- Sarepta Therapeutics Announces Topline Results from EMBARK, a Global Pivotal Study of ELEVIDYS Gene Therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Business Wire
- Sarepta’s Duchenne gene therapy fails to meet primary endpoint in pivotal trial STAT
- [Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR] Roche announces EMBARK trial in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) did not reach primary endpoint, but shows positive efficacy outcomes on all timed functional key endpoints GlobeNewswire
- Even after primary miss, Sarepta to seek wider Elevidys approval FiercePharma
- Sarepta’s upcoming data on Duchenne gene therapy: What to know STAT
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: embark
Astronauts embark on spacewalk to boost ISS power
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The International Space Station is set to receive its second solar power boost in a month during a spacewalk on Thursday. The event comes after a piece of wayward space garbage interfered with plans to carry out the spacewalk Wednesday.
NASA was forced to implement a 24-hour delay so that the space station could fire up its thrusters to move out of the way of the debris, which was identified as a fragment of an old Russian rocket. Near-collisions in space are common, as low-Earth orbit — the area in which the ISS orbits — is becoming increasingly congested with satellites and space junk.
“The crew is not in any immediate danger,” NASA noted in a blog post Wednesday.
The spacewalk kicked off Thursday around 8:30 a.m. ET and is expected to last for about seven hours. Live coverage began at 7 a.m. ET on NASA’s website.
NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio are working to install a solar array outside the floating laboratory. Rubio is serving as extravehicular crew member 1 and is wearing a suit with red stripes, while Cassada is wearing an unmarked white suit as extravehicular crew member 2.
Thursday’s spacewalk is one of many intended to install rollout solar arrays, called iROSAs, to increase electrical power on the space station.
The first two rollout solar arrays were installed outside the station in June 2021. The plan is to add six iROSAs, which will likely boost the space station’s power generation by more than 30% once all are operational.
Two more arrays were delivered to the space station on November 27 aboard the 26th SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission, which also carried dwarf tomato seeds and other experiments to the orbiting laboratory. Rolled up like carpet, the arrays weigh 750 pounds (340 kilograms) each and are 10 feet (3 meters) wide.
Cassada and Rubio already installed one outside the space station during a spacewalk on December 3.
During Thursday’s spacewalk, the two will install a solar array to increase capacity in one of the space station’s eight power channels, located on its port truss.
Once the array is unfurled and bolted into place, it will be about 63 feet (19 meters) long and 20 feet (6 meters) wide.
The original solar arrays on the space station are still functioning, but they have been supplying power for more than 20 years and are showing signs of wear after long-term exposure to the space environment. The arrays were originally designed to last 15 years.
Erosion can be caused by thruster plumes, which come from both the station’s thrusters and those of the crew and cargo vehicles that come and go from the station, as well as micrometeorite debris.
The new solar arrays are being placed in front of the original ones. It’s a good test because equipment using this same design will power parts of the planned Gateway lunar outpost, which will help humans return to the moon through NASA’s Artemis program.
The new arrays will have a similar 15-year life expectancy. However, since the degradation on the original arrays was expected to be worse, the team will monitor the new ones to test their longevity because they may last longer.
While US spacewalks continue, Russian ones conducted by cosmonauts aboard the space station are on hold following the discovery of a coolant leak from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is docked to the Russian segment of the space station.
The leak was found December 14 ahead of a planned Roscosmos spacewalk, when liquid began spewing out from the Soyuz.
The external radiator cooling loop of the Soyuz is the suspected leak source, according to a December 15 update from NASA.
While the space station crew remained safe, investigation of the leak is ongoing. NASA is expected to give an update on the issue on Thursday at 11 a.m. ET.
The Soyuz MS-22 ferried NASA’s Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts to the space station on September 21 and is scheduled to bring them back to Earth in March.
BTS members to embark on mandatory military service
CNN
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Members of BTS, the K-pop supergroup, are planning to undertake military service, the band’s record label confirmed Monday, with Jin, the oldest member, aiming to start the process at the end of the month.
Military service is mandatory in South Korea, where almost all able-bodied men are required to serve in the army for 18 months by the time they are 28 years old.
South Korea’s parliament passed a bill in 2020 allowing pop stars – namely those who “excel in popular culture and art” – to defer their service until the age of 30.
With Jin turning 30 this year, and the band’s announcement of a break in June from group musical activities to pursue solo projects, members are now making plans to serve.
BTS is expected to reconvene as a group around 2025, according to BIGHIT Music.
The record label said it has been looking at the timing of the band’s military service, “to respect the needs of the country and for these healthy young men,” and it said the time was “now.”
