Science & TechnologyS


Syringe

Needle-free vaccine patches coming soon, say researchers and makers

Lucie Aubourg
Medical Xpress
Fri, 29 Oct 2021 07:35 UTC
Vaxxas microarray patch
© VaxxasTechnicians working with the high-density microarray patch in the Vaxxas cleanroom.
Effective vaccines, without a needle: Since the start of the COVID pandemic, researchers have doubled down on efforts to create patches that deliver life-saving drugs painlessly to the skin, a development that could revolutionize medicine.

The technique could help save children's tears at doctors' offices, and help people who have a phobia of syringes.

Beyond that, skin patches could assist with distribution efforts, because they don't have cold-chain requirements — and might even heighten vaccine efficacy.

A new mouse study in the area, published in the journal Science Advances, showed promising results.

The Australian-US team used patches measuring one square centimeter that were dotted with more than 5,000 microscopic spikes, "so tiny you can't actually see them," David Muller, a virologist at the University of Queensland and co-author of the paper, told AFP.

Comment: It's not just vaccines they'll want to use these patches for...

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Colosseum

Roman concrete from noblewoman's tomb still stands strong 2,000 years later, new study reveals why

Tibi Puiu
ZME Science
Sat, 16 Oct 2021 12:00 UTC
Caecilia Metella
© Tyler Bell.The tomb of Caecilia Metella is still remarkably intact after nearly 2,000 years since it was completed.
One of the world's biggest engineering problems is concrete. Critical infrastructure built over the last century — bridges, highways, dams, and buildings — are now crumbling before our eyes. Repairing and rebuilding this decaying infrastructure is estimated to cost trillions of dollars in the United States alone.

When steel reinforcements were introduced to concrete in the 19th century, it was rightfully at the time hailed as a massive step up in innovation. Adding steel bars to concrete speeds up construction time, uses less concrete, and allows the engineering of long, cantilevered structures such as miles-long bridges and tall skyscrapers. These early engineers who introduced these projects thought reinforced concrete structures would last at least 1,000 years. In reality, we now know their lifespan is between 50 and 100 years.

Comment: A few other recent discoveries reveal that the Roman era had other technologies that were far more sophisticated than once thought: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:


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Jupiter

NASA's Juno probe offers first 3D view of Jupiter's atmosphere, inner workings of Great Red Spot


SciTech Daily
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 20:32 UTC
jupite natural light infrared light
© International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/NASA/ESA, M.H. Wong and I. de Pater (UC Berkeley) et al.Jupiter's banded appearance is created by the cloud-forming "weather layer." This composite image shows views of Jupiter in (left to right) infrared and visible light taken by the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, respectively.
New findings from NASA's Juno probe orbiting Jupiter provide a fuller picture of how the planet's distinctive and colorful atmospheric features offer clues about the unseen processes below its clouds. The results highlight the inner workings of the belts and zones of clouds encircling Jupiter, as well as its polar cyclones and even the Great Red Spot.

Researchers published several papers on Juno's atmospheric discoveries today in the journal Science and the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Additional papers appeared in two recent issues of Geophysical Research Letters.

"These new observations from Juno open up a treasure chest of new information about Jupiter's enigmatic observable features," said Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Each paper sheds light on different aspects of the planet's atmospheric processes - a wonderful example of how our internationally-diverse science teams strengthen understanding of our solar system."
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Health

Leprosy identified in wild chimpanzees for the first time

Mindy Weisberger
Live Science
Wed, 13 Oct 2021 12:00 UTC
chimpanzee leprosy
© Tai Chimpanzee ProjectA chimpanzee named Woodstock with leprosy, in the Ivory Coast.
Scientists have detected leprosy in wild chimpanzees for the first time, and the symptoms resemble those in infected people.

A team of researchers recently found leprosy-infected chimps in unconnected populations in two West African countries: Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast. Facial lesions in several of the animals looked like those in humans with advanced leprosy; genetic analysis of the chimps' stool samples confirmed that animals in both groups were carrying Mycobacterium leprae, bacteria that causes the disfiguring disease, according to a new study.

Not only are these cases the first to be detected in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) — leprosy in captive chimps has been reported previously — they are the first known non-human cases of leprosy in Africa.

Comment: See also:

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Better Earth

Previous periods of abrupt climate change cannot be explained by current scientific models

University of Birmingham
Phys.org
Mon, 25 Oct 2021 12:00 UTC
dsert field climate change
Climate 'tipping points' can be better understood and predicted using climate change data taken from the ancient past, new research shows.

Current understanding of tipping points, in which the climate system exceeds a threshold beyond which large and often irreversible changes occur, is limited. This is because such an event has not occurred in recent times and certainly not since scientists started to record climate data.


Comment: There's actually a wealth of data across various fields of expertise that show abrupt climate change has occurred in our recent past, and, as just one data point, mainstream science has shown that these shifts appear to correlate with periods of low sun spot activity: 536 AD, the year the sky went dark


Earth System models, routinely used to predict climate, are taken from our understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes that work together to shape our planet's environment.

