- Wizards of the Coast Already Courting Multiple Studios to Develop Next Baldur’s Gate Push Square
- Hasbro Talking to ‘Lots’ of Partners About the Future of Baldur’s Gate After Larian Walked Away From Dungeons & Dragons IGN
- Hasbro wants to make another Baldur’s Gate sequel but it’s early days yet: ‘We certainly hope that it’s not another 25 years’ PC Gamer
- Hasbro Already Planning Baldur’s Gate 3 Sequel Without Larian Kotaku
- D&D owner Hasbro is already “talking to lots of partners” about the next Baldur’s Gate game and hopes “it’s not another 25 years” before it comes out Gamesradar
Tag Archives: develop
Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s – but our research suggests a specific brain enzyme could help protect them – The Conversation Indonesia
- Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s – but our research suggests a specific brain enzyme could help protect them The Conversation Indonesia
- Protein activation in the brain may protect women against Alzheimer’s Medical Xpress
- CYP46A1-mediated cholesterol turnover induces sex-specific changes in cognition and counteracts memory loss in ovariectomized mice Science
- Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, but our research suggests that a certain brain enzyme may help protect them. Pi News | Pi News pro iqra
- Cholesterol Metabolite Ups Estrogen Signaling to Keep Females Sharp | ALZFORUM Alzforum
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group And Tom Cruise To Jointly Develop And Produce Original And Franchise Theatrical Films Starring Cruise Beginning In 2024 Under Newly Formed Strategic Partnership – Warner Bros. Discovery
- Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group And Tom Cruise To Jointly Develop And Produce Original And Franchise Theatrical Films Starring Cruise Beginning In 2024 Under Newly Formed Strategic Partnership Warner Bros. Discovery
- Tom Cruise Returns To Warner Bros, Forms New Strategic Movie Partnership Deadline
- Tom Cruise Signs Deal With Warner Bros. to Develop and Produce Original and Franchise Films Variety
- Tom Cruise Sets Up Shop at Warner Bros. with New Movie Partnership Hollywood Reporter
- Tom Cruise Is Back at Warner Bros. for ‘Original and Franchise Theatrical Films’ IndieWire
Get ready for Covid vaccine PILLS! Researchers develop oral shot that kills virus BEFORE it infects the body – Daily Mail
- Get ready for Covid vaccine PILLS! Researchers develop oral shot that kills virus BEFORE it infects the body Daily Mail
- COVID vaccine pill that kills virus before it infects the body could be coming New York Post
- “Inverse Vaccine” Could Reverse Symptoms Of Multiple Autoimmune Diseases IFLScience
- “Inverse Vaccine” Could Treat Multiple Sclerosis and Range of Other Autoimmune Diseases Inside Precision Medicine
- “Inverse vaccine” shows promise to reverse autoimmune diseases without shutting down rest of the immune system News-Medical.Net
- View Full Coverage on Google News
NASA and DARPA to develop nuclear thermal rocket engine that may put humans on Mars: reports
NASA is partnering with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to use a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, according to reports.
In a press release on Tuesday, NASA said the nuclear thermal rocket engine could one day be used for NASA crewed missions to Mars.
Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft, which will demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine. Nuclear thermal propulsion technology could be used for future NASA crewed missions to Mars.
(DARPA and NASA)
Both agencies will collaborate on the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, program, under a “non-reimbursable agreement.”
NASA’S ARTEMIS I LAUNCH TO BRING US STEP CLOSER TO ‘SUSTAINABLE HUMAN FOOTPRINT ON THE MOON’
The agreement, the release read, is designed to benefit both agencies while outlining roles, responsibilities and processes that could accelerate the program’s development.
“NASA will work with our long-term partner, DARPA, to develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars. Congratulations to both NASA and DARPA on this exciting investment, as we ignite the future, together.”
The nuclear thermal rocket would allow transit between the moon and Mars to take less time while also reducing the risk for astronauts.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson speaks during a visit to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center on November 5, 2021 in Greenbelt, Maryland.
((Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images))
Longer trips require more supplies, so reducing the transit time would be a key component for human missions to Mars.
NASA INSIGHT LANDER RECORDS LARGEST QUAKE ON MARS EVER, SCIENTISTS SAY
Additional benefits include increased science payload capacity and higher power generation for instruments and communications.
