Evidence Suggests Some Super-Puffs Might Be Ringed Exoplanets
Phys.org / Dec. 5, 2019
Not all super-puffs, mind you. But some.
Evidence Suggests Some Super-Puffs Might Be Ringed Exoplanets
Phys.org / Dec. 5, 2019
Not all super-puffs, mind you. But some.
Nanocontainer Ships Titan-Size Gene Therapies and Drugs Into Cells
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine via phys.org / Dec. 6, 2019Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report they have created a tiny, nanosize container that can slip inside cells and deliver protein-based medicines and gene therapies of any size—even hefty ones attached to the gene-editing tool called CRISPR. If their creation—constructed of a biodegradable polymer—passes more laboratory testing, it could offer a way to efficiently ferry larger medical compounds into specifically selected target cells.
A report on their work appears in the Dec. 6 issue of Science Advances.
“Most medicines spread throughout the body in an indiscriminate way and don’t target a specific cell,” says biomedical engineer Jordan Green, Ph.D., leader of the research team. “Some medicines, such as antibodies, latch on to targets on the cell’s surface receptors, but we don’t have good systems for delivering biological medicines straight to the inside of a cell, which is where therapies would have the best chance at working properly and with fewer side effects.”
OK, stand by for the credentials of a guy who did not waste his time in college taking ridiculous courses:
Many academic and commercial scientists have long sought better transit systems for therapies, says Green, professor of biomedical engineering, ophthalmology, oncology, neurosurgery, materials science and engineering, and chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a member of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Johns Hopkins.
!
Some commercially available techniques use stripped down forms of viruses—known for their ability to “infect” cells directly—to deliver therapies, although the noninfectious versions of these delivery systems can unleash an unwanted immune system response.
Other therapies aimed at diseased blood cells, for example, are more cumbersome, requiring patients’ blood to be removed, then zapped with an electric current that opens pores in the cell membrane to gain entry.
The nanosize container that Green and his team developed at Johns Hopkins borrows an idea from the properties of viruses, many of which are nearly spherical in shape and carry both negative and positive charges.
With a more neutral overall charge, viruses can get close to cells. That’s not the case with many biological medicines, which consist of highly charged, large proteins and nucleic acids that tend to repel off cells.
I’d rather imagine Raquel Welch rappelling off cells in her white scuba suit, but that’s why I’m not a Professor (who totally could’ve scored with Ginger or Mary Ann if he put in any effort).
1941: Oahu military base. Japanese dive-bombers in full attack. Explosions all around.
Liberal Main Character {not a white male}, running around banning guns: “Don’t be phobic! Don’t profile!!”
Even More Liberal Sidekick {not a white male}, spitting mad: “It just makes me mad: seventy-five years from now, some dumb conservative will actually claim that a wall might have prevented this.”
Liberal Main Character: “Impeach him!”
{Explosion nearby}
Liberal Main Character: “They’d probably blame Captain Mohammad, here, for the explosions, too.”
{Captain Mohammad, concealing detonator, grins and gives a clumsy salute}
Even More Liberal Sidekick: “Kinda makes you wonder what side we’re on . . . ”
{Lens flare}
Pyramid-Shaped 427-foot Asteroid Set To Whiz Past Earth
Fox News | James Rogers | Dec. 6, 2019
The space rock will fly harmlessly past our planet. Asteroid VH5 2019 will make its flyby at about 17.9 lunar distances on Dec. 8, according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The asteroid has dimensions of 57 meters (187 feet) by 130 meters (426.5 feet), NASA says.
Citing the asteroid’s dimensions, the Inquisitr website describes the rock as “pyramid-shaped,” noting that it is almost as large as the famous Great Pyramid of Giza.
The Apollo asteroid is one of five space rocks set to fly by Earth over the weekend, according to the Inquisitr, all at safe distances.
A massive 2,000-foot asteroid harmlessly zoomed past Earth last month. In 2017, a skyscraper-sized asteroid named 2010 NY65 flew past Earth at about eight times the distance between Earth and the moon.
…
A recent study revealed that, over the last 290 million years, asteroids have been slamming Earth at triple their previous rate. Scientists, however, are unsure why.
I just ran across this article’s title:
A Ferroelectric Ternary Content-Addressable Memory To Enhance Deep Learning Models
. . . which sort of makes me wish I hadn’t taken classes entitled “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” and “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.”
Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Learning from YouTube,” “How To Watch Television,” and “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?
— Fraud in Higher Education by Walter E. Williams
Townhall.com | December 4, 2019