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upstart writes:

China scientists discover giant viruses in the deepest place on Earth:

The first known batch of viruses retrieved from the deepest point in the Mariana Trench includes giant species bigger than some bacterium, according to a research team in Shanghai.

The many legends of giant sea creatures have been largely debunked because of the challenges to large, complex life forms at the greatest ocean depths.

But the researchers discovered several giant viral species, including mimiviruses – which typically use amoeba as their hosts – in sediments taken from a seabed nearly 11,000 metres (36,000 feet) below sea level at Challenger Deep.

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upstart writes:

Astronomers seek evidence of tech built by aliens:

An international team of scientists led by a prominent Harvard astronomer announced a new initiative Monday to look for evidence of technology built by extraterrestrial civilizations.

Called the Galileo Project, it envisages the creation of a global network of medium-sized telescopes, cameras and computers to investigate unidentified flying objects, and has so far been funded with $1.75 million from private donors.

Given recent research showing the prevalence of Earth-like planets throughout the galaxy, "We can no longer ignore the possibility that technological civilizations predated us," Professor Avi Loeb told reporters at a news conference.

"The impact of any discovery of extraterrestrial technology on science, our technology, and on our entire world view, would be enormous," he added in a statement.

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upstart writes:

Water transformed into shiny, golden metal:

Journal References:
1.) Castelvecchi, Davide. Water transformed into shiny, golden metal, (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-02065-w)
2.) Mason, Philip E., Schewe, H. Christian, Buttersack, Tillmann, et al. Spectroscopic evidence for a gold-coloured metallic water solution, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03646-5)
3.) Tillmann Buttersack, Philip E. Mason, Ryan S. McMullen, et al. Photoelectron spectra of alkali metal–ammonia microjets: From blue electrolyte to bronze metal [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz7607)
4.) Mason, Philip E., Uhlig, Frank, Vaněk, Václav, et al. Coulomb explosion during the early stages of the reaction of alkali metals with water, Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2161)

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upstart writes:

CRISPR therapy cures first genetic disorder inside the body:

A new CRISPR therapy: Now, researchers from Intellia Therapeutics and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals have demonstrated for the first time that a CRISPR therapy delivered into the bloodstream can travel to desired tissues to make edits.

"This is a major milestone for patients," Jennifer Doudna, co-developer of CRISPR, who wasn't involved in the trial, told NPR.

"While these are early data, they show us that we can overcome one of the biggest challenges with applying CRISPR clinically so far, which is being able to deliver it systemically and get it to the right place," she continued.

Journal Reference:
Julian D. Gillmore, Ed Gane, Jorg Taubel, et al. CRISPR-Cas9 In Vivo Gene Editing for Transthyretin Amyloidosis, New England Journal of Medicine (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2107454)

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takyon writes:

Watchdog denies Blue Origin's challenge to NASA's lunar lander program

Blue Origin's protest against NASA's decision to pick just one company to build the country's first human lunar lander in decades was denied by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog agency said Friday, also denying a similar protest from Dynetics. The decision keeps Blue Origin's rival, Elon Musk's SpaceX, the sole winner of NASA's lucrative Moon lander program and hands a loss to Jeff Bezos, whose space company waged a months-long fight to win the same funding.

In a formal protest filed in April, Bezos' Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics had accused NASA of running afoul of contracting law when the agency shelved their proposals and gave Musk's SpaceX a lone $3 billion contract to land a crew of humans on the Moon by 2024. NASA had said it could award up to two companies for the contract, but never committed to that number, and went with SpaceX's Starship proposal. The GAO found that NASA "reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all."

Musk responded to the news by tweeting "GAO" with a flexing bicep emoji.

Also at CNBC and Wccftech.

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upstart writes:

Google And Facebook Mandate Vaccines For Employees At U.S. Offices:

Google and Facebook will require U.S. employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus before returning to the company's offices, the tech giants said on Wednesday.

In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the vaccine mandate would apply to its U.S. offices in the coming weeks and would be required eventually for other locations.

"Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead," Pichai wrote.

Shortly after Google's announcement, Facebook said it too will require anyone coming to work at its U.S. offices to be vaccinated.

"How we implement this policy will depend on local conditions and regulations. We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves," Lori Goler, Facebook's vice president of people, wrote in a statement.

The tech giants' vaccine requirements could push other employers to follow suit.

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upstart writes:

Russian module suddenly fires thrusters after docking with space station:

Flight controllers at NASA and Roscosmos averted a disaster on Thursday after a large Russian module docked with the International Space Station and began to "inadvertently" fire its thrusters.

