Newsworthy Science

Assuming it took a century or over, wouldn't (inevitably) any of the city lizards that didn't have speed/longer pads/such traits die out? (particularly if hunted)
But to not be there in forest lizards, they'd also need to be generally damaging there.
 
Boston Dynamics' ATLAS robot is already more agile than the Terminator was.

Spoiler :
6d0b5f13b89cea4b19c59462c49f5bc8
 
Boston Dynamics' ATLAS robot is already more agile than the Terminator was.

Spoiler :
6d0b5f13b89cea4b19c59462c49f5bc8
That is an awesome clip! I'll have to think about your new avatar though.
 
The guy eating a week old Twinkie!
 
A carnivorous mushroom paralyzes and kills nematodes via a volatile ketone
P. ostreatus uses a nerve gas in a lollipop strategy to prey on nematodes

The carnivorous mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus uses an unknown toxin to rapidly paralyze and kill nematode prey upon contact. We report that small lollipop-shaped structures (toxocysts) on fungal hyphae are nematicidal and that a volatile ketone, 3-octanone, is detected in these fragile toxocysts. Treatment of Caenorhabditis elegans with 3-octanone recapitulates the rapid paralysis, calcium influx, and neuronal cell death arising from fungal contact. Moreover, 3-octanone disrupts cell membrane integrity, resulting in extracellular calcium influx into cytosol and mitochondria, propagating cell death throughout the entire organism. Last, we demonstrate that structurally related compounds are also biotoxic to C. elegans, with the length of the ketone carbon chain being crucial. Our work reveals that the oyster mushroom has evolved a specialized structure containing a volatile ketone to disrupt the cell membrane integrity of its prey, leading to rapid cell and organismal death in nematodes.

sciadv.ade4809-f8.jpg

Spoiler Legend :
Compounds structurally related to 3-octanone paralyze C. elegans.
(A) Paralysis ratio of adult N2 upon treatment with 3-octanone or other structurally-related ketones. Each dot represents 20 to 25 animals (means ± SEM; n = 6). (B) Fluorescence imaging of ciliated sensory neurons using cytosolic GFP reporter lines exposed to 80% 3-octanone or structurally related compounds for 5 min. Scale bars, 10 μm. (C) Summary model showing how P. ostreatus uses a nerve gas in a lollipop strategy to prey on nematodes. Inset: 3-Octaonone from the toxocysts disrupts plasma membrane integrity, resulting in extracellular calcium influx to the cytosol and mitochondria, which causes mitochondrial swelling.
 
Last edited:
@EvaDK et al

Redhead girl with long hair blowing in front of her and in front of her face
[/URL]
With tens of millions of redheads sprinkled throughout the global population, this exotic trait isn't disappearing.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KIKE CALVO, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Redheads aren’t going extinct. Here’s why.​

Be it ginger, auburn, or strawberry blond, red hair is here to stay, say geneticists.

BYSHARON GUYNUP
PUBLISHED JANUARY 20, 2023

On the screen and on the street, strawberry blonds and those with auburn tresses attract attention, and always have. That is, in part, because red hair is an exotic trait, occurring in just one or two out of every 100 people. While the gene variants that endow flaming locks are rare, redheads are not destined to vanish from the population, despite recurring claims to that effect. “Redheads are not going extinct,” says Katerina Zorina-Lichtenwalter, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at University of Colorado, Boulder.

To understand why this is so, it’s necessary first to understand why there are redheads in the first place. As it turns out, it’s not only tabloids that are interested in flame-haired people. Scientists are too. There’s more research on the variations in human hair color than you might expect, and the science makes it clear that crimson locks are not becoming increasingly rare, nor will they disappear any time soon. It’s a trait that dates to prehistory. Analysis of 50,000-year-old DNA revealed that some Neanderthals were pale-complected redheads. A famous 3,800-year-old Bronze Age mummy, known as the Beauty of Loulan, was unearthed from a desert cemetery in northwestern China with intact sepia-colored hair. From the fifth century on in what is now southeast Europe and Turkey, the mythological King Rhesus of the ancient Thracians was depicted on Greek pottery with carrot-colored hair and beard.
The gene variants involved are recessive, meaning two copies—one from the mother and one from the father—are required to produce a red-haired child. Only if both parents are redheads can they be almost certain their baby will have fiery hair, Zorina-Lichtenwalter says. In her book Red: A History of the Redhead, author Jacky Colliss Harvey characterizes the odds of having a crimson-haired baby this way: “In the great genetic card game, red hair is the two of clubs. It is trumped by every other card in the pack.”

