Fortune.

Like cancer vaccines, cancer blood panels aren’t some far-flung, futuristic goal. Multi-cancer early detection tests, known as MCEDs, are a thing—right now. Today. Google the phrase and you’ll find multiple products available for purchase. You can have one at your door in mere days.

It’s a concept that has promise, experts say. “The technology is advancing truly at a rapid pace,” Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society, tells Fortune. “I think all of us in the oncology world think that the next frontier is liquid biopsy”—another term for MCED.

National Geographic.

A Harvard-affiliated Canadian company is making a liquid fuel that is carbon neutral, and they hope the economics will be in their favor.

Good luck with that.

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Infarm, a Germany-based vertical farming company, announced its harvest in November. Spokesperson Pádraic Flood credits Infarm’s success with its focus on optimizing the growth environment and crop cycle time.

The experiment showcases what’s possible not just for growers looking to move their cereal crop indoors, but for global food security in general. Growing these staple crops indoors, in regions previously unable to support them, could benefit millions of people.

However, there are challenges when shifting from produce to grain.

If vertical farming is ever going to be anything other than a hobby, it needs to be able to grow the staple grains–wheat. rice, maize, barley, and rye–in a cost-effective manner.

Anything else is just recreational.

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French startup Meropy has developed an agricultural robot that autonomously inspects crops from both above and below, saving farmers time and money.

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“We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power if he does run, making sure he—under legitimate efforts of our Constitution—does not become the next president again,” Joe Biden said of Donald Trump in an often overlooked remark just a few months ago.

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Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, has lost her battle to stay in power after her centre-left Social Democratic party (SDP) was narrowly beaten into third place in a cliffhanger election by its conservative and far-right rivals.

With all of the votes counted on Sunday, the right-wing National Coalition party (NCP) won 20.8% of the vote, with the populist, nation-first Finns party scoring 20.1%. Marin’s SDP took 19.9% of the vote. Voter turnout was 71.9%.

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Color me hopeful, but we have heard about a new kind of paint that holds the potential to cut airline fuel usage and make our homes and communities cooler. How? Well, some of the brightest and most beautiful colors in nature can only be replicated using heavy metals and chemicals. And those paints absorb infrared radiation, making objects covered in them much hotter. But Debashis Chanda, a nanoscience researcher with the University of Central Florida, has created a way to mimic nature’s way of reflecting colors without absorbing heat. It’s the same way a rainbow is created after it rains. Chanda’s research looks at why structural colors, as they’re called, may be the future of paint, and how altering the way light is reflected off surfaces could help cool a rapidly warming environment.

Interesting Engineering.

esearchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research developed the world’s first messenger mRNA-based single-dose vaccine that is 100 percent effective against a lethal bacteria.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, the study suggests that this paves the way for developing more vaccines for bacterial diseases, including diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The study, conducted on mice, demonstrated that all vaccinated animals were fully protected against the bacteria that causes the plague.

This is HUGE.

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Caltech engineers have made a significant breakthrough in the field of nano- and micro-architected materials by creating a novel material composed of multiple interconnected microscale knots.

Compared to structurally identical but unknotted materials, the presence of knots in this new material significantly enhances its toughness by enabