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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 11, 2021 at 8:20am

'Vegan spider silk' provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

Researchers have created a plant-based, sustainable, scalable material that could replace single-use plastics in many consumer products.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, created a polymer film by mimicking the properties of spider silk, one of the strongest materials in nature. The new material is as strong as many common plastics in use today and could replace plastic in many common household products.

The material was created using a new approach for assembling plant proteins into materials which mimic silk on a molecular level. The energy-efficient method, which uses sustainable ingredients, results in a plastic-like free-standing film, which can be made at industrial scale. Non-fading 'structural' color can be added to the polymer, and it can also be used to make water-resistant coatings.

The material is home compostable, whereas other types of bioplastics require industrial composting facilities to degrade.

Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23813-6

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-vegan-spider-silk-sustainable-alterna...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 11, 2021 at 6:56am

AMAZING Cases of Animal MIMICRY!

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mimicry+of+animals+to+...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 10, 2021 at 12:09pm

Scientists Have Calculated The Weight of All The SARS-CoV-2 in The World

If all the SARS-CoV-2 particles currently circulating in humans around the globe were gathered together into one place, they would weigh somewhere between the weight of an apple and that of a young toddler, according to a new study.

A group of researchers recently calculated that each infected individual carries about 10 billion to 100 billion individual SARS-CoV-2 particles at the peak of their infection. That suggests that all of the SARS-CoV-2 viruses currently infecting people around the world — which has been about 1 million to 10 million infections at any given time during the course of the pandemic  — have a collective mass of somewhere between 0.22 and 22 pounds (0.1 and 10 kilograms).

Small doesn't mean insignificant, however.

Here we are talking about a super-tiny mass of viruses, and they are completely wreaking havoc on the world.

The total number and mass of SARS-CoV-2 virions

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/25/e2024815118/tab-article-info

https://www.sciencealert.com/how-much-does-all-the-sars-cov-2-in-th...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 10, 2021 at 10:54am

Researchers create quantum microscope that can see the impossible

In a major scientific leap,  researchers have created a quantum microscope that can reveal biological structures that would otherwise be impossible to see.

This paves the way for applications in biotechnology, and could extend far beyond this into areas ranging from navigation to medical imaging.

The microscope is powered by the science of quantum entanglement, an effect Einstein described as "spooky interactions at a distance".

The quantum entanglement in this microscope provides 35 percent improved clarity without destroying the cell, allowing us to see minute biological structures that would otherwise be invisible.

"The benefits are obvious—from a better understanding of living systems, to improved diagnostic technologies.

 Quantum-enhanced nonlinear microscopy, Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03528-w , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03528-w

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-quantum-microscope-impossible.html?ut...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 10, 2021 at 9:59am

Bacteria-sized robots take on microplastics and win by breaking them down

Small pieces of plastic are everywhere, stretching from urban environments to pristine wilderness. Left to their own devices, it can take hundreds of years for them to degrade completely. Catalysts activated by sunlight could speed up the process, but getting these compounds to interact with microplastics is difficult. In a proof-of-concept study, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces developed self-propelled microrobots that can swim, attach to plastics and break them down.

While plastic products are omnipresent indoors, plastic waste and broken bits now litter the outdoors, too. The smallest of these—microplastics less than 5 mm in size—are hard to pick up and remove. In addition, they can adsorb heavy metals and pollutants, potentially harming humans or animals if accidently consumed. So, previous researchers proposed a low-energy way to get rid of plastics in the environment by using catalysts that use sunlight to produce highly reactive compounds that break down these types of polymers. However, getting the catalysts and tiny plastic pieces in contact with each other is challenging and usually requires pretreatments or bulky mechanical stirrers, which aren't easily scaled-up. so wanted to create a sunlight-propelled catalyst that moves toward and latches onto microparticles and dismantles them.