The genetics of red​

Ginger coloring in people—as well as horses, dogs, pigs, and other mammals—is conferred by just a handful of genetic mutations that both parents must carry. The “redhead gene” was discovered in 1995 by a team including Ian Jackson, now a professor emeritus at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh. This melanocortin 1 receptor gene, or MC1R, plays a key role in producing melanin, the tan pigment that protects skin from ultraviolet radiation (sunlight) and also colors eyes and skin. One type, eumelanin, endows brown or black hair. Pheomelanin creates red or blonde locks and confers light skin and freckles. In people who have red hair, the skin cells (melanocytes) that produce pigment have a variant receptor on the cell surface. When exposed to UV light, this variant fails to trigger a switch that changes melanin pigment from yellow/red to the protective brown/black. “MC1R is one of several genes that work together to produce dark melanin, and without that switch, you’re going to have light skin,” says Zorina-Lichtenwalter—and easily burn when out in the sun. In their 1995 research, Jackson and his colleagues compared 30 Irish and British redheads with the same number of brunettes. More than 80 percent of rosy-haired and/or fair-skinned people carried variations in the MC1R gene; but just 20 percent of the brown-haired individuals did. When they published the study, geneticist Richard Spritz told the media “this is the first time in humans that a specific gene for any common visible characteristic has been identified.”

Genetic advantage—and peril​

Pale coloration bestowed a key advantage to cultures migrating from sunnier regions into northern Europe with its gray skies and short winter days. “There was evolutionary pressure to lose skin pigmentation,” Zorina-Lichtenwalter explains, because lighter skin absorbs more UV, which produces more vitamin D from the limited amount of sunlight in northern regions. Vitamin D helps the body absorb and retain calcium, build stronger bones, and protect against inflammation.

These health benefits increased the likelihood that women would survive pregnancy and birth, successfully passing on genes for light skin and red or blonde hair to their offspring. The trait flourished in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where there are, by far, more fair-skinned redheads than anywhere else on Earth. Some unofficial estimates peg the number at around 10 percent. Much of the research into redhead genetics stems from their elevated skin cancer risk. The MC1R gene mutations linked to crimson hair, light skin, and freckles also allows more UV to reach DNA and damage it. One study found that people carrying a so-called R variant of the MC1R gene had a 42 percent higher incidence of melanoma, one of the most aggressive forms of cancer. Melanoma is 20 times more prevalent in Caucasians than in African Americans. However, the average age for melanoma diagnosis is 65. Therefore, Zorina-Lichtenwalter says, “it doesn’t threaten reproductive fitness.” At that age, women have already passed their genes to the next generation. This is why, she says, redheads are unlikely to disappear from the gene pool.

More ginger genes​

When he was working on that 1995 genetic analysis, Jackson knew there was more to understand about the factors conferring red hair. “It seemed logical that there were other genes involved,” he says, but deeper exploration was not yet possible: Genetic research was extremely slow and costly. While rapid advances in genetic technologies and computing had launched the Human Genome Project, the first draft of the genetic map would not be complete until 2001. Now, a quarter-century later, quick, inexpensive genetic research is the norm. Jackson and his colleagues recently revisited their inquiry with resources unthinkable in 1995. They analyzed DNA from the UK Biobank, which contains genetic and health information on a half million residents of the United Kingdom. They discovered eight previously unknown genetic variants that affect red hair and skin pigmentation. “To go through and find those genes using the Biobank was very, very satisfying,” Jackson says. This research, published in 2022, identified most of the genetic variation contributing to differences in hair color.

