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Elon Musk Says Disused Oil Rigs Will Be Used as Spaceship Launchpads This Year

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Elon Musk announced that SpaceX's floating oil rig spaceship launchpad would be in limited operation by the end of the year as part of its grand vision for Starship.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine in adults. Maureen Ferran, a virologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, explains how this third authorized vaccine works and explores the differences between it and the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that are already in use.
1. How does the Johnson & Johnson vaccine work?

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is what's called a viral vector vaccine.

To create this vaccine, the Johnson & Johnson team took a harmless adenovirus - the viral vector - and replaced a small piece of its genetic instructions with coronavirus genes for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

After this modified adenovirus is injected into someone's arm, it enters the person's cells. The cells then read the genetic instructions needed to make the spike protein and the vaccinated cells make and present the spike protein on their own surface. The person's immune system then notices these foreign proteins and makes antibodies against them that will protect the person if they are ever exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in the future.

The adenovirus vector vaccine is safe because the adenovirus can't replicate in human cells or cause disease, and the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein can't cause COVID-19 without the rest of the coronavirus.

This approach is not new. Johnson & Johnson used a similar method to make its Ebola vaccine, and the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine is also an adenovirus viral vector vaccine.

2. How effective is it?

The FDA's analysis found that, in the U.S., the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was 72% effective at preventing all COVID-19 and 86% effective at preventing severe cases of the disease. While there is still a chance a vaccinated person could get sick, this suggests they would be much less likely to need hospitalization or to die from COVID-19.

A similar trial in South Africa, where a new, more contagious variant is dominant, produced similar results. Researchers found the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be slightly less effective at preventing all illness there - 64% overall - but was still 82% effective at preventing severe disease. The FDA report also indicates that the vaccine protects against other variants from Britain and Brazil too.

3. How is it different from other vaccines?

The most basic difference is that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is an adenovirus vector vaccine, while the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are both mRNA vaccines. Messenger RNA vaccines use genetic instructions from the coronavirus to tell a person's cells to make the spike protein, but these don't use another virus as a vector. There are many practical differences, too.

Both of the mRNA-based vaccines require two shots. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only a single dose. This is key when vaccines are in short supply.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine can also be stored at much warmer temperatures than the mRNA vaccines. The mRNA vaccines must be shipped and stored at below-freezing or subzero temperatures and require a complicated cold chain to safely distribute them. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be stored for at least three months in a regular refrigerator, making it much easier to use and distribute.

As for efficacy, it is difficult to directly compare the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with the mRNA vaccines due to differences in how the clinical trials were designed. While the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are reported to be approximately 95% effective at preventing illness from COVID-19, the trials were done over the summer and fall of 2020, before newer more contagious variants were circulating widely. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines might not be as effective against the new variants, and Johnson & Johnson trials were done more recently and take into account the vaccine's efficacy against these new variants.

4. Should I choose one vaccine over another?

Although the overall efficacy of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines is higher than the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, you should not wait until you have your choice of vaccine - which is likely a long way off anyway. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is nearly as good as the mRNA-based vaccines at preventing serious disease, and that's what really matters.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine and other viral-vector vaccines like the one from AstraZeneca are particularly important for the global vaccination effort. From a public health perspective, it's important to have multiple COVID-19 vaccines, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a very welcome addition to the vaccine arsenal. It doesn't require a freezer, making it much easier to ship and store. It's a one-shot vaccine, making logistics much easier compared with organizing two doses per person.

As many people as possible need to be vaccinated as quickly as possible to limit the development of new coronavirus variants. Johnson & Johnson is expected to ship out nearly four million doses as soon as the FDA grants emergency use authorization. Having a third authorized vaccine in the U.S. will be a big step towards meeting vaccination demand and stopping this pandemic.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Maureen Ferran, Rochester Institute of Technology. Maureen Ferran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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How does the Johnson & Johnson vaccine compare to other coronavirus vaccines? 4 questions answered

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The Johnson & Johnson vaccine only requires one dose. Phill Magoke/AFP via Getty ImagesThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine in adults. Maureen Ferran, a virologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology, explains how this third authorized vaccine works and explores the differences between it and the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that are already in use.

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NASA's Perseverance Rover Lands Successfully on Mars: After a seven-month-long journey, NASA's Perseverance Rover successfully touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California celebrate landing NASA's fifth -- and most ambitious -- rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Download video ›

The agency's latest and most complex mission to the Red Planet has touched down at Jezero Crater. Now it's time to begin testing the health of the rover.
The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers). Confirmation of the successful touchdown was announced in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST).

Packed with groundbreaking technology, the Mars 2020 mission launched July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Perseverance rover mission marks an ambitious first step in the effort to collect Mars samples and return them to Earth.

Perseverance Rover's First Image from Mars: This is the first image NASA's Perseverance rover sent back after touching down on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. The view, from one of Perseverance's Hazard Cameras, is partially obscured by a dust cover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image and caption ›

"This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally - when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks," said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. "The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission embodies our nation's spirit of persevering even in the most challenging of situations, inspiring, and advancing science and exploration. The mission itself personifies the human ideal of persevering toward the future and will help us prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet."

About the size of a car, the 2,263-pound (1,026-kilogram) robotic geologist and astrobiologist will undergo several weeks of testing before it begins its two-year science investigation of Mars' Jezero Crater. While the rover will investigate the rock and sediment of Jezero's ancient lakebed and river delta to characterize the region's geology and past climate, a fundamental part of its mission is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. To that end, the Mars Sample Return campaign, being planned by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), will allow scientists on Earth to study samples collected by Perseverance to search for definitive signs of past life using instruments too large and complex to send to the Red Planet.

"Because of today's exciting events, the first pristine samples from carefully documented locations on another planet are another step closer to being returned to Earth," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA. "Perseverance is the first step in bringing back rock and regolith from Mars. We don't know what these pristine samples from Mars will tell us. But what they could tell us is monumental - including that life might have once existed beyond Earth."

Some 28 miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater sits on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Scientists have determined that 3.5 billion years ago the crater had its own river delta and was filled with water.

The power system that provides electricity and heat for Perseverance through its exploration of Jezero Crater is a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) provided it to NASA through an ongoing partnership to develop power systems for civil space applications.

Equipped with seven primary science instruments, the most cameras ever sent to Mars, and its exquisitely complex sample caching system - the first of its kind sent into space - Perseverance will scour the Jezero region for fossilized remains of ancient microscopic Martian life, taking samples along the way.

"Perseverance is the most sophisticated robotic geologist ever made, but verifying that microscopic life once existed carries an enormous burden of proof," said Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division. "While we'll learn a lot with the great instruments we have aboard the rover, it may very well require the far more capable laboratories and instruments back here on Earth to tell us whether our samples carry evidence that Mars once harbored life."
Paving the Way for Human Missions
"Landing on Mars is always an incredibly difficult task and we are proud to continue building on our past success," said JPL Director Michael Watkins. "But, while Perseverance advances that success, this rover is also blazing its own path and daring new challenges in the surface mission. We built the rover not just to land but to find and collect the best scientific samples for return to Earth, and its incredibly complex sampling system and autonomy not only enable that mission, they set the stage for future robotic and crewed missions."

The Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2 ( MEDLI2) sensor suite collected data about Mars' atmosphere during entry, and the Terrain-Relative Navigation system autonomously guided the spacecraft during final descent. The data from both are expected to help future human missions land on other worlds more safely and with larger payloads.

On the surface of Mars, Perseverance's science instruments will have an opportunity to scientifically shine. Mastcam-Z is a pair of zoomable science cameras on Perseverance's remote sensing mast, or head, that creates high-resolution, color 3D panoramas of the Martian landscape. Also located on the mast, the SuperCam uses a pulsed laser to study the chemistry of rocks and sediment and has its own microphone to help scientists better understand the property of the rocks, including their hardness.

Located on a turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm, the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry ( PIXL) and the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals ( SHERLOC) instruments will work together to collect data on Mars' geology close-up. PIXL will use an X-ray beam and suite of sensors to delve into a rock's elemental chemistry. SHERLOC's ultraviolet laser and spectrometer, along with its Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) imager, will study rock surfaces, mapping out the presence of certain minerals and organic molecules, which are the carbon-based building blocks of life on Earth.

The rover chassis is home to three science instruments, as well. Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment ( RIMFAX) is the first ground-penetrating radar on the surface of Mars and will be used to determine how different layers of the Martian surface formed over time. The data could help pave the way for future sensors that hunt for subsurface water ice deposits.

Also with an eye on future Red Planet explorations, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment ( MOXIE) technology demonstration will attempt to manufacture oxygen out of thin air - the Red Planet's tenuous and mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere. The rover's Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer ( MEDA) instrument, which has sensors on the mast and chassis, will provide key information about present-day Mars weather, climate, and dust.

Currently attached to the belly of Perseverance, the diminutive Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is a technology demonstration that will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Project engineers and scientists will now put Perseverance through its paces, testing every instrument, subsystem, and subroutine over the next month or two. Only then will they deploy the helicopter to the surface for the flight test phase. If successful, Ingenuity could add an aerial dimension to exploration of the Red Planet in which such helicopters serve as a scouts or make deliveries for future astronauts away from their base.

Once Ingenuity's test flights are complete, the rover's search for evidence of ancient microbial life will begin in earnest.

"Perseverance is more than a rover, and more than this amazing collection of men and women that built it and got us here," said John McNamee, project manager of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at JPL. "It is even more than the 10.9 million people who signed up to be part of our mission. This mission is about what humans can achieve when they persevere. We made it this far. Now, watch us go."
More About the Mission
A primary objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology research, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter technology demonstration for NASA.

For more about Perseverance:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
and
https://nasa.gov/perseverance
News Media Contacts
Alana Johnson / Grey Hautaluoma
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-672-4780 / 202-358-0668
alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov / grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

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Touchdown! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Safely Lands on Red Planet - NASA Mars Exploration

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The agency's latest and most complex mission to the Red Planet has touched down at Jezero Crater. Now it's time to begin testing the health of the rover. The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars Thursday, after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers).

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HST/WFC3 color composite image of CL J1449+0856. Credit: Kalita et al., 2021.

Using ground-based facilities and space telescopes, an international team of astronomers has conducted multiwavelength observations of a galaxy cluster known as CLJ1449+0856. The observational campaign detected multiple faint radio-jets, what could shed more light on the nature of this cluster. The finding is reported in a paper published February 23 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Galaxy clusters consist of up to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. They are the largest gravitationally bound structures, and could therefore be crucial in improving the knowledge about large-scale structure formation and evolution of the universe.

At a redshift of 1.99, CLJ1449+0856 is a cluster in a phase of galaxy assembly and star formation quenching which is expected to create a dominant population of massive and passive galaxies. However, unlike the less evolved protoclusters, this one features an extended X-ray emission originating most likely from its hot intra-cluster medium (ICM) plasma.

In order to get more insights into the properties of CLJ1449+0856, a team of astronomers led by Boris S. Kalita of the University of Paris, France, has carried out a multiwavelength study of this cluster. For this purpose, they combined 3.0 GHz data obtained by the Very Large Array (VLA) with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array's (ALMA) sub-millimeter and Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) near-infrared observations. The study was complemented by datasets from the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), XMM-Newton telescope and Chandra X-ray observatory.

As a result of this observational campaign, the researchers have identified multiple radio emission regions in CLJ1449+0856 without any counterparts in the HST near-infrared as well as 870 µm continuum data.

"Detection of multiple radio-jet sites in a cluster core is in stark contrast to low redshift counterparts, which predominantly feature centrally placed radio AGN-jets [active galactic nuclei-jets]," the authors of the paper explained.

The possible association of these radio sources with known galaxies due to physical proximity for four out of six of these objects without any overlap allowed the astronomers to conclude they are indeed AGN radio-jets. The total flux from all the detected jets was measured to be at a level of about 30.6 µJy.

Their power contribution of the six newly detected jets was estimated to be at least 120 tredecillion erg/s. This is approximately 25% of the previously estimated instantaneous energy injection into the ICM of CLJ1449+0856 from AGN outflows and star formation.

In general, the researchers noted that the results point out to accretion of gas into the cluster center of CLJ1449+0856 and also suggest a "steady state" of the cluster featuring non cool-core like behavior.

"We are possibly witnessing a 'steady state' of the cluster ICM due to a rather constant version of the AGN feedback driven loop," the scientists concluded.

More information: Feedback Factory: Multiple faint radio-jets detected in a cluster at z=2, arXiv:2102.11752 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/abs/2102.11752

© 2021 Science X Network

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Astronomers identify faint radio-jets in the galaxy cluster CLJ1449+0856

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Using ground-based facilities and space telescopes, an international team of astronomers has conducted multiwavelength observations of a galaxy cluster known as CLJ1449+0856. The observational campaign detected multiple faint radio-jets, what could shed more light on the nature of this cluster. The finding is reported in a paper published February 23 on the arXiv pre-print server.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced the following actions taken in its ongoing response effort to the COVID-19 pandemic:

The agency has updated its FDA COVID-19 Response At-A-Glance Summary, which provides a quick look at facts, figures and highlights on the FDA's response efforts.

The agency issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Quidel for its QuickVue At-Home COVID-19 Test for at-home use with a prescription. The Quidel QuickVue At-Home COVID-19 Test is an antigen test that detects proteins from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, from a nasal swab sample and gives a result in 10-15 minutes without needing to send a sample to a laboratory for analysis. The test is authorized for prescription at-home use with a self-collected nasal swab sample by people age 14 years and older or people age 8 years and older, when the nasal swab sample is collected by an adult, within the first six days of the onset of COVID-19 symptoms.

A new FDA Voices entitled National Consumer Protection Week: FDA Is Vigilant in Protecting Consumers Against COVID-19 Vaccine Scams, by Judy McMeekin, Pharm. D., explains that the FDA is on the lookout for charlatans seeking to profit from the pandemic. Vaccine distribution is underway throughout the country and schemes to mislead and scam the American public are prevalent. Public health protection for consumers is the hallmark of our mission and the FDA remains vigilant to ensure that consumers are shielded from seedy efforts and can have confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.

As part of the FDA's effort to protect consumers, the agency issued a warning letter jointly with the Federal Trade Commission to Ageless Global, LLC for selling unapproved products with fraudulent COVID-19 claims. The company sells products, including "Immunoral," "Immune Plus," "MD Immune Support Spray," and "MD CVK-365 Mouth Spray," and misleadingly represents the products can mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose or cure COVID-19 in people. The FDA requested Ageless Global, LLC take immediate action to cease the sale of any unapproved and unauthorized products for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19. Consumers concerned about COVID-19 should consult with their health care provider.

As part of the FDA's effort to protect consumers, the agency issued a warning letter to KDunn and Associates, P.A. dba HealthQuilt and Kimberly Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., for not complying with federal laws and regulations, including laws and regulations to protect people participating in clinical trials, during the clinical investigation of an investigational drug to treat, cure and prevent COVID-19. Sponsors seeking to develop new drugs to treat or prevent any disease, including COVID-19, must comply with the FDA's laws and regulations governing the drug approval process.

Testing updates:
As of today, 335 tests and sample collection devices are authorized by the FDA under emergency use authorizations (EUAs). These include 249 molecular tests and sample collection devices, 71 antibody tests and 15 antigen tests. There are 38 molecular authorizations that can be used with home-collected samples. There is one molecular prescription at-home test, two antigen prescription at-home test and one over-the-counter (OTC) at-home antigen test.

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: March 2, 2021

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced the following actions taken in its ongoing response effort to the COVID-19 pandemic: The agency has updated its FDA COVID-19 Response At-A-Glance Summary, which provides a quick look at facts, figures and highlights on the FDA's response efforts.

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A supernova is the explosion of a star -- the largest explosion that takes place in space.

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Researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a new method of 3D printing photonic crystal fibers - a special type of optical fiber.

The team constructed a purpose-built SLA-based 3D printer for the project, one that enabled the scientists to customize their optical fibers with previously impossible internal geometries. Much like any resin-based system, it works by curing photopolymers into solid parts layer by layer, except it grants "unprecedented ease and precision" while fabricating fiber structures at much higher speeds than traditional manufacturing processes.

Study co-authors Andrea Bertoncini and Carlo Liberale 3D printing optical fibers in the lab. Photo via KAUST.

What are photonic crystal fibers?
Fiber optics technology is capable of transmitting information at lightspeed. As such, it is the driving force behind a whole host of modern technologies, including medical imaging devices, military communications systems, and of course high-speed internet.

Photonic crystal fibers (PCF) are a subclass of optical fiber that emerged at the University of Bath in 1996. PCFs are special in that they feature several internal channels that run along the entire length of the fiber. The channels act like near-perfect mirrors, improving the fibers' light trapping and long propagation properties. This ultimately means a faster rate of transmission and a reduction in information loss.