The Russian "Nauka" module linked to the space station at 8:30 am CT (13:30 UTC), local time in Houston, where NASA's Mission Control is based. After that, Russian cosmonauts aboard the station began preparing to open the hatches leading to Nauka, but at 11:34 am Houston time, Nauka unexpectedly started to fire its movement thrusters.

Within minutes, the space station began to lose attitude control. This was a problem for several reasons. First of all, the station requires a certain attitude to maintain signal with geostationary satellites and talk to Mission Control on the ground. Also, solar arrays are positioned to collect power based upon this predetermined attitude.

Another concern is G forces on the station's structure. The various components of the extensive space station were assembled in microgravity and designed to operate at zero-G. So even small stresses on the vehicle can induce small cracks or other problems with the station's structure.

takyon writes:

No Antenna Could Survive Europa's Brutal, Radioactive Environment—Until Now

Ultimately, when NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where I am a senior antenna engineer, began to seriously consider a Europa lander mission, we realized that the antenna was the limiting factor. The antenna needs to maintain a direct-to-Earth link across more than 550 million miles (900 million km) when Earth and Jupiter are at their point of greatest separation. The antenna must be radiation-hardened enough to survive an onslaught of ionizing particles from Jupiter, and it cannot be so heavy or so large that it would imperil the lander during takeoff and landing. One colleague, when we laid out the challenge in front of us, called it impossible. We built such an antenna anyway—and although it was designed for Europa, it is a revolutionary enough design that we're already successfully implementing it in future missions for other destinations in the solar system.

[...] I've mentioned previously that the antenna will need to transmit signals up to 900 million km. As a general rule, less efficient antennas need a larger surface area to transmit farther. But as the lander won't have an orbiter overhead with a large relay antenna, and it won't be big enough itself for a large antenna, it needs a small antenna with a transmission efficiency of 80 percent or higher—much more efficient than most space-bound antennas.

So, to reiterate the challenge: The antenna cannot be large, because then the lander will be too heavy. It cannot be inefficient for the same reason, because requiring more power would necessitate bulky power systems instead. And it needs to survive exposure to a brutal amount of radiation from Jupiter. This last point requires that the antenna must be mostly, if not entirely, made out of metal, because metals are more resistant to ionizing radiation.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Hackaday

The IBM PC spawned the basic architecture that grew into the dominant Wintel platform we know today. Once heavy, cumbersome and power thirsty, it’s a machine that you can now emulate on a single board with a cheap commodity microcontroller. That’s thanks to work from [Fabrizio Di Vittorio], who has shared a how-to on Youtube.

The full playlist is quite something to watch, showing off a huge number of old-school PC applications and games running on the platform. There’s QBASIC, FreeDOS, Windows 3.0, and yes, of course, Flight Simulator. The latter game was actually considered somewhat of a de facto standard for PC compatibility in the 1980s, so the fact that the ESP32 can run it with [Fabrizio’s] code suggests he’s done well.

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upstart writes:

China's CATL unveils sodium-ion battery - a first for a major car battery maker:

China's CATL (300750.SZ) on Thursday became the first major automotive battery maker to unveil a sodium-ion battery, saying it planned to set up a supply chain for the new technology in 2023.

As electric vehicles become increasingly popular, demand for key battery ingredients, particularly cobalt, has spiked. That has spurred car and battery makers to seek alternatives to the current three main technologies - nickel-cobalt-aluminium (NCA), nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

The sodium-ion batteries do not contain lithium, cobalt or nickel. It did not disclose cost details of the new batteries.

CATL, China's top car battery maker with a market value of almost $200 billion, also unveiled a battery pack that integrates sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries.

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upstart writes:

Mice sweating fat raises prospect of unusual anti-obesity therapy:

The research began by studying how an immune protein called thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) influences energy metabolism in mice. The initial hypothesis was that increasing the levels of TSLP in mice could lower the animals’ risk of developing diabetes.

“Initially, we did not think TSLP would have any effect on obesity itself," says the study’s principal investigator Taku Kambayashi. "What we wanted to find out was whether it could impact insulin resistance. We thought that the cytokine could correct Type 2 diabetes, without actually causing the mice to lose any weight.”

After a month of treatment designed to increase TSLP levels the mice showed significant improvements to blood glucose. But surprisingly, the animals also dropped huge volumes of visceral fat. Even more unexpectedly, the TSLP-treated mice were losing weight while consuming up to 30 percent more food than the control mice.

So what was going on? Kambayashi says the clue was in the unusually oily coats on the TSLP-treated mice.

[...] Extracting oils from the animals’ fur the researchers discovered the mice were indeed "sweating fat." The fat cells in the oils were a form of what is called sebum – a waxy substance released by glands in the skin.

Sebum secretion is generally regulated by hormones. In humans excessive hormonal activity in adolescence is known to stimulate high levels of sebum secretion leading to that infamous wave of teenage acne.