Most redheads have two MC1R variants, according to Jackson, one from each parent. But several other genes also affect whether your hair will be red. “It's a particular combination that gives rise to red hair,” he says. Researchers assigned each of the implicated genes a “genetic risk score”: with some variants exerting higher probability of red locks. Others had much less clout but were still associated. You don’t need all of them to have red hair, Jackson says. “MC1R is king when it comes to red headedness,” Zorina-Lichtenwalter says. “It has a tremendous amount of say in whether we'll have dark pigmentation or light pigmentation.” More than four-fifths of redheads carry MC1R; whereas the remaining reds are caused by other genes.

Geography and ancestry​

A recent U.K. genetic study correlated the incidence of burnished tresses with place of birth, with more redheads in the country’s north and west. “In the Biobank, you've got the latitude and longitude of birthplace of every individual.” Jackson says. “The further north you were born, the higher the likelihood of having red hair.” Red-haired, light-skinned genetics thrived in remote regions, closed communities, and islands––such as Scotland (estimates of redheads there range from Jackson’s 6 percent up to 12 or 14 percent); Ireland (10 percent); and Britain (6 percent). While the populations of these countries are no longer cut off from the rest of the world, “when you have an insular population, isolated from others reproductively, then whatever alleles, they rise in frequency from generation to generation,” Zorina-Lichtenwalter says. However, redheads are not only Celts or Caucasians. Their distribution is a testament to the global movement of DNA across societies and landscapes. Although most common in Northern Europe, parts of Russia, and among European descendants in Australia, there are redheads from all ethnicities and races. For example, both Morocco and Jamaica have higher-than-average numbers.

The reason, Zorina-Lichtenwalter says, is that several genes are responsible for triggering dark eumelanin production to protect skin. But for hair color, she says “MC1R does appear to dominate, which is why variants in MC1R can still produce red hair in Jamaicans and other dark-skinned people.”

We are not amidst a redhead extinction event​

Claims that redheads are a dying breed are not new, and some of them were clearly linked to financial gain, Jackson says. One headline that started an uproar blared, “Redheads May Soon Join Polar Bears As Casualties Of Climate Change,” which is a serious stretch. Climate change is creating more extreme temperature, drought, and flood; but the possibility that it will impact UV radiation enough to alter Northern Hemisphere genetics––within the predicted few hundred years––is slim, says Zorina-Lichtenwalter. The source of this claim was Alistair Moffat, CEO of the now-defunct genetic testing company ScotlandsDNA. Prior to that, the Oxford Hair Foundation (also dissolved) predicted that redheads would be extinct by 2100, with the gene variant that confers flaming hair slowly disappearing. “[The institute] was a front, funded by a hair dye and cosmetics company to generate interest in hair color,” Jackson says. While recessive genes can become rare, they don't utterly disappear unless every person who carries that gene either perishes—or does not bear children. And clearly that’s not going to happen.

Wherever they live, redheads garner outsized attention, sometimes stigmatized, sometimes admired. As testament to their continued presence in the world, they celebrate themselves in yearly “red pride” events in the U.K., France, and Italy, as well as the U.S. The largest may be an event in August, when thousands of gingers from across the world convene in the Netherlands for “Redhead Days.”
 

Fossils paint the picture of gorilla-sized penguins that once roamed New Zealand​

'It makes an emperor penguin look kind of like a little tiny robin,' said lead study author Daniel Ksepka

Fifty million years ago, New Zealand was home to penguins that stood as tall as humans and weighed as much as adult gorillas.

Scientists have discovered fossils of the largest penguin known to date, thought to have weighed between 148 and 160 kilograms (300 and 340 pounds).

"It totally blew me away the first time I saw it," lead study author Daniel Ksepka told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. "This thing was gigantic. It makes an emperor penguin look kind of like a little tiny robin."

