NASA announces crew for Moon mission, Levels of CFCs increasing and other Science events of the Week

Hey there, welcome to my blog Mufawad. In this weekly writeup, wherein I cover the current science, I will try to delve into the new scientific research that happened in the past week or so and explore the latest technologies and breakthroughs/events that were achieved in this domain.

Whether you are a student, a professional, or simply a science enthusiast, this article will provide you an engaging and informative insights and updates. Plus, as a compliment, you will get a peep into pretty quirky AI generated images by me related to those particular topics.

In today's blog, you will read about the following science events of the week:

NASA announced Crew for Moon Mission

DNA analysis confirm medieval Swahili folklore

The levels of banned Chlorofluorocarbon’s ‘strangely’ increasing

Remember Youngs double slit experiment, Now Scientists squeezed Light through Time Slits

European Union bows to German Automobile maker, Backslides on electric vehicles policy

First ever CRISPR therapy seeks approval from FDA

NASA announces crew for Moon mission, Levels of CFCs increasing and other Science events of the Week; Mufawad

 

NASA announced Crew for Moon Mission

NASA has named a crew of astronauts headed to the moon for the first time in more than half a century. They are Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, mission specialist; and Jeremy Hansen.

The first three are NASA astronauts, while as J. Hansen is a member of the Canadian Space Agency. C. Koch will be the first woman to venture beyond low-Earth orbit, and J. Hansen, as a Canadian, the first non-American to travel that far. During an event unveiling the crew, the assembled crowd cheered in response.

P.C: NASA

The Artemis II mission is a major step in NASA's Artemis program to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon to explore the cold regions near the moon's south pole. The four astronauts aboard this mission will not land on the moon, but instead will take a 10-day journey that will swing around the moon and come back to Earth.

Harrison Schmitt, the last surviving astronaut from Apollo 17, said that many people did not realize that we are three generations away from any experience with human beings being in deep space. J. Hansen noted that the United States could have undertaken the Artemis missions by itself, but instead chose to pull together an international collaboration with Canada and the European Space Agency.  Victor Glover, who was the first Black man to serve as a crew member on the International Space Station, said that diversity was an important aim of the agency and its partners.

Artemis II is set to be the second in NASA's Artemis program. Its predecessor Artemis I was launched in November 2022 not only as an uncrewed test of the Space Launch System, but also to test NASA's giant new rocket, and the Orion astronaut capsule.

The Artemis II mission will allow a full check of the Orion's life support systems, and will encourage Artemis III which plans to land two astronauts near the south pole of moon.

The four astronauts, R. Wiseman, V. Glover and C. Koch, are not disappointed that being part of the Artemis II crew rules out the possibility of walking on the moon during Artemis III.

As I saw on CNN, After a long day of interviews with reporters, the four astronauts left the Johnson Space Center, accompanied by a police escort, to watch the NCAA men's basketball championship game between the University of Connecticut and San Diego State University.

 It is pertinent to mention that NASA is aiming for the first moon landing in late 2025, but the NASA inspector general has predicted the mission would at least slip to 2026 or later. The Artemis III mission requires the use of Starship, a giant spacecraft being developed by SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company.

In the 1960s, the space race reflected the geopolitical jousting between the United States and the Soviet Union, but interest in the moon has waned. China is also aiming to send astronauts to the moon in the coming years.

Interestingly, According to GQ, Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, has bought a trip on Starship that would loop around the moon similar to the trajectory that Artemis II will take.

 

DNA analysis confirm medieval Swahili folklore

Around One thousand years ago, East Africa's Swahili coast was a key node in a trade network that linked merchants from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, propelled by the monsoon winds.

This melting pot emerged hints of a new culture, as prosperous 'stone towns' with mosques and homes built from coral blocks flourished along the coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique.

Image generated by Mufawad using AI

Now the analysis of ancient genomes from dozens of individuals buried in these medieval settlements point to the diverse origins of Swahili culture, with people carrying a mix of local African, Middle Eastern and South Asian ancestry.

The researchers sampled DNA from 54 people who were buried in Swahili coastal towns in Kenya and Tanzania, as well in an inland burial in Kenya, between 1250 and 1290. The findings suggest that the Swahili civilization is essentially an Arab civilization, with people from Asia and people from Africa coming together to build a new culture.

Analysis of the DNA of medieval Swahili coast individuals revealed that most of them were descended from people from East Africa, Persia and South Asia, who began mixing around AD 1000.

There was a strong sex bias in the ancestry patterns, with nearly all the East African ancestry coming from women and most of the Asian ancestry being contributed by men from Persia. However, two related people whose DNA was found at a Kenyan site carried maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA markers found in India, suggesting that some South Asian women settled in East Africa.

