

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/india-covaxin-coronavirus-vaccine-effective-study-trial-results/

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Wildfires Are Spurring Wandering Tree Species to Move Faster, Study Finds

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Antibody Breakthrough in Mice Could Lead to a Vaccine For Alzheimer's Disease

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Delivering chemotherapy drugs directly to cancers could help reduce side effects, and soon that job could be done by tiny 3D-printed robotic animals. These microrobots are steered by magnets, and only release their drug payload when they encounter the acidic environment around a tumor.

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An Epic Lunar Eclipse Is Coming Tomorrow – The Longest of Its Kind in 580 Years

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UBC researchers train computers to predict the next designer drugs

They have trained computers to predict the next designer drugs before they are even on the market, technology that could save lives.

Law enforcement agencies are in a race to identify and regulate new versions of dangerous psychoactive drugs such as bath salts and synthetic opioids, even as clandestine chemists work to synthesize and distribute new molecules with the same psychoactive effects as classical drugs of abuse. Identifying these so-called “legal highs” within seized pills or powders can take months, during which time thousands of people may have already used a new designer drug.

But new research is already helping law enforcement agencies around the world to cut identification time down from months to days, crucial in the race to identify and regulate new versions of dangerous psychoactive drugs.

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New Lie Detector Can Read Facial Muscles You Don't Even Know You're Using

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