In a new study published in the Journal of Paleontology, scientists identified two new species of penguins based on fossils embedded in rocky formations on the Otago beaches of New Zealand's South Island: Kumimanu fordycei and Petradyptes stonehousei.

Both species are thought to have existed around 55 to 59 million years ago during the Paleocene era.

Researchers compared the fossils to the bones of 20 modern penguin species to learn more about the ancient water birds. "We probably would recognize it as a penguin, but it would have been quite distinct from the little fellows we see in zoos and aquariums today," said Ksepka, who is a curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn.

Only a couple of bones belonging to the giant K. fordycei — named after New Zealand paleontologist Ewan Fordyce — were discovered. But they were enough to give researchers a clue about its appearance.

"We measured hundreds of penguin bones from modern species to try to estimate the body mass [of the ancient penguins]. And we arrived at a total of about 340 pounds, which is just kind of mind-blowing. I mean, imagine a penguin the size of a gorilla," Ksepka said.

Emperor penguins, the largest species alive today, weigh about 40 kilograms (90 pounds) which makes K. fordycei nearly four times heavier.

The smaller of the two newly discovered species P. stonehousei — named after biologist Bernard Stonehouse — also outweighs the modern emperor penguin, weighing in at 50 kilograms.

Mystery of the vanishing penguin giants

According to Ksepka, the Paleocene birds' flippers more closely resembled the wings of flying birds, which made them less efficient swimmers than their modern counterparts. But their impressive size would have helped them dive deeper and keep warm in the water for longer periods of time.

But being gorilla-sized also came with disadvantages. "If resources are scarce, a smaller penguin will be able to get a day's meal much easier than a gigantic species," Ksepka said.

He points to resource competition as a likely reason why penguins today are much smaller. Fossil records point to giant penguins starting to vanish around 15 million years ago, the time when pinnipeds like seals and sea lions were spreading widely throughout the southern hemisphere.

"They could be competing for food. They could be bothering the penguins — eating them is one very good way to bother them. But also monopolizing breeding grounds," Ksepka said.

"You imagine one of these giant penguins trying to lay eggs and then, all of a sudden, two elephant seals are fighting over territory and just crushing everything around them."

There's still much to learn about the giant Paleocene penguins. Scientists haven't found the skulls of either of K. fordycei or P. stonehousei, so they can only guess what their heads would have looked like based on previously discovered bones of penguin species in the same era.

But one thing is certain for Ksepka. "These would have been a breathtaking sight when they were alive," he said.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/feb...nguins-that-once-roamed-new-zealand-1.6752437
 
WSJ today. Investors betting on the science.

Wall Street Bets on Psychedelic Medicines
BY MATT WIRZ
Wall Street is betting tens of millions of dollars on psychedelic drugs that backers say could treat mental illness for a fraction of what it costs to do therapy with better-known treatments.

Transcend Therapeutics Inc. raised $40 million from venture-capital investors in January to develop a post-traumatic stress disorder treatment that its 29-year-old Chief Executive Blake Mandell says would require about half the amount of therapy as MDMA, or ecstasy, a popular hallucinogen. Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Lusaris Therapeutics Inc. have announced capital raises of about $100 million combined since November for similar products addressing depression. The companies’ fundraising— and their focus on more cost-effective psychedelic therapy— coincides with a sharp selloff in biotech stocks last year that blunted some of the enthusiasm surrounding the commercial potential of hallucinogens. All three companies say their drugs will kick in faster and wear off faster than MDMA and psilocybin, the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. That could lift one of the biggest roadblocks to delivering psychedelic treatment to a mass market.

The FDA is expected to approve treatments using MDMA and psilocybin in the next few years, but rolling them out could be expensive because they must be administered by trained therapists, pharmaceutical executives say. MDMA and psilocybin can induce psychedelic trips lasting six to eight hours, and treatments typically involve additional therapy before and after. “There’s a role for traditional medicine for people who want to do six- to eight-hour trips, but you have to face the reality of the medical system as it is today,” said Amy Kruse, a neuroscientist and partner at venture-capital investment firm Prime Movers Lab, which led a $39 million funding for Gilgamesh in December.

