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In what might be a bit of nightmare fuel. Scientists at Stanford have made skin transparent enabling the direct optical study of internal organs in live mice.


We report on the counterintuitive observation that strongly absorbing molecules can achieve optical transparency in live biological tissues. Specifically, we found that an aqueous solution of a common food color approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, tartrazine, has the effect of reversibly making the skin, muscle, and connective tissues transparent in live rodents.
 
Instead of worrying about drinking Mountain Dew when I was younger causing my penis to get smaller, I should've been worrying about my body becoming translucent.
 
So is my experience reading this thread kind of like the experience of a research scientist reading about the procedural challenges to Trump’s classified documents case?

Confused Rooster Teeth GIF by Achievement Hunter
 
dcf2 said:
In what might be a bit of nightmare fuel. Scientists at Stanford have made skin transparent enabling the direct optical study of internal organs in live mice.


We report on the counterintuitive observation that strongly absorbing molecules can achieve optical transparency in live biological tissues. Specifically, we found that an aqueous solution of a common food color approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, tartrazine, has the effect of reversibly making the skin, muscle, and connective tissues transparent in live rodents.
Click to expand...
That’s a nifty trick. How long before I can get a VAST imaging system for pregnant dams?
 
Scott Manley's examination of new video regarding the Titan sub implosion.
{{ I highly recommend his YT channel, generally }}

 
Scientists successfully nuke asteroid

www.nature.com

Scientists successfully ‘nuke asteroid’ — in a lab mock-up

Experiment shows that, in a worst-case scenario, humanity could use a nuclear explosion to save the planet from a deadly impact.
www.nature.com www.nature.com

The Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered mass extinction, mega-tsunamis and a spell of global warming that lasted for around 100,000 years. Although the recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission by NASA demonstrated that near-Earth objects can be successfully targeted, deflecting the most dangerous asteroids will require energy concentrations akin to nuclear explosions. However, targets suitable for practice missions are scarce. Here we demonstrate the simulation of asteroid deflection with an X-ray pulse from a dense argon plasma generated at the Z machine, a pulsed power device at Sandia National Laboratories. We use so-called X-ray scissors to place surrogate asteroidal material into free space, simultaneously severing supports and vapourizing the target surface. The ensuing explosion accelerates the mock asteroidal material in a scaled asteroid intercept mission. Deflection velocities of around 70 m s–1 for silica targets agree with radiation-hydrodynamic model predictions. We scale these results to proposed interceptor energies and predict that asteroids up to a diameter of (4 ± 1) km can be deflected with this mechanism, showing a viable way to prepare for future planetary defence missions.

but also

 
I hope this is the right place to drop this. Did not expect what I got when I clicked. 😄

Japanese scientists make a robot smiley face with living skin.

ETA found link that works hopefully.
 
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Published in several papers in Nature this week - A new largest animal brain map.

140,000 cell and more than 50 million synapses have been physically mapped in fruit fly - like a wiring diagram. More than 8,000 different types of neurons have been described including thousands of new types.

www.nature.com

A complete wiring diagram of the fruit-fly brain

A connectomic map of the entire fly brain.
www.nature.com www.nature.com

also

Codex

codex.flywire.ai codex.flywire.ai
 
The worm genome wasn't completed until ~1998. So pre-genomic era.

Cell 1993


lin-4 is essential for the normal temporal control of diverse postembryonic developmental events in C. elegans. lin-4 acts by negatively regulating the level of LIN-14 protein, creating a temporal decrease in LIN-14 protein starting in the first larval stage (L1). We have cloned the C. elegans lin-4 locus by chromosomal walking and transformation rescue. We used the C. elegans clone to isolate the gene from three other Caenorhabditis species; all four Caenorhabditis clones functionally rescue the lin-4 null allele of C. elegans. Comparison of the lin-4 genomic sequence from these four species and site-directed mutagenesis of potential open reading frames indicated that lin-4 does not encode a protein. Two small lin-4 transcripts of approximately 22 and 61 nt were identified in C. elegans and found to contain sequences complementary to a repeated sequence element in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) of lin-14 mRNA, suggesting that lin-4 regulates lin-14 translation via an antisense RNA-RNA interaction.
 
dcf2 said:
Scientists successfully nuke asteroid

www.nature.com

Scientists successfully ‘nuke asteroid’ — in a lab mock-up

Experiment shows that, in a worst-case scenario, humanity could use a nuclear explosion to save the planet from a deadly impact.
www.nature.com www.nature.com

The Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered mass extinction, mega-tsunamis and a spell of global warming that lasted for around 100,000 years. Although the recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission by NASA demonstrated that near-Earth objects can be successfully targeted, deflecting the most dangerous asteroids will require energy concentrations akin to nuclear explosions. However, targets suitable for practice missions are scarce. Here we demonstrate the simulation of asteroid deflection with an X-ray pulse from a dense argon plasma generated at the Z machine, a pulsed power device at Sandia National Laboratories. We use so-called X-ray scissors to place surrogate asteroidal material into free space, simultaneously severing supports and vapourizing the target surface. The ensuing explosion accelerates the mock asteroidal material in a scaled asteroid intercept mission. Deflection velocities of around 70 m s–1 for silica targets agree with radiation-hydrodynamic model predictions. We scale these results to proposed interceptor energies and predict that asteroids up to a diameter of (4 ± 1) km can be deflected with this mechanism, showing a viable way to prepare for future planetary defence missions.

but also

Click to expand...

Uh whatever those X-ray scissors are, I hope they're very careful about what direction they point them in
 


“… Baker designed a new protein in 2003 and his research group has since produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors, the Nobel committee said.

Hassabis and Jumper created an artificial intelligence model that has been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified, the committee added. …”
 
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gizmodo.com

Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Mars Became a Lifeless Wasteland

Mars is generally regarded as a place that can't support life, but new research sheds light on how the Red Planet evolved into the barren, inhospitable world we see today.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com
NASA’s Curiosity rover has added a new wrinkle to the theory that the surface of Mars was once hospitable to alien life. New chemical analysis of Martian dirt hints at eras in the planet’s past where the conditions necessary for life may have been met, but only for relatively short periods of time. The very processes that led to elements vital to life being present in Martian soil, may also have led to the waterless conditions currently present.

The trundling robot, which has been exploring Mars’ Gale Crater since 2012, analyzed soil and rock samples from the planet’s surface as part of an effort to find carbon-rich minerals. Carbon is often seen as being vital to life, as its ability to form strong bonds with a host of other atoms makes molecules like DNA and RNA possible. What the rover found suggests that Mars is not only a hostile environment today, but that any periods when the planet could have been habitable may have been brief. However, as the saying goes, life finds a way. More research is needed to determine if microbes might have thrived in more hospitable conditions underground.

NASA’s rovers have found evidence that Mars once had lots of organic compounds rich in the carbon-bearing minerals known as carbonates, and a meteorite with Martian origins has been found to contain carbon, as well. To figure out which isotopes of carbon and oxygen are present in those carbonates, the Curiosity team turned to the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars instruments. The equipment heats collected samples to over 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (899 Celsius) and then uses a laser spectrometer to analyze the gasses that are produced.

When the data was transmitted back to Earth, NASA scientists determined it contained higher levels of certain heavy carbon and oxygen isotopes than had previously been found in Martian samples.

Both elements are vital to the carbon cycle, in which carbon goes through different forms, thanks to processes such as photosynthesis. The carbon cycle is an integral part of life here on Earth, but the researchers found the proportion of heavier isotopes of carbon and oxygen in the samples was far higher than what’s found on Earth.
 
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