"Photonic crystal fibers allow you to confine light in very tight spaces, increasing the optical interaction," explains Andrea Bertoncini, a co-author of the study. "This enables the fibers to massively reduce the propagation distance needed to realize particular optical functions, like polarization control or wavelength splitting."

Cross-sectional areas of various 3D printed PCFs. Image via KAUST.

Using 3D printing to modify optical properties
The primary method of tuning a PCF's optical properties is to modify its cross-sectional geometry. This is done at the initial manufacturing stage, where the fibers are conventionally drawn out from a pool of molten silica glass. Factors that can influence a fiber's properties include the size and shape of the hollow chambers, as well as the cross-sectional pattern itself.

Since the diameter of an optical fiber is often a fraction of a millimeter, the patterns are usually drawn out in scaled-up versions of the fibers first. While this works, it introduces limits to the number of geometries that are possible due to factors such as gravity and surface tension.

"Photonic crystal fibers offer scientists a type of 'tuning knob' to control light-guiding properties through geometric design," adds Bertoncini. "However, people were not fully exploiting these properties because of the difficulties of producing arbitrary hole patterns with conventional methods. The surprising thing is that now, with our approach, you can fabricate them. You design the 3D model, you print it, and that's it."

The specially developed KAUST 3D printer uses UV lasers to fabricate optical fibers. Photo via KAUST.

By 3D printing the PCFs instead, the KAUST team was able to overcome these geometric limitations. Custom cross-sectional areas were programmed directly into the fiber layers themselves, eliminating the need to work with scaled-up versions altogether.

According to Bertoncini, the novel process also allows for multiple cross-sectional areas to be fabricated along a single optical fiber - a feature that would otherwise be impossible. The technique can be used to split a light beam into its individual polarization components, much like a prism does to a ray of white light. Multiple cross-sectional areas can also be used to vary the focus of a light beam as and when needed, paving the way for a whole new method of high-speed, highly-custom optical fiber production.

Further details of the study can be found in the paper titled ' 3D printed waveguides based on photonic crystal fiber designs for complex fiber-end photonic devices '. It is co-authored by Andrea Bertoncini and Carlo Liberale.

A schematic showing multiple cross-sectional areas integrated into a single optical fiber. Image via KAUST.

3D printing for optics applications
The 3D printing of optical devices is a cutting-edge sector within additive manufacturing. Luxexcel, a specialist in 3D printed prescription lenses, recently partnered with waveguide manufacturer WaveOptics to 3D print prescription smart glasses with augmented reality (AR) functionality. The upcoming lens modules will combine Luxexcel's lenses with WaveOptics' waveguides and light projectors, providing smart technology in a normal form factor that can be integrated with off-the-shelf eyewear frames.

Elsewhere, engineers from 3D printer OEM Nanoscribe and the University of Freiburg recently collaborated to 3D print high-resolution glass silica microstructures using two-photon-polymerization (2PP). The optics are made of a glass-like resin called 'Glassomer', and feature a surface roughness of just 6 nanometers, much less than the 40-200 nanometers seen in many conventionally manufactured glass parts. The scientists believe their 3D printing process could be used to produce the next generation of micro-optics with potential applications in medical imaging systems.
Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter for the latest news in additive manufacturing. You can also stay connected by following us on and liking us on Looking for a career in additive manufacturing? Visit 3D Printing Jobs for a selection of roles in the industry.

Featured image shows a set of highly-custom 3D printed optical fibers. Photo via KAUST.

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Scientists advance fiber optics technology with new high-speed 3D printer - 3D Printing Industry

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Researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a new method of 3D printing photonic crystal fibers - a special type of optical fiber. The team constructed a purpose-built SLA-based 3D printer for the project, one that enabled the scientists to customize their optical fibers with previously impossible internal geometries.

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COVID-19 can be diagnosed in 55 minutes or less with the help of programmed magnetic nanobeads and a diagnostic tool that plugs into an off-the-shelf cellphone, according to Rice University engineers.

The Rice lab of mechanical engineer Peter Lillehoj has developed a stamp-sized microfluidic chip that measures the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) protein in blood serum from a standard finger prick. The nanobeads bind to SARS-CoV-2 N protein, a biomarker for COVID-19, in the chip and transport it to an electrochemical sensor that detects minute amounts of the biomarker.

The researchers argued their process simplifies sample handling compared to swab-based PCR tests that are widely used to diagnose COVID-19 and need to be analyzed in a laboratory.

"What's great about this device is that doesn't require a laboratory," Lillehoj said. "You can perform the entire test and generate the results at the collection site, health clinic or even a pharmacy. The entire system is easily transportable and easy to use."

The research appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Sensors.

Lillehoj and Rice graduate student and lead author Jiran Li took advantage of existing biosensing tools and combined them with their own experience in developing simple diagnostics, like a microneedle patch introduced last year to diagnose malaria.

The new tool relies on a slightly more complex detection scheme but delivers accurate, quantitative results in a short amount of time. To test the device, the lab relied on donated serum samples from people who were healthy and others who were COVID-19-positive.

Lillehoj said a longer incubation yields more accurate results when using whole serum. The lab found that 55 minutes was an optimum amount of time for the microchip to sense SARS-CoV-2 N protein at concentrations as low as 50 picograms (billionths of a gram) per milliliter in whole serum. The microchip could detect N protein in even lower concentrations, at 10 picograms per milliliter, in only 25 minutes by diluting the serum fivefold.

Paired with a Google Pixel 2 phone and a plug-in potentiostat, it was able to deliver a positive diagnosis with a concentration as low as 230 picograms for whole serum.

"There are standard procedures to modify the beads with an antibody that targets a particular biomarker," Lillehoj said. "When you combine them with a sample containing the biomarker, in this case SARS-CoV-2 N protein, they bond together."

A capillary tube is used to deliver the sample to the chip, which is then placed on a magnet that pulls the beads toward an electrochemical sensor coated with capture antibodies. The beads bind to the capture antibodies and generate a current proportional to the concentration of biomarker in the sample.

The potentiostat reads that current and sends a signal to its phone app. If there are no COVID-19 biomarkers, the beads do not bind to the sensor and get washed away inside the chip.

Lillehoj said it would not be difficult for industry to manufacture the microfluidic chips or to adapt them to new COVID-19 strains if and when that becomes necessary.

Reference: "Microfluidic Magneto Immunosensor for Rapid, High Sensitivity Measurements of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid Protein in Serum" by Jiran Li and Peter B. Lillehoj, 25 February 2021, ACS Sensors.
DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.0c02561

The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Rice University COVID-19 Research Fund supported the research.

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Microfluidic Chip Simplifies COVID-19 Testing, Delivers Results on a Phone in 55 Minutes or Less

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Programmed magnetic nanobeads enable diagnostic device designed at Rice University. COVID-19 can be diagnosed in 55 minutes or less with the help of programmed magnetic nanobeads and a diagnostic tool that plugs into an off-the-shelf cellphone, according to Rice University engineers. The Rice

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NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star's habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. Scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet's potential environments to help inform future observations.

TOI 700 d is one of only a few Earth-size planets discovered in a star's habitable zone so far. Others include several planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system and other worlds discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

"TESS was designed and launched specifically to find Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars," said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Planets around nearby stars are easiest to follow-up with larger telescopes in space and on Earth. Discovering TOI 700 d is a key science finding for TESS. Confirming the planet's size and habitable zone status with Spitzer is another win for Spitzer as it approaches the end of science operations this January."

TESS monitors large swaths of the sky, called sectors, for 27 days at a time. This long stare allows the satellite to track changes in stellar brightness caused by an orbiting planet crossing in front of its star from our perspective, an event called a transit.

TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. It's roughly 40% of the Sun's mass and size and about half its surface temperature. The star appears in 11 of the 13 sectors TESS observed during the mission's first year, and scientists caught multiple transits by its three planets.

The star was originally misclassified in the TESS database as being more similar to our Sun, which meant the planets appeared larger and hotter than they really are. Several researchers, including Alton Spencer, a high school student working with members of the TESS team, identified the error.

"When we corrected the star's parameters, the sizes of its planets dropped, and we realized the outermost one was about the size of Earth and in the habitable zone," said Emily Gilbert, a graduate student at the University of Chicago. "Additionally, in 11 months of data we saw no flares from the star, which improves the chances TOI 700 d is habitable and makes it easier to model its atmospheric and surface conditions."

Gilbert and other researchers presented the findings at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, and three papers - one of which Gilbert led - have been submitted to scientific journals.

The innermost planet, called TOI 700 b, is almost exactly Earth-size, is probably rocky and completes an orbit every 10 days. The middle planet, TOI 700 c, is 2.6 times larger than Earth - between the sizes of Earth and Neptune - orbits every 16 days and is likely a gas-dominated world. TOI 700 d, the outermost known planet in the system and the only one in the habitable zone, measures 20% larger than Earth, orbits every 37 days and receives from its star 86% of the energy that the Sun provides to Earth. All of the planets are thought to be tidally locked to their star, which means they rotate once per orbit so that one side is constantly bathed in daylight.

A team of scientists led by Joseph Rodriguez, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, requested follow-up observations with Spitzer to confirm TOI 700 d.

"Given the impact of this discovery - that it is TESS's first habitable-zone Earth-size planet - we really wanted our understanding of this system to be as concrete as possible," Rodriguez said. "Spitzer saw TOI 700 d transit exactly when we expected it to. It's a great addition to the legacy of a mission that helped confirm two of the TRAPPIST-1 planets and identify five more."

The Spitzer data increased scientists' confidence that TOI 700 d is a real planet and sharpened their measurements of its orbital period by 56% and its size by 38%. It also ruled out other possible astrophysical causes of the transit signal, such as the presence of a smaller, dimmer companion star in the system.

Rodriguez and his colleagues also used follow-up observations from a 1-meter ground-based telescope in the global Las Cumbres Observatory network to improve scientists' confidence in the orbital period and size of TOI 700 c by 30% and 36%, respectively.

Because TOI 700 is bright, nearby, and shows no sign of stellar flares, the system is a prime candidate for precise mass measurements by current ground-based observatories. These measurements could confirm scientists' estimates that the inner and outer planets are rocky and the middle planet is made of gas.

Future missions may be able to identify whether the planets have atmospheres and, if so, even determine their compositions.

While the exact conditions on TOI 700 d are unknown, scientists can use current information, like the planet's size and the type of star it orbits, to generate computer models and make predictions. Researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, modeled 20 potential environments of TOI 700 d to gauge if any version would result in surface temperatures and pressures suitable for habitability.

Their 3D climate models examined a variety of surface types and atmospheric compositions typically associated with what scientists regard to be potentially habitable worlds. Because TOI 700 d is tidally locked to its star, the planet's cloud formations and wind patterns may be strikingly different from Earth's.

One simulation included an ocean-covered TOI 700 d with a dense, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere similar to what scientists suspect surrounded Mars when it was young. The model atmosphere contains a deep layer of clouds on the star-facing side. Another model depicts TOI 700 d as a cloudless, all-land version of modern Earth, where winds flow away from the night side of the planet and converge on the point directly facing the star.

When starlight passes through a planet's atmosphere, it interacts with molecules like carbon dioxide and nitrogen to produce distinct signals, called spectral lines. The modeling team, led by Gabrielle Engelmann-Suissa, a Universities Space Research Association visiting research assistant at Goddard, produced simulated spectra for the 20 modeled versions of TOI 700 d.

"Someday, when we have real spectra from TOI 700 d, we can backtrack, match them to the closest simulated spectrum, and then match that to a model," Engelmann-Suissa said. "It's exciting because no matter what we find out about the planet, it's going to look completely different from what we have here on Earth."

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT's Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Space operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

The modeling work was funded through the Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration at Goddard, a multidisciplinary collaboration that brings together experts to build comprehensive and sophisticated computer models to better analyze current and future exoplanet observations.

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NASA Planet Hunter Finds its 1st Earth-size Habitable-zone World - NASA

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NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star's habitable zone, the range of distances where

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Perseverance rover: Everything you need to know

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The Perseverance rover is hunting for signs of ancient life and cache samples for future return to Earth.

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A new variant of the coronavirus believed to spread more easily has forced the United Kingdom into another lockdown and been detected in at least 33 countries, including the United States. Many of the U.S. cases have no known travel history - meaning the strain is spreading throughout communities. The variant, known as B.1.1.7, is not expected to be resistant to the vaccines rolled out in December, though scientists are racing to learn more about the mutation - and where it has already spread. Below is a primer for the public-health and political ramifications of the concerning development.

The B.1.1.7 (U.K.) strain has been found in at least 21 U.S. states

The first U.S. cases of B.1.1.7. were identified in Colorado on December 29. On December 31, Florida health officials confirmed that a man in his 20s with no history of traveling had tested positive for the new COVID strain. These infections were shortly followed by California officials reporting six cases within the state: two in the same household in the Big Bear area east of Los Angeles and four in San Diego County. (One of the two Big Bear patients had contact with a person who returned from the U.K.) On January 4 and 5, New York and Georgia reported B.1.1.7. cases in patients with no travel history.

As of January 21, multiple cases of the strain have been detected in 14 states, including Florida, California, New York, Colorado, Minnesota, Georgia, Indiana, Texas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Tennessee. Single cases have been detected in seven other states.

Previously, the Centers for Disease Control has warned that the U.K. variant may already be spreading within the United States, because there is still ongoing travel between the nations and because scientists have not sequenced the genetic coding of the vast majority of cases. And on January 3, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb warned that the new strain could account for the majority of new cases in the U.S. by March.

How is this COVID strain different?

The variation found in the U.K., also known as "VUI - 202012/01" was first identified there in mid-September, according to the World Health Organization. Its mutations have occurred on the genetic material that controls the spike protein, which allows COVID and other similar viruses to penetrate host cells, causing infection.

According to the U.K.'s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, there are 23 changes in the virus's genetic material, an unusually large number that appears to be helping it spread more quickly. British officials have now estimated that the strain is as much as 70 percent more transmissible - a number that is based on modeling, but not yet confirmed in lab experiments. A later study, published on December 23, suggested a smaller, but still dangerous number: that the British mutation is 56 percent more contagious. Still, other scientists have expressed skepticism that the mutation necessarily means it is more transmissible, pointing to other potential explanations such as mask-wearing and social distancing.

Though there is no evidence to-date that the strain causes a more intense illness or leads to a higher fatality rate, faster transmission does mean more cases, which can lead to a higher hospitalization rate. In the Atlantic, sociologist Zeynep Tufecki cites the work of Adam Kucharski, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, to explain why an increase in transmissibility is such an alarming development:

Kucharski compares a 50 percent increase in virus lethality to a 50 percent increase in virus transmissibility. Take a virus reproduction rate of about 1.1 and an infection fatality risk of 0.8 percent and imagine 10,000 active infections-a plausible scenario for many European cities, as Kucharski notes. As things stand, with those numbers, we'd expect 129 deaths in a month. If the fatality rate increased by 50 percent, that would lead to 193 deaths. In contrast, a 50 percent increase in transmissibility would lead to a whopping 978 deaths in just one month-assuming, in both scenarios, a six-day infection-generation time.

Are coronavirus variations common?

In general, viruses are prone to picking up small genetic changes as they move through a host population. "Viruses that encode their genome in RNA, such as SARS-CoV-2, HIV and influenza, tend to pick up mutations quickly as they are copied inside their hosts, because enzymes that copy RNA are prone to making errors," Nature writer Ewen Callaway explains.

Scientists have been tracking minor changes in the COVID-19 genetic code since the beginning of the pandemic, and at least 1,000 variants have been detected so far. But the change to the spike protein found in southeast England represents one of the first coronavirus mutations that have made it more infectious.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, this isn't the first time that COVID mutations have resulted in a more transmissible strain of the virus:

Scientists in July described a variant that over time displaced an older strain of coronavirus to become the dominant strain in the global pandemic. Experiments showed that variant, known as G614, replicated more quickly, but appeared to be just as susceptible to antibodies that target the earlier strain and wasn't associated with more severe illness.

Another new strain has been found in California

As the virus rages through southern California, authorities have identified another new strain in a dozen counties, and have connected it to several considerable outbreaks in Santa Clara County. The Los Angeles Times reports that the California Department of Public Health is unsure if "the variant is highly contagious or is just being identified frequently as lab work becomes more sophisticated." Similar to the U.K. variant, the one found in California appears to feature a mutation on the spike protein. (As The Atlantic's Sarah Zhang notes, one of the more concerning developments regarding the multiple strains is that they are "mutating in similar ways," which suggests "that they confer an evolutionary advantage to the virus.")

How will the U.S. vaccine rollout be impacted by the U.K. strain?

"Our working assumption from all the scientists is that the vaccine response should be adequate for this virus," Vallance said in a briefing on December 20. Thus, the strain that has shut down southeast England will not cut off the inoculation effort that began on December 8.

