Tyson Fights Like Tyson With Words

Heavy metal is in our blood!

Anytime you don’t feel powerful, remember this:

Supergiant stars are beasts! Their life is a fight between gravity pushing in and heat pushing out. They fuse heavier and heavier elements in their core until they get to iron. They can’t fuse any more. Iron absorbs more energy than it returns, so gravity takes over. The star’s core collapses and the star dies in an explosive supernova that outshines its entire galaxy.

The heat of a supernova fuses new elements during the explosion, which are then spread out into space via the nebula remnant. Nebulae are the birthplaces of new stars and solar systems.

The iron in your blood came from one of the most powerful explosions in the universe.

You have something in your blood that can kill stars and build solar systems.

ISS Expedition 54 crew land safely in Kazakhstan

Houston TX (SPX) Feb 28, 2018 Three members of the Expedition 54 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS), including NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba, returned to Earth on Tuesday after months of performing research and spacewalks in low-Earth orbit. Vande Hei, Acaba and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos landed at 9:31 p.m. EST (8:31 a.m. Feb. 28 in Kazakhstan) sout Full article

Flame Nebula in Orion - For more images of the cosmos Click Here

PINning down future problems

Study finds hackers could use brainwaves to steal passwords

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that brainwave-sensing headsets, also known as EEG or electroencephalograph headsets, need better security after a study reveals hackers could guess a user’s passwords by monitoring their brainwaves.

EEG headsets are advertised as allowing users to use only their brains to control robotic toys and video games specifically developed to be played with an EEG headset. There are only a handful on the market, and they range in price from $150 to $800.

Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences Department of Computer and Information Sciences, and Ph.D. student Ajaya Neupane and former master’s student Md Lutfor Rahman, found that a person who paused a video game and logged into a bank account while wearing an EEG headset was at risk for having their passwords or other sensitive data stolen by a malicious software program.

“These emerging devices open immense opportunities for everyday users,” Saxena said. “However, they could also raise significant security and privacy threats as companies work to develop even more advanced brain-computer interface technology.”

Saxena and his team used one EEG headset currently available to consumers online and one clinical-grade headset used for scientific research to demonstrate how easily a malicious software program could passively eavesdrop on a user’s brainwaves. While typing, a user’s inputs correspond with their visual processing, as well as hand, eye and head muscle movements. All these movements are captured by EEG headsets. The team asked 12 people to type a series of randomly generated PINs and passwords into a text box as if they were logging into an online account while wearing an EEG headset, in order for the software to train itself on the user’s typing and the corresponding brainwave.

“In a real-world attack, a hacker could facilitate the training step required for the malicious program to be most accurate, by requesting that the user enter a predefined set of numbers in order to restart the game after pausing it to take a break, similar to the way CAPTCHA is used to verify users when logging onto websites,” Saxena said.

The team found that, after a user entered 200 characters, algorithms within the malicious software program could make educated guesses about new characters the user entered by monitoring the EEG data recorded. The algorithm was able to shorten the odds of a hacker’s guessing a four-digit numerical PIN from one in 10,000 to one in 20 and increased the chance of guessing a six-letter password from about 500,000 to roughly one in 500.

EEG has been used in the medical field for more than half a century as a noninvasive method for recording electrical activity in the brain. Electrodes are placed on the surface of the scalp to detect brain waves. An EEG machine then amplifies the signals and records them in a wave pattern on graph paper or a computer. EEG can be combined with a brain-computer interface to allow a person to control external devices. This technology was once highly expensive and used mostly for scientific research, like the production of neuroprosthetic applications to help disabled patients control prosthetic limbs by thinking about the movements. However, it is now being marketed to consumers in the form of a wireless headset and is becoming popular in the gaming and entertainment industries.

“Given the growing popularity of EEG headsets and the variety of ways in which they could be used, it is inevitable that they will become part of our daily lives, including while using other devices,” Saxena said. “It is important to analyze the potential security and privacy risks associated with this emerging technology to raise users’ awareness of the risks and develop viable solutions to malicious attacks.”

One potential solution proposed by Saxena and his team is the insertion of noise anytime a user types a password or PIN while wearing an EEG headset.

Tumour Markers

Chemical biomarkers that can be elevated by the presence of one or more types of cancer,  produced directly by the tumour or by non-tumour cells as a response to the presence of a tumour. Really great tests as can use just blood/urine, but aren’t the most specific and false positives do occur.

Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) 

Glycoprotein synthesised in yolk sac, the foetal liver, and gut - will be high in a foetus and during pregnancy. 

<10 ng/mL is normal for adults

>500 ng/mL could indicate liver tumour

Normally:

Produced primarily by the liver in a developing foetus 

Thought to be a foetal form of albumin

suppress lymphocyte activation and antibody production in adults (immune suppressant)

Binds bilirubin, fatty acids, hormones and metals

In cancer:

Detects hepatocarcinoma (liver cancer)

Risk factors: haemochromotosis, hep B, alcoholism - cell repair and growth from this damage leads to cancers

Present in non-pathogenic liver proliferation, including the growth and repair response to the above. This makes it hard to differentiate - AFP levels can be raised in patients with liver cancer risk factors due to the factors themselves, not a cancer. Not very diagnostic!! Used in combination with other tests/factors. Sensitivity and specificity ~75%

Other hepatocellular carcinoma markers:

γGT (γ-glutamyltransferase) - biliary damage

AFP mRNA (not always together with AFP! Might not be activated)

γGT mRNA elevated

Raised cytokines (IL-8, VEGF, TGF-B1) 

ALT and AST elevated - liver disease

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)

a set of highly related glycoproteins involved in cell adhesion. Potentially associated with innate immune system.

