Hey there, welcome to my blog Mufawad. In this monthly writeup, I will try to unveil the latest breakthroughs & uncover tomorrow's possibilities in the field of science. Whether you are a student, a professional, or simply a science enthusiast, this article will provide you an engaging and informative insights and current updates. Plus, as a compliment, you will get a peep into quirky AI images generated by me related to those particular topics.
Let’s delve into the new scientific research that happened in the past month or so and explore the latest technologies that are being created and breakthroughs that were achieved in this field.
In current blog, you will read about the following science events of the month:
- Unique plan to make roads on Moon by concentrating sunlight on its sand
- The Moon is 40 million years older than thought
- It may be safe to get Pregnant in the Space, say Scientists after tests on Mice
- Human made Satellite outshines every object in the night sky
- Know about the next big thing in Medicine: The RNA Rings
- The creators of Dolly now create Flu resistant Chickens
- Dengue cases drop after Modified Mosquitoes released in Columbia
- New Low-Cost Malarial Vaccine to be released soon
- Monkey survives for 25 months on gene edited Pig kidney
- AI to help predict Earthquakes
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| Current Science Report: October 2023, Mufawad |
Unique plan to make roads on Moon by concentrating sunlight on its sand
Scientists have discovered that lunar dust could be fused into paved roads and landing pads on the moon using concentrated sunlight from large lenses. Moon dust is primarily made of lunar volcanic rock, which has been blasted to a powder over millions of years due to cosmic impacts and radiation.
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The dust is electrically charged, making it especially sticky and causing damage to lunar landers, spacesuits, and human lungs if inhaled. To prevent moon dust from damaging rovers, researchers experimented with a fine-grained material called EAC-1A, developed by the European Space Agency as a substitute for lunar soil.
They used laser beams of different strengths and sizes to simulate concentrated sunlight, producing triangular, hollow-centred tiles about 9.8 inches wide and up to 1 inch thick. These tiles could interlock to create solid surfaces across large areas of lunar soil for use in roads and landing pads.
Previous research suggested that intense sunlight or laser beams could fuse lunar soil into dense, rigid structures. However, prior experiments never produced blocks this big or used light beams this large or powerful.
To focus sunlight to generate a beam on the moon as strong as the most powerful ones used in these experiments, a lens about 5.7 feet (1.74 meters) in diameter was used. Future experiments should analyze how well such tiles survive rocket thrust to see if they could find use in landing pads.
Researchers can also test such techniques in simulated lunar conditions, such as the absence of air and reduced gravity found on the surface of Moon. This will help to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology before it can be applied on the moon.
Source: Space.com
The Moon is 40 million years older than thought
A new study published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters has found that the moon's surface formed at least 40 million years earlier than previously thought. The study, which analyzed an ancient crystal embedded in rock collected by Apollo 17 astronauts, pushes back the timeline ‘for when the molten moon solidified, by 40 million years.
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Jennika Greer, a cosmochemist at the University of Glasgow, said that this is the oldest age to date and that it does not mean we now know the age of the moon and we should stop looking. The moon's origin story has been debated for years, with most scientists agreeing on the basic gist of the moon's origin story: about 4.5 billion years ago, a giant, Mars-size object called Theia slammed into the nascent Earth, ejecting hot debris that coalesced into our moon.
The moon's initial formation was believed to be covered in magma, which cooled and solidified, creating lunar zircon crystals. These crystals absorb radioactive uranium, which decays into lead over time. Scientists can estimate the moon's age by comparing the ratios of lead and uranium isotopes in the sample.
A team of cosmochemists led by Bidong Zhang and Audrey Bouvier published a paper in 2021 showing that zircon crystals embedded in an Apollo 17 moon rock might be the oldest yet discovered at 4.46 billion years old.
The new study also suggests that this process happened within the first 110 million years of the solar system’s history, which is obviously very early compared to many other planetary bodies.
Source: Washington Post, Live Science
It may be safe to get Pregnant in the Space, say Scientists after tests on Mice
Mouse embryos have been cultured on the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time to explore the possibility of humans becoming pregnant in space. The study, led by Teruhiko Wakayama at the University of Yamanashi in Japan, aims to ensure that humans can safely have children if a future trip to Mars takes more than 6 months.
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The embryos were extracted from pregnant mice at an early two-cell stage and frozen, then sent to the ISS on a SpaceX rocket. They were stored inside special devices designed for easy thawing and culture for 4 days.