Nuclear thermal rocket engines have a fission reactor that generates extremely high temperatures. NASA said the engine transfers that heat to a liquid propellant which is exhausted through a nozzle that propels the spacecraft.
These types of engines, NASA added, can be three times more efficient than chemical propulsion engines.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image of “Santa Cruz,” a hill within Jezero Crater, on April 29, 2021, the 68th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
(Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
“NASA has a long history of collaborating with DARPA on projects that enable our respective missions, such as in-space servicing,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said. “Expanding our partnership to nuclear propulsion will help drive forward NASA’s goal to send humans to Mars.”
NASA’S MARS LANDER INSIGHT TRANSMITS POTENTIAL FINAL IMAGE OF THE RED PLANET AS ITS POWER DWINDLES
As part of the agreement, NASA will lead the technical development of the nuclear thermal engine while DARP will function as the contracting authority for the stage and engine, including the reactor.
DARPA will also lead the overall program, including rocket system integration, procurement, approvals, security, scheduling, and more.
The goal is to be able to demonstrate the rocket in space as early as 2027.
“DARPA and NASA have a long history of fruitful collaboration in advancing technologies for our respective goals, from the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon for the first time to robotic servicing and refueling of satellites,” Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, director, DARPA said. “The space domain is critical to modern commerce, scientific discovery, and national security. The ability to accomplish leap-ahead advances in space technology through the DRACO nuclear thermal rocket program will be essential for more efficiently and quickly transporting material to the Moon and eventually, people to Mars.”
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NASA said the last nuclear thermal rocket engine tests conducted by the U.S. took place more than 50 years ago under NASA’s Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application and Rover projects.
NASA will join a military program to develop nuclear thermal propulsion
Enlarge / Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft.
DARPA
Nearly three years ago, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced its intent to develop a flyable nuclear thermal propulsion system. The goal was to develop more responsive control of spacecraft in Earth orbit, lunar orbit, and everywhere in between, giving the military greater operational freedom in these domains.
The military agency called this program a Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO for short. The program consists of the development of two things: a nuclear fission reactor and a spacecraft to fly it. In 2021, DARPA awarded $22 million to General Atomics for the reactor and gave small grants of $2.9 million to Lockheed Martin and $2.5 million to Blue Origin for the spacecraft system.
At the same time, NASA was coming to realize that if it were really serious about sending humans to Mars one day, it would be good to have a faster and more fuel-efficient means of getting there. An influential report published in 2021 concluded that the space agency’s only realistic path to putting humans on Mars in the coming decades was using nuclear propulsion.
Nuclear thermal propulsion involves a rocket engine in which a nuclear reactor replaces the combustion chamber and burns liquid hydrogen as a fuel. It requires significantly less fuel than chemical propulsion, often less than 500 metric tons, to reach Mars. That would be helpful for a Mars mission that would include several advance missions to pre-stage cargo on the red planet.
So this week, NASA said it is partnering with the military agency and joining the DRACO project.
“NASA will work with our long-term partner DARPA to develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever, a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars.”
The US space agency will provide no direct funding at this time. However, its Space Technology Mission Directorate will lead the technical development of the nuclear thermal engine, a key component of the spacecraft that will harness energy from the nuclear reactor. DARPA will still lead the overall program development, including rocket systems integration and procurement.
Nuclear thermal propulsion has long been a goal of spaceflight advocates, dating back to the days of German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and NASA’s Project NERVA. Those plans were never realized, and the idea has remained on the back burner for decades. Now, this joint project is the most serious US effort to develop the technology since then. It has the added benefit of interest from the US Congress, which has been pushing the space agency to get involved.
None of this will happen fast. The technology is difficult and unproven, and there are of course regulatory issues involved with launching a nuclear reactor into space. The year 2027 seems optimistic for a demonstration, and the technology is unlikely to be used to send humans to Mars before at least the very late 2030s.
But something is finally happening. For now, that’s enough.
343 Industries Will Continue to Develop Halo ‘Now and in the Future’
Amidst rumors that 343 Industries has been taken off of lead development of the Halo franchise, the studio has taken to Twitter to state that it will continue to “develop Halo now and in the future.”