U.S. scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research are still studying the mutation, but Dr. Nelson Michael, director of the institute's Center for Infectious Diseases Research, agreed that the current vaccines will probably be effective against the new variant. "It stands to reason that this mutation isn't a threat, but you never know. We still have to be diligent and continue to look," Michael told CNN.

However, microbiologists that spoke with NBC News shared concerns that the virus could eventually grow to become vaccine-resistant. "Whilst it may not be actually resistant, it may not take so many changes after this for it to get there," said Ravindra Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge. Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said the COVID vaccine could eventually become like the flu shot, requiring an updated version every year.

Which countries have banned travel from the United Kingdom?

On December 20, the Netherlands and Belgium were the first nations to suspend air travel from the United Kingdom. They were soon joined by Germany, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Israel, while the French ban applies to travel over the English Channel as well. The air-travel list eventually grew to include Albania, Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Equitorial Guinea, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, Grenada, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Malawi, Malta, Mauritius, Moldova, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Seychelles, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, St. Kitts and Nevis, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, the United States, and Uzbekistan. Many of the bans are temporary, and expired at the end of December or early January.

Until February 15, all travelers flying to the U.K. must also test negative in the time period 72 hours before departure.

Has Biden instituted any new COVID travel restrictions

On January 25, the Biden administration is expected to reimpose a travel ban on most non-citizen visitors who have been to the U.K., Ireland, Brazil, and the 26 countries that make up Europe's Schengen Area, where travel is permitted across open borders.

The administration will also add South Africa to the list, "because of the concerning variant present," Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's principal deputy director, told Reuters.

Are new virus strains active anywhere outside Britain?
This post has been updated.
Scientists in South Africa have detected a strain that shares one of the mutations of the British coronavirus in up to 90 percent of samples that have been genetically sequenced since mid-November. Evidence suggests that the two variations have arisen separately, according to molecular epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft. Though the variant has not been connected to more severe cases, it is associated with higher viral loads in swab tests, meaning that it is also more transmissible.

South Africa, the hardest-hit nation on the continent, is currently experiencing a second wave driven in part by this more virulent strain and in part by behavior that has undermined public-health measures throughout the pandemic - including a recent party at a beach town on the Indian Ocean, where over 1,000 attendees have already tested positive for COVID-19. At a WHO meeting earlier this month, scientists reported that the new variant made up 80 to 90 percent of infections in South Africa.

Following the announcement of the strain, public-health authorities identified small numbers of cases (ranging from one to nine) in travelers from the U.K. in at least 33 other nations: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United States.

New COVID strains also appear to be developing elsewhere. On December 24, the head of Africa CDC John Nkengasong said that there is a separate variant developing in Nigeria. A new COVID variant has also been spreading in Brazilian city of Manaus.

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New COVID Strain Spreading Across U.S.: What We Know

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We're committed to keeping our readers informed. We've removed our paywall from essential coronavirus news stories. Become a subscriber to support our journalists. Subscribe now . A new variant of the coronavirus believed to spread more easily has forced the United Kingdom into another lockdown and been detected in at least 33 countries, including the United States.

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From Blade Runner to Back to the Future II, science fiction films help us imagine incredible futuristic cities with new technologies. One of the most iconic examples of these innovations is the flying car. Whether it's a futuristic hovercraft or an updated Delorean, films and television shows have been predicting that hoverboards and floating cars should be a reality by now. Despite these innovative concepts, we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century and our wheels have remained firmly on the ground. As a result, you may believe that flying cars are only a dream of science fiction-or at least a long way off-but General Motors (GM) is closer to developing a real-life flying car than you might expect.

GM's eVOL concept was developed under the Cadillac Halo portfolio and features two vehicles. The first is less of a flying car and more of a passenger drone that provides personal air travel like a sky taxi or Uber. It is considered a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) flying car that lifts up straight into the air. The second vehicle is a self-driving shuttle that will help passengers complete the last leg of their journey.

The proposal is currently still a paper project with no solid plans for development, but Michael Simcoe, the Vice President of GM, believes there is a market for these luxurious vehicles. "It's a concept for when time is of the essence," says Simcoe at the virtual 2021 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where the project was presented. The drone can grant you an incredible travel experience for those trying to catch a meeting across town at a speed of about 56 mph. The trip will also be relatively silent compared to a helicopter.

Though maybe not as radical as a flying car, GM's accompanying shuttle is a self-driving car with no steering wheel, pedals, or driver. Instead of traditional seats, the interior is equipped with a luxurious couch that demonstrates how the passengers can focus on their guests instead of worrying about reaching their destination.

Whether you are a big car person or a fan of science fiction, it is hard not to get excited about these futuristic vehicle concepts-even if they are only concepts for now.

GM is developing a flying car concept called Cadillac Halo which would act as a futuristic taxi providing personal air travel.

A self-driving shuttle will help passengers complete the last leg of their journey from the drone landing site.

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Cadillac Designed a Futuristic Flying Car That Could Be a Taxi in the Sky

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From Blade Runner to Back to the Future II, science fiction films help us imagine incredible futuristic cities with new technologies. One of the most iconic examples of these innovations is the flying car. Whether it's a futuristic hovercraft or an updated Delorean, films and television shows have been predicting that hoverboards and floating cars should be a reality by now.

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The original Blade Runner film took place in an imagined Los Angeles of 2019, a futuristic city where acid rain fell from skies crowded with "skimmers": flying cars that zipped along aerial highways. Since the film's 1982 debut, technology has advanced in ways that Hollywood might never have predicted - selfie sticks, murder drones, hashtag politics - yet hovercraft taxis still seem a far-off fantasy, reserved for science-fiction novels and theme park rides.

In fact, flying cars are real - and they could shape how we commute, work and live in the coming decades. Advances in battery energy density, materials science and computer simulation have spurred the development of a range of personal flying vehicles (and the navigation systems that will allow them to run), from electric gliders to fixed-wing craft and quadcopter drones.

These aircraft may not look exactly like Blade Runner's imaginings. But they aren't all that far off. Far smaller than a commercial plane, most are designed with rotors instead of wings, which allow for vertical takeoff and landing. Tilt rotors, for example, allow for efficiency in forward flight at longer distances, while multirotors are designed to reduce noise in hover flight. Most important, these vehicles are designed to offer faster commutes than traditional modes of transit for individuals, especially in traffic-clogged cities.
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At the moment, the autonomous urban aircraft market is still a bit of a Wild West. Dozens of start-up companies are competing to develop commercial jetpacks, flying motorbikes and personal air taxis. Venture capitalists, auto and aviation corporations (even rideshare company Uber, with its ambitious Uber Elevate) are staking claims on the burgeoning industry, which may be worth as much as $1.5tn (£1.1tn) by 2040. Meanwhile, aviation authorities hash out the policies and safety standards that will govern this new realm of transport.

Germany-based Volocopter, for instance, has marketed its VoloCity craft as the first commercially licensed electrically powered air taxi, a vehicle which will eventually run without a pilot. "It's like an Uber Black or any other premium service," says Fabien Nestmann, vice president of public affairs at Volocopter.

With a few key differences, that is. Initially, the VoloCity will only have room for a single passenger. That will mean a higher cost per ride at first, but Volocopter hopes to build consumer confidence before transitioning to a full-autonomy model: an electric, wingless craft powered by nine batteries, which will transport passengers throughout a planned network of vertiports - airports for planes that take off and land vertically - across major cities. VoloCity's first commercial flights are scheduled to take place in 2022.

These first flights will cost €300 ($350/£270) per ticket. But eventually, says Nestmann, the company's goal is to make the cost competitive with, say, an Uber Black. "We don't want this to be a toy for the wealthy, but part of a well-integrated journey for anyone in an urban area," he says. "Everyone should have the option to walk, be driven, cycle, or fly."

Other companies have partnered with existing car manufacturers to create models they plan to develop for eventual commercial use. Japanese startup SkyDrive, for example, recently teamed up with Toyota to conduct a test flight of its all-electric air taxi, said to be the world's smallest electric vehicle that can take off and land from a vertical position. This summer, the company successfully flew its SD-03 craft for several minutes around an airfield with a pilot at the helm.

"Consumer demand has grown, but humans have not yet provided a clear solution to traffic, even through options like electric cars or speedy alternatives like [France's intercity] TGV train," says SkyDrive representative Takako Wada. "You could say SkyDrive mobility has been nurtured by consumption demands as well as by advances in technology."

Indeed, those advances makes it possible for so many aircraft designers to clamour for airtime, as it were. Companies like Lillium, Wisk, Joby Aviation, Bell and countless others are capitalising on innovations like electric propulsion, which dramatically reduces noise emissions, and battery power, which enhances range. For an industry in its infancy, there are no shortage of Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) designs, or the imaginary heights that might be reached with them.

Consider Gravity Industries, a UK-based aeronautical company that created a 1,050-horsepower wearable jetpack. "It's a bit like a Formula One car," says Richard Browning, chief test pilot and founder of the company. "The Jetsuit is a specialist piece of equipment that only trade professionals and military fliers can ride, for now." Browning gestures to a metallic, Batman-esque contraption in his studio. "Someday, the jetpack might mean a hovering super hero paramedic can make decisions about where to go and what to do."

This is not as pie-in-the-sky a scheme as it sounds: the Great North Air Ambulance Service recently partnered with Gravity Industries to simulate a search and rescue mission. Browning flew in his jetpack from the craggy valley bottom of Langdale Pikes in England's Lake District to a staged casualty site. By foot, it would have been a 25-minute arduous climb.

The flight took 90 seconds. The exercise illustrated the potential of jetpacks to deliver critical care services to remote locations.

"The dream of air transport has been around for a long time," says Parimal Kopardekar, director of Nasa's Aeronautics Research Institute at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. "There's a powerful opportunity now to design vehicles that can transport goods and services where current aviation can't reach."

Kopardekar is responsible for exploring aviation trends in autonomy and advanced air mobility, including VTOLs. Given the complexity of this undertaking, the team at Nasa must address and test an entire ecosystem of factors: aircraft, airspace, infrastructure, community integration, weather patterns, GPS, noise standards, maintenance, supply chain, parts acquisition... It's a list that reveals numerous and not always obvious problems that must be resolved before aerial ridesharing at scale can become a reality.

Reimagining human flight requires vehicles that are "road legal" and safe to fly, but also a public willing to fly in them. Industry leaders need to convince riders that VTOLs aren't compelling simply because the technology is possible, but because it is preferable to other modes of transport - and safe.

"You cannot offer commercial services without extremely vigorous testing regimes," says Nestmann, who oversees Volocopter's public education initiatives. "Part of that is developing the infrastructure for these machines." That might mean hardware construction of vertiports and storage facilities equipped with electrical power, or software run behind the scenes: systems needed to run VTOLs will undoubtedly require near-full automation to properly coordinate the envisioned swarms of vehicles. While the commercial aircraft we travel on today are monitored by human controllers in a tower, the flying machines of tomorrow will rely on UTM: Unmanned Traffic Management. This digital tracking will ensure that all VTOLs have common awareness of other flights in their path.

Fully automated vertical transport with a proven track record may put the public at ease, but a vast network of flying objects creates a host of new challenges. VTOLs will obviate the need for runways or on-the-ground parking, but they will require dedicated air corridors and sky-harbours to store craft. Air taxis might reduce the number of cars on the ground and enhance arrival and departure time predictability, but the sheer number of objects in the sky - buildings, birds, delivery drones and airplanes - will require pilots (at least, while VTOLs are piloted) to practise a new kind of dynamic obstacle avoidance. The "Skyway", for want of a better term, will need its own set of laws.

Additionally, manufacturers and operators will have to show that no harm will come either to passengers or to people on the ground below. In concert with the US's Federal Aviation Administration and other regulatory bodies, Kopardekar and the team at Nasa created an "Urban Air Mobility Maturity Levels Scale", which ranks craft, airspace and other systems on a scale of one to six based on complexity and urban density. They are devising ways to simplify cockpit operations, with a combination of automation and contingency management: guidelines for how a VTOL might respond to bad weather, bird strike, or sudden jetpack intruder, for example.

Already, incidents have shown the importance of these types of guidelines: in October 2020, crewmembers on a commercial airliner near LAX airport in Los Angeles spotted a jetpack at 6,000 feet (1,828m) - an altitude that presents serious risk of collision.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has also created a set of technical specifications for VTOLS, though the agency hasn't quite decided how to certify them. These specifications aim to address the unique characteristics of flying cars, and detail airworthiness standards like emergency exits, lightning protection, landing gear systems and pressurised cabins. "Despite having design characteristics of aeroplanes, rotorcraft or both," EASA's statement reads, "in most cases EASA was not able to classify these new vehicles as being either a conventional aeroplane or a rotorcraft." In other words, EASA seems undecided about what, exactly, separates VTOLS from fixed-wing commercial jets or helicopters. Clearly, the successful operation of VTOLs will require coordinated efforts across sectors, including government, technology, transportation, urban planning and public outreach.

What accounts for the sudden proliferation of VTOL developers? Global trends like the rise of e-commerce, climate change, the gig economy and an integrated supply chain have accelerated interest in personal air travel, while failures in our current infrastructure and related industries underscore its necessity. As cities like New York, Hong Kong and Beijing reach capacity, urban living becomes less and less sustainable - yet our increasingly interconnected economy demands constant mobility.

The effects could transform commuting, and living, as we know it. "Right now, most people optimise living based on access to transportation," notes Kopardekar. "VTOLs and drones will make it possible to reach people wherever they are, to optimise transportation based on living." Businesses will no longer have to look to central business districts for their headquarters, while employees may choose to live anywhere within reach of an air taxi. Owning a VTOL could become as affordable and ubiquitous as owning a bicycle.

"On the macro level, ever-growing cities create a growing mobility need from the citizens in those cities," says Nestmann. "That leads to a rethinking of the city, because building everything around the car doesn't improve life quality."

Traffic bottlenecks wear down our cities' highways and the cars we drive on them, contributing to emissions that in turn threaten our planet's delicate ecosystems and our own health. Meanwhile, eVTOLS (which are electric) will dramatically reduce emissions or reliance on diesel fuel.

Increasing numbers of flying cars will naturally give rise to a changing layout in the way our cities are structured as cities grow taller, rooftop landings expand and air highways connect super sky-scrapers, freeing up space below. Fewer cars on the ground will reduce congestion and may give rise to parks and green spaces. "In the long run - 2045 and onward - businesses and green spaces will become much more integrated," says Kopardekar. "While we may not ever eliminate metros and roads, we might be able to reduce their footprint with these machines."

VTOLs have vast implications for the future of transport, work-life, consumption, urban design, even healthcare and ecology. As soon as 2030, consumers might be able to press a button and order an air taxi straight to their cloud-tethered office. In the decades that follow, we may ultimately have fewer and fewer reasons to descend to the earth below, conducting our business and our lives atop a city in the sky.

"One mile of road can only take you one mile," says Kopardekar. "One mile of aviation can take you anywhere."

--
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The flying car is here - and it could change the world

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The original Blade Runner film took place in an imagined Los Angeles of 2019, a futuristic city where acid rain fell from skies crowded with "skimmers": flying cars that zipped along aerial highways.

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What Will Our World Really Be Like In 20 Years From Now? What Does The Future Hold For The Food We Eat, The Technology We Use And Home We Live In?

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If you think 2017 hasn't been weird enough, this might just convince you. Skipping Rocks Lab, a London-based company focused on reducing plastic pollution, has just unveiled very real plans for one of the first biodegradable water bottles. The catch? The capsule, Ooho, is made entirely out of plants and seaweed.

Why Sustainability?

British inventors Rodrigo García González and Pierre-Yves Paslier started looking for a solution to a pressing issue when brainstorming Ooho. With an estimated 310 billion pounds of plastic in our oceans today, plastic pollution is beginning to increasingly impact our daily lives. Plastic pollution is not only harmful to marine life because of ingestion of toxins, but also to humans. It is estimated that almost 1/4 of fish sold in markets have plastic in their bodies at the time of sale.

How Ooho Was Born

González and Paslier started their quest for sustainable water bottle solutions in 2014. They finally came up with a method known as spherification, in which a frozen ball of water is dipped into a chemical solution and then soaked in an algae-based mixture. This process creates a natural gel around the water, making a blob that is easy to hold and, eventually, pop.

Why Ooho?

Ooho solves the problem of unnecessary plastic waste by biodegrading in 4-6 weeks, just like fruit. Ooho is also much less expensive to produce than plastic, at just 2 cents a piece, and can hold soda, alcohol, and cosmetics, with flavoring and color added as needed.

Where to Get Ooho

If seaweed layers don't scare you away and you believe in Ooho's mission, sit tight. Ooho recently went into production after earning more than $1 million on a crowdfunding campaign for the sustainable water capsules. While it is not yet available in stores, you can find Ooho at marathon events, private conferences, and the occasional festival.