The U.S. is struggling with a scarcity of mental-health workers. About 158 million Americans live in areas affected by such shortages, up from 95 million a decade ago, according to data from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.
The fundraising coincides with a selloff in biotech stocks last year. Some pharmaceutical companies are pushing to develop psychedelic compounds that don’t cause hallucinations or euphoric experiences at all, allowing for shorter and cheaper treatments. Transcend says its drug induces euphoria but not hallucinations.

Critics of the new ventures say they are trying to create patentable drugs that will be far more costly to purchase than traditional psychedelics without commensurate improvement in outcomes. Psilocybin isn’t patentable because it occurs naturally, while synthetic drugs LSD and MDMA are decades old. Global revenue from psychedelics could reach $8 billion by 2027, L.E.K. Consulting estimated. Transcend is conducting clinical trials for Methylone, a drug that will appeal to many PTSD patients precisely because it is less intoxicating than MDMA, said Ben Kelmendi, the firm’s co-founder and chief scientific adviser. He became interested in the chemical at his other job, running psychedelic research at Yale University. Results of tests conducted on rats were promising enough for Mr. Mandell to attract outside capital this year. Transcend will use the money to start tests on sick humans.

“Methylone, which doesn’t have any hallucinogenic effects, is far milder than MDMA, and is a better fit for the existing medical infrastructure,” said Rick Gerson, chief investment officer of Alpha Wave Global, a venture-capital firm that participated in Transcend’s recent funding.
Others are also jostling to raise cash. Small Pharma , based in London, announced in January a successful Phase 2a trial treating depression with Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a fast-acting drug related to the psychedelic ayahuasca. The company raised $52 million with a Canadian stock offering in 2021 but only has about $17 million left.

The biotech selloff has made fundraising more difficult, but Small Pharma is considering another share sale to fund a larger trial this year. “The U.S. capital markets are larger in order of magnitude compared to Canada and they have a depth of expertise,” said Chief Executive George Tziras. —Daniela Hernandez and Brianna Abbott contributed to this article.
 
WSJ today. Investors betting on the science.

Wall Street Bets on Psychedelic Medicines
BY MATT WIRZ
Wall Street is betting tens of millions of dollars on psychedelic drugs that backers say could treat mental illness for a fraction of what it costs to do therapy with better-known treatments.

Transcend Therapeutics Inc. raised $40 million from venture-capital investors in January to develop a post-traumatic stress disorder treatment that its 29-year-old Chief Executive Blake Mandell says would require about half the amount of therapy as MDMA, or ecstasy, a popular hallucinogen. Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Lusaris Therapeutics Inc. have announced capital raises of about $100 million combined since November for similar products addressing depression. The companies’ fundraising— and their focus on more cost-effective psychedelic therapy— coincides with a sharp selloff in biotech stocks last year that blunted some of the enthusiasm surrounding the commercial potential of hallucinogens. All three companies say their drugs will kick in faster and wear off faster than MDMA and psilocybin, the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. That could lift one of the biggest roadblocks to delivering psychedelic treatment to a mass market.

The FDA is expected to approve treatments using MDMA and psilocybin in the next few years, but rolling them out could be expensive because they must be administered by trained therapists, pharmaceutical executives say. MDMA and psilocybin can induce psychedelic trips lasting six to eight hours, and treatments typically involve additional therapy before and after. “There’s a role for traditional medicine for people who want to do six- to eight-hour trips, but you have to face the reality of the medical system as it is today,” said Amy Kruse, a neuroscientist and partner at venture-capital investment firm Prime Movers Lab, which led a $39 million funding for Gilgamesh in December.

The U.S. is struggling with a scarcity of mental-health workers. About 158 million Americans live in areas affected by such shortages, up from 95 million a decade ago, according to data from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.
The fundraising coincides with a selloff in biotech stocks last year. Some pharmaceutical companies are pushing to develop psychedelic compounds that don’t cause hallucinations or euphoric experiences at all, allowing for shorter and cheaper treatments. Transcend says its drug induces euphoria but not hallucinations.