343 Industries’ studio head Pierre Hintze shared the message on Twitter, saying, “Halo and Master Chief are here to stay. 343 Industries will continue to develop Halo now and in the future, including epic stories, multiplayer, and more of what makes Halo great.”
pic.twitter.com/03Xm3a9s59
— Halo (@Halo) January 21, 2023
The news follows the mass layoffs of 10,000 people at Microsoft, which saw a number of employees at Xbox Game Studios, The Coalition, 343 Industries, and Bethesda let go. Shortly after, Halo Infinite director Joseph Staten reportedly left 343 Industries to rejoin Xbox publishing.
Rumors then started swirling that 343 Industries would be taken off lead development of the Halo franchise and would instead help third-party studios bring Halo to life in the form of new games. As reported by Metro, one such leaker named Bathrobe Spartan even said that initial plans for story-based DLC for Halo Infinite have been canceled already.
In response to the rumors, 343 Industries has planted its flag and said it is here to stay.
Halo Infinite has had a bumpy ride since it was announced, from its controversial E3 2020 demo to its unpopular original Battle Pass and progression system that has since been changed to the cancelation of split-screen co-op.
There have been a lot of positives as well, as we scored both Halo Infinite’s single-player campaign and multiplayer a 9/10, and the team has done a lot to address fan complaints.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Scientists develop a vaccine that kills AND prevents untreatable brain cancer that killed Beau Biden
Scientists develop a vaccine that destroys AND prevents untreatable brain cancer which killed Beau Biden and John McCain
- A new Glioblastoma treatment uses living cancer cells to reduce brain tumors
- Cells are removed, modified, and returned to induce a strong immune response
- The cell therapy method, so far tested only on mice, produced promising results
A new experimental vaccine may hold hope for sufferers of the incurable brain cancer glioblastoma.
The dual-action shot – so far only tested in mice – eliminates existing tumors and prevents future cancer from returning.
Experts take live pieces of patients’ tumors and reprogram them to attack the glioblastoma before reinjecting them into the body. From there, the re-engineered living cancer cells make a beeline to the original tumor, allowing the immune system to tag and remember them as they travel.
While it has only been tested in animals, the shot offers hope in the treatment of a deadly cancer that kills virtually all patients within five years. President Biden’s son Beau succumbed to glioblastoma in 2015 at just 46 years old. Senator John McCain died in 2018, only one year after his diagnosis.
The new vaccine works in 4 steps: First, cancer cells are removed from the tumor; Second, through gene mutation using CRISPR technology, the cells are re-engineered to produce a tumor killing agent and express factors allowing the immune system to better recognize and tag them; Third, the cells are re-inserted, and begin travelling across the brain to the tumor site, producing a strong immune defense; Finally, the tumor reduces as a result of the two-pronged attack
Glioblastoma are malignant, stage 4 tumors that develop deep in the brain and spinal cord.
Their fast growth and invasion of surrounding brain tissue makes 100% removal nearly impossible, while the changing nature of the tumor cells over time makes treatment incredibly difficult.
The new vaccine is the result of years of painstaking research by a lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts.
The treatments works by extracting live tumor cells from a Glioblastoma, and transforming them into potent, anti-cancer killers.
Most cancer vaccines in production use inactivated cancer particles to help the immune system seek and destroy them.
But the new shot turns living cells into tumor killers that will both destroy active tumor cells and allow the immune system to memorize how to combat them next time.
This method harnesses the unique ability of active cancer cells to travel vast distances across the brain to return to the site of their fellow tumor cells, much like homing pigeons returning to the roost.
The transplanted cells are transformed using CRISPR technology, a gene editor that allowed the team to reprogram the cells to release a tumor killing agent.
The lab also conditioned the tumor cells to express factors that make them more recognizable to the immune system, allowing it to tag and remember them.
The patient’s immune system is thereby primed for a long-term, anti-tumor response.
Once packaged into a vaccine, the team tested it on mice bearing cells derived from humans, mimicking how it would work on people.
Dr. Khalid Shah, one of the creators of the shot, said: ‘Our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and transform them into cancer killers and vaccines.
‘Using gene engineering, we are repurposing cancer cells to develop a therapeutic that kills tumor cells and stimulates the immune system to both destroy primary tumors and prevent cancer.’
