Science & TechnologyS


Heart

US surgeons successfully implant pig heart in human


Insider Paper
Mon, 10 Jan 2022 23:18 UTC
Surgery
© Pixabay
US surgeons have successfully implanted a heart from a genetically modified pig in a human patient, a first of its kind procedure, the University of Maryland Medical School said Monday.

The surgery took place Friday, and demonstrates for the first time that an animal heart can survive in a human without immediate rejection, the medical school said in a statement.

The patient, David Bennett, had been deemed ineligible for human transplant.

The 57-year-old Maryland resident is being carefully monitored to determine how the new organ performs.

"It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it's a shot in the dark, but it's my last choice," he said a day before the surgery.

Bennett, who has spent the last several months bedridden on a life support machine, added: "I look forward to getting out of bed after I recover."

The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the surgery on New Year's Eve, as a last ditch effort for a patient who was unsuitable for conventional transplant.
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Galaxy

Experiment reveals antimatter and matter respond to gravity in the same way

Hamish Johnston
Physics World
Thu, 06 Jan 2022 15:35 UTC
matter antimatter graphic
© Flashmovie/DepositphotosEvery particle of normal matter has an antimatter equivalent
Precise measurements of the motions of antiprotons and protons suggest that antimatter responds to gravity in the same way as matter. The experiment was done at CERN by the international BASE collaboration and involved trapping antiprotons and negative hydrogen ions using electric and magnetic fields. The measurements also provide the best confirmation yet that the antiproton conforms to certain aspects of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Matter is made of baryons and leptons such as protons and electrons. According to the Standard Model, each of these particles has a corresponding antiparticle with identical mass but opposite charge. Just like protons and electrons, these antiparticles can combine to make antimatter. Indeed, physicists at CERN can make antihydrogen by combining an antiproton with an antielectron. These antiprotons are produced in large numbers at CERN in a facility dubbed the "Antimatter Factory".
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Moon

China's Chang'E-5 lander makes first onsite detection of water on the moon

Chinese Academy of Sciences
Scit Tech Daily
Sat, 08 Jan 2022 12:00 UTC
Chang’E 5 moon
© CNSA/NASAArtist’s illustration of China’s Chang’E 5 moon sample-return spacecraft.
A joint research team led by Profs. LIN Yangting and LIN Honglei from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) observed water signals in reflectance spectral data from the lunar surface acquired by the Chang'E-5 lander, providing the first evidence of in-situ detection of water on the Moon.

The study was published in Science Advances on January 7, 2022.

Researchers from the National Space Science Center of CAS, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of CAS and Nanjing University were also involved in the study.

Comment: Another recent study revealed that Earth's magnetosphere can create water on the surface of the moon.

See also:

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Light Sabers

New cholera strain replaced older strains during the seventh cholera pandemic

Max Planck Society
Phys.org
Fri, 07 Jan 2022 12:00 UTC
cholera
© DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26847-yFig. 1: The T6SS gene clusters of the classical V. cholerae strain PA1849. A Illumina-generated reads were mapped to a 6th pandemic classical strain (O395) and a 7th pandemic El Tor V. cholerae strain (C6706). Read coverage plotted against the nucleotide sequence of the three T6SS gene clusters (shown as light blue arrows in panel (B)) separated by white vertical lines that indicate the intervening genomic sequences not included in this analysis. The top plot (gray) represents read coverage against the O395 reference, and the bottom plot (gray) represents read coverage against the C6706 reference. B Nucleotide alignment of the three T6SS clusters (bottom light blue arrows) from PA1849, O395 and C6706. The top black bars, representing the PA1849 T6SS clusters, are designated as the reference sequences. Conserved residues in O395 and C6706 sequences are represented by gray bars with single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) highlighted by vertical black lines and insertions or deletions (INDELS) of base pairs represented by gaps with horizontal black dashes. C A schematic gene map for each T6SS gene cluster displays structural genes as blue arrows and effector/immunity pairs as red arrows. Zoomed alignments of regions of interest in strains C6706, O395 and PA1849 are shown. Hyphens in the alignment indicate deleted nucleotides (above) and amino acids (below). Nucleotides and their corresponding amino acid changes are colored. Multiple colors are used to indicate the new reading frame for the vasK frameshift mutation.
The bacterium Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the diarrheal disease cholera and is responsible for seven known pandemics. The seventh cholera pandemic began in 1961 and is still active. Unlike previous pandemics, it is caused by cholera strains of a slightly different type. How did the modified cholera strains develop and spread, and what might have contributed to their success? Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, and CAU Kiel, in an international team with colleagues from City College New York and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, have now gained new insights into a molecular mechanism that provides insight into the interactions between cholera bacteria and may have played a role in the emergence of the seventh pandemic.

Comment: See also:

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Footprints

Google & Facebook fined for spying on users


RT
Thu, 06 Jan 2022 18:07 UTC
facebook google
© getty
France's online privacy regulator has ordered Google and Facebook to cough up some €210 million ($237 million) between them, fining the firms for their questionable use of data-tracking 'cookies' on their sites.