Critics of the new ventures say they are trying to create patentable drugs that will be far more costly to purchase than traditional psychedelics without commensurate improvement in outcomes. Psilocybin isn’t patentable because it occurs naturally, while synthetic drugs LSD and MDMA are decades old. Global revenue from psychedelics could reach $8 billion by 2027, L.E.K. Consulting estimated. Transcend is conducting clinical trials for Methylone, a drug that will appeal to many PTSD patients precisely because it is less intoxicating than MDMA, said Ben Kelmendi, the firm’s co-founder and chief scientific adviser. He became interested in the chemical at his other job, running psychedelic research at Yale University. Results of tests conducted on rats were promising enough for Mr. Mandell to attract outside capital this year. Transcend will use the money to start tests on sick humans.

“Methylone, which doesn’t have any hallucinogenic effects, is far milder than MDMA, and is a better fit for the existing medical infrastructure,” said Rick Gerson, chief investment officer of Alpha Wave Global, a venture-capital firm that participated in Transcend’s recent funding.
Others are also jostling to raise cash. Small Pharma , based in London, announced in January a successful Phase 2a trial treating depression with Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a fast-acting drug related to the psychedelic ayahuasca. The company raised $52 million with a Canadian stock offering in 2021 but only has about $17 million left.

The biotech selloff has made fundraising more difficult, but Small Pharma is considering another share sale to fund a larger trial this year. “The U.S. capital markets are larger in order of magnitude compared to Canada and they have a depth of expertise,” said Chief Executive George Tziras. —Daniela Hernandez and Brianna Abbott contributed to this article.
Nature had a special on that last year. It is interesting stuff.
 
as MDMA, or ecstasy, a popular hallucinogen
mdma is not a hallucinogen
Critics of the new ventures say they are trying to create patentable drugs that will be far more costly to purchase than traditional psychedelics without commensurate improvement in outcomes.
Lol, investors caring about improvement in outcomes, right...
“Methylone, which doesn’t have any hallucinogenic effects, is far milder than MDMA, and is a better fit for the existing medical infrastructure,” said Rick Gerson, chief investment officer of Alpha Wave Global, a venture-capital firm that participated in Transcend’s recent funding.
Better fit how? Why is milder better? PTSD is not mild.
 
The article I posted was not about the science but about the investors interest in the science. Speculative investors are betting they can make money and not if the science works. If the science works out, so much the better; they will make even more money! :)
 
How your brain controls how sick you get

Scientists are starting to decipher the biological mechanisms behind a phenomenon that many clinicians are aware of: mental states can have a profound impact on how ill we get — and how well we recover. “Most people probably assume that when you feel sick, it’s because the bacteria or viruses are messing up your body,” says neuroscientist Catherine Dulac. But her team showed that activating a brain structure called the hypothalamus triggered fever and appetite loss, even in the absence of a pathogen. Brain-stimulation treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer are already nearing clinical trials, although exactly how the brain controls the body’s immune responses is still a mystery.

Example study (the whole article is long):

Late last year, in a small, windowless microscope room, Hedva Haykin pulled out slides from a thin black box, one by one. On them were slices of hearts, no bigger than pumpkin seeds, from mice that had experienced heart attacks. Under a microscope, some of the samples were clearly marred by scars left in the aftermath of the infarction. Others showed mere speckles of damage visible among streaks of healthy, red-stained cells.

The difference in the hearts’ appearance originated in the brain, Haykin explains. The healthier-looking samples came from mice that had received stimulation of a brain area involved in positive emotion and motivation. Those marked with scars were from unstimulated mice.

d41586-023-00509-z_24038522.jpg

Neuronal cells (red) in the gut interface with cells of the immune system (green).
 