The embryos were chemically preserved and sent back to Earth on a return vessel. The team studied the returned embryos to see if their development had been affected by their exposure to higher radiation and low gravity, known as microgravity. The embryos did not show signs of DNA damage from the radiation exposure, possibly because they were only in space for a short time.
They also displayed normal structural development, including differentiation into two groups of cells that form the basis of the foetus and placenta. It is unclear whether later stages of embryo development would be disrupted by being in space.
A previous study sent pregnant rats on NASA spaceflights for 9 to 11 days during the second halves of their pregnancies found they gave birth to typical-weight pups when they came back to Earth, hinting at normal development.
The team plans to test whether mouse embryos sent to the ISS and then returned to Earth can implant in female mice and develop into healthy offspring. They also want to test whether mouse sperm and eggs sent to the ISS can be used to create embryos via IVF in space.
Source: MSN
Human made Satellite outshines every object in the night sky
A study published in Nature on the launch and deployment of BlueWalker 3, a satellite in low-Earth orbit that has become one of the brightest objects in the sky has raised few eyebrows. The satellite is part of dozens of similar satellites being developed by AST SpaceMobile, a company that aims to keep smartphones connected from orbit.
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Astronomers were already concerned about the emergence of satellite megaconstellations, such as SpaceX's Starlink, which have shiny surfaces that interfere with views of space from the ground. The launch and deployment of BlueWalker 3 have compounded those concerns.
AST SpaceMobile is one of many companies racing to capture the surging demand for global broadband connectivity. SpaceX has launched about 5,000 satellites into space as part of its Starlink network, which already provides satellite internet service to customers around the world. Other companies, such as Amazon and OneWeb, have similar ambitions, and many countries are developing their own communications megaconstellations.
The rapid proliferation of satellites in recent years has alarmed stargazers from all walks of life. As spacecraft move across the sky, they create bright trails and an ambient glow in the sky that can destroy astronomical images and obscure fainter celestial objects that would otherwise be visible to the naked eye.
AST SpaceMobile made BlueWalker 3's array so large in order to beam strong cellular coverage directly to phones on Earth. The satellite is made of many small antennas that can connect existing smartphones, which distinguishes the company from Starlink and other planned constellations that currently rely on ground antennas or dishes.
To find the specific impact of BlueWalker 3, the authors of the new study compiled observations of the satellite recorded by amateur and professional astronomers in Chile, the United States, Mexico, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Morocco. This global campaign revealed that BlueWalker 3 reached a magnitude that made it as bright as Procyon and Achernar, two of the 10 most luminous stars in the sky.
AST SpaceMobile is working with astronomers on techniques to reduce disruptions and contrasts the number in its constellation with the tens of thousands planned by other companies. The spokesperson said it has plans to "provide substantial global coverage with around 90 satellites."
Source: New York Times
Know about the next big thing in Medicine: The RNA Rings
RNA-based vaccines were the heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic, setting records for the highest-grossing drug launches in history. However, their development was recognized in this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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RNA's has short life span although its fleeting nature isn't a big problem for a vaccine: it needs to encode proteins only for a short time to trigger an immune response. But for other therapeutic applications, it would be much better to have RNA that could stick around for longer. That's where circular RNAs, or circRNAs, come in.
By tying the ends of an RNA transcript together, using certain enzymes, RNA gains stability and longevity that, in theory, could increase its therapeutic potential, even at low dose levels.
With a single delivery, you can get quite durable protein production,” says Howard Chang, a molecular geneticist at Stanford University School of Medicine in California and a scientific co-founder of Orbital Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This particular biotech firm have collectively raised well in excess of US$1 billion in venture-capital funding over the past three years. Many other big pharma companies are now dabbling in the technology as well. They are driven by the belief that whatever linear RNA can do, its more resilient circular counterpart can do better.
Proponents anticipate that circRNA will emerge as the preferred RNA platform for the drug industry, and could lead to products from next-generation vaccines and rare-disease treatments to anti-cancer agents and beyond.
The first human trials of such medicines kicked off in August. However, circular RNAs are still a long way from unlocking a revolution or delivering on any solid.
Researchers discovered the first circular RNAs in living beings in 1976, when a team in Germany described small, virus-like RNA pathogens in plants. They were later identified in human and other mammalian cells 15 years later. It took until the 2010s for researchers to appreciate the extent of ring-shaped RNAs in various cell types and discover their multifaceted roles in directing biological activity.
Circular RNAs can bind to regulatory molecules to mediate gene expression, but some circRNAs can also encode proteins, which scientists soon realized could have therapeutic potential if only they had a way to make RNA circles from scratch.