The genetic findings lend support to oral traditions of Swahili people that trace the origins of the medieval towns to the arrival of Persian merchants.

 

The levels of banned Chlorofluorocarbon’s ‘strangely’ increasing

The Montreal Protocol of 1987, which banned most uses of ozone-destroying chemicals known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and called for their global phase-out by 2010, has been a great success story.

However, atmospheric chemists were surprised to see a troubling signal in recent data: the levels of five CFCs rose rapidly in the atmosphere from 2010 to 2020. It is highly likely that manufacturing plants are accidently releasing three of the chemicals — CFC-113a, CFC-114a and CFC-115, while producing replacements for CFCs. CFCs, once used as refrigerants and aerosols, can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Since the Montreal protocol came into force, Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HFCs) replaced these CFCs.

Image generated by Mufawad using AI

The rise in the levels of these CFCs seems to be a mystery as of now, as CFC-13 and CFC-112a should not theoretically be used or produced currently. But Researchers do have detected high levels of CFC-13 in the atmosphere, and it is difficult to pinpoint where it is coming from.

Earlier, CFC-11 was found to be released in the atmosphere. However, scientists got somewhat lucky with CFC-11, which was located relatively close to the source, and was pinpointed to be coming from eastern China.

If most emissions of the five recently detected CFCs are coming from the production of CFC-replacement chemicals, the world might need to think differently about HFCs, and perhaps even the next-generation of refrigerant chemicals. If the problem continues, amendments might be needed to the Montreal Protocol to address this by-product problem head-on.

 

Remember Youngs double slit experiment, Now Scientists squeezed Light through Time Slits

You might have read in your PU school Physics book about the celebrated experiment in 1801 showed that light passing through two thin slits interferes with itself, forming a characteristic striped pattern on the wall behind, also called Youngs double slit experiment.

Now, physicists have shown that a similar effect can arise with two slits in time rather than in space. Romain Tirole, a quantum physicist at Imperial College London, and his collaborators shot an infrared laser at a surface made of layers of gold and glass with a thin coating of indium tin oxide (ITO).

Image generated by Mufawad using AI

The researchers were able to make the material reflective using a second laser, which excited electrons in the material, affecting its optical properties. When they shot two ultrashort pulses separated by a few tens of femtoseconds, they saw that the waveform of the twice-reflected light changed in response, from a simple, monochromatic wave to a more complex one.

This could open new paths for building devices that handle information using light rather than electronic impulses. The researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to change the properties of ITOs very quickly, which could lead to devices that reflect signals in time.

This is analogous to what happened in the classic Young experiment, where the interference patterns vanished if the light was shone through one slit rather than two. However, achieving such a feat with any kind of wave requires generating an abrupt and pronounced change in a medium's properties across a sufficiently large volume.

Tirole and his team are working with collaborators to reproduce the two-mirror effect with sound waves, such as those propagating on a membrane. They want to apply the concepts of waves on different domains. This can bring about more applications, for example novel antennas for 6G, using time to combine many antennas in one.

Temporal interference and time reversal could also lead to new ways of creating time crystals, which are mind-bending structures that repeat periodically, not in space. They could also help researchers build quantum computers based on photons.

European Union bows to German automobile maker, Backslides on new electric vehicles policy

One-fifth of all anthropogenic emissions, or 7.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, were produced by the transportation systems we use to go around the world in 2021. The exhaust of road vehicles accounted for about three-quarters of all transport emissions.

Road transportation's transition to green energy would be a significant step towards reaching net zero emissions by the middle of the century, a transformation that is necessary if we are to keep global warming at "safe" levels. For this reason, governments have pushed automakers to step up their efforts to stop producing cars using internal combustion engines. It makes no sense. At least in the European Union, it appeared like the two parties were buckled up and prepared to reach that destination by 2035.

Image generated by Mufawad using AI

Now the European Commission has been embroiled in a row with Germany, Italy and some other EU members over implementation of the 2035 deadline on internal combustion engines, resulting in a concession to Germany's powerful automotive industry, which can continue to sell such cars after 2035, provided the engines use carbon-neutral fuels instead of diesel, petrol or compressed and liquefied gases.

This is a climate-damaging move from a region that has so far led the world in policies for decarbonizing transport. The Carbon-neutral fuels are inefficient, expensive and untested at large scale.

The capacity to make green hydrogen is limited, and any expansion should be used to power sectors such as heavy industry. The use of biomass creates incentives to harvest wood and divert agricultural land to grow energy crops, regardless of the consequences for land as a carbon sink or for biodiversity.

The automotive industry wants to keep the internal combustion engine alive, but there is only one proven viable, scalable and technologically ripe scheme for decarbonizing personal road transport: electrification.