Last edited:

The tiny diamond sphere that could unlock clean power​

At 1:03am on Monday 5 December, scientists at the National Ignition Facility in California aimed their 192 beam laser at a cylinder containing a tiny diamond fuel capsule.
That powerful burst of laser light created immense temperatures and pressures and sparked a fusion reaction - the reaction which powers the sun.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF), part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), had done such experiments before, but this time the energy that came out of the reaction, was more than the laser power used to trigger it.
Scientists have been trying for decades to meet that threshold and the hope is, one day, to build power stations that employ a fusion reaction to generate abundant, carbon-free electricity.
That's still some way off. In the meantime, much work needs to be done in developing the technology.

One of the key components at NIF is a peppercorn-sized synthetic diamond capsule, which holds the fuel. The properties of that spherical capsule are crucial to creating a successful fusion experiment.

The sphere has to be perfectly smooth and contaminant-free - any anomalies could ruin the reaction.
Those precisely engineered spheres are not made in California though. They are the result of years of work by Diamond Materials, a company based in Freiburg, Germany.
"The demands on the [spherical] capsules are very high," says Christoph Wild who, alongside Eckhard Wörner, is managing director of Diamond Materials.
"We collaborate closely with Lawrence Livermore and try to minimise defects like impurities, cavities or uneven walls."
The 25-strong team at Diamond Materials manufactures synthetic diamond through a process called chemical vapour deposition.

It takes around two months to create each batch of 20-40 capsules, which are made by painstakingly layering tiny diamond crystals around a silicon carbide core and polishing repeatedly.

During the development process they discovered that even the most meticulous polishing was not enough as at the microscopic level the surface was still pitted and uneven.
Working with teams at LLNL, they eventually discovered they could glaze a polished capsule with a fresh layer of diamond crystals to achieve the clean mirror-like finish they needed.

When the diamond capsules arrive at LLNL, the silicon core is removed and a tiny glass tube is used to fill the hollow sphere with deuterium and tritium, both heavy kinds of hydrogen, which fuel the fusion reaction.
"Around that fuel pellet is a gold and depleted uranium cylinder," explains Mike Farrell, vice president of inertial fusion technology at General Atomics, which is LLNL's largest industrial partner.
The third and final layer of the capsule is an aluminium cylinder that is used to cool down the contents of the capsule before the reaction.

Another crucial area of technology for NIF are optics - anything that supports the transmission, detection or utilisation of light.
As NIF runs the most powerful laser in the world, it uses a lot of that tech, and optical components get damaged every time the machine is fired up.

Since the early 1970s, NIF has been working closely with optics manufacturers like Zygo Corporation and specialist glassmaker SCHOTT to fine-tune and supply replacement parts, as well as debris and blast shields.
Following December's successful experiment, the next challenge for NIF and its partners will be to further improve tech in order to replicate and improve the reaction.
Mike Farrell hopes the step forward may help foster support for further research. "The experiment changed scientific opinion. Ignition was always thought of as almost unattainable, [or something that might only happen] 40 years in the future. The result in December was eye-opening."
Back in Freiburg, Diamond Materials hopes to be able to invest more time into research. "About 20% of our team is involved in research and us two managing directors are also physicists," says Mr Wild.
"Research at the level we produce requires a lot of resources and we can't neglect production. So we will probably continue to grow the team. After all, the research of today leads to the products of tomorrow."

Teams around the world are scrambling to build a working fusion power plant - using all sorts of approaches. But it will take many years and billions of dollars of investment.
Last year's landmark at NIF is likely to give the sector a boost says Mr Farrell: "Governmental and corporate funding may be easier to come by now that ignition has been proven possible."
That investment will be needed to overcome the considerable engineering challenges that face building a working power plant - not least finding materials that can stand the high energy emitted by the fusion process.
But Mr Farrell is quick to point out how quickly progress can gather momentum after the initial breakthrough is made.
"Once you show first principles, like we have just done, engineers then take over the reins to figure out how to reproducibly do that.
"Remember, the Wright brothers' first flight happened in 1903 and the first supersonic flight was in the 1950s. In 40 years or so, a lot can progress."
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64553796
 
^^^ Cool beans!
 