Comment: Evidently current climate science fails to take into account the primary drivers behind climate change, which doesn't bode well for our own time: The Seven Destructive Earth Passes of Comet Venus

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Family

Brain implant gives blind woman basic artificial vision in scientific first

Carly Cassella
Science Alert
Fri, 29 Oct 2021 19:51 UTC
brain implant vision blind woman
© John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of UtahBerna Gomez, wearing glasses to test the brain implant visual prosthesis.
A 'visual prosthesis' implanted directly into the brain has allowed a blind woman to perceive two-dimensional shapes and letters for the first time in 16 years.

The US researchers behind this phenomenal advance in optical prostheses have recently published the results of their experiments, presenting findings that could help revolutionize the way we help those without sight see again.

At age 42, Berna Gomez developed toxic optic neuropathy, a deleterious medical condition that rapidly destroyed the optic nerves connecting her eyes to her brain.

In just a few days, the faces of Gomez' two children and her husband had faded into darkness, and her career as a science teacher had come to an unexpected end.
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Fireball 2

'Lost extinction event' uncovered for the first time, claimed more than 60% of Africa's primates

Mindy Weisberger
Live Science
Mon, 25 Oct 2021 19:22 UTC
extinct lemurs africa skull fossils
© Matt Borths, Duke University Lemur CenterFossils of the key groups used to unveil the Eocene-Oligocene extinction in Africa with primates on the left, the carnivorous hyaenodont, upper right, rodent, lower right. These fossils are from the Fayum Depression in Egypt and are stored at the Duke Lemur Center's Division of Fossil Primates.
About 34 million years ago, a "lost extinction" in Africa wiped out the majority of primates, rodents and carnivores that preyed on the two groups. Species vanished in a slow-motion wave that spanned millions of years and yet went undetected by scientists — until now.

This previously unseen extinction bridges two geologic epochs: the Eocene (55.8 million to 33.9 million years ago) and the Oligocene (33.9 million to 23 million years ago). When the Eocene's greenhouse climate began shifting toward the icehouse temperatures that marked the Oligocene, sea levels dropped, the Antarctic ice sheet grew, and approximately two-thirds of all animal species in Europe and Asia went extinct.
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Arrow Up

Study finds California condors can have 'virgin births'


Phys.org
Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
California Condor
© AP/Marcio Jose SanchezCondor takes flight in the Ventana Wilderness east of Big Sur, California
Endangered California condors can have "'virgin births," according to a study released Thursday.

Researchers with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance said genetic testing confirmed that two male chicks hatched in 2001 and 2009 from unfertilized eggs were related to their mothers. Neither was related to a male.

The study was published Thursday in the the Journal of Heredity. It's the first report of asexual reproduction in California condors, although parthenogenesis can occur in other species ranging from sharks to honey bees to Komodo dragons.

But in birds, it usually only occurs when females don't have access to males. In this case, each mother condor had previously bred with males, producing 34 chicks, and each was housed with a fertile male at the time they produced the eggs through parthenogenesis.

The researchers said they believe it is the first case of asexual reproduction in any avian species where the female had access to a mate.
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Ice Cube

Scientists create 'superionic ice' in a lab

Louise Lerner
Argonne National Laboratory
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 17:26 UTC
Using the Advanced Photon Source, scientists have recreated the structure of ice formed at the center of planets like Neptune and Uranus.
Superionic ice
© Vitali PrakapenkaScientists used diamonds and a beam of brilliant X-rays to recreate the conditions deep inside planets, and found a new phase of water called “superionic ice.”
Everyone knows about ice, liquid and vapor — but, depending on the conditions, water can actually form more than a dozen different structures. Scientists have now added a new phase to the list: superionic ice.

This type of ice forms at extremely high temperatures and pressures, such as those deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus. Previously superionic ice had only been glimpsed in a brief instant as scientists sent a shockwave through a droplet of water, but in a new study published in Nature Physics, scientists found a way to reliably create, sustain and examine the ice.

"It was a surprise — everyone thought this phase wouldn't appear until you are at much higher pressures than where we first find it," said study co-author Vitali Prakapenka, a University of Chicago research professor and beamline scientist at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory. ​"But we were able to very accurately map the properties of this new ice, which constitutes a new phase of matter, thanks to several powerful tools."
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Microscope 2

Lab study: Coronavirus A.30 variant 'efficiently evades' antibodies induced by Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines


RT
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 11:17 UTC
coronavirus image
© Coronavirus image NEXU Science Communication/Reuters/File photo
The A.30 variant of the coronavirus, detected in Angola and Sweden, is highly resistant to antibodies induced by the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, a new lab study has shown.

A team from Germany looked at the rare A.30 variant that was first recorded in Tanzania and later detected in several patients in Angola and Sweden this spring. They compared the mutation to the Beta and Eta variants. Beta was chosen because it has "the highest level" of resistance to antibodies, the researchers said.

According to the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology this week, the A.30 variant showed improved ability to enter most host cells, including kidney, liver, and lung cells.

The study found the mutation
"enters certain cell lines with increased efficiency and evades antibody-mediated neutralization. In summary, A.30 exhibits a cell line preference not observed for other viral variants and efficiently evades neutralization by antibodies elicited by ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 [AstraZeneca] or BNT162b2 [Pfizer] vaccination."
The variant also proved to be resistant to monoclonal drug Bamlanivimab, which is used for Covid-19 treatment, but was vulnerable to a cocktail of Bamlanivimab and Etesevimab.
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