In cells, the circles arise through an unconventional mode of messenger RNA processing known as back-splicing. Back-splicing requires an intricate dance between various proteins, all of which are naturally present inside cells but not readily available at the laboratory bench.
In the early 1990s, researchers came up with two possible workarounds for creating synthetic circular RNAs: one uses DNA bridges to hold the ends of an RNA strand together while another enzyme seals it, a process known as ligation, and the other harnesses the enzymatic properties of specialized RNA sequences themselves.
When two such sequences pair in a hairpin formation, they can initiate cross-joining reactions, forming a ring. In 1995, a group at the University of Colorado worked out how to synthesize proteins from such lab-made circles using a specialized sequence called an IRES. Short for internal ribosome entry site, the IRES allows the ribosome, the cell's protein-making machine, to bind to a circular RNA transcript and start continuously churning out proteins.
However, the researchers could create only short circular sequences, generally, only a few hundred nucleotides at most.
Experiments in mice showed that these circRNAs could elicit protein production for days, whereas linear mRNA yielded protein for only about 24 hours. Other companies have taken different approaches to building circRNAs, such as packing instructions for generating circRNA into viral vectors or DNA cassettes, using genetically engineered bacteria.
Circular argument of circRNAs do not provoke undesired immune responses, which could undermine their therapeutic efficacy.
During development of Covid vaccine at Peking University, China, in mouse and monkey experiments, the circRNA vaccine prompted production of more virus-destroying antibodies than did a linear vaccine made of the same type of modified mRNA in approved COVID-19 vaccines, and led to more potent T-cell responses.
As an added bonus, the circRNA jab was more stable than mRNA at ambient temperatures, potentially allowing the vaccine to be stored and transported without cold-chain requirements. A company that Wei founded, Beijing-based start-up Therorna, is now testing this vaccine in people.
This particular vaccine is being tested in China. The trial is thought to be the first to test a synthetic circRNA medicine in humans. Next year could see a handful of others enter the clinic, including a cancer therapeutic from Suzhou CureMed that encodes an immune-stimulating molecule called interleukin-12.
Another Biotech firm, Orna therapeutics is also gearing up to begin trials in 2024, of a circRNA that reprograms immune cells to attack blood cancer. At a conference in May, Orna scientists showed that this circRNA candidate, even when administered at low doses, could eradicate tumours in a mouse model of leukaemia, without any of the complex cell engineering or intense preparatory drug regimens required for most comparable immune therapies available today.
Source: The Nature
The creators of Dolly now create Flu resistant Chickens
A group of British researchers at the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute have used gene editing to breed chickens that resist infection by the avian flu. It is the same institute that created first cloned animal named Dolly.
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Influenza A, a deadly virus for birds that causes economic losses worldwide and can infect humans, has proved difficult for vaccines due to rapidly changing proteins on its surface recognized by the immune system. The researchers, led by Mike McGrew, used the CRISPR editing technique to modify the gene named ANP32A that produces the protein in the chickens' germ cells, which would enable the birds to pass down the change to their offspring.
In this way, animals were created that hardly became infected with influenza when exposed to other infected birds, and they did not subsequently infect other chickens. In a later test, when inoculated with a dose a thousand times higher, five out of ten became infected.
However, the virus adapted to the change and switched to using two other proteins from the same family (ANP32B and ANP32E) to continue replicating, albeit less efficiently.
This prompted the authors to try editing two more genes, thus stopping the progression of the virus in eggs. The researchers, however, were not able to breed chickens post these triple edits, as they believe it might have had harmful side effects on the animals' fertility, their ability to gain weight, and their protection against other diseases, making its practical application impossible.
Lluis Montoliu, a geneticist at the Spanish National Research Council’s National Biotechnology Center, believes that the result heralds a future in which animals resistant to influenza infections can be generated, which will require not one but several genetic modifications.
Generating more than one modification in the same animal would have been a challenge a few years ago, but now it is much easier with CRISPR gene-editing tools. However, many scientists warn that we must not allow the Influenzas virus to adopt to the changes and affect other living beings including humans.
Source: El Pais
Dengue cases drop after Modified Mosquitoes released in Columbia
Three cities in Colombia have seen a dramatic fall in dengue incidence in the years following the introduction of mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia, a bacterium that prevents the insect from transmitting viruses.
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The Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with this bacterium were released by the World Mosquito Program (WMP), a non-profit organization that has been conducting similar experiments in Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam, among other countries.