The French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) announced the move in a statement on Thursday, saying Google will be made to pay €150 million ($169.5 million) and Facebook another €60 million ($67.8 million) within a period of three months, or else face additional fines of €100,000 ($113,000) per day.

The commission said the way the companies employ 'cookies' - small amounts of data generated while users browse websites that can be used to track their activity - "affects the freedom of consent," as Facebook and Google make it much easier for netizens to authorize that data-tracking than to decline it.
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Nebula

Cosmic first: Scientists observe red supergiant just before it explodes

Meghan Bartels
Space.com
Fri, 07 Jan 2022 17:54 UTC
illustration red supergiant star
© W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam MakarenkoAn artist's depiction of a red supergiant star within the last year before it explodes.
"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die."

It's much easier for scientists to see the messy aftermath of stellar explosions than to watch the prelude to the drama.

But finally, astronomers managed to observe a red giant star just as it "went supernova," as exploding stars are called. Using a telescope in Hawaii, a team of scientists gathered observations of a red supergiant star in summer 2020. Lo and behold, in September, that very same star died in a supernova dubbed (SN) 2020tlf — an explosion that team members called "one of the most intriguing" supernovas of its type.

"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," Wynn Jacobson-Galán, an astronomy National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California Berkeley and lead author of a new study reporting the results, said in a statement from the Keck Observatory, where the team gathered observations. "For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode!"
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Cassiopaea

Coherent interstellar magnetic field detected

Chinese Academy of Sciences
Phys.org
Fri, 07 Jan 2022 10:12 UTC
Taurus molecular cloud
© NAOCThe Taurus molecular cloud (grey scale), of which L1544 is a part, is superimposed onto the 2MASS sky image and the field orientation based on Planck data (thin white lines). The HINSA Zeeman spectrum (thick white line) is shown with the fitted Zeeman signature (blue).
Magnetic fields are the essential, but often "secret" ingredients of the interstellar medium and the process of making stars. The secrecy shrouding interstellar magnetic fields can be attributed to the lack of experimental probes.

While Michael Faraday was probing the link between magnetism and electricity with coils in the early 19th century in the basement of the Royal Institution, astronomers today still cannot deploy coils light-years away.

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), an international team led by Dr. LI Di from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has obtained accurate magnetic field strength in molecular cloud L1544 — a region of the interstellar medium that seems ready to form stars.

Comment: See also:

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Fish

Researchers find that goldfish can learn how to drive


RT
Thu, 06 Jan 2022 20:29 UTC
fish navigational ability goldfish drive
© Ronan Segev/TwitterStill from one of the goldfish navigational tests
Six fish were able to navigate a room in search of targets with 'high level of success' in new study

Israeli scientists have built a "Fish Operated Vehicle" (FOV) and claim to have trained six goldfish to move it around. They say the experiment demonstrates how navigational skills can translate between different environments.

The study, published this month in the Behavioural Brain Research journal, involved putting the fish into a water tank attached to a wheeled robot that was hooked up to a motion-tracking camera. A computer program developed to respond to its movement towards the tank's walls then moved the FOV into the respective direction.
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Beaker

Science is in trouble

Anthony Sadar
Washington Examiner
Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:00 UTC
science mathematics proof
Will 2022 be another year when scientists lament the public's continued lack of trust in science?

Editorials abound about the pushback scientists are experiencing when it comes to proposed science-oriented solutions to serious societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Yet, science communicators can be their own worst enemy when they go on the offense with loutish language. Their offense becomes offensive and seen as arrogance.

Labeling as "conspiracy theorists" credentialed subject-matter experts who have legitimate questions about the science behind COVID-19's origin or the confidence the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change places in climate models is not helpful to the cause of science communication or, more importantly, the overall advancement of science.

Comment: The politicization of science happens when science is used as a tool to steer the public a direction the PTB find expedient rather than letting the facts take us where they may. Humility is lacking because science has been perverted into a tool for political control which has to remain unquestioned and indisputable. In other words, it's not science at all.

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Cassiopaea

Gravitational action of sun and moon influences behavior of animals and plants - study

José Tadeu Arantes, FAPESP
Phys.org
Tue, 04 Jan 2022 12:00 UTC
seed
© Cristiano de Mello Gallep/UNICAMPResearch was driven by observations of fluctuations in autoluminescence caused by seed germination in cycles regulated by gravitational tides.
The rhythms of activity in all biological organisms, both plants and animals, are closely linked to the gravitational tides created by the orbital mechanics of the sun-Earth-moon system. This truth has been somewhat neglected by scientific research but is foregrounded in a study by Cristiano de Mello Gallep at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. An article on the study is published in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

"All matter on Earth, both live and inert, experiences the effects of the gravitational forces of the sun and moon expressed in the form of tides. The periodic oscillations exhibit two daily cycles and are modulated monthly and annually by the motions of these two celestial bodies. All organisms on the planet have evolved in this context. What we sought to show in the article is that gravitational tides are a perceptible and potent force that has always shaped the rhythmic activities of these organisms," Gallep told.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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