“Group member Jin will initiate the process as soon as his schedule for his solo release is concluded at the end of October. He will then follow the enlistment procedure of the Korean government,” the label said, adding: “Other members of the group plan to carry out their military service based on their own individual plans.”
The country’s defense minister said in August that BTS might still be able to perform overseas while serving in the military, the Reuters news agency reported.
Physicists Embark on a Hunt for a Long-Sought Quantum Glow
According to a prediction known as the Unruh effect, Millenium Falcon pilots would more likely see a warm glow as they jump to hyperspace. Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT
A new approach could make it possible detect the elusive Unruh effect in hours, rather than billions of years.
For “Star Wars” fans, the streaking stars seen from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon as it jumps to hyperspace is a canonical image. But what would a pilot actually see if she could accelerate in an instant through the vacuum of space? She would most certainly see a warm glow, according to a prediction known as the Unruh effect.
Since the 1970s when it was first proposed, the Unruh effect has eluded detection, owing to the fact that the probability of seeing the effect is infinitesimally small, requiring either incredible accelerations or vast periods of observation time. However, researchers at
“Now at least we know there is a chance in our lifetimes where we might actually see this effect,” says study co-author Vivishek Sudhir, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, who is designing an experiment to catch the effect based on the group’s theory. “It’s a hard experiment, and there’s no guarantee that we’d be able to do it, but this idea is our nearest hope.”
The study’s co-authors also include Barbara Šoda and Achim Kempf of the University of Waterloo.
Close connection
The Unruh effect is also known as the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect, after the three physicists who initially proposed it. The prediction states that a body that is accelerating through a vacuum should in fact feel the presence of warm radiation purely as an effect of the body’s acceleration. This effect has to do with quantum interactions between accelerated matter and quantum fluctuations within the vacuum of empty space.
To produce a glow warm enough for detectors to measure, a body such as an
“To see this effect in a short amount of time, you’d have to have some incredible acceleration,” Sudhir says. “If you instead had some reasonable acceleration, you’d have to wait a ginormous amount of time — longer than the age of the universe — to see a measurable effect.”
What, then, would be the point? For one, he says that observing the Unruh effect would be a validation of fundamental quantum interactions between matter and light. And for another, the detection could represent a mirror of the Hawking effect — a proposal by the physicist Stephen Hawking that predicts a similar thermal glow, or “Hawking radiation,” from light and matter interactions in an extreme gravitational field, such as around a
In their study, the researchers introduced a new approach to increase the probability of the Unruh effect, by adding light to the entire scenario — an approach known as stimulation.
“When you add photons into the field, you’re adding ‘n’ times more of those fluctuations than this half a photon that’s in the vacuum,” Sudhir explains. “So, if you accelerate through this new state of the field, you’d expect to see effects that also scale ‘n’ times what you would see from just the vacuum alone.”
However, in addition to the quantum Unruh effect, the additional photons would also amplify other effects in the vacuum — a major drawback that has kept other hunters of the Unruh effect from taking the stimulation approach.
Šoda, Sudhir, and Kempf, however, found a work-around, through “acceleration-induced transparency,” a concept they introduce in the paper. They showed theoretically that if a body such as an atom could be made to accelerate with a very specific trajectory through a field of photons, the atom would interact with the field in such a way that photons of a certain frequency would essentially appear invisible to the atom.
“When we stimulate the Unruh effect, at the same time we also stimulate the conventional, or resonant, effects, but we show that by engineering the trajectory of the particle, we can essentially turn off those effects,” Šoda says.
By making all other effects transparent, the researchers could then have a better chance of measuring the photons, or the thermal radiation coming from only the Unruh effect, as the physicists predicted.
The researchers already have some ideas for how to design an experiment based on their hypothesis. They plan to build a laboratory-sized particle accelerator capable of accelerating an electron to close to the speed of light, which they would then stimulate using a laser beam at microwave wavelengths. They are looking for ways to engineer the electron’s path to suppress classical effects, while amplifying the elusive Unruh effect.
“Now we have this mechanism that seems to statistically amplify this effect via stimulation,” Sudhir says. “Given the 40-year history of this problem, we’ve now in theory fixed the biggest bottleneck.”
Reference: “Acceleration-Induced Effects in Stimulated Light-Matter Interactions” by Barbara Šoda, Vivishek Sudhir and Achim Kempf, 21 April 2022, Physical Review Letters.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.163603
This research was supported, in part, by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Australian Research Council, and a Google Faculty Research Award.