For now, Ooho's delicate structure makes it hard to pack in a bag and drink on the go, but Skipping Rocks Lab is assuring investors that more durable products are in the works. Although Ooho is not yet the most practical product on the market, it has the potential to redefine the bottled water industry and pave the way for more nature-friendly, anti-plastic innovations.

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How One Seaweed Capsule Could Solve Ocean Pollution

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If you think 2017 hasn't been weird enough, this might just convince you. Skipping Rocks Lab, a London-based company focused on reducing plastic pollution, has just unveiled very real plans for one of the first biodegradable water bottles. The catch? The capsule, Ooho, is made entirely out of plants and seaweed.

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Images produced by laser-induced fluorescence show how a rapidly expanding cloud of ultracold plasma (yellow and gold) behaves when confined by a quadrupole magnet. Ultracold plasmas are created in the center of the chamber (left) and expand rapidly, typically dissipating in a few thousandths of a second. Using strong magnetic fields (pink), Rice University physicists trapped and held ultracold plasmas for several hundredths of a second. By studying how plasmas interact with strong magnetic fields in such experiments, researchers hope to answer research questions related to clean fusion energy, solar physics, space weather and more. Credit: T. Killian/Rice University

Rice University physicists have discovered a way to trap the world's coldest plasma in a magnetic bottle, a technological achievement that could advance research into clean energy, space weather and astrophysics.

"To understand how the solar wind interacts with the Earth, or to generate clean energy from nuclear fusion, one has to understand how plasma-a soup of electrons and ions-behaves in a magnetic field," said Rice Dean of Natural Sciences Tom Killian, the corresponding author of a published study about the work in Physical Review Letters.

Using laser-cooled strontium, Killian and graduate students Grant Gorman and MacKenzie Warrens made a plasma about 1 degree above absolute zero, or approximately -272 degrees Celsius, and trapped it briefly with forces from surrounding magnets. It is the first time an ultracold plasma has been magnetically confined, and Killian, who's studied ultracold plasmas for more than two decades, said it opens the door for studying plasmas in many settings.

"This provides a clean and controllable testbed for studying neutral plasmas in far more complex locations, like the sun's atmosphere or white dwarf stars," said Killian, a professor of physics and astronomy. "It's really helpful to have the plasma so cold and to have these very clean laboratory systems. Starting off with a simple, small, well-controlled, well-understood system allows you to strip away some of the clutter and really isolate the phenomenon you want to see."

That's important for study co-author Stephen Bradshaw, a Rice astrophysicist who specializes in studying plasma phenomena on the sun.

"Throughout the sun's atomosphere, the (strong) magnetic field has the effect of altering everything relative to what you would expect without a magnetic field, but in very subtle and complicated ways that can really trip you up if you don't have a really good understanding of it," said Bradshaw, an associate professor of physics and astronomy.

Credit: Rice University

Solar physicists rarely get a clear observation of specific features in the sun's atmosphere because part of the atmosphere lies between the camera and those features, and unrelated phenomena in the intervening atmosphere obscures what they'd like to observe.

"Unfortunately, because of this line-of-sight problem, observational measurements of plasma properties are associated with quite a lot of uncertainty," Bradshaw said. "But as we improve our understanding of the phenomena, and crucially, use the laboratory results to test and calibrate our numerical models, then hopefully we can reduce the uncertainty in these measurements."

Plasma is one of four fundamental states of matter, but unlike solids, liquids and gases, plasmas aren't generally part of everyday life because they tend to occur in very hot places like the sun, a lightning bolt or candle flame. Like those hot plasmas, Killian's plasmas are soups of electrons and ions, but they're made cold by laser-cooling, a technique developed a quarter century ago to trap and slow matter with light.

Killian said the quadrupole magnetic setup that was used to trap the plasma is a standard part of the ultracold setup that his lab and others use to make ultracold plasmas. But finding out how to trap plasma with the magnets was a thorny problem because the magnetic field plays havoc with the optical system that physicists use to look at ultracold plasmas.

"Our diagnostic is laser-induced fluorescence, where we shine a laser beam onto the ions in our plasma, and if the frequency of the beam is just right, the ions will scatter photons very effectively," he said. "You can take a picture of them and see where the ions are, and you can even measure their velocity by looking at the Doppler shift, just like using a radar gun to see how fast a car is moving. But the magnetic fields actually shift around the resonant frequencies, and we have to disentangle the shifts in the spectrum that are coming from the magnetic field from the Doppler shifts we're interested in observing."

That complicates experiments significantly, and to make matters even more complicated, the magnetic fields change dramatically throughout the plasma.

Rice University graduate student MacKenzie Warrens adjusts a laser-cooling experiment in Rice's Ultracold Atoms and Plasmas Lab. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

"So we have to deal with not just a magnetic field, but a magnetic field that's varying in space, in a reasonably complicated way, in order to understand the data and figure out what's happening in the plasma," Killian said. "We spent a year just trying to figure out what we were seeing once we got the data."

The plasma behavior in the experiments is also made more complex by the magnetic field. Which is precisely why the trapping technique could be so useful.

"There is a lot of complexity as our plasma expands across these field lines and starts to feel the forces and get trapped," Killian said. "This is a really common phenomenon, but it's very complicated and something we really need to understand."

One example from nature is the solar wind, streams of high-energy plasma from the sun that cause the aurora borealis, or northern lights. When plasma from the solar wind strikes Earth, it interacts with our planet's magnetic field, and the details of those interactions are still unclear. Another example is fusion energy research, where physicists and engineers hope to recreate the conditions inside the sun to create a vast supply of clean energy.

Killian said the quadrupole magnetic setup that he, Gorman and Warrens used to bottle their ultracold plasmas is similar to designs that fusion energy researchers developed in the 1960s. The plasma for fusion needs to be about 150 million degrees Celsius, and magnetically containing it is a challenge, Bradshaw said, in part because of unanswered questions about how the plasma and magnetic fields interact and influence one another.

"One of the major problems is keeping the magnetic field stable enough for long enough to actually contain the reaction," Bradshaw said. "As soon as there's a small sort of perturbation in the magnetic field, it grows and 'pfft,' the nuclear reaction is ruined.

"For it to work well, you have to keep things really, really stable," he said. "And there again, looking at things in a really nice, pristine laboratory plasma could help us better understand how particles interact with the field."

More information: G. M. Gorman et al. Magnetic Confinement of an Ultracold Neutral Plasma, Physical Review Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.085002

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Rice University physicists have discovered a way to trap the world's coldest plasma in a magnetic bottle, a technological achievement that could advance research into clean energy, space weather and astrophysics.

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Northwestern Engineering researchers have developed a theoretical model to design soft materials that demonstrate autonomous oscillating properties that mimic biological functions. The work could advance the design of responsive materials used to deliver therapeutics as well as for robot-like soft materials that operate autonomously.

The design and synthesis of materials with biological functions require a delicate balance between structural form and physiological function. During embryonic development, for instance, flat sheets of embryonic cells morph through a series of folds into intricate three-dimensional structures such as branches, tubes, and furrows. These, in turn, become dynamic, three-dimensional building blocks for organs performing vital functions like heartbeat, nutrient absorption, or information processing by the nervous system.

Such shape-forming processes, however, are controlled by chemical and mechanical signaling events, which are not fully understood on the microscopic level. To bridge this gap, researchers led by Monica Olvera de la Cruz designed computational and experimental systems that mimic these biological interactions. Hydrogels, a class of hydrophilic polymer materials, have emerged as candidates capable of reproducing shape changes upon chemical and mechanical stimulation observed in nature.

The researchers developed a theoretical model for a hydrogel-based shell that underwent autonomous morphological changes when induced by chemical reactions.

"We found that the chemicals modified the local gel microenvironment, allowing swelling and deswelling of materials via chemo-mechanical stresses in an autonomous manner," said de la Cruz, Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering. "This generated dynamic morphological change, including periodic oscillations reminiscent of heartbeats found in living systems."

A paper, titled "Chemically Controlled Pattern Formation in Self-oscillating Elastic Shells," was published March 1 in the journal PNAS. Siyu Li and Daniel Matoz-Fernandez, postdoctoral fellows in Olvera de la Cruz's lab, were the paper's co-first authors.

In the study, the researchers designed a chemical-responsive polymeric shell meant to mimic living matter. They applied the water-based mechanical properties of the hydrogel shell to a chemical species, a chemical substance that produces specific patterned behavior -- in this case, wave-like oscillations -- located within the shell. After conducting a series of reduction-oxidation reactions -- a chemical reaction that transfers of electrons between two chemical species -- the shell generated microcompartments capable of expanding or contracting, or inducing buckling-unbuckling behavior when mechanical instability was introduced.

"We coupled the mechanical response of the hydrogel to changes in the concentration of the chemical species within the gel as a feedback loop," Matoz-Fernandez said. "If the level of chemicals goes past a certain threshold, water gets absorbed, swelling the gel. When the gel swells, the chemical species gets diluted, triggering chemical processes that expel the gel's water, therefore contracting the gel."

The researchers' model could be used as the basis to develop other soft materials demonstrating diverse, dynamic morphological changes. This could lead to new drug delivery strategies with materials that enhance the rate of diffusion of compartmentalized chemicals or release cargos at specific rates.

"One could, in principle, design catalytic microcompartments that expand and contract to absorb or release components at a specific frequency. This could lead to more targeted, time-based therapeutics to treat disease," Li said.

The work could also inform the future development of soft materials with robot-like functionality that operate autonomously. These 'soft robotics' have emerged as candidates to support chemical production, tools for environmental technologies, or smart biomaterials for medicine. Yet the materials rely on external stimuli, such as light, to function.

"Our material operates autonomously, so there's no external control involved," Li said. "By 'poking' the shell with a chemical reaction, you trigger the movement."

The researchers plan to build on their findings and further bridge the gap between what's possible in nature and the science lab.

"The long-term goal is to create autonomous hydrogels that can perform complex functions triggered by clues as simple as a local mechanical deformation," Olvera de la Cruz said.

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biotechnology and bioengineering; developmental biology; biotechnology; biology; materials science; civil engineering; engineering and construction; organic chemistry

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Designing soft materials that mimic biological functions: Soft material demonstrates autonomous, heartbeat-like oscillating properties

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Northwestern Engineering researchers have developed a theoretical model to design soft materials that demonstrate autonomous oscillating properties that mimic biological functions. The work could advance the design of responsive materials used to deliver therapeutics as well as for robot-like soft materials that operate autonomously.

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Novel Catalyst Material Could Enable Better Lithium-Sulfur Batteries, Power Next-Gen Electronics

At the heart of most electronics today are rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). But their energy storage capacities are not enough for large-scale energy storage systems (ESSs). Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) could be useful in such a scenario due to their higher theoretical energy storage capacity. They could even replace LIBs in other applications like drones, given their light weight and lower cost.

But the same mechanism that is giving them all this power is keeping them becoming a widespread practical reality. Unlike LIBs, the reaction pathway in LSBs leads to an accumulation of solid lithium sulfide (Li ₂S ₆) and liquid lithium polysulfide (LiPS), causing a loss of active material from the sulfur cathode (positively charged electrode) and corrosion of the lithium anode (negatively charged electrode). To improve battery life, scientists have been looking for catalysts that can make this degradation efficiently reversible during use.

In a new study published in ChemSusChem, scientists from Gwangju Institute of Technology (GIST), Korea, report their breakthrough in this endeavor. "While looking for a new electrocatalyst for the LSBs, we recalled a previous study we had performed with cobalt oxalate (CoC ₂O ₄) in which we had found that negatively charged ions can easily adsorb on this material's surface during electrolysis. This motivated us to hypothesize that CoC ₂O ₄ would exhibit a similar behavior with sulfur in LSBs as well," explains Prof. Jaeyoung Lee from GIST, who led the study.

To test their hypothesis, the scientists constructed an LSB by adding a layer of CoC ₂O ₄ on the sulfur cathode.

Sure enough, observations and analyses revealed that CoC ₂O ₄'s ability to adsorb sulfur allowed the reduction and dissociation of Li ₂S ₆ and LiPS. Further, it suppressed the diffusion of LiPS into the electrolyte by adsorbing LiPS on its surface, preventing it from reaching the lithium anode and triggering a self-discharge reaction. These actions together improved sulfur utilization and reduced anode degradation, thereby enhancing the longevity, performance, and energy storage capacity of the battery.

Charged by these findings, Prof. Lee envisions an electronic future governed by LSBs, which LIBs cannot realize. "LSBs can enable efficient electric transportation such as in unmanned aircrafts, electric buses, trucks and locomotives, in addition to large-scale energy storage devices," he observes. "We hope that our findings can get LSBs one step closer to commercialization for these purposes."

Perhaps, it's only a matter of time before lithium-sulfur batteries power the world.

Reference: "Improved Redox Reaction of Lithium Polysulfides on the Interfacial Boundary of Polar CoC ₂O ₄ as a Polysulfide Catenator for a High‐Capacity Lithium‐Sulfur Battery" by Dr. Jin Won Kim, Gyuwon Seo, Dr. Sungyool Bong and Prof. Dr. Jaeyoung Lee, 21 October 2020, ChemSusChem.
DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202002140

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New Catalyst Promises Lighter, Cheaper, Higher-Capacity, Next-Generation Rechargeable Batteries

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At the heart of most electronics today are rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). But their energy storage capacities are not enough for large-scale energy storage systems (ESSs). Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) could be useful in such a scenario due to their higher theoretical energy storage capacity.

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of By lovemoney staff Lovemoney |

The robot revolution pictured

The rise of robots is no longer mere science fiction, with robotics and artificial intelligence infiltrating nearly every area of our lives from self-serve checkouts in supermarkets to screening legal documents. So it's no surprise that a McKinsey Global report predicts that robots will take over 800 million jobs by 2030, which would affect a fifth of the global workforce. Click or scroll through to see what robots in the workplace actually look like today.

© JIJI Press/Stringer/Getty Images

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of By lovemoney staff Lovemoney | The rise of robots is no longer mere science fiction, with robotics and artificial intelligence infiltrating nearly every area of our lives from self-serve checkouts in supermarkets to screening legal documents.

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Elon Musk indicates that a major update to Full Self-Driving could arrive in April, and that FSD will be offered more widely.

Full Self-Driving is expected to be offered by Tesla on a subscription basis, in addition to purchase, in Q2 of 2021.

Tesla hasn't mentioned just how many further updates will be needed for the system to not require driver attention at all times.

Tesla launched what it calls Full Self-Driving just five months ago, letting a relatively small group of owners activate and use and software while adding an unnerving warning that the system could do "the worst thing at the worst time." The hardware for FSD itself had been available in Tesla vehicles for much longer, pending activation in those cars that had been purchased with the required set of sensors.

Exactly when the technology would receive a wider release has been unclear, however-as with a number of things related to Tesla product timelines.

Elon Musk shed some light on a significant software update on Twitter earlier this week, suggesting that the version that will follow the current build V8.1 would constitute a significant advancement.

"FSD beta build V8.1 normally drives me around with no interventions. Next version is a big step change beyond that. Tesla is solving a major part of real-world AI. This is not widely known," Musk tweeted in response to a question about when the system would reach Level 5 autonomy.

Putting aside for the moment the actual abilities of FSD, it didn't take long for Musk to shed light on just when the next update would be offered.

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Of course, "much more widely" does not mean everyone, and perhaps it's prudent to keep in mind that his statement still refers to a "beta" version of the software, not the final or complete version of Full Self-Driving. So we can expect a further number of updates after this one as FSD inches its way up the SAE autonomous level ladder.

This update, however, is expected to permit Teslas to use Autosteer on City Streets-a long-promised expansion of the system's current range of operation.

In the same cluster of tweets Musk also indicated that FSD on a subscription basis could arrive in the second quarter of 2021, an alternative to buying FSD outright for its current price of $10,000.

Just how many beta tests of FSD we're likely to see until the company declares autonomy solved remains to be seen; the next version of FSD will by no means be Complete Self-Driving, neither will it be available to everyone with a Tesla, if we follow Musk's comments. It's also prudent to note that the current version of FSD still requires drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and be ready to take over control of the car at all times, so there are some asterisks to just how "self-driving" the system is.

Full Self-Driving is not a Level 5 system and should not be treated by current or future users as such. In fact, it's still considered Level 2 by many in the industry, just like the company's Autopilot driver-assist system, requiring (adult) driver supervision at all times.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

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Elon Musk Signals Big Update for 'Full Self-Driving'

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Elon Musk indicates that a major update to Full Self-Driving could arrive in April, and that FSD will be offered more widely. Full Self-Driving is expected to be offered by Tesla on a subscription basis, in addition to purchase, in Q2 of 2021.

