Lifeboat Foundation

This sounds very promising! The researchers are investigating the use of nuclear microreactors to power faster and more efficient electric propulsion systems.☢️🚀

To develop spacecraft that can “maneuver without regret,” the U.S. Space Force is providing $35 million to a national research team led by the University of Michigan. It will be the first to bring fast chemical rockets together with efficient electric propulsion powered by a nuclear microreactor.

The newly formed Space Power and Propulsion for Agility, Responsiveness and Resilience Institute involves eight universities, and 14 industry partners and advisers in one of the nation’s largest efforts to advance space power and propulsion, a critical need for national defense and space exploration.

Continue reading “Space Force funds $35M institute for versatile propulsion at U-M” »

A team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania introduced a novel wet chemical etching process that modifies the surface of conventional metal powders used in 3D printing.

In a significant advancement for metal additive manufacturing, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their academic partners have developed a groundbreaking technique that enhances the optical absorptivity of metal powders used in 3D printing.

The innovative approach, which involves creating nanoscale surface features on metal powders, promises to improve the efficiency and quality of printed metal parts, particularly for challenging materials like copper and tungsten, according to researchers.

Continue reading “New technique enhances absorptivity of powders for metal 3D printing” »

Despite its almost perfect anti-aging profile, rapamycin exerts one significant limitation – inappropriate physicochemical properties. Therefore, we have decided to utilize virtual high-throughput screening and fragment-based design in search of novel mTOR inhibiting scaffolds with suitable physicochemical parameters. Seven lead compounds were selected from the list of obtained hits that were commercially available (4, 5, and 7) or their synthesis was feasible (1, 2, 3, and 6) and evaluated in vitro and subsequently in vivo. Of all these substances, only compound 3 demonstrated a significant cytotoxic, senolytic, and senomorphic effect on normal and cancerous cells. Further, it has been confirmed that compound 3 is a direct mTORC1 inhibitor. Last but not least, compound 3 was found to exhibit anti-SASP activity concurrently being relatively safe within the test of in vivo tolerability. All these outstanding results highlight compound 3 as a scaffold worthy of further investigation.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Next Generation Biomanufacturing Technologies — Dr. Leonard Tender, Ph.D. — Biological Technologies Office, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — DARPA

Dr. Leonard Tender, Ph.D. is a Program Manager in the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-leonar…) where his research interests include developing new methods for user-defined control of biological processes, and climate and supply chain resilience.

Continue reading “Dr. Leonard Tender, Ph.D. — Biological Technologies Office, DARPA — Next Generation Biomanufacturing” »

Fortunately, the past decade has experienced a boom, with over 200 startups bringing novel cancer therapies—primarily antibodies, viruses, or cells—into clinical trials aiming to find alternatives to toxic chemotherapy. Despite these innovations, chemotherapy remains an essential yet toxic part of cancer care. In Pittsburgh, a small team of scientist-entrepreneurs and oncologists started meeting every Friday morning before work, collaborating to search for a new chemistry, one that could replace toxic chemotherapies. Their search soon focused on compelling research about novel ultra-small nanomedicine chemistry that carried potent drugs deep into solid tumors while sparing healthy organs.

This new nanomedicine chemistry fascinated Dr. Sam Rothstein, a scientist-entrepreneur with 20+ years of nanomedicine research experience spanning academia and industry. “We could make a real positive impact on patients,” says Rothstein. “We know that nanomedicines, which keep potent therapies out of healthy organs, improve quality of life. But this novel ultrasmall chemistry could go even further, saving lives by reaching remote cancer cells that current therapies can’t touch.”

Dr. Rothstein set to work building a new company, calling on connections made over a 10+-year career as a life science startup CEO and CSO, where he founded and grew two nanomedicine startups from academic discoveries. After months of market, regulatory, and business research, Duo Oncology was born.

Dr. Jim Burch: “With these precise measurements, the composition of the gases will reveal the story of the interior and whether the conditions for life exist beneath the icy surface of Europa.”

Will we find the building blocks of life, and potentially signs of life, on Jupiter’s moon, Europa? This is what the nine instruments onboard the recently launched NASA Europa Clipper mission hopes to address, with two being developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) and Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS). These two instruments hold the potential to help researchers determine the habitability of Europa and whether the small moon could support life as we know it.

The goal of MASPEX is to investigate the molecules that leave Europa’s surface, which occur either from Jupiter’s intense radiation interacting with the surface or emanating from Europa’s subsurface ocean that lies beneath its icy crust. MASPEX will accomplish this by collecting gases and stripping the ions to determine the types and sizes of the molecules present in the gases. Through this, MASPEX will help scientists better understand the chemical composition of Europa’s atmosphere, icy surface, and subsurface ocean.

Continue reading “Searching for Life: The Role of MASPEX and Europa-UVS in NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission” »

Programmable quantum computers have the potential to efficiently simulate increasingly complex molecular structures, electronic structures, chemical reactions, and quantum mechanical states in chemistry that classical computers cannot. As the molecule’s size and complexity increase, so do the computational resources required to model it.

The platform-agnostic algorithm ignores information related to noise in quantum computers to prevent compounding errors.

Researchers will be able to analyze chemical compounds and atoms in greater detail than ever before using the brightest, clearest laser of its kind anywhere in the world.