Normally:

produced in gastrointestinal tissue during foetal development 

production stops before birth

present only at very low levels in the blood of healthy adults. 

Cancer:

Elevated in almost all patients with colorectal cancer

Can monitor recurrence of cancer (when compared to previous test results for that patient) with a sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 70%

levels may also be raised in gastric, pancreatic, lung, breast and medullary thyroid carcinomas

also some non-neoplastic (not cancer) conditions like ulcerative colitis, liver disease, pancreatitis,  COPD, Crohn’s disease, hypothyroidism - again, high risk groups for colorectal cancer - not a diagnostic test

Levels elevated in smokers.

Carbohydrate antigens (CA)

Including:

CA 19-9 - Pancreas

CA 15-3 Breast

CA 50 - Colorectal

CA 125 - ovarian

Levels rise only in disease states and particularly cancer, but will not rise in all patients.

Part 2 coming soon!

Gut bug enzyme turns blood into type-O

Gut bug enzyme turns blood into type-O Scientists believe they have found a reliable way to transform donor blood into the universal type needed for safe, emergency blood transfusions. The discovery is enzymes from gut bacteria that can efficiently turn type-A human blood into type-O. Type-O blood is special because it can be donated to anyone without the risk of a bad mismatch reaction. The researchers, from the University of British Columbia, say clinical trials of the treatment could begin soon.

Thats amazing news :O

Polymer researchers discover path to sustainable and biodegradable polyesters

There’s a good chance you’ve touched something made out of the polyolefin polymer today. It’s often used in polyethylene products like plastic bags or polypropylene products like diapers.

As useful as polyolefins are in society, they continue to multiply as trash in the environment. Scientists estimate plastic bags, for example, will take centuries to degrade.

But now, researchers at Virginia Tech have synthesized a biodegradable alternative to polyolefins using a new catalyst and the polyester polymer, and this breakthrough could eventually have a profound impact on sustainability efforts.

Rong Tong, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and affiliated faculty member of Macromolecules Innovation Institute (MII), led the team of researchers, whose findings were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

One of the largest challenges in polymer chemistry is controlling the tacticity or the stereochemistry of the polymer. When multiplying monomer subunits into the macromolecular chain, it’s difficult for scientists to replicate a consistent arrangement of side-chain functional groups stemming off the main polymer chain. These side-chain functional groups greatly affect a polymer’s physical and chemical properties, such as melting temperature or glass-transition temperature, and regular stereochemistry leads to better properties.

Read more.

Re-generatively cooled RL10 Thrust Chamber Assembly test validates 3D printing process

West Palm Beach FL (SPX) Jun 18, 2018 Aerojet Rocketdyne recently achieved a significant milestone by successfully completing a series of hot-fire tests of an advanced, next-generation RL10 engine thrust chamber design that was built almost entirely using additive manufacturing; commonly known as 3-D printing. “This recent series of hot-fire tests conducted under our RL10C-X development program demonstrated the large-scale add Full article

Solar powered sea slugs shed light on search for perpetual green energy

The sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, steals millions of green-colored plastids, which are like tiny solar panels, from algae. Credit: Karen N. Pelletreau/University of Maine

A Northeast sea slug sucks raw materials from algae to provide its lifetime supply of solar-powered energy, according to a study by Rutgers University-New Brunswick, USA.

‘It’s a remarkable feat because it’s highly unusual for an animal to behave like a plant and survive solely on photosynthesis,’ said Debashish Bhattacharya, senior author of the study and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers-New Brunswick. ‘The broader implication is in the field of artificial photosynthesis. That is, if we can figure out how the slug maintains stolen, isolated plastids to fix carbon without the plant nucleus, then maybe we can also harness isolated plastids for eternity as green machines to create bioproducts or energy. The existing paradigm is that to make green energy, we need the plant or alga to run the photosynthetic organelle, but the slug shows us that this does not have to be the case.’

The sea slug Elysia chlorotica, a mollusk that can grow to more than 2 inches long, has been found in the intertidal zone between Nova Scotia, Canada, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as well as in Florida. Juvenile sea slugs eat the nontoxic brown alga Vaucheria litorea and become photosynthetic – or solar-powered – after stealing millions of algal plastids, which are like tiny solar panels, and storing them in their gut lining, according to the study published online in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

This particular alga is an ideal food source because it does not have walls between adjoining cells in its body and is essentially a long tube loaded with nuclei and plastids, Bhattacharya said. ‘When the sea slug makes a hole in the outer cell wall, it can suck out the cell contents and gather all of the algal plastids at once,’ he said.

Read the full study here: Cheong Xin Chan, Pavel Vaysberg, Dana C Price, Karen N Pelletreau, Mary E Rumpho, Debashish Bhattacharya. Active Host Response to Algal Symbionts in the Sea Slug Elysia chlorotica. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2018; DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msy061