DB's absolutely amazing sci/tech thread

[the innominate one]

Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers

Very interesting, and there has previously been some discussion a few years ago about differences in model animals' reaction by the sex of the researchers. I wonder if the animals used in this experiment you linked were all-male, as is typical for research, and if the reaction to researcher sex is consistent or opposite between the sexes of the specimens.

Isn't this thus likely another case where mouse models don't apply to humans?

[thoreau]

Let's talk about what REALLY matters: How can we fit this into American academia's fucked up "conversations" about gender and STEM?

[thoreau]

More seriously, I wonder what other odors are affecting the results of mouse experiments. Does the lunch that the grad student ate before handling the mouse matter for certain experiments? What if the postdoc has a cat at home? What if the grad student is wearing perfume? Or a scented deodorant? The list could go on. There might be all sorts of sources of noise that we're not even aware of, experiments explained by the fact that the postdoc who handled the mice was taking care of a baby who threw up a lot.

[the innominate one]

Good points. Maybe live animal specimens should consistently be handled in glove boxes, at a minimum.

[dbcooper]

Looking to cure Type 1 diabetes, investors front $114M to launch a pioneering human study at Semma

Three years ago, Harvard’s Doug Melton published a landmark study outlining how he had successfully used stem cells to create insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells that were inserted in bulk into mice and successfully protected from an immune response — a breakthrough in regenerative medicine that bore real promise to provide a curative approach for Type 1 diabetes that could conceivably end a lifetime of insulin shots.

It was the culmination of 23 years of lab work, launched when his son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. And that achievement marked the beginning of something new in biotech.

26 years and counting of work ...

[JD]

NASA and Google have some big announcement to make on Thursday, but they're being all coy about exactly what it is: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/t ... -thursday/

[Kolohe]

NASA and Google have some big announcement to make on Thursday, but they're being all coy about exactly what it is: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/t ... -thursday/

It's probably not aliens.

[Aresen]

General Relativity passes another test

For more than 20 years, a team of astronomers has tracked a single star whipping around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy at up to 25 million kilometers per hour, or 3% of the speed of light. Now, the team says the close encounter has put Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity to its most rigorous test yet for massive objects, with the light from the star stretched in a way not prescribed by Newtonian gravity. In a study announced today, the team says it has detected a distinctive indicator of Einstein’s general theory of relativity called “gravitational redshift,” in which the star’s light loses energy because of the black hole’s intense gravity.

[JD]

Nematodes have been revived after apparently being in a state of suspended animation for 40,000 years. (I assume some sort of funk was involved.)

[Eric the .5b]

Nematodes have been revived after apparently being in a state of suspended animation for 40,000 years. (I assume some sort of funk was involved.)

That took me a second.

Now, I want to do some kind of story where manned interstellar travel is a bust, as FTL doesn't exist, hibernation isn't feasible for mammals, and generation ships all turn into North Korea without the foreign aid. Except, we find out that there are interstellar travelers—they're just all aliens evolved from nematodes, tardigrades, or other things that can be safely frozen or dehydrated for journeys.

[JD]

This could potentially be quite significant:

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.

[thoreau]

This is pretty cool: Lenses for concentrating water waves, to improve harvesting of offshore wave energy.

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/89

[JD]

This is pretty cool: Lenses for concentrating water waves, to improve harvesting of offshore wave energy.

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/89

That is really cool. I think that ocean power generation is a field with a lot of potential, and it's good to see attention being paid to it.

[JD]

The Northern mole vole, Ellobius talpinus, has X and Y chromosomes, and the chromosomes determine sex, as in humans. But its relative the Transcaucasian mole vole, E. lutescens, has no Y chromosome at all, and both sexes have XO chromosomes. And in the Zaisan mole vole, E. tancrei, both sexes have XX chromosomes. The Ryuku spiny rat and Tokunoshima spiny rat also have no Y chromosome anymore. Study of their genetics is ongoing: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5704219/

[thoreau]

SCIENCE!!!!!111! PROVES THAT MALE AND FEMALE ARE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS!!!!1!!!1!!11!

[JD]

MDMA appears to affect octopuses similarly to how it affects humans. This is pretty amazing considering that they're not even in the same phylum as humans, we last shared a common ancestor about 800 million years ago (they are no more closely related to us than an earthworm or a butterfly is), and their brains are organized very differently from ours.

[Aresen]

TESS has discovered its first exoplanet, only days into its mission:

[JD]

A new invention could filter heavy metals out of water quickly and cheaply. It uses gallium to create porous sheets of aluminum oxide, which has a high affinity for heavy metals but allows water molecules to pass through. Aluminum is very cheap, and while gallium is rather more expensive, the cool thing is that it actually doesn't get used up in the process, so the overall cost should still be low.

[thoreau]

Pores in aluminum? Do I need to tell you what the fuck you can do with an aluminum tube?

ALUMINUM!!!!

[Mo]

The last SI element to be defined by a physical artifact, the kilogram, will finally get a definition based entirely on a physical constant.

[Warren]

The last SI element to be defined by a physical artifact, the kilogram, will finally get a definition based entirely on a physical constant.

Too Twitter Will Not Read.
I'm mildly surprised to learn we were still using an artifact. What's the new standard? 1/12 an Avogadro of C12?

[Mo]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 093337.htm

[Warren]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 093337.htm

I don't like it. You're measuring weight by measuring electric current, so how are you calibrating that? On top of that you're measuring weight not mass, so you need to precisely measure gravity at the time and place you're measuring the kg.

I'm sure I just don't understand it well enough.

[JD]

Llama antibodies may hold the secret to a universal flu vaccine!

tl;dr version: Human antibodies are pretty large, and only recognize the proteins tips of flu viruses, but those are the parts that change the most frequently. Llama antibodies are tinier, so they can match the "core" of the virus. Scientists created synthetic antibodies and genetically engineered a virus to inject the genes for making the antibodies, said virus being how they delivered the vaccine to mice. Truly we live in amazing times.

[thoreau]

So the credit for a universal flu vaccine will go to:
"RALPH" The Wonder Llama
Assisted By EARL J. LLAMA
MIKE Q. LLAMA III
SY LLAMA
MERLE Z. LLAMA IX,
40 SPECIALLY TRAINED ECUADORIAN MOUNTAIN LLAMAS
6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS
142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS
14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS (CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA)
REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON
76000 BATTERY LLAMAS FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS LTD. NEAR PARAGUAY