49ers embark on their quarterback quest for 2021
The fact that the 49ers reportedly made an attempt to trade for quarterback Matthew Stafford confirms what many have suspected for months. With quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo entering the outer years of his contract, with a relatively minimal cap charge associated with trading or cutting him, all options are on the table as the 49ers determine the identity of their quarterback for 2021.
The 49ers have only $2.8 million in unallocated signing-bonus charges arising from the contract given to Garoppolo three years ago. He has a $24.1 million base salary for next season, none of which is currently guaranteed — and none of which becomes guaranteed at any point before the start of the regular season.
Thus, the 49ers can treat Garoppolo like any other potentially available quarterback option that may be available to them. Whether it’s pursuing a free agent who may become available or whether it’s trading for an established option at the position, the 49ers can do whatever they want to do.
Last year, they considered adding quarterback Tom Brady. They decided to stick with Garoppolo. The fact that Brady has vaulted the Buccaneers in his first year with the team to the Super Bowl surely has the 49ers wondering whether they made the right call.
Yes, the rash of injuries sustained by the 49ers this year would have made it very difficult for the 49ers to thrive even with Brady. Still, Garoppolo once again failed to show the kind of durability that characterizes true franchise quarterbacks like Brady, who but for a fluke low hit in Week One of the 2008 season would be in the midst of a two-decade streak of showing up and performing, each and every week.
Garoppolo has missed 23 games in three full seasons with the 49ers. Although he performs well when able to play, the inability to play becomes a major factor in the ability of the 49ers to justify continuing to ride with Garoppolo.
So what will they do? A trade offer for Deshaun Watson remains possible, although the price will surely be high. Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, the player whom 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan assumed the team would sign as a free agent in 2018 but for the Garoppolo trade, could be available in a trade. It’s not news that Shanahan would be interested in the player he and his father drafted nine years ago. The news will arise if/when the Vikings decide to move on from Cousins — and if/when the 49ers decide to absorb a contract that pays $56 million fully guaranteed over the next two years.
The Vikings first would have to be willing to trade Cousins. Before the Vikings would do that, they’d need to be willing to absorb $20 million in dead money for 2021. They’d also need to be confident that they have another viable option at quarterback.
If not Cousins, who would the Vikings quarterback be? Cam Newton? Andy Dalton? Mitchell Trubisky? Ryan Fitzpatrick? Jacoby Brissett? Jameis Winston? Alex Smith?
Minnesota could try to trade for Deshaun Watson, if he’d be willing to play there. But that would require multiple first-round draft picks (probably three) and maybe more.
Although Cousins has played well during three seasons in Minnesota, the Vikings have only one playoff appearance during his tenure with the team. However, absent someone in whom they’d have sufficient faith for 2021, they’d potentially be taking a step back, especially since they currently have no offensive coordinator.
The Vikings made an all-in move when they signed Cousins. There’s no similar all-in move they could make this year, unless they go ultra-all-in for Watson. Would a trade for someone like Sam Darnold make a difference in a year that likely will entail coach Mike Zimmer and G.M. Rick Spielman inching toward the hot seat? The Vikings pick too low to get one of the top incoming rookies, and placing full faith in a first-year player would entail significant risk.
From a continuity standpoint, especially if Klint Kubiak becomes the next offensive coordinator, it makes sense to keep Cousins. Barring a highly-unlikely decision by Tom Brady to ask for a trade or a release by the Buccaneers and a willingness by Brady to continue his career in his mother’s native state, there’s no obviously viable option who will help the Vikings do enough in 2021 to keep the power structure in place for 2022.
Even a trade with the 49ers that would bring Jimmy Garoppolo to Minnesota wouldn’t be enough to ensure that the Vikings will be competitive. Although there’s no reason to think the Vikings will suddenly become dominant if Cousins gets a fourth season, putting all eggs in a different basket could be the quickest way to get all of those eggs busted.
Thus, even though plenty of Vikings fans may be ready to move on, the coaching staff and the front office need to keep Cousins, if they hope to keep at bay the possibility of the Vikings pressing the reset button after the coming season. Only Cousins minimizes that risk.
By 2022, things could be very different. But 2022 may as well be 2032, as far as the Vikings are concerned. Despite the hard ceiling that seems to reside over Minnesota’s chances to contend at a high level in 2021, the folks who need to get as close to that ceiling as possible next season likely will decide that Cousins gives them the best chance to do so.
So where does that leave the 49ers? That remains to be seen, as the coaching carousel begins to spin, thanks to the kick start that the Saturday night news of a Lions-Rams quarterback trade has provided.
Regardless of where things end up, it’s obvious that the 49ers already have begun to explore all available options.