To transform a catalytic material into light-driven microrobots, the researchers made star-shaped particles of bismuth vanadate and then evenly coated the 4–8 µm-wide structures with magnetic iron oxide. The microrobots could swim down a maze of channels and interact with microplastic pieces along their entire lengths. The researchers found that under visible light, microrobots strongly glommed on to four common types of plastics. The team then illuminated pieces of the four plastics covered with the microrobot catalyst for seven days in a dilute hydrogen peroxide solution. They observed that the plastic lost 3% of its weight and that the surface texture for all types changed from smooth to pitted, and small molecules and components of the plastics were found in the left-over solution. The researchers say the self-propelled microrobot catalysts pave the way toward systems that can capture and degrade microplastics in hard-to-reach-locations.

Seyyed Mohsen Beladi-Mousavi et al, A Maze in Plastic Wastes: Autonomous Motile Photocatalytic Microrobots against Microplastics, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c04559

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-bacteria-sized-robots-microplastics.h...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 10, 2021 at 9:34am

Low Doses of "Laughing Gas" Could Be Fast, Effective Treatment for Severe Depression

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 10, 2021 at 5:43am

Popularity runs in families

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 12:13pm

Cloud Avalanche

This "cloud avalanche" occurred near the Kapuche Glacier Lake in the mountains of Nepal last month. At that time, a group of travel companions were camping by the lake, and they took the risk of taking pictures of this rare visual feast. The white snow clouds rushed down the valley, unstoppable, instantly swallowing the mountains and hitting the lake surface. Against the backdrop of the blue sky and the yellow-brown mountains, they were more distinct, magnificent and shocking. The strong air flow overturned the tents and sleeping bags, frightening the travellers, but fortunately no casualties were reported. After that, a small rainbow appeared by the lake, which was extremely beautiful, and the travelers all cheered and marveled at it. Call it "perfect cloud collapse".

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 10:26am

Why Arctic soil can go slip-sliding away

Slow-moving arctic soils form patterns that, from a distance, resemble those found in common fluids such as drips in paint and birthday cake icing. Los Alamos researchers and their collaborators analyzed existing arctic soil formations and compared them to viscous fluids, determining that there is a physical explanation for this pattern that is common to both Earth and Mars landscapes.

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Algae blooms harmful to aquaculture: UN global assessment

Potentially lethal marine algae blooms have not increased in number over the last three decades, but pose a serious threat to aquaculture, according to a UN global assessment released recently.

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Bacteria-sized robots take on microplastics and win by breaking the...

Small pieces of plastic are everywhere, stretching from urban environments to pristine wilderness. Left to their own devices, it can take hundreds of years for them to degrade completely. Catalysts activated by sunlight could speed up the process, but getting these compounds to interact with microplastics is difficult. In a proof-of-concept study, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces developed self-propelled microrobots that can swim, attach to plastics and break them down.

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Normal breathing sends saliva droplets 7 feet; masks shorten this

The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control recommend keeping a certain distance between people to prevent the spread of COVID-19. These social distancing recommendations are estimated from a variety of studies, but further research about the precise mechanism of virus transport from one person to another is still needed.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 9, 2021 at 10:23am

Subatomic particle seen changing to antiparticle and back

Physicists have proved that a subatomic particle can switch into its antiparticle alter-ego and back again, in a new discovery revealed recently.

The extraordinarily precise measurement was made by UK researchers using the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN.

It has provided the first evidence that charm mesons can change into their antiparticle and back again.

For more than 10 years, scientists have known that charm mesons, subatomic particles that contain a quark and an antiquark, can travel as a mixture of their particle and antiparticle states.

It is a phenomenon called mixing.

However, this new result shows for the first time that they can oscillate between the two states.

Armed with this new evidence, scientists can try to tackle some of the biggest questions in physics around how particles behave outside of the Standard Model.

One being, whether these transitions are caused by unknown particles not predicted by the guiding theory.

The research, submitted to Physical Review Letters and available on arXiv.

Observation of the mass difference between neutral charm-meson eigenstates. arXiv:2106.03744v1 [hep-ex] arxiv.org/abs/2106.03744

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-subatomic-particle-antiparticle.html?...

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