In Colombia, the modified mosquitoes were released in one of the country's most populous regions, making it the largest continuous releases of Wolbachia mosquitoes globally so far. When infected with Wolbachia, the mosquitoes are much less likely to transmit diseases such as dengue and Zika, because the bacteria compete with these viruses.
The insects also pass the bacteria on to their offspring. Researchers hope that the modified mosquitoes will interbreed with the wild population wherever they are released, and that the number of mosquitoes with Wolbachia will eventually surpass that of mosquitoes without it.
The WMP first deployed modified mosquitoes in the Aburrá Valley in Colombia in 2015 and gradually expanded the releases until late 2020. Eventually, the cities of Bello, MedellÃn, and ItagüÃ, with a combined area of 135 square kilometers and home to 3.3 million people, were completely covered.
When the incidence of dengue in fully treated areas was compared with that in the same regions in the ten years before the intervention, it had dropped by 95% in Bello and MedellÃn and by 97% in ItagüÃ.
Since the project started, there hasn't been a large outbreak of dengue in the region. Measuring the effects of such an intervention on the incidence of dengue can be tricky due to the oscillation of the incidence over the years. The WMP plans to scale up the project by building a factory in Brazil to produce modified mosquitoes to be released in many of the country's urban areas over the next ten years.
Source: The Nature
New Low-Cost Malarial Vaccine to be released soon
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended a second malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, with a 75% efficacy rate. The vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, aims to protect vulnerable children at risk of the disease.
The vaccine will be available for administration by mid-2024 and will be reasonably priced, ranging from $2 to $4. The WHO will evaluate the vaccine for prequalification, ensuring its approval, which will enable global organizations like GAVI and UNICEF to procure it from manufacturers.
The Serum Institute of India highlighted extensive research and trials supporting the decision, stating that the recommendation was based on pre-clinical and clinical trial data showing good safety and high efficacy in four countries with both seasonal and perennial malaria transmission.
Dr. Lisa Stockdale, Senior Immunologist at the Jenner Institute of the University of Oxford, emphasized the need for further work to establish the vaccine's effectiveness and apply it to future vaccines. As R21/Matrix-M enters the stage, it will face competition from the RTS, S shot by GSK Plc, recommended by the United Nations agency in 2021 and currently sold under the brand Mosquirix.
Source: India Today
Monkey survives for 25 months on gene edited Pig kidney
A kidney transplanted from a genetically engineered miniature pig kept a monkey alive for more than two years, one of the longest survival times for an interspecies organ transplant.
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This brings clinicians one step closer to their goal of relieving the shortage of life-saving human organs by using animal organs, a practice known as xenotransplantation. The work describes a raft of genome edits that prevent the recipient’s immune system from attacking the new organs and that also neutralize viruses lurking in the donor’s organs — crucial steps for harnessing organs for human use.
Researchers say that this tests will provide more data to regulators such as the US Food and Drug Administration, which is considering whether to approve the first human trials of non-human organ transplants. Scientists say that it will be important to dig into why there was considerable variation in the success of the newly described xenotransplants and how feasible it will be to mass-produce pigs with such extensive editing.
In the past few years, researchers have transplanted pig hearts into two living people and demonstrated that pig hearts and kidneys can function in people who have been declared legally dead. Such research is crucial, given the dearth of suitable organ donors.
In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are awaiting an organ transplant, and about 17 of them die each day. Xenotransplantation research has mainly focused on pigs (Sus domesticus), in part because their organs are of a comparable size and anatomy to that of humans. However, the immune systems of humans and other primates react to three molecules on the surfaces of pig cells, causing them to reject unaltered pig organs. Researchers started using the genome-editing technology CRISPR–Cas9 to disable the genes that encode enzymes that produce those molecules.
Qin and her colleagues edited 69 genes, which is the most extensive editing done in live pigs for xenotransplantation. Around 15 monkeys received these gene edited kidneys and 5 of those monkeys lived for more than one year, and one of the five lived for more than two. An analysis of kidney biomarkers also show that the transplanted organs performed just as well as two native kidneys.
AI to help predict Earthquakes
Scientists have found that artificial intelligence can significantly improve earthquake prediction. In a seven-month trial in China, an AI-driven tool was 70% accurate in predicting earthquakes a week before they occurred.
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The tool successfully predicted 14 earthquakes within 200 miles of where it estimated they would occur and at almost exactly the calculated strength.
However, the AI tool missed one earthquake and gave eight false warnings. The tool was also trained to detect statistical bumps in real-time seismic data paired with previous earthquakes.
The study was published in the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Source: Live Mint