The Accelerating to Zero Coalition has been launched to drive the global transition to new electric cars and vans by 2035 in "leading markets", meaning high-income countries, and globally by 2040. The Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFI) has called for a radical policy framework to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles worldwide. This includes the removal of fossil-fuel subsidies and the mobilization of both public and private investment for the development of electric vehicles and their attendant charging infrastructure.

Researchers believe an international agreement must also be reached on standards, so that the introduction of cleaner vehicles in one part of the world doesn't mean old bangers being shipped off to pollute the environment elsewhere. To ensure a truly green transport transition, behavioural change is also needed, and urban environments must be redesigned to encourage active transport. This is the best route to a cleaner, healthier world.

First ever CRISPR therapy seeks approval from FDA

Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics have submitted their CRISPR-based ex vivo cell therapy exagamglogene autotemcel (exa-cel) for FDA approval, for sickle cell disease (SCD) and beta-thalassemia, also called as Beta hemoglobinopathies. A regulatory decision on this gene-editing candidate is expected within 8 to 12 months. The companies have also filed for approval in Europe and the UK.

It was Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier who co-founded CRISPR Therapeutics. Doudna and Charpentier shared a Nobel Prize in 2020 for their ground-breaking work.

Beta-haemoglobinopathies are caused by mutations in the beta-subunit of haemoglobin, the protein that enables red blood cells to carry oxygen. In SCD, the mutation causes sickling and clumping of red blood cells, triggering painful inflammatory Vaso-occlusive crises, and haemolysis.

Although Treatment for beta-thalassemia involves blood transfusions, but existing small-molecule drugs reduce the pain, morbidity and mortality of the disease. Now, Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics have developed exa-cel treatment, which uses a CRISPR–Cas9 nuclease to silence BCL11A, a repressor of the fetal haemoglobin gene, in haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) harvested from patients.

This treatment amounts to a bone marrow transplantation with a patient's own, modified cells. Patients are vulnerable to infections, bleeding and other complications for about 2 months, until the edited HSPCs engraft in the bone marrow, but the effects of treatment are compelling.

The exa-cel, a lentiviral gene therapy developed by Vertex, increased the mean proportion of fetal haemoglobin to 40% and boosted mean haemoglobin levels to over 11 g/dL. This is comparable to those produced by Bluebird's lovo-cel, which adds an anti-sickling haemoglobin variant gene ex vivo into patient HSPCs.

However, the durability of effects remains to be seen, as the proportions of edited BCL11A alleles in bone marrow and in peripheral blood mononuclear cells remained stable more than 1 year after treatment.

Follow-up studies over many years are needed to confirm if this is truly a one-time therapy. Vertex expects that the therapeutic's ability to precisely switch on an existing gene, rather than insert an exogenous gene into the genome at a random location, may make it more appealing to patients and physicians.

Exa-cel would also validate the newer gene-editing technology as a therapeutic contender, but the jury is still out on whether they can address the haemolysis component of the disease. This leaves room for other drugs such as voxelotor, a major driver of Pfizer's US$5.4 billion buyout of GBT last year.

Exa-cel is a leading gene editor, but its safety is of paramount concern for regulators. Of 75 treated patients, 2 experienced severe adverse events (SAEs) including thrombocytopenia and haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis.

The mechanism of the CRISPR–Cas editing could cause safety issues, such as large genomic rearrangements and translocations in vitro, as well as complete loss of the target chromosome through a process called chromothripsis.

Genome editing technologies such as base editing and prime editing, which are at earlier stages of development, do not make double-stranded DNA breaks and might side-step this issue. Additionally, the editor's guide RNA can direct the Cas nuclease to cut similar, non-target, sites, resulting in off-target editing.

Researchers have made good inroads in predicting and mitigating these liabilities, however, through deep sequencing to screen for genomic sites that might match the guide RNA, and by selecting Cas nucleases with more stringent editing windows. Research also needs to be undertaken about the consequences of raising fetal haemoglobin levels in women who later get pregnant, as this could disrupt the balance of oxygen flow to the fetus across the placenta.

If a gene-editing therapy is approved, pricing and access considerations will come into play. Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics have yet to comment on pricing plans for exa-cel, but expectations are for it to be high.

Vertex estimates that 32,000 patients have severe SCD or transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia in the US and Europe. Analysts at Evaluate Pharma predict the therapy could achieve $1.6 billion in sales by 2028.

Oral fetal haemoglobin inducers that can work synergistically with hydroxyurea would be game-changers, but the pipeline is constricted due to safety signals in animal studies. The CRISPR–Cas nuclease pipeline is also beginning to advance into new therapeutic territories, targeting genetic drivers of disease in other organs and cell types. CRISPR Therapeutics and Capsida are partnering with AAV-specialist biotech Capsida to develop CNS-targeted CRISPR–Cas drugs.