For as long as 70 years, bats have been carrying the genetic precursors of the COVID virus, according to a team of Chinese, European, and U.S. scientists that reconstructed the virus’s evolutionary history. The study found the COVID structure enabling it to lock onto human receptors is shared by other coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats...
Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE
Post
BLOOD TRANSFERS MENTAL BENEFITS OF EXERCISE
It’s well-known that exercise sharpens the mind. Now researchers at the University of California San Francisco have found that blood from mice that exercise regularly can perk up the mental faculties of mice that don’t. The study was simple: researchers put exercise wheels in cages with mice. The mice ran for miles overnight. After a...
Post
TEACHING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO SPOT DEEPFAKES
The software for creating deepfakes – AI-generated videos of people seeming to say things they never actually did – is freely available online and relatively easy to learn to use. With an election not many weeks away, we could begin to see videos of Donald Trump admitting taking bribes from Vladimir Putin or Joe Biden...
Post
1,000 TONS OF PLASTIC DUSTS FALLS ON NATIONAL PARKS EACH YEAR
Janice Brahney, a chemist at Utah State University, set out to study how dust carried on the winds brings nutrients to ecosystems. She collected samples from weather stations in remote spots around the U.S. When she looked through her microscope at samples gathered from wilderness areas and national parks, she saw plastic. She used weather...
Post
NEW TECHNOLOGY TO RECHARGE EVs ON THE MOVE
by Bennett Daviss Engineers at Stanford University have created a way to recharge electric vehicles wirelessly as they move that carries an efficiency of 92 percent, up from 10 percent that previous methods achieved. Recharging an electric vehicle wirelessly involves creating a magnetic field that activates magnetic coils in the vehicle. But that only works...
Post
CONGRESS OFFERS PLAN TO REMAKE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
by Bennett Daviss The National Science Foundation will be renamed, given an additional $100 billion over five years, and charged with maintaining the U.S. leadership in global technological innovation under a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate and House of Representatives. The proposal also would alter the foundation’s mission from pure research alone to add...
Post
NEW MOLECULE TAKES THE HIGH OUT OF METH AND COCAINE
by Bennett Daviss Scientists led by a Duke University research team have created a new molecule that weakens the high that cocaine and methamphetamines deliver to the brain. The molecule is a neurotensin, a kind of protein that moderates reward-seeking behaviors and has been known to reduce food- and drug-seeking in mice. Using a neurotensin...
Post
MAKING CANCER CELLS POISON THEMSELVES
by Bennett Daviss What if every time you flushed your toilet, it emptied into your food supply? Researchers at the Institute of Basic Sciences in South Korea have found a way to do the same for cancer cells. The parts of cells that take out the trash are called lysosomes. In cancer cells, they’re more...
Post
3D PRINTING A THOUSAND TIMES FASTER
by Bennett Daviss 3D printing is revolutionizing the manufacture of everything from jet engine parts to artificial human organs – or at least it has the power to if it wasn’t so slow. Now engineers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have collaborated with colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop a...
Post
MACHINE LEARNING SLASHES EV BATTERY DEVELOPMENT TIME
By Bennett Davis Machine learning software created by researchers at MIT, Stanford University, and the Toyota Research Institute can cut design and development time for new batteries by as much as 98 percent, the developers say. The program also can be used to slash development times in areas such as drug research and laser design....