The team’s findings were published in Science Translational Medicine this week.
It comes as a number of new vaccines show promising results in trials.
Moderna’s new cancer vaccine uses the same mRNA technology as its Covid vaccination, using pieces of genetic code from patients’ tumors to effectively ‘teach’ the body to fight off cancer.
The shot, combined with an immunotherapy drug, reduced the chance of relapse or death in post-surgery Melanoma patients by 44 percent, compared to the drug on its own.
Another recent cancer breakthrough saw all 10 participants of a last resort Mount Sinai trial go from having just years to live, to complete or partial remission.
The vaccine they received was injected directly into the tumor itself, melting it away as well as teaching the body to hunt and kill cancer cells that have spread elsewhere.
Scientists develop a cool new method of refrigeration
Adding salt to a road before a winter storm changes when ice will form. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have applied this basic concept to develop a new method of heating and cooling. The technique, which they have named “ionocaloric cooling,” is described in a paper published Dec. 23 in the journal Science.
Ionocaloric cooling takes advantage of how energy, or heat, is stored or released when a material changes phase—such as changing from solid ice to liquid water. Melting a material absorbs heat from the surroundings, while solidifying it releases heat. The ionocaloric cycle causes this phase and temperature change through the flow of ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) which come from a salt.
Researchers hope that the method could one day provide efficient heating and cooling, which accounts for more than half of the energy used in homes, and help phase out current “vapor compression” systems, which use gases with high global warming potential as refrigerants. Ionocaloric refrigeration would eliminate the risk of such gases escaping into the atmosphere by replacing them with solid and liquid components.
“The landscape of refrigerants is an unsolved problem: No one has successfully developed an alternative solution that makes stuff cold, works efficiently, is safe, and doesn’t hurt the environment,” said Drew Lilley, a graduate research assistant at Berkeley Lab and Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley who led the study. “We think the ionocaloric cycle has the potential to meet all those goals if realized appropriately.”
Finding a solution that replaces current refrigerants is essential for countries to meet climate change goals, such as those in the Kigali Amendment (accepted by 145 parties, including the United States in October 2022). The agreement commits signatories to reduce production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) by at least 80% over the next 25 years. HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases commonly found in refrigerators and air conditioning systems, and can trap heat thousands of times as effectively as carbon dioxide.
The new ionocaloric cycle joins several other kinds of “caloric” cooling in development. Those techniques use different methods—including magnetism, pressure, stretching, and electric fields—to manipulate solid materials so that they absorb or release heat. Ionocaloric cooling differs by using ions to drive solid-to-liquid phase changes. Using a liquid has the added benefit of making the material pumpable, making it easier to get heat in or out of the system—something solid-state cooling has struggled with.
Lilley and corresponding author Ravi Prasher, a research affiliate in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area and adjunct professor in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, laid out the theory underlying the ionocaloric cycle. They calculated that it has the potential to compete with or even exceed the efficiency of gaseous refrigerants found in the majority of systems today.
They also demonstrated the technique experimentally. Lilley used a salt made with iodine and sodium, alongside ethylene carbonate, a common organic solvent used in lithium-ion batteries.
“There’s potential to have refrigerants that are not just GWP [global warming potential]-zero, but GWP-negative,” Lilley said. “Using a material like ethylene carbonate could actually be carbon-negative, because you produce it by using carbon dioxide as an input. This could give us a place to use CO2 from carbon capture.”
Running current through the system moves the ions, changing the material’s melting point. When it melts, the material absorbs heat from the surroundings, and when the ions are removed and the material solidifies, it gives heat back. The first experiment showed a temperature change of 25 degrees Celsius using less than one volt, a greater temperature lift than demonstrated by other caloric technologies.
“There are three things we’re trying to balance: the GWP of the refrigerant, energy efficiency, and the cost of the equipment itself,” Prasher said. “From the first try, our data looks very promising on all three of these aspects.”
While caloric methods are often discussed in terms of their cooling power, the cycles can also be harnessed for applications such as water heating or industrial heating. The ionocaloric team is continuing work on prototypes to determine how the technique might scale to support large amounts of cooling, improve the amount of temperature change the system can support, and improve the efficiency.