Journal Reference:
Ruth Choa, Junichiro Tohyama, Shogo Wada, et al. Thymic stromal lymphopoietin induces adipose loss through sebum hypersecretion [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abd2893)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Australia's military will help enforce a lockdown in Sydney after the city of 6 million posted a record daily rise in COVID-19 cases on Thursday and state authorities said the outbreak was likely to get worse.

The lockdown of Australia's biggest city has increased pressure on Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is now trailing in opinion polls, and heightened concern that Australia's A$2 trillion ($1.5 trillion) economy could slide into recession.

[...] "We can only assume that things are likely to get worse before they get better given the quantity of people infectious in the community," said Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of New South Wales state, of which Sydney is the capital.

[...] With little sign that of restrictions reducing infections, Berejiklian said new curbs would be imposed on the southwestern and western areas of Sydney where the majority of COVID-19 cases are being found.

Residents there will be forced to wear masks outdoors and to stay within five km (three miles) of their homes.

With even tighter restrictions set to begin on Friday, New South Wales Police said it had asked for 300 military personnel to help enforce lockdown orders.

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The Amount of Greenland Ice That Melted on Tuesday Could Cover Florida in 2 Inches of Water

upstart writes:

The amount of Greenland ice that melted on Tuesday could cover Florida in 2 inches of water:

It's the third instance of extreme melting on the continent in the past decade, during which time the melting has stretched farther inland than the entire satellite era, which began in the 1970s.

Greenland lost more than 8.5 billion tons of surface mass on Tuesday, and 18.4 billion tons since Sunday, according to the Denmark Meteorological Institute. While this week's total ice loss is not as extreme as a similar event in 2019 — a record melt year — the area of the ice sheet that's melting is larger.

"It's a significant melt," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, told CNN. "July 27th saw most of the eastern half of Greenland from the northern tip all the way to the southern tip mostly melted, which is unusual."

As human-caused climate change warms the planet, ice loss has increased rapidly. According to a recent study published in the journal Cryosphere, Earth has lost a staggering 28 trillion tonnes of ice since the mid-1990s, a large portion of which was from the Arctic, including the Greenland ice sheet.

As Drought Cuts Hay Crop, Cattle Ranchers Face Culling Herds

upstart writes:

As drought cuts hay crop, cattle ranchers face culling herds:

With his cattle ranch threatened by a deepening drought, Jim Stanko isn’t cheered by the coming storm signaled by the sound of thunder.

DannyB writes:

The Porsche dynasty is taking on Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in space

Porsche SE, the family holding company that controls Volkswagen Group, is the latest big investor to bet on space's crucial role in developing future technologies.

The company, controlled by the related Porsche and Piëch families that turned Volkswagen into a global powerhouse, on Wednesday unveiled an investment into Germany's Isar Aerospace, a space startup attempting to rival Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX with rocket production and satellite launch services.

While Blue Origin and SpaceX are backed by billionaires and already racing ahead with manned space missions, Isar Aerospace believes it can compete in the growing market for launching small satellites into Earth's orbit. It's planning its first test flight for next year.

[....] "The funding will allow Isar Aerospace to further invest in its launch, testing, and manufacturing infrastructure for its largely automated rocket production and commercial operations," Isar Aerospace said in a statement on Wednesday.

[....] Commercial demand for the launch of small satellites is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, as companies in traditional and emerging industries come to rely more heavily on satellite technology to run software applications.

[....] Although a relatively small deal for Porsche SE, it's a notable move for a business that's invested overwhelmingly in automotive businesses and is the latest example of the space race taking hold between private companies and their billionaire backers.

Will space become the next gold rush?

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upstart writes:

MLM Nauka makes triumphant docking to ISS - NASASpaceFlight.com:

Russia’s Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) Nauka, meaning “science,” has defied the odds to successfully dock to the ISS after a long and arduous journey dating back over 20 years and a problematic propulsion system after launch which had threatened the success of the mission.

The docking was not without issue, with Russian cosmonauts noting that Nauka wasn’t on the correct course less than an hour before docking; however, a retro burn quickly corrected the issue. After also troubleshooting an issue with the TORU manual docking system, which was used for the final seconds of the module’s approach, Nauka successfully docked to the Zvezda service module’s nadir port at 09:29 EDT / 13:29 UTC, marking the first major expansion to the Russian segment for over 20 years.

[...] Nauka had been chasing down the International Space Station (ISS) for the last eight days after being launched atop a Proton-M booster from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 21 July.

Immediately after a successful orbit insertion of 190 x 350.1 km, issues with the module’s communications and propulsion systems were noted. Initial troubleshooting was complicated by limited communications during brief periods when the module came within range of Russian ground stations.