116 articles from FRIDAY 3.6.2022

Did volcanic ‘glasses’ help spark early life?

Some content has been removed for formatting reasons. Please view the original article for the best reading experience. When life emerged, it did so quickly. Fossils suggest microbes were present 3.7 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the 4.5-billion-year-old planet had cooled enough to support biochemistry, and many researchers think the hereditary material for...

New director of NASA’s storied Jet Propulsion Lab takes on ballooning mission costs

Some content has been removed for formatting reasons. Please view the original article for the best reading experience. On 16 May, planetary scientist Laurie Leshin became director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), one of the world’s leading labs for robotic space science. Coming off the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars, JPL is readying several more...

New Lunar Spacesuits to Set NASA Back $3.5 Billion

Nobody would have known if I had touched Neil Armstrong’s moon-walking suit back in 2018. I wasn’t supposed to touch it—indeed, I was forbidden to touch it—but boy, I could have. I was in the restoration lab at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy extension outside of Washington, D.C., and the suit was being mounted on a new mannequin-like armature that...

Let doctors use MDMA to treat veterans with PTSD and depression, former ADF boss says

Chris Barrie says he hopes common sense will prevail and the TGA will allow drug to be more readily used to treat patientsGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingThe former chief of the Australian defence force, Chris Barrie, is campaigning to remove barriers stymying doctors from using MDMA to treat veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, saying he hopes...

Beyond our ‘ape-brained meat sacks’: can transhumanism save our species?

The 21st century will be make or break for humanity, says Oxford University transhumanist Elise Bohan. If we get it right, she thinks we might find something better Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastAgeing cured. Death conquered. Work ended. The human brain reverse-engineered by AI. Babies born outside of the womb. Virtual children, non-human partners. The future...

Novel method for early disease detection using DNA droplets

Droplet systems such as DNA droplets, which are formed by liquid-liquid phase separation of macromolecules, play an essential role in cellular functions. Now, by combining the technologies of DNA droplets and DNA computing, computational DNA droplets have been developed, which can recognize specific patterns in tumor biomarker microRNA sequences.

Great timing, supercomputer upgrade lead to successful forecast of volcanic eruption

In the fall of 2017, a team of geologists had just set up a new volcanic forecasting modeling program on the Blue Waters and iForge supercomputers. Simultaneously, another team was monitoring activity at the Sierra Negra volcano in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. The teams shared their insights and what happened next was the fortuitous forecast of the June 2018 Sierra Negra eruption five months...