“We have this brand-new thermodynamic cycle and framework that brings together elements from different fields, and we’ve shown that it can work,” Prasher said. “Now, it’s time for experimentation to test different combinations of materials and techniques to meet the engineering challenges.”
Lilley and Prasher have received a provisional patent for the ionocaloric refrigeration cycle, and the technology is now available for licensing.
More information:
Drew Lilley et al, Ionocaloric refrigeration cycle, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.ade1696
Provided by
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Citation:
Scientists develop a cool new method of refrigeration (2023, January 4)
retrieved 5 January 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientists-cool-method-refrigeration.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
Researchers develop a light source that produces two entangled light beams
Scientists are increasingly studying quantum entanglement, which occurs when two or more systems are created or interact in such a manner that the quantum states of some cannot be described independently of the quantum states of the others. The systems are correlated, even when they are separated by a large distance. The significant potential for applications in encryption, communications and quantum computing spurs research. The difficulty is that when the systems interact with their surroundings, they almost immediately become disentangled.
In the latest study by the Laboratory for Coherent Manipulation of Atoms and Light (LMCAL) at the University of São Paulo’s Physics Institute (IF-USP) in Brazil, the researchers succeeded in developing a light source that produced two entangled light beams. Their work is published in Physical Review Letters.
“This light source was an optical parametric oscillator, or OPO, which is typically made up of a non-linear optical response crystal between two mirrors forming an optical cavity. When a bright green beam shines on the apparatus, the crystal-mirror dynamics produces two light beams with quantum correlations,” said physicist Hans Marin Florez, last author of the article.
The problem is that light emitted by crystal-based OPOs cannot interact with other systems of interest in the context of quantum information, such as cold atoms, ions or chips, since its wavelength is not the same as those of the systems in question. “Our group showed in previous work that atoms themselves could be used as a medium instead of a crystal. We therefore produced the first OPO based on rubidium atoms, in which two beams were intensely quantum-correlated, and obtained a source that could interact with other systems with the potential to serve as quantum memory, such as cold atoms,” Florez said.
However, this was not sufficient to show the beams were entangled. In addition to the intensity, the beams’ phases, which have to do with light wave synchronization, also needed to display quantum correlations. “That’s precisely what we achieved in the new study reported in Physical Review Letters,” he said.
“We repeated the same experiment but added new detection steps that enabled us to measure the quantum correlations in the amplitudes and phases of the fields generated. As a result, we were able to show they were entangled. Furthermore, the detection technique enabled us to observe that the entanglement structure was richer than would typically be characterized. Instead of two adjacent bands of the spectrum being entangled, what we had actually produced was a system comprising four entangled spectral bands.”
In this case, the amplitudes and phases of the waves were entangled. This is fundamental in many protocols to process and transmit quantum-coded information. Besides these possible applications, this kind of light source could also be used in metrology. “Quantum correlations of intensity result in a considerable reduction of intensity fluctuations, which can enhance the sensitivity of optical sensors,” Florez said. “Imagine a party where everyone is talking and you can’t hear someone on the other side of the room. If the noise decreases sufficiently, if everyone stops talking, you can hear what someone says from a good distance away.”
Enhancing the sensitivity of atomic magnetometers used to measure the alpha waves emitted by the human brain is one of the potential applications, he added.
The article also notes an additional advantage of rubidium OPOs over crystal OPOs. “Crystal OPOs have to have mirrors that keep the light inside the cavity for longer, so that the interaction produces quantum correlated beams, whereas the use of an atomic medium in which the two beams are produced more efficiently than with crystals avoids the need for mirrors to imprison the light for such a long time,” Florez said.
Before his group conducted this study, other groups had tried to make OPOs with atoms but failed to demonstrate quantum correlations in the light beams produced. The new experiment showed there was no intrinsic limit in the system to prevent this from happening. “We discovered that the temperature of the atoms is key to observation of quantum correlations. Apparently, the other studies used higher temperatures that prevented the researchers from observing correlations,” he said.
More information:
A. Montaña Guerrero et al, Continuous Variable Entanglement in an Optical Parametric Oscillator Based on a Nondegenerate Four Wave Mixing Process in Hot Alkali Atoms, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.163601
Citation:
Researchers develop a light source that produces two entangled light beams (2023, January 3)
retrieved 4 January 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-01-source-entangled.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.