Science!
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@donsteppa said in Science!:
Notable born on this day from Twitter:
Maurice Ralph Hilleman (August 30, 1919 – April 11, 2005) was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity. According to one estimate, his vaccines save nearly 8 million lives each year. Many have described him as one of the most influential vaccinologists of all time.
Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current American vaccine schedules, Hilleman and his team developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. During the "1957-1958 Asian flu pandemic", his vaccine is believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. He also played a role in the discovery of antigenic shift and drift, the cold-producing adenoviruses, the hepatitis viruses, and the potentially cancer-causing virus SV40.
Not a bad achievement but I’m sure there’s someone out there who spent the evening googling some stuff who knows better than he did.
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@donsteppa said in Science!:
Notable born on this day from Twitter:
Maurice Ralph Hilleman (August 30, 1919 – April 11, 2005) was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity. According to one estimate, his vaccines save nearly 8 million lives each year. Many have described him as one of the most influential vaccinologists of all time.
Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current American vaccine schedules, Hilleman and his team developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. During the "1957-1958 Asian flu pandemic", his vaccine is believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. He also played a role in the discovery of antigenic shift and drift, the cold-producing adenoviruses, the hepatitis viruses, and the potentially cancer-causing virus SV40.
Just think of all the anti-vaxxers his efforts have created.
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@Tim You know any more about this as a cancer cure? Your field I think re proteins, etc:
*Scientists have shown that message RNAs can completely shrink tumours in mice, and now they’re testing it in humans!
mRNAs are now widely discussed for their use in Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Simply put, mRNAs are molecules that instruct cells to make proteins, and in this case they can produce tumour-fighting proteins (cytokines).*
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Scientific basis for the story of Sodom & Gomorrah
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@machpants said in Science!:
Scientific basis for the story of Sodom & Gomorrah
Interesting ongoing analysis of the claims in this (and linked) twitter thread:
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Astronomers discover something invisible near the centre of the galaxy that's blasting out mysterious signals
Mysterious signals unlike anything ever seen before have been detected coming from the direction of the galactic centre, baffling astronomers.
The signal "switches on and off apparently at random" and the object it's coming from is invisible, according to a new paper published this week.
"At first we thought it could be a pulsar - a very dense type of spinning dead star - or else a type of star that emits huge solar flares," said Ziteng Wang, University of Sydney PhD student and lead author.
"But the signals from this new source don't match what we expect from these types of celestial objects."
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Scientists are calling the seismic signal a "marsquake".
Given the catchy name ASKAP J173608.2-321635, named after its coordinates in the sky, the object was first spotted in 2021 using the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia.
"Looking towards the centre of the galaxy, we found ASKAP J173608.2-321635," said Wang's PhD supervisor Tara Murphy. "This object was unique in that it started out invisible, became bright, faded away and then reappeared. This behaviour was extraordinary."
When Prof Murphy says "became bright", she means in the radio spectrum - increasing its output by a factor of 100, before disappearing. It doesn't appear to give off any visual or infrared energy, making it invisible to the naked eye. It also couldn't be detected using telescopes designed to find X-ray signals, Wang said.
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The signals are coming from a spiral galaxy similar to the one pictured.
Mysterious radio signals repeatedly emitting from single source in space
The strange signal was picked up six more times in 2020, then went quiet. When it returned, the mystery only deepened.
"Luckily, the signal returned, but we found that the behaviour of the source was dramatically different - the source disappeared in a single day, even though it had lasted for weeks in our previous ASKAP observations," said Prof Murphy.
The paper, published in The Astrophysics Journal on Tuesday, suggests it might be "a low-mass star/substellar object with extremely low infrared luminosity, a pulsar with scatter-broadened pulses, a transient magnetar, or a Galactic Center radio transient [GCRT]". But none of those explanations really fit, according to what astronomers currently know about them.
The latter seems the best candidate, with one of the team suggesting the new signal has "some parallels" with a previously discovered signal dubbed the 'Cosmic Burper', including its location.
"While our new object... does share some properties with GCRTs there are also differences," said Wang's co-supervisor, David Kaplan from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "And we don't really understand those sources, anyway, so this adds to the mystery."
More clues might be found when the Square Kilometre Array telescope - which will have dishes across the globe - goes online sometime in the next decade.
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@no-quarter Not going to happen. Way too expensive.
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Watched an Episode on Nat Geo Super Structures, Engineering Marvels, which was on the construction of the International Space Station.
It was excellent!
Talks about the construction of it, oxygen, water, impact from objects in space, was really interesting.
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Interesting read, not sure where else to put this.
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I know the vastness of space, 4,000,000 km is pretty close, but still...
Leonard swung extremely close to Venus at the weekend, coming within 4 million kilometres.
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@taniwharugby Great video. I'm always fascinated by fluid dynamics, particularly aerodynamics in motorsport where they determine the correct amount of flow and where to place the boundary between laminar and turbulent flow - best seen in Formula 1.