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Current Event

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Tobacco companies started to add ammonium salts, such as diammonium phosphate [(NH ₄) ₂HPO ₄], to cigarettes. When lit, the salts convert to ammonia (NH ₃). The ammonia takes protons from acid form nicotine molecules, turning them into the easier-to-absorb, conjugate base form.

The conjugate base form of nicotine feels harsh and scratchy to the back of the throat. The acid form of nicotine is reported to feel milder and smoother when inhaled, but the lungs don't absorb it as readily.

Researchers who have studied vaping liquids have suggested that this difference in smoothness between acid and conjugate base nicotine might contribute to the popularity of Juul, which first appeared in stores in 2015. Its discreet, thumb-drive-like design, and fruity flavors helped Juul quickly become a top seller. By early August 2019, Juul products accounted for 72% of total e-cigarette sales.

A 2018 study led by David Peyton at Portland State University to evaluate various brands of e-cigarettes found that the two Juul liquids they tested contained mostly acid form (smoother feeling) nicotine.

Peyton and his colleagues also found that Juul pods contained approximately 57 milligrams (mg) of nicotine per milliliter (mL) of solution. Other brands, including Twelve Vapor, Nicquid, and Beard Vape Co., averaged 10 mg of nicotine per mL of solution. Most of the non-Juul brands' liquids had more than 50% of the harsher, conjugate base form of nicotine.

Peyton and his co-authors see a parallel between the different nicotine forms they found in e-cigarettes and the tobacco companies' discovery in the 1960s. In an email interview, Peyton noted that "the combination of high-nicotine concentrations and low conjugate base form, like Juul has, will make for a flavor and perception by users that is not harsh, as if the e-cigarette liquid had very little nicotine."

In the study, however, the quantity of nicotine in the two Juul flavors was higher than in other e-cigarette liquids tested. How much actually gets absorbed by the lungs is another question.

Your brain on nicotine

Research has found that nicotine is bad news, particularly for teenagers, whose brains are still developing.

Among other effects, such as increasing a person's risk of high blood pressure and diabetes, nicotine boosts the level of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a type of chemical released by neurons to send signals to other nerve cells. Dopamine is involved in the activation of the brain's pleasure and reward centers. Normally, the levels of this neurotransmitter go up when you earn a good grade on a test, win a race, or reach the next level in a computer game. The dopamine makes you feel good about your accomplishment.

When a drug like nicotine artificially causes a dopamine surge, it induces that same positive feeling. The problem is that when the effect wears off, smokers or e-cigarette users want to repeat the experience, so they take more of the drug. This pattern of use and reinforcement can lead to addiction.

This is especially dangerous for teens. Adolescence is a critical period for brain development. Research suggests that nicotine exposure could re-wire teens' brains with harmful, long-term consequences. For example, it can lower users' cognitive skills, increase the likelihood that they will try illicit drugs, and increase their risk of developing mental health disorders.

Aside from nicotine, flavorings in vaping liquids could have their own set of health effects. Preliminary lab studies involving human endothelial cells, which line the lungs, have shown that some of the flavored liquids used in e-cigarettes cause significant damage to the cells.

How all of these health factors will play out in the next few years to decades is still unknown. But what recent illnesses and studies on e-cigarettes thus far have shown is that a lot more research is needed to understand the health risks of vaping.

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Vaping: What You Need to Know - American Chemical Society

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Tobacco companies started to add ammonium salts, such as diammonium phosphate [(NH 4) 2HPO 4], to cigarettes. When lit, the salts convert to ammonia (NH 3). The ammonia takes protons from acid form nicotine molecules, turning them into the easier-to-absorb, conjugate base form.

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LAS VEGAS --- After decades of equipping military snipers with rifle scopes, the Leupold optics company has unveiled a new version of its scope that's lighter and provides higher definition and better use of light for precision shooters.

The Mark V HD Long-Range Riflescope was unveiled this year and showcased at the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade show here

Leupold has provided scopes for the Army's M110 and the M2010 enhanced sniper rifle in .300 Winchester Magnum, which replaced the .308 caliber M24 sniper rifle.

The company also built a scope specifically designed for the Army's Precision Sniper Rifle system but the service went with its previous scope instead.

The Mark V provides a 5-power zoom but at a lighter weight and with better light use than would normally be necessary to increase the zoom from the standard Mark IV or 4-power zoom.

While some optics programs in the Army and Marines are pushing digital technology and computerization of optics and targeting systems on small arms, the Leupold scopes have continued to rely on high quality glass and configurations that meet real-world sniper needs.

The Mark V will ultimately replace the Mark IV family of systems, which have been in use by the military and citizens in some for since at least the 1990s. But the company will continue to produce the Mark IV to fulfill its legacy contracts and defense department needs, said John Snodgrass, a product line manager and Oregon Army National Guard veteran and shooting team member.

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Longtime military optics maker unveils new scope for Army snipers

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LAS VEGAS --- After decades of equipping military snipers with rifle scopes, the Leupold optics company has unveiled a new version of its scope that's lighter and provides higher definition and better use of light for precision shooters.

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From going overboard with bleach to using products filled with harsh ingredients (or a lack of moisturizing agents), there are many different causes behind hair damage.

It often makes its aggravating presence known through split ends, breakage, dullness, more frequent tangling and extreme dryness. It's also worth noting that dryness on its own can make hair more prone to breakage and can often be confused for damage on its own-a professional stylist can help diagnose the issue for you so you know exactly how to treat it.

Oribe Gold Lust Repair and Restore ($49) is our pick for best splurge shampoo for dry, damaged hair.
Sephora

One of the simplest ways to help your hair recover, though, is editing your hair care routine with a shampoo that supports, strengthens and rebuilds the hair fiber and imparts essential moisture and nourishment while gently cleansing.

Ahead, the best shampoo for dry, damaged hair, whether it's color-treated, curly, fine, in severe need of TLC and more.

Best Overall

Olaplex No. 4 Bond Maintenance Shampoo

Olaplex is considered a gold standard brand for damage repair and prevention. It's beloved by celebrity stylists (Khloé Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen's hair colorist is a spokesperson), and it's 800 five-star reviews on Sephora further prove its popularity among shoppers. This incredibly moisturizing shampoo utilizes technology that actually relinks broken disulfide bonds (what gives hair strength and structure) within the hair shaft.

forbes.com Sephora Promo Codes | 50% Off In March 2021 | Forbes

Best for Color-Treated Hair

Pureology Hydrate Shampoo

Color-treated hair is often in need of moisture, so it's important to use a shampoo that delivers hydrating ingredients and also protects against color fade. Enter Pureology's Hydrate Shampoo, a cult-favorite, sulfate-free formula that uses ingredients like jojoba to moisturize and green tea to maintain scalp health.

Best in Clean Hair Care

Briogeo Don't Despair, Repair! Super Moisture Shampoo for Damaged Hair

While "clean hair care" holds a different definition depending on the brand, Briogeo's formulas are labeled as 6-free, meaning they are free of sulfates, parabens, phthalates, silicones, DEA and artificial dyes. The name of this formula from Briogeo says it all. It provides a surge of moisture (and moisture retention) and helps repair hair via argan oil, panthenol, algae extract and sodium PCA. It's designed for straight, wavy, curly and coily hair types, and the brand claims it'll decrease damage after just two uses.

Best Drugstore

Love Beauty and Planet Hope and Hair Repair Sulfate-Free Shampoo

Truth be told, there are plenty of impressive shampoos for damaged hair at the drugstore, but Love Beauty and Planet's coconut oil-infused shampoo deserves attention for multiple reasons. For starters, the packaging is made from 100 percent recycled materials, and it's 93% naturally derived. In terms of performance, reviewers give it rave reviews for its refreshing ylang ylang scent and softening, hydrating properties.

Best for Fine Hair

Redken All Soft Shampoo

Dry, damaged hair often needs moisture, but those with fine hair might be weary of a moisturizing shampoo weighing down hair in the process. Redken's lightweight formula helps support hair structure and addresses moisture needs through ultra-hydrating argan oil.

Best for Severely Damaged Hair

Nexxus Keraphix Damage Healing Shampoo

With over 7,000 five-star reviews, it's hard to ignore Nexxus's Our Keratin Protein Damage Hair Repair Shampoo. The formula is made with black rice, which is rich in glutamic acid. According to the brand, this amino acid is commonly lost when hair is damaged. Combined with keratin, it provides impressive strengthening and recovery benefits for the hair.

Best for Curly Hair

Mielle Organics Babassu Oil

Dry, damaged hair needs to be handled with care. This popular sulfate-free shampoo gently cleanses curls while delivering nourishing moisture and supporting growth via organic babassu oil. The formula is rounded out with almond protein for strengthening the hair and hibiscus to enhance shine.

Best Salon Buy

Kérastase Nutritive Shampoo for Severely Dry Hair

Kérastase has an impressive selection for damaged hair needs. This particular shampoo is made specifically for dry, brittle hair. It utilizes benzoin resin to form a protective layer on top of the hair, therefore locking in moisture and reducing tangling. The addition of xylose helps to shield hair from the damaging effects of heat styling.

Best Value

Dove Nutritive Solutions Strengthening Shampoo for Damaged Hair Intensive Repair

Ringing in at less than $4, Dove's strengthening shampoo offers value in way more categories than affordability. The high-performing formula thoroughly cleanses while repairing the damaged surface of the hair, resulting in enhanced shine. It also dips into the hair itself to continuously strengthen it over time, so hair is ready to defend against aggressors.

forbes.com Target Coupons | 10% Off In March 2021 | Forbes

Best Splurge

Oribe Gold Lust Repair and Restore

This luxurious shampoo has a silky, gorgeous texture and holds the brand's signature sunny Côte d'Azur scent. (It would have won the best-smelling shampoo category, too). It's worth the splurge, though. It features a lineup of ingredients that penetrate the hair's cuticle to strengthen and protect against future damage. Nourishing oils provide rich moisture that helps hair reach a healthier state without weighing it down.

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The 10 Best Shampoos For Dry, Damaged Hair

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One of the simplest ways to help your hair recover is editing your hair care routine with a shampoo that supports, strengthens and rebuilds the hair fiber and imparts essential moisture and nourishment while gently cleansing. Ahead, the best shampoo for dry, damaged hair.

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Aalto researchers have used an IBM quantum computer to explore an overlooked area of physics, and have challenged 100-year-old cherished notions about information at the quantum level.

The rules of quantum physics - which govern how very small things behave - use mathematical operators called Hermitian Hamiltonians. Hermitian operators have underpinned quantum physics for nearly 100 years but recently, theorists have realized that it is possible to extend its fundamental equations to making use of Hermitian operators that are not Hermitian. The new equations describe a universe with its own peculiar set of rules: for example, by looking in the mirror and reversing the direction of time you should see the same version of you as in the actual world. In their new paper, a team of researchers led by Docent Sorin Paraoanu used a quantum computer to create a toy-universe that behaves according to these new rules. The team includes Dr. Shruti Dogra from Aalto University, first author of the paper, and Artem Melnikov, from MIPT and Terra Quantum.

The researchers made qubits, the part of the quantum computer that carries out calculations, behave according to the new rules of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics. They demonstrated experimentally a couple of exciting results which are forbidden by regular Hermitian quantum mechanics. The first discovery was that applying operations to the qubits did not conserve quantum information - a behavior so fundamental to standard quantum theory that it results in currently unsolved problems like Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Information paradox. The second exciting result came when they experimented with two entangled qubits.

Entanglement is a type of correlations that appears between qubits, as if they would experience a magic connection that makes them behave in sync with each other. Einstein was famously very uncomfortable with this concept, referring to it as "spooky action at a distance." Under regular quantum physics, it is not possible to alter the degree of entanglement between two particles by tampering with one of the particles on its own. However, in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics, the researchers were able to alter the level of entanglement of the qubits by manipulating just one of them: a result that is expressly off-limits in regular quantum physics.

"The exciting thing about these results is that quantum computers are now developed enough to start using them for testing unconventional ideas that have been only mathematical so far" said Sorin Paraoanu. "With the present work, Einstein's spooky action at a distance becomes even spookier. And, although we understand very well what is going on, it still gives you the shivers."

The research also has potential applications. Several novel optical or microwave-based devices developed in recent times do seem to behave according to the new rules. The present work opens the way to simulating these devices on quantum computers.

The paper "Quantum simulation of parity-time symmetry breaking with a superconducting quantum processor" is published in Communications Physics. The work was performed under the Finnish Center of Excellence in Quantum Technology (QTF) of the Academy of Finland.

Reference: "Quantum simulation of parity-time symmetry breaking with a superconducting quantum processor" by Shruti Dogra, Artem A. Melnikov and Gheorghe Sorin Paraoanu, 15 February 2021, Communications Physics.
DOI: 10.1038/s42005-021-00534-2

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New Physics Rules Tested by Using a Quantum Computer to Create a "Toy-Universe"

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Simulation of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics using a quantum computer goes beyond centuries-old conventions. Aalto researchers have used an IBM quantum computer to explore an overlooked area of physics, and have challenged 100-year-old cherished notions about information at the quantum level.

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Cygnus X-1, a binary star system first discovered in 1964, comprises one of the closest black holes to Earth. New observations of this black hole, the first ever detected, have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe's most mysterious objects.

An international team, including researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), recently found that the stellar-mass black hole in the Cygnus X-1 binary system has a mass 21 times the mass of the Sun and rotates at a speed close to the speed of light.

The study was published in Science on February 18, 2021.

The researchers used the Very Long Baseline Array - a continent-sized radio telescope made up of 10 dishes spread across the United States - together with a clever technique to measure distances in space.

"If we can view the same object from different locations, we can calculate its distance away from us by measuring how far the object appears to move relative to the background," said Prof. James Miller-Jones, a researcher at Australia's Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), who is first author of the study.

"If you hold your finger out in front of your eyes and view it with one eye at a time, you'll notice your finger appears to jump from one spot to another. It's exactly the same principle," said Prof. Miller-Jones.

An animation showing the Cygnus X-1 system, consisting of a black hole in orbit with a giant star. Recent observations by radio telescopes have found the system is 20 percent further away than previously thought, implying the black hole is 21 times the mass of the Sun, making it the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational waves. Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

Over six days, the researchers observed a full orbit of the black hole around its companion blue supergiant variable star. They then compared the new data with observations of the same system taken with the same telescope array in 2011. Their new observations and measurements showed that the system is further away than previously thought.

With this new distance information, the researchers re-estimated the mass of the Cygnus X-1 black hole and found it to be more than 20 times the mass of our Sun - a 50 percent increase over previous estimates.

Prof. GOU Lijun of NAOC is a co-author of the study and led the study's spin measurement.

"Using the updated measurements for the black hole's mass and its distance away from Earth, we were able to confirm that Cygnus X-1 is spinning incredibly quickly - very close to the speed of light and faster than any other black hole found to date," said Prof. GOU.

Co-author Prof. Ilya Mandel, a scientist from Australia's Monash University and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), said the black hole is so massive and rotating so fast that it is actually challenging astronomers' thoughts on how black holes formed.

"Stars lose mass to their surrounding environment through stellar winds that blow away from their surface. But to make a black hole this heavy and rotating so quickly, we need to dial down the amount of mass that bright stars lose during their lifetimes," he said.

The black hole in the Cygnus X-1 system began life as a star approximately 60 times the mass of the Sun and collapsed tens of thousands of years ago. Incredibly, it's orbiting its companion star every five-and-a-half days at just one-fifth the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Accompanying the publication in Science, two further papers focusing on different aspects of this work have also been published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

Read First Black Hole Ever Detected - Cygnus X-1 - Is Much More Massive Than We Thought for more on this research.

References:

"Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole - implications for massive star winds" by James C. A. Miller-Jones, Arash Bahramian, Jerome A. Orosz, Ilya Mandel, Lijun Gou, Thomas J. Maccarone, Coenraad J. Neijssel, Xueshan Zhao, Janusz Ziólkowski, Mark J. Reid, Phil Uttley, Xueying Zheng, Do-Young Byun, Richard Dodson, Victoria Grinberg, Taehyun Jung, Jeong-Sook Kim, Benito Marcote, Sera Markoff, María J. Rioja, Anthony P. Rushton, David M. Russell, Gregory R. Sivakoff, Alexandra J. Tetarenko, Valeriu Tudose and Joern Wilms, 18 February 2021, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abb3363

"Reestimating the Spin Parameter of the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1" by Xueshan Zhao, Lijun Gou, Yanting Dong, Xueying Zheng, James F. Steiner, James C.A. Miller-Jones, Arash Bahramian, Jerome A. Orosz and Ye Feng, 18 February 2021, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abbcd6
arXiv: 2102.09093

"Wind mass-loss rates of stripped stars inferred from Cygnus X-1" by Coenraad J. Neijssel, Serena Vinciguerra, Alejandro Vigna-Gomez, Ryosuke Hirai, James C. A. Miller-Jones, Arash Bahramian, Thomas J. Maccarone and Ilya Mandel, 18 February 2021, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abde4a
arXiv: 2102.09092

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New Observations of First Black Hole Ever Detected Leads to Questions About the Universe's Most Mysterious Objects

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Cygnus X-1, a binary star system first discovered in 1964, comprises one of the closest black holes to Earth. New observations of this black hole, the first ever detected, have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe's most mysterious objects. An international team, includin

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Several orangutans and bonobos at the San Diego Zoo have received an experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed specifically for animals.