How your brain controls how sick you get

Scientists are starting to decipher the biological mechanisms behind a phenomenon that many clinicians are aware of: mental states can have a profound impact on how ill we get — and how well we recover. “Most people probably assume that when you feel sick, it’s because the bacteria or viruses are messing up your body,” says neuroscientist Catherine Dulac. But her team showed that activating a brain structure called the hypothalamus triggered fever and appetite loss, even in the absence of a pathogen. Brain-stimulation treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer are already nearing clinical trials, although exactly how the brain controls the body’s immune responses is still a mystery.

Example study (the whole article is long):

Late last year, in a small, windowless microscope room, Hedva Haykin pulled out slides from a thin black box, one by one. On them were slices of hearts, no bigger than pumpkin seeds, from mice that had experienced heart attacks. Under a microscope, some of the samples were clearly marred by scars left in the aftermath of the infarction. Others showed mere speckles of damage visible among streaks of healthy, red-stained cells.

The difference in the hearts’ appearance originated in the brain, Haykin explains. The healthier-looking samples came from mice that had received stimulation of a brain area involved in positive emotion and motivation. Those marked with scars were from unstimulated mice.

d41586-023-00509-z_24038522.jpg

Neuronal cells (red) in the gut interface with cells of the immune system (green).
The brain controls how sick you get, and your body controls how anxious you feel

Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

Emotions such as fear and anxiety can make the heart beat faster. Now a study in mice has found that the reverse is also true — artificially increasing the heart rate can raise anxiety levels.

Links between emotions and physical sensations are familiar to everyone: hairs rising on the backs of your arms when you hear an eerie sound, or the sinking feeling in your gut when you receive bad news. But the question of whether emotions drive bodily functions or vice versa has long vexed researchers, because it is hard to control either factor independently.

“It was a chicken-and-egg question that has been the subject of debate for a century,” says Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in California. He learned about this conundrum — first proposed by the psychologist William James in the 1880s — while at medical school and says the question has haunted him ever since.

To test the phenomenon directly, Deisseroth and his colleagues turned to optogenetics, a method that involves using light to control cell activity. The team bioengineered mice to make muscle cells in the rodents’ hearts sensitive to light. The authors also designed tiny vests for the animals that emitted red light, which could pass through the rodents’ bodies all the way to their hearts. When a mouse’s vest emitted a pulse of light, the animal’s engineered heart muscles fired, causing the heart to beat.

The team trained the animals to expect a shock if they pressed a lever for a water reward. Using the optogenetic system, the team raised the animals’ heart rates from their normal 660 beats per minute to 900. When their hearts started racing, mice became less willing to press the lever or to explore open areas, suggesting that they were more anxious. But for animals in other contexts, the externally increased heart rate had no effect, suggesting that the brain and the heart worked together to produce anxiety.

When the researchers measured the animals’ brain activity, they found that the insula — a region associated with both emotion and the processing of bodily signals — became more active when the heart rate increased if the animal was acting anxious. The researchers say this suggests that the insula is in charge of integrating signals from the heart with threats from the environment before passing the information on to areas involved in higher cognition.

The finding could have implications for the treatment of chronic anxiety conditions, says Sahib Khalsa, a psychiatrist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who studies the link between organ systems and anxiety in humans. Purposely slowing one’s breathing, for instance, has long been known to help reduce anxiety. “There’s a lot of use of these strategies and a sense that [they have] a benefit, but what exactly is doing the anxiety reduction is not well established,” he says. It’s also not clear, he adds, whether acute fear — such as fear of a foot shock — involves the same body–brain circuits as chronic anxiety, which in humans seems to involve more parts of the brain than acute fear does.

Writeup Paper

d41586-023-00584-2_24074264.jpg
 
I want to point out that scientists have the ability to modify neurons to be receptive to light and can make little tiny mouse vests that emit red light


.... and they used this technology not to create cuteness, but to just create anxious mice
 
Somewhere in an alternative universe mice are messing w our emotions
Have you read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
 
Back
Top Bottom