Over the last two months, several great apes at the zoo "that are most at risk and can be easily vaccinated" received two doses each of the vaccine, which was developed by the veterinary pharmaceutical company Zoetis, about three weeks apart, a spokesperson for the zoo told CBS News.

They mark the first known non-human primates to get the shot.

"This isn't the norm. In my career, I haven't had access to an experimental vaccine this early in the process and haven't had such an overwhelming desire to want to use one," Nadine Lamberski, chief conservation and wildlife health officer at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, told National Geographic.

In January, eight gorillas at the zoo became the first great apes in the world to test positive for coronavirus.

"The gorilla troop at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park are doing well and appear to be on their way to a full recovery," the zoo said.

Infections have also been confirmed in dogs, cats, mink, tigers, lions and several other animals around the world. However, great apes are a particular concern among conservationists.

All species of gorillas are listed as endangered or critically-endangered on the IUCN Red List, with "susceptibility to disease" as one of the main threats. Infections spread rapidly among the animals, which live in close familial groups.

COVID-19 has the potential to wipe out populations of gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos if humans don't take steps to prevent its spread, experts have warned.

Zoetis started development on a COVID-19 vaccine for dogs and cats after the first dog tested positive for the virus in Hong Kong over a year ago, a spokesperson told CBS News. It was deemed safe and effective eight months later - but testing had only been done in dogs and cats.

"Now more than ever before, we can all see the important connection between animal health and human health," the spokesperson said. "While thankfully a COVID vaccine is not needed for cats and dogs at this time, we have applied our early development work to help the Great Apes at the San Diego Zoo and in other species on an experimental basis for emergency uses."

The vaccinated animals are doing well and we have seen no adverse reactions from the vaccine, the zoo said. They are being closely monitored.

"It's not like we randomly grab a vaccine and give it to a novel species," she said. "A lot of thought and research goes into it-what's the risk of doing it and what's the risk of not doing it. Our motto is, above all, to do no harm."

Lamberski said that, because vaccines are made for a specific pathogen and not a specific species, it's common to give a vaccine meant for one species to another. Apes at the zoo get flu and measles vaccines developed for humans.

A spokesperson for Zoetis told National Geographic that other U.S. zoos have requested doses of the vaccine for their own great apes. The company expects more to be available in June.

Additionally, the company is currently conducting trials of the vaccine in mink - tens of thousands of which have due to of COVID-19.
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Sophie Lewis

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Great apes at San Diego Zoo become first non-humans to receive COVID-19 vaccine

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Several orangutans and bonobos at the San Diego Zoo have received an experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed specifically for animals. Over the last two months, several great apes at the zoo "that are most at risk and can be easily vaccinated" received two doses each of the vaccine, which was developed by the veterinary pharmaceutical company Zoetis, about three weeks apart, a spokesperson for the zoo told CBS News.

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Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System

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NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

The planets orbit close to their host stars and range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen are between Earth and Neptune in size. Further observations will be required to determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.

"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."

Kepler identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars to detect when a planet passes in front of the star. That passage casts a small shadow toward Earth and the Kepler spacecraft.

"Confirming that the small decrease in the star's brightness is due to a planet requires additional observations and time-consuming analysis," said Eric Ford, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Florida and lead author of the paper confirming Kepler-23 and Kepler-24. "We verified these planets using new techniques that dramatically accelerated their discovery."

Each of the newly confirmed planetary systems contains two to five closely spaced transiting planets. In tightly packed planetary systems, the gravitational pull of the planets on each other causes some planets to accelerate and some to decelerate along their orbits. The acceleration causes the orbital period of each planet to change. Kepler detects this effect by measuring the changes, or so-called Transit Timing Variations.

Planetary systems with Transit Timing Variations can be verified without requiring extensive ground-based observations, accelerating confirmation of planet candidates. This detection technique also increases Kepler's ability to confirm planetary systems around fainter and more distant stars.

"By precisely timing when each planet transits its star, Kepler detected the gravitational tug of the planets on each other, clinching the case for 10 of the newly announced planetary systems," said Dan Fabrycky, Hubble Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lead author for a paper confirming Kepler-29, 30, 31 and 32.

Five of the systems (Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33) contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Four of the systems (Kepler-23, Kepler-24, Kepler-28 and Kepler-32) contain a pairing where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.

"These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher," said Jason Steffen, the Brinson postdoctoral fellow at Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics in Batavia, Ill., and lead author of a paper confirming Kepler-25, 26, 27 and 28.

Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than our sun, had the most planets. The system hosts five planets, ranging in size from 1.5 to 5 times that of Earth. All of the planets are located closer to their star than any planet is to our sun.

The properties of a star provide clues for planet detection. The decrease in the star's brightness and duration of a planet transit combined with the properties of its host star present a recognizable signature. When astronomers detect planet candidates that exhibit similar signatures around the same star, the likelihood of any of these planet candidates being a false positive is very low.

"The approach used to verify the Kepler-33 planets shows the overall reliability is quite high," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper on Kepler-33. "This is a validation by multiplicity."

These discoveries are published in four different papers in the Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission's development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit http://www.nasa.gov/kepler. More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov.

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national aeronautics and space administration

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NASA's Kepler announces 11 new planetary systems - Exoplanet Exploration: Planets Beyond our Solar System

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NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits the star.

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A remarkable prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity -- the theory that connects space, time, and gravity -- is that rotating black holes have enormous amounts of energy available to be tapped.

For the last 50 years, scientists have tried to come up with methods to unleash this power. Nobel physicist Roger Penrose theorized that a particle disintegration could draw energy from a black hole; Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes could release energy through quantum mechanical emission; while Roger Blandford and Roman Znajek suggested electromagnetic torque as a main agent of energy extraction.

Now, in a study published in the journal Physical Review D, physicists Luca Comisso from Columbia University and Felipe Asenjo from Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Chile, found a new way to extract energy from black holes by breaking and rejoining magnetic field lines near the event horizon, the point from which nothing, not even light, can escape the black hole's gravitational pull.

"Black holes are commonly surrounded by a hot 'soup' of plasma particles that carry a magnetic field," said Luca Comisso, research scientist at Columbia University and first author on the study.

"Our theory shows that when magnetic field lines disconnect and reconnect, in just the right way, they can accelerate plasma particles to negative energies and large amounts of black hole energy can be extracted."

This finding could allow astronomers to better estimate the spin of black holes, drive black hole energy emissions, and might even provide a source of energy for the needs of an advanced civilization, Comisso said.

Comisso and Asenjo built their theory on the premise that reconnecting magnetic fields accelerates plasma particles in two different directions. One plasma flow is pushed against the black hole's spin, while the other is propelled in the spin's direction and can escape the clutches of the black hole, which releases power if the plasma swallowed by the black hole has negative energy.

"It is like a person could lose weight by eating candy with negative calories," said Comisso, who explained that essentially a black hole loses energy by eating negative-energy particles. "This might sound weird," he said, "but it can happen in a region called the ergosphere, where the spacetime continuum rotates so fast that every object spins in the same direction as the black hole."

Inside the ergosphere, magnetic reconnection is so extreme that the plasma particles are accelerated to velocities approaching the speed of light.

Asenjo, professor of physics at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and coauthor on the study, explained that the high relative velocity between captured and escaping plasma streams is what allows the proposed process to extract massive amounts of energy from the black hole.

"We calculated that the process of plasma energization can reach an efficiency of 150 percent, much higher than any power plant operating on Earth," Asenjo said. "Achieving an efficiency greater than 100 percent is possible because black holes leak energy, which is given away for free to the plasma escaping from the black hole."

The process of energy extraction envisioned by Comisso and Asenjo might be already operating in a large number of black holes. That may be what is driving black hole flares -- powerful bursts of radiation that can be detected from Earth.

"Our increased knowledge of how magnetic reconnection occurs in the vicinity of the black hole might be crucial for guiding our interpretation of current and future telescope observations of black holes, such as the ones by the Event Horizon Telescope," Asenjo said.

While it may sound like the stuff of science fiction, mining energy from black holes could be the answer to our future power needs.

"Thousands or millions of years from now, humanity might be able to survive around a black hole without harnessing energy from stars," Comisso said. "It is essentially a technological problem. If we look at the physics, there is nothing that prevents it."

The study, Magnetic reconnection as a mechanism for energy extraction from rotating black holes, was funded by the National Science Foundation's Windows on the Universe initiative, NASA, and Chile's National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development.

Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin, a program director at NSF, said the Foundation aims to catalyzes new theoretical efforts based on frontier observations at facilities such as the EHT, bringing together theoretical physics and observational astronomy under one roof.

"We look forward to the potential translation of seemingly esoteric studies of black hole astrophysics into the practical realm," Lukin said.

"The ideas and concepts discussed in this work are truly fascinating," said Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin, a program director at the National Science Foundation. He said NSF aims to catalyze new theoretical efforts based on frontier observations, bringing together theoretical physics and observational astronomy under one roof.

"We look forward to the potential translation of seemingly esoteric studies of black hole astrophysics into the practical realm," he added.

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black holes; astrophysics; astronomy; galaxies; albert einstein; physics; energy technology; nuclear energy

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Could we harness energy from black holes? A new study indicates energy can be extracted from black holes through reconnection of magnetic field lines

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A remarkable prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity -- the theory that connects space, time, and gravity -- is that rotating black holes have enormous amounts of energy available to be tapped. For the last 50 years, scientists have tried to come up with methods to unleash this power.

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A Japanese company said it had completed a manned flight of its electrical vertical takeoff and landing machine. Experts say the technology needs work and that it will be expensive.

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The Japanese company SkyDrive conducted a four-minute test flight of its flying car prototype this month. Credit... SkyDrive/CARTIVATOR 2020, via Associated Press

In the 1880s, the first automobile was developed and about two decades later, the Wright brothers in North Carolina invented the first successful airplane. Today, the world is closer to combining those two concepts as a Japanese tech company said it completed a manned test flight of a " flying car."

The company, SkyDrive, said in a news release on Friday that it had completed a flight test using "the world's first manned testing machine," its SD-03 model, an electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle. The flight time was four minutes, the company said.

The aircraft has one seat and operates with eight motors and two propellers on each corner. It lifted about 3 meters (or about 10 feet) into the air and was operated by a pilot, the company said.

Tomohiro Fukuzawa, SkyDrive's chief executive, said on Saturday that five years ago there were various prototypes of flying cars, usually with fixed wings. SkyDrive's product, he said, was one of the most compact in size and was lighter compared with other designs.

SkyDrive was started in 2012 by members of a volunteer organization called Cartivator, and the company began developing a "flying car" in 2014, according to its website.

This year, SkyDrive received funding from the Development Bank of Japan and other investors, the company said.

There are several companies developing similar technology, including Boeing and Airbus, as well as automakers Toyota and Porsche. In January, Hyundai and Uber announced they were collaborating on an all-electric air taxi.

Analysts with Morgan Stanley have said they expect urban air taxis to be common by 2040, with the global market projected to be $1.4 trillion to $2.9 trillion by then.

Safety is one of two challenges preventing the technology from becoming widely used, said Derya Aksaray, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics at the University of Minnesota. Safe autonomous technology for eVTOL aircrafts is still being developed, Professor Aksaray said.

"These vehicles need to look at their environment, assess the situation and act accordingly," she said. "They cannot wait for a pilot or an operator to say, 'Now do this, now do that.' We cannot wait for that kind of micromanagement of the vehicle."

The other challenge is design: The vehicles should be powerful enough to carry any necessary weight, yet quiet enough to fly at undetermined low altitudes, she said.

Ella Atkins, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, expressed mixed views on the practicality of eVTOL machines.

"They are going to be more energy efficient than helicopters that use a lot of fuel but they will be less energy efficient than cars because they have to lift themselves," she said. "From a cost perspective, they won't be practical to go to the grocery store."

Professor Atkins said these machines may be better suited for satellite communities of cities or countries with difficult terrain.

"These vehicles can provide transportation," Professor Atkins said, adding that "these communities might skip right over having roads" and use the aircraft as their main form of transportation.

Mr. Fukuzawa said SkyDrive plans to begin selling a two-seat version of its eVTOL by 2023 for about $300,000 to $500,000. He projected the price will decrease by 2030.

"With any new technology, it will be very expensive in the beginning," Professor Aksaray said.

Professor Atkins echoed that observation and said it's unlikely that private citizens with a modest income would be able to afford one in the next 20 years.

"We're at the entrant phase," she said. "We don't have the mass production we would need to buy down the costs of all the development, research, deployment and manufacturing at a small scale."

Professor Aksaray said humans are on the verge of a new mobility revolution, reminiscent of the ones created by the invention of the automobile and the plane.

"If this becomes successful," she said, "I think that would definitely create a different means of transportation. We are going to benefit a lot by reducing congestion and overcoming the geographical constraints of ground mobility."

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Humans Take a Step Closer to 'Flying Cars' (Published 2020)

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A Japanese company said it had completed a manned flight of its electrical vertical takeoff and landing machine. Experts say the technology needs work and that it will be expensive. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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The Flow Events: Cardiac Chamber Filling and Emptying

Figure 1 illustrates the sequential filling and emptying of the cardiac chambers during a cardiac cycle.

The cardiac cycle begins with the atrium and ventricle in a relaxed state. During diastole, blood flowing from central veins fills the atrium and partially fills the ventricle, passing through the sinus venosus, the sino-atrial (SA) canal and the atrio-ventricular (AV) canal. Atrial contraction (atrial systole) then ejects blood from the atrium and into the ventricle, which is still in diastole, and this completes ventricular filling. The contributions of these two phases of ventricular filling vary among species, with sometimes only ∼50% occurring via atrial contraction. In addition, the contribution of passive ventricular filling may decrease at high heart rates when the diastole is shorter.

Atrial relaxation (atrial diastole) occurs while the ventricle is contracting (ventricular systole). However, before ventricular contraction starts, the propagation of the action potential from the atrium is briefly delayed in the AV canal. This AV delay ensures that blood has sufficient time to move from the atrium and complete ventricular filling. Ventricular contraction ejects blood into the outflow tract past an opened bulbo-ventricular (BV) valve. The cardiac cycle is completed when the ventricle relaxes (ventricular diastole).

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123745538000605

Cardiac Cycle

Cardiac sounds and murmurs that arise from turbulence or vibrations within the heart and vascular system may be innocent or pathologic. It is important to understand the timing of events in the cardiac cycle as a prerequisite to understanding heart murmurs. The relationship between the normal heart cycle and that of the heart sounds is noted in Fig. 8.2.

The cardiac cycle begins with atrial systole, the sequential activation and contraction of the 2 thin-walled upper chambers. Atrial systole is followed by the delayed contraction of the more powerful lower chambers, termed ventricular systole. Ventricular systole has 3 phases:

1.

Isovolumic contraction: the short period of early contraction when the pressure builds within the ventricle but has yet to rise sufficiently to permit ejection

2.

Ventricular ejection: when the ventricles eject blood to the body (via the aorta) and to the lungs (via the pulmonary artery)

3.

Isovolumic relaxation: the period of ventricular relaxation when ejection ceases and pressure falls within the ventricles

During ventricular contraction, the atria relax ( atrial diastole) and receive venous return from both the body and the lungs. Then, in ventricular diastole, the lower chambers relax, allowing initial passive filling of the thick-walled ventricles and emptying of the atria. Later, during the terminal period of ventricular relaxation, the atria contract. This atrial systole augments ventricular filling just before the onset of the next ventricular contraction.

The sequence of contractions generates pressure and blood flow through the heart. The relationship of blood volume, pressure, and flow determines opening and closing of heart valves and generates characteristic heart sounds and murmurs.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978032339956200008X

1.1.2 The Cardiac Cycle

The cardiac cycle includes two phases: diastole and systole ( Fig. 1.4). In the diastole phase, blood returns to the heart from the superior and interior vena cava and flows into the right atrium. The pressure in the right atrium increases as blood flows into it. When the pressure of the right atrium exceeds the pressure of the right ventricle, the tricuspid valve opens passively allowing blood to flow into the right ventricle. At the same time, the oxygenated blood returning from the lungs flows into the left atrium. As left atrial pressure increases, the mitral valve opens and blood flows into the left ventricle.

In the systole phase, blood is forced to flow from the two atria into their respective ventricles as the atrial muscles contract due to the depolarization of the atria. There is a period called isovolumetric contraction during which the ventricles contract but the pulmonary and aortic valves are closed as the ventricles do not have enough force to open them. The atrioventricular valves also remain closed during the isovolumetric contraction period. The semilunar valves open when the ventricular muscle contracts and generates blood pressure within the ventricle higher than within the arterial tree. When the heart muscle relaxes the diastole phase begins again.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128047347000014

Ventricular Pumping during Systole and Diastole

The cardiac cycle refers to all of the events that occur from the beginning of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next and can be divided into two parts: a period of relaxation known as diastole and a period of contraction known as systole. The pressure and volume changes that occur during the cardiac cycle for the left ventricle are depicted in Figure 6.2 and will serve as a platform for describing key events. Importantly, these changes depicted here for the left ventricle also occur simultaneously in the right side of the heart in the right atrium, right ventricle, and pulmonary artery.

Throughout the cardiac cycle the atria collect deoxygenated blood returning to the heart from the peripheral circulation and the coronary circulation (right atria) or from the pulmonary circulation (left atria). During diastole, the build up of blood in the atria creates a pressure gradient that forces open the AV valves allowing for about 75% of this blood to pass into the ventricle causing a gradual increase in ventricular diastolic pressure (point A). In late diastole, the contraction of the atria propels the remaining 25% of the blood into the ventricles, which produces a further increase in atrial and ventricle pressures (point B). Contraction of the ventricle then follows, signaling the onset of mechanical systole. As the ventricles contract, the pressures within them rapidly exceed atrial pressures. This pressure gradient pushes back on the leaflets of the AV valves and forces them closed (point C). The onset of the ventricular contraction also creates tension on the papillary muscles, which apply extra force to the edges of the leaflets ensuring the proper alignment of the valves, which aids in their closing. Further ventricular contraction causes ventricular pressure to exceed the diastolic pressures in the pulmonary artery and aorta, which forces the opening of the semilunar valves (point D). This allows the ventricles to empty their contents into the pulmonary and systemic circulations. Because the semilunar valves are open, the continued contraction of the ventricles increases the pressure in the pulmonary artery and aorta. The conclusion of ventricular ejection causes the pressure in the ventricles to fall below those of the pulmonary artery and aorta. This allows for the blood in the pulmonary artery and aorta to push back on the semilunar valves forcing them closed (point E). The cardiac cycle then begins once again with the ventricles filling with blood that has collected in the atria.

The relationship between left ventricular volume and intraventricular pressure during systole and diastole is represented by the pressure-volume curves depicted in Figure 6.3. The curve for diastolic pressure is determined by filling the heart with increasing amounts of blood and then measuring intraventricular pressure before the start of contraction. In other words, this curve represents the end-diastolic pressure for a given amount of blood volume. The curve for systolic pressure represents the measurement of the intraventricular pressure at the end of contraction for each volume of filling. It is important to note that the pressure volume curve for diastole is initially flat, indicating that increasing the volume of the blood only minimally increases ventricular pressure. This holds true up to about 150 ml. Above this volume the pressure increases rapidly, partially because the fibrous tissue of the heart and the pericardium that surrounds the heart has reached its limits of stretching. In contrast, systolic pressure increases rapidly even at low ventricular volumes and continues to increase at a steady rate before reaching a maximum of roughly 250 mmHg at a volume of 150-170 ml. Above this volume, systolic pressure actually decreases because at these great volumes the actin and myosin filaments of the cardiac muscle are pulled apart in such a way that the strength of contraction becomes less than optimal.

While the curves depicted in Figure 6.3 nicely represent the changes in left ventricular pressure in response to increasing amounts of blood volume, they do not really portray an acute picture of the normal changes that occur throughout a single cardiac cycle. This is depicted in Figure 6.4 as a standard pressure-volume loop, which is divided into four phases. Phase I is called the period of filling and begins at point A when diastolic filling begins. At this point, there is about 45 ml of blood in the ventricles and the pressure is about 0 mmHg. The 45 ml represents the amount of blood left in the ventricles after the previous heartbeat and is known as the end-systolic volume. The initial decrease in pressure from point A to point B that occurs despite an increase in volume is attributed to the progressive ventricular relaxation and distensibility. During the remainder of diastole (point B to C), the ventricle continues to fill with blood with only a minimal increase in pressure. The small increase in volume and pressure just to the left of point C is caused by the contribution of atrial contraction to ventricular filling. Phase I ends at point C, when diastole ends. At this point the ventricular volume has increased by about 70 ml to a total of 115 ml (end-diastolic volume) and the pressure has risen to 5 mmHg (end-diastolic pressure). Phase II is known as the period of isovolumic contraction and begins at point C. This phase is characterized by a large increase in pressure without a change in volume. The reason that the volume does not change during phase II is that all of the valves are closed, so blood can neither enter nor leave the ventricle. During phase II, the pressure in the ventricle increases to about 80 mmHg, which equals the pressure in the aorta. Point D represents the end of phase II and the beginning of phase III, which is known as the period of relaxation. During the initial phase of ejection (point D to point E), systolic pressure continues to rise even higher due to contraction of the heart. At the same time the volume of the ventricles starts to decrease because the aortic valve has opened and blood is flowing out of the ventricle and into the aorta (point E to point F). The closing of the aortic valve at point F marks the end of phase III and the beginning of phase IV, which is known as the period of isovolumic relaxation. A sharp drop in pressure back to the diastolic pressure level with no change in volume characterizes this phase. Thus, the ventricle returns to its starting point with about 45 ml of blood and a pressure of 0 mmHg. The mitral valve opens at this point and the entire cycle begins again.

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The Cardiac Cycle

The cardiac cycle describes pressure, volume, and flow phenomena in the ventricles as a function of time. This cycle is similar for both the left and right ventricles, although there are differences in timing, which stem from differences in the depolarization sequence and the levels of pressure in the pulmonary and systemic circulations. For simplicity, the cardiac cycle for the left heart during one beat has been described ( Figure 10).

The QRS complex on the surface ECG represents ventricular depolarization. Contraction ( systole) begins after an approximately 50 ms delay and results in closure of the mitral valve. The left ventricle contracts isovolumetrically until the ventricular pressure exceeds the systemic pressure, which opens the aortic valve and results in ventricular ejection. Bulging of the mitral valve into the left atrium during isovolumetric contraction causes a slight increase in left atrial pressure ( c wave). Shortly after ejection begins, the active state of ventricular myocardium declines and ventricular pressure begins to decrease. Left atrial pressure rises during ventricular systole ( v wave) as blood returns to the left atrium by means of the pulmonary veins. The aortic valve closes when left ventricular pressure falls below aortic pressure, and momentum briefly maintains forward flow despite greater aortic than left ventricular pressure. Ventricular pressure then declines exponentially during isovolumetric relaxation, when both the aortic and mitral valves are closed. This begins the ventricular diastole. When ventricular pressure declines below left atrial pressure, the mitral valve opens and ventricular filling begins. Initially, ventricular filling is very rapid because of the relatively large pressure gradient between the atrium and ventricle. Ventricular pressure continues to decrease after mitral valve opening because of continued ventricular relaxation; its subsequent increase (and the decrease in atrial pressure) slows ventricular filling. Especially at low end-systolic volumes, early rapid ventricular filling can be facilitated by ventricular suction produced by elastic recoil. Ventricular filling slows during diastasis, when atrial and ventricular pressures and volumes increase vary gradually. Atrial depolarization is followed by atrial contraction, increased atrial pressure ( a wave), and a second, late rapid-filling phase. A subsequent ventricular depolarization completes the cycle.

Valve closure and rapid-filling phases are audible with a stethoscope placed on the chest and can be recorded phonocardiographically after electronic amplification. The first heart sound, resulting from cardiohemic vibrations with closure of the AV (mitral, tricuspid) valves, heralds ventricular systole. The second heart sound, shorter and composed of higher frequencies than the first, is associated with closure of the semilunar valves (aortic and pulmonic) at the end of ventricular ejection. Third and fourth heart sounds are low-frequency vibrations caused by early rapid filling and late diastolic atrial contractile filling, respectively. These sounds can be heard in normal children, but in adults they usually indicate disease.

An alternative time-independent representation of the cardiac cycle is obtained by plotting instantaneous ventricular pressure and volume (Figure 11). During ventricular filling, pressure and volume increase nonlinearly (phase I). The instantaneous slope of the pressure-volume (P-V) curve during filling (d P/d V) is diastolic stiffness, and its inverse (d V/d P) is compliance. Thus, as chamber volume increases, the ventricle becomes stiffer. In a normal ventricle, operative compliance is high, because the ventricle operates on the flat portion of its diastolic P-V curve. During isovolumetric contraction (phase II) pressure increases and volume remains constant. During ejection (phase III) pressure rises and falls until the minimum ventricular size is attained. The maximum ratio of pressure to volume (maximal active chamber stiffness or elastance) usually occurs at the end of ejection. Isovolumetric relaxation follows (phase IV), and when left ventricular pressure falls below left atrial pressure, ventricular filling begins. Thus, end-diastole is at the lower right-hand corner of the loop, and end systole is at the upper left corner of the loop. Left ventricular P-V diagrams can illustrate the effects of changing preload, afterload, and inotropic state in the intact ventricle (see the following).

A P-V loop can also be described for atrial events (Hoit et al., 1994). During ventricular ejection, descent of the ventricular base lowers atrial pressure and thus assists in atrial filling. Filling of the atria from the veins results in a v wave on the atrial and venous pressure tracing. When the mitral and tricuspid valves open, blood stored in the atria empties into the ventricles. Atrial contraction denoted by an a wave on the atrial pressure tracing actively assists ventricular filling. The resultant atrial P-V diagram has a figure-of-eight configuration with a clockwise V loop, representing passive filling and emptying of the atria and a counterclockwise A loop, representing active atrial contraction. Thus, the atria function as a reservoir and conduit for venous flow (during ventricular systole and diastole, respectively), and as a booster pump for ventricular filling late in diastole.

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INTRODUCTION

The cardiac cycle is continuous. The filling of the ventricle (diastole) is followed by ventricular contraction (systole) to provide an adequate cardiac output during both rest and exercise to meet the body's metabolic demands. Systole and diastole affect each other in an intimate manner to accomplish this goal. The normal elastic recoil after left ventricular (LV) contraction aids early filling of the ventricle, with the late diastolic atrial contraction ensuring that the myocardial sarcomeres are adequately stretched to optimize contractile force. Exercise tests the health of this integrated system by shortening the time for filling and myocardial perfusion, and a normally functioning cardiac electrical system is also needed for optimal performance.

The "new" epidemiology of LV diastolic dysfunction has been discussed in Chapter 6 of this volume. Diastolic heart failure is now recognized as a major national health problem, especially in the elderly, who have a high incidence of LV hypertrophy (LVH). These patients present with symptomatic heart failure despite a normal LV ejection fraction (LVEF) and have morbidity and mortality that is nearly equal to that of patients with reduced systolic function. Diastolic heart failure patients are also at risk for first-onset atrial fibrillation and a higher incidence of stroke. Although LVEF is normal in diastolic heart failure, ventricular contractile mechanics have been altered in a way that lengthens the isovolumic contraction and relaxation period so that the period for diastolic filling becomes shorter and may be inadequate. In both systolic and diastolic heart failure, the degree of diastolic dysfunction is a powerful predictor of prognosis.

Despite this new appreciation of the importance of both systole and diastole in maintaining normal cardiovascular physiology, the role of LV diastolic function in health and disease is incompletely understood and underappreciated by many primary care physicians and cardiologists. As discussed in Chapter 2, diastole is a complex phenomenon with many determinants that are difficult to study individually and several phases that encompass both the relaxation and the filling of the ventricle. Physical examination, echocardiography (ECG), chest radiographs, and laboratory studies are unreliable in diagnosing diastolic heart failure in most individuals, and invasive measurements of LV diastolic properties and pressures are impractical in clinical practice. Therefore, at present, assessing the type and degree of LV diastolic dysfunction relies on evaluating the pattern of LV filling. Although this can be accomplished by radionuclide and computed tomography (CT) angiographic and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, cardiac ultrasound is currently the method of choice because of its noninvasive and portable nature. Evaluating LV filling by two-dimensional anatomic findings, Doppler flow, and tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) have emerged as powerful clinical techniques to predict adverse cardiovascular events such as new-onset atrial fibrillation and heart failure, as well as mortality regardless of LVEF. The purpose of this chapter will be to describe the various LV filling patterns encountered in clinical practice, and what these patterns and their measurable variables reveal about LV diastolic function. In cases of possible ambiguity, ancillary variables such as left atrial (LA) volume, pulmonary venous (PV) flow velocity, and TDI that help in interpreting mitral flow velocity patterns will be discussed.

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Extramural Compression

During the cardiac cycle the pulsatile pattern of CBF follows typical physiologic variations, which are influenced by the variations in intramyocardial and intracavitary pressures occurring during systole and diastole (see Fig. 5.1). Approximately 90% of CBF occurs in diastole, and therefore diastolic abnormalities have a more significant impact on myocardial perfusion. Nevertheless, an increase in systolic intramyocardial and intracavitary pressures, for example in conditions of increased pressure overload, may negatively impact on myocardial perfusion. An increased microvascular compression during systole hinders subendocardial vessels' tone restoration in diastole, thus impairing diastolic microvascular CBF in the subendocardial layers.

Diastolic CBF is impaired whenever intracavitary diastolic pressure is increased. This is the case in the presence of either primary or secondary LV hypertrophy (LVH) and also in the presence of diastolic dysfunction consequent to increased interstitial and perivascular fibrosis. Diastolic impairment of CBF is enhanced when arteriolar driving pressure during diastole is significantly lower than intracavitary pressure, as in patients with severe aortic stenosis, critical coronary stenoses, prearteriolar constriction, or merely hypotension.

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Cardiac Conduction and Waveform Genesis

For each cardiac cycle the impulse originates in the sinoatrial node (SA node) located in the wall of the right atrium near the entrance of the cranial vena cava. The impulse rapidly propagates through the atrial myocardium along the specialized internodal tracts to activate the right and then the left atrium (depolarizing them). This depolarization of the atria results in the P wave on the body surface ECG, which is followed by atrial contraction. SA nodal activity is too small to produce a deflection on the body surface ECG. The depolarization wave front next travels through the atrioventricular node (AV node). Conduction velocity is slow through the AV node, allowing atrial contraction to finish before ventricular depolarization occurs and facilitating synchronization of atrial and ventricular contractions. On the body surface ECG, conduction through the AV node corresponds to the PR interval. Conduction velocity increases through the bundle of His, bundle branches, and Purkinje system, resulting in rapid ventricular depolarization inscribed as the QRS complex on the ECG. The Q is the first negative depolarization of the ventricular depolarization complex. The R wave is the first positive deflection following the P wave, and the S wave is the first negative following the R wave. Ventricular recovery (repolarization) is represented by the T wave (Miller et al. 1999).

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Refractoriness

During a cardiac cycle, once an action potential is initiated, the cardiomyocyte becomes inexcitable to stimulation (i.e., unable to initiate another action potential in response to a stimulus of threshold intensity) for some duration of time (which is generally slightly shorter than the duration of the "true" action potential duration) until its membrane has repolarized to a certain level. With repolarization, Na ⁺ channels normally recover rapidly from inactivation (within 10 milliseconds) and are ready to open again. Refractoriness is determined, in part, by the action potential duration and the E m, and the degree of refractoriness primarily reflects the number of Na⁺ channels that have recovered from their inactive state. The period of refractoriness to stimulation is physiologically necessary for the mechanical function of the heart; it allows only gradual recovery of excitability, thus permitting relaxation of cardiac muscle before subsequent activation. In addition, the refractory period acts as a protective mechanism by preventing multiple, compounded action potentials from occurring (i.e., it limits the frequency of depolarization and heart rate). Therefore refractoriness is a determinant of susceptibility to arrhythmias. In general, shorter refractoriness facilitates reentry and arrhythmias.

There are different levels of refractoriness during the action potential (Fig. 1.4). During the absolute refractory period (which extends over phases 0, 1, 2, and part of phase 3 of the action potential), no stimulus, regardless of its strength, can reexcite the cell. After the absolute refractory period, a stimulus can cause some cellular depolarization, but it does not lead to a propagated action potential. The sum of this period (which includes a short interval of phase 3 of the action potential) and the absolute refractory period is termed the effective refractory period (ERP, ending during phase 3 at an E m of approximately −60 mV). The ERP is followed by the relative refractory period, which extends over the middle and late parts of phase 3 (at an E m of approximately −60 mV during phase 3) to the end of phase 3 of the action potential. During the relative refractory period, initiation of a second action potential is more difficult but not impossible; a larger-than-normal stimulus can result in activation of the cell and lead to a propagating action potential (Fig. 1.5). However, the upstroke of the new action potential is less steep and of lower amplitude and its conduction velocity is reduced compared with normal. As noted, there is a brief period in phase 3, the supernormal period, during which excitation is possible in response to an otherwise subthreshold stimulus (supernormal excitability).

In pacemaking tissues, I Na is predominantly absent and excitability is mediated by the activation of I CaL. After inactivation, the transition of Ca ²⁺ channels from the inactivated to the closed resting state (i.e., recovery from inactivation) is relatively slow. The time constant for recovery from inactivation depends on both the E m and the intracellular Ca ²⁺ concentration (typically 100 to 200 milliseconds at −80 mV and low intracellular Ca ²⁺ concentration). This means that I CaL must recover from inactivation between action potentials. As a result, excitability in pacemaking cells may not be recovered by the end of phase 3 of the action potential and full restoration of maximum diastolic potential because L-type Ca ²⁺ channels require longer time to recovery from inactivation to be able to mediate the upstroke of a new action potential. In other words, sinus and AV nodal cells remain refractory for a time interval that is longer than the time it takes for full membrane repolarization to occur, a phenomenon termed postrepolarization refractoriness. This can also occur in working myocardium during some disease states such as myocardial infarction.

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Figure 1 illustrates the sequential filling and emptying of the cardiac chambers during a cardiac cycle. The cardiac cycle begins with the atrium and ventricle in a relaxed state. During diastole, blood flowing from central veins fills the atrium and partially fills the ventricle, passing through the sinus venosus, the sino-atrial (SA) canal and the atrio-ventricular (AV) canal.

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The idea of creating selectively porous materials has captured the attention of chemists for decades. Now, new research from Northwestern University shows that fungi may have been doing exactly this for millions of years.

When Nathan Gianneschi's lab set out to synthesize melanin that would mimic that which was formed by certain fungi known to inhabit unusual, hostile environments including spaceships, dishwashers, and even Chernobyl, they did not initially expect the materials would prove highly porous - a property that enables the material to store and capture molecules.

Melanin has been found across living organisms, on our skin and the backs of our eyes, and as pigments for many animals and plants. It also plays a role in protecting species from environmental stressors. Turtle-headed sea snakes' stripes darken, for example, in the presence of polluted water; moths living in industrial areas turn black as their cells absorb toxins in soot. The researchers wondered whether this type of biomaterial could be made more sponge-like, to optimize these properties. And, in turn, whether sponge-like melanins existed already in nature.

"Melanin's function isn't fully known all the time and in all cases," Gianneschi, the corresponding author on the study, said. "It's certainly a radical scavenger in human skin and protects against UV damage. Now, through synthesis we've happened upon this exciting material that very well may exist in nature. Fungi might make this material to add mechanical strength to their cells, but is porous, allowing nutrients across."

The study will be published Friday, March 5, 2021, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Gianneschi is the Jacob and Rosaline Cohn Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. With appointments in the materials science and biomedical engineering departments in the McCormick School of Engineering, Gianneschi also is associate director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology.

The ability to create this material in a lab is encouraging for a number of reasons. In typical non-porous materials, particles adsorb only superficially on the surface. But porous materials like allomelanin soak up and hold undesirable toxins while letting good stuff like air, water and nutrients through. This may allow manufacturers to create breathable, protective coatings for uniforms.

"You're always excited by discovering something that's potentially useful," Gianneschi said. "But there's also the intriguing idea that by discovering this, maybe more materials like this exist out there in biology already. There aren't many examples where chemical synthesis leads to a biological discovery. It's most often the other way around."

Naneki McCallum, a graduate student researcher in the lab and first author on the paper, had noticed that under the right conditions, melanin appeared to be hollow, or could be made to contain what looked like voids by electron microscopy. When the team came across the synthetic material, they began experimenting with porosity and selectivity of the materials for adsorbing molecules in those voids.

In a key demonstration, the team, working with researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory, was able to show that the new porous melanin would act as a protective coating, preventing simulants of nerve gas from getting through. Inspired by this result, they then isolated naturally occurring melanin from fungal cells. This was done by etching away biomaterial from within, leaving a shell containing melanin. They call these structures "fungal ghosts" for the elusive, hollow shape's "Casper"-like quality. The material, derived from fungi could also, in turn be used as a protective layer in fabrics. Remarkably, the material stays breathable, allowing water to pass, while trapping toxins.

Another benefit to this material is its simplicity, as it's easily produced and scaled from simple molecular precursors. In the future, it could be used to make protective masks and face shields and has potential for applications in long distance space flight. Coating materials in space would allow astronauts to store toxins they're breathing out while protecting themselves from harmful radiation, making for less waste and weight.

It's also a step toward selective membranes, a highly complex field of study that aims to take compounds like water and allow healthy minerals to pass through while blocking heavy metals like mercury.

"Fungi can thrive in places where other organisms struggle, and they have melanin to help them do it," McCallum said. "So, we ask, what are the properties that we can harness by recreating such materials in the lab?"

Reference: "Allomelanin: A Biopolymer of Intrinsic Microporosity" 5 March 2021, Journal of American Chemical Society.

The study was supported by a MURI through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR FA9550-18-1-0142) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (HDTRA1-19-19-1-0010).

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New Form of Synthetic Melanin: "Fungal Ghosts" Protect Skin, Fabric From Toxins, Radiation

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Inspired by fungus, new form of synthetic melanin acts as natural detoxifier. The idea of creating selectively porous materials has captured the attention of chemists for decades. Now, new research from Northwestern University shows that fungi may have been doing exactly this for millions of year

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One of the most profound rules in all the Universe is that nothing lasts forever. With gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear forces all acting on matter, practically everything we observe to exist today will face changes in the future. Even the stars, the most enormous collections that transform nuclear fuel in the cosmos, will someday all burn out, including our Sun.

But this does not mean that stellar death - when stars run out of nuclear fuel - is actually the end for a star like our Sun. Quite to the contrary, there are a number of fascinating things in store for all stars once they've died that first, most obvious death. Although it's true that our Sun's fuel is finite and we fully expect it to undergo a "typical" stellar death, this death is not the end. Not for our Sun, and not for any Sun-like stars. Here's what comes next.

In order to be considered a true star, and not a failed star (like a brown dwarf) or some corpse (like a white dwarf or neutron star), you have to be capable of fusing hydrogen into helium. When a cloud of gas collapses to potentially form a new star, it has a lot of gravitational potential energy in its diffuse state, which gets converted into kinetic (thermal) energy when it collapses. This collapse heats up the matter, and if it gets hot and dense enough, nuclear fusion will begin.

After many generations of studying stars, including where they do and don't form, we now know they have to reach an internal temperature of about 4 million K to begin fusing hydrogen into helium, and that requires at least ~8% the mass of our Sun, or about 70 times the mass of Jupiter. Being at least that massive is the minimum requirement for becoming a star at all.

Once that mass/temperature threshold is crossed, the star begins fusing hydrogen into helium, and will encounter one of three different fates. These fates are determines solely by the star's mass, which in turn determines the maximum temperature that will be reached in the core. All stars begin fusing hydrogen into helium, but what comes next is temperature-dependent. In particular:

If your star is too low in mass, it will fuse hydrogen into helium only, and will never get hot enough to fuse helium into carbon. A purely helium composition is the fate of all M-class (red dwarf) stars, below about 40% the Sun's mass. This describes the majority of stars in the Universe (by number).

If your star is like the Sun, it will contract down to higher temperatures when the core runs out of hydrogen, beginning helium fusion (into carbon) when the star swells into a red giant. It will end composed of carbon and oxygen, with the lighter (outer) hydrogen and helium layers blown off. This occurs for all stars between about 40% and 800% the Sun's mass.

If your star is more than 8 times the mass of the Sun, it will not only fuse hydrogen into helium and helium into carbon, but will initiate carbon fusion later on, leading to oxygen fusion, silicon fusion, and eventually, a spectacular death by supernova.

These are the most conventional fates of stars, and by far the three most common. The stars that are massive enough to go supernova are rare: only about 0.1-0.2% of all stars are this massive, and they will leave behind either neutron star or black hole remnants.

The stars that are lowest in mass are the most common star in the Universe, making up somewhere between 75-80% of all stars, and are also the longest-lived. With lifetimes that range from perhaps 150 billion to over 100 trillion years, not a single one has run out of fuel in our 13.8 billion year old Universe. When they do, they will form white dwarf stars made entirely out of helium.

But Sun-like stars, which comprise about a quarter of all stars, experience a fascinating death cycle when they run out of helium in their core. They transform into a planetary nebula/white dwarf duo in a spectacular, but slow, death process.

During the red giant phase, Mercury and Venus will certainly be engulfed by the Sun, while Earth may or may not, depending on certain processes that have yet to be fully worked out. The icy worlds beyond Neptune will likely melt and sublimate, and are unlikely to survive the death of our star.

Once the Sun's outer layers are returned to the interstellar medium, all that remains will be a few charred corpses of worlds orbiting the white dwarf remnant of our Sun. The core, largely composed of carbon and oxygen, will total about 50% the mass of our present Sun, but will only be approximately the physical size of Earth.

This white dwarf star will remain hot for an extremely long time. Heat is an amount of energy that gets trapped inside any object, but can only be radiated away through its surface. Imagine taking half the energy in a star like our Sun, then compressing that energy down into an even smaller volume. What will happen?

It will heat up. If you take gas in a cylinder and compress it rapidly, it heats up: this is how a piston in your combustion engine works. The red giant stars that give rise to white dwarfs are actually much cooler than the dwarf itself. During the contraction phase, temperatures increase from as low as 3,000 K (for a red giant) to up to about 20,000 K (for a white dwarf). This type of heating is due to adiabatic compression, and explains why these dwarf stars are so hot.

But now, it's got to cool down, and it can only radiate away through its small, tiny, Earth-sized surface. If you were to form a white dwarf right now, at 20,000 K, and give it 13.8 billion years to cool down (the present age of the Universe), it would cool down by a whopping 40 K: to 19,960 K.

We've got a terribly long time to wait if we want our Sun to cool down to the point where it becomes invisible. However, once our Sun has run out of fuel, the Universe will happily provide ample amounts of time. Sure, all the galaxies in the Local Group will merge together; all the galaxies beyond will accelerate away due to dark energy; star formation will slow to a trickle and the lowest-mass red dwarfs will burn through their fuel. Still, our white dwarf will continue to cool.

At last, after somewhere between 100 trillion and 1 quadrillion years (10 ¹⁴ to 10 ¹⁵ years) have passed, the white dwarf that our Sun will become will fade out of the visible part of the spectrum and cool down to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Now known as a black dwarf, this ball of carbon and oxygen in space will simply zip through whatever becomes of our galaxy, along with over a trillion other stars and stellar corpses left over from our Local Group.

But that isn't truly the end for our Sun, either. There are three possible fates that await it, depending on how lucky (or unlucky) we get.

1.) Completely unlucky. About half of all stellar corpses in the galaxy - in most galaxies - originate as singlet star systems, much like our own Sun. While multi-star systems are common, with approximately 50% of all known stars found in binary or trinary (or even richer) systems, our Sun is the only star in our own Solar System.

This is hugely important for the future, because it makes it extraordinarily unlikely that our Sun will merge with a companion, or to swallow a companion or be swallowed by another companion. We'd be defying the odds if we merged with another star or stellar corpse out there. Assuming that we don't get lucky, all our Sun's corpse will see in the future is countless gravitational interactions with the other masses, which ought to culminate in what's left of our Solar System getting ejected from the galaxy after approximately 10 ¹⁷ to 10 ¹⁹ years.

2.) Lucky enough to revitalize. You might think, for good reason, that once the white dwarf that our Sun becomes cools off, there's no chance for it to ever shine again. But there are many ways for our Sun to get a new lease on life, and to emit its own powerful radiation once again. To do so, all it needs is a new source of matter. If, even in the distant future, our Sun:

merges with a red dwarf star or a brown dwarf,

accumulates hydrogen gas from a molecular cloud or gaseous planet,

or runs into another stellar corpse,

it can ignite nuclear fusion once again. The first scenario will result in at least many millions of years of hydrogen burning; the second will lead to a burst of fusion known as a nova; the last will lead to a runaway supernova explosion, destroying both stellar corpses. If we experience an event like this before we get ejected, our cosmic luck will be on display for everyone remaining in our galaxy to witness.

3.) Super lucky, where we'll get devoured by a black hole. In the outskirts of our galaxy, some 25,000 light-years from the supermassive black hole occupying our galactic center, only the small black holes formed from individual stars exist. They have the smallest cross-sectional area of any massive object in the Universe. As far as galactic targets go, these stellar-mass black holes are some of the hardest objects to hit.

But occasionally, they do get hit. Small black holes, when they encounter matter, accelerate and funnel it into an accretion flow, where some fraction of the matter gets devoured and added to the black hole's mass, but most of it gets ejected in the form of jets and other debris. These active, low-mass black holes are known as microquasars when they flare up, and they're very real phenomena.

Although it's exceedingly unlikely to happen to us, someone's got to win the cosmic lottery, and those who do will become black hole food for their final act.

Almost every object in the Universe has a large set of possibilities as far as what's going to happen to it in the far future, and it's incredibly difficult to determine a single object's fate given the chaotic environment of our corner of the cosmos. But by knowing the physics behind the objects we have, and understanding what the probabilities and timescales for each type of object is, we can better estimate what anyone's fate should be.

For our Sun, we're going to become a white dwarf after less than another 10 billion years, will fade to a black dwarf after ~10 ¹⁴-10 ¹⁵ years, and will get ejected from the galaxy after 10 ¹⁷-10 ¹⁹ years. At least, that's the most probable path. But mergers, gas accumulation, collisions, or even getting devoured are all possibilities too, and they'll happen to someone, even if it's probably not us. Our future may not yet be written, but we'd be smart to bet on a bright one for trillions of years to come!

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This Is What Will Happen To Our Sun After It Dies

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One of the most profound rules in all the Universe is that nothing lasts forever. With gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear forces all acting on matter, practically everything we observe to exist today will face changes in the future. Even the stars, the most enormous collections that transform nuclear fuel in the cosmos, will someday all burn out, including our Sun.

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As a result, the thinking began to shift toward the idea that the asteroid belt was full of planetesimals, or pieces of a planet that either hadn't formed or failed to form. But the trouble with this theory is that there just isn't enough material in the belt to create such a mass. Ceres is the single largest asteroid in the belt, roughly the size of Australia with a mass nearly half that of all the material of the belt, according to Raymond.

"It's like tiny little crumbs," Raymond says.

Cosmic leftovers

Just because the asteroid belt doesn't represent the leftovers of a former planet doesn't mean scientists have abandoned the idea entirely. The belt might have come from parts of other planets that still exist, or be part of a planetesimal - which is like a baby planet - that never completely formed before being smashed apart.

"It used to be kind of a simple story, but in recent years it's gotten increasingly more complicated as we learn more about planet formation," Bottke says.

Raymond says that these bits could have been left over from when Jupiter and Saturn were still forming. Later on, these planets may have migrated around the solar system until they eventually reached their present orbits. This would have resulted in a dynamic instability, with chaotic orbits and gravitational forces.

"The solar system of today looks very different from the way it looked 4.5 billion years ago," Bottke says.

Pieces of different puzzles

We now know the asteroid belt doesn't contain material from a single source. Some of its components may have been derived from the general region of space it currently inhabits. Other material may have come from sources beyond the orbit of Jupiter, Bottke says. Still other asteroids may have arrived from the inner-planets zone, as bits that broke off at some point.

The movements of planets during the solar system's early period of instability could have resulted in the gravities of Saturn and Jupiter sucking in some material, while sending other asteroids careening into other planets or right out of our solar system entirely. Some researchers even believe that water-rich asteroids banged into Earth in this period, leading to the creation of the oceans we still have today. Raymond says a fraction of these rocks would have been sent off in the right trajectory and speed to join the asteroid belt.

"In that context, we sometimes call the asteroid belt the blood spatter of the solar system," he says.

Whatever violence may have resulted in sending these bits and pieces to the asteroid belt, the reason they stay put is because Mars and Jupiter's orbits eventually stabilized. So if an asteroid manages to find its way there, it's likely not going anywhere, Bottke says.

According to Raymond, the solar system question that most astronomers are concerned with is how the planets formed. The composition of asteroids, their position and their orbits continue to reveal clues about the distant past of the planets.

"Even though we care more about the planets than the asteroids in general, the asteroids are a really good tool for trying to figure out what happened with the planets," Raymond says. "They're a really key piece of evidence in that story."

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The asteroid belt: Wreckage of a destroyed planet or something else?

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As a result, the thinking began to shift toward the idea that the asteroid belt was full of planetesimals, or pieces of a planet that either hadn't formed or failed to form. But the trouble with this theory is that there just isn't enough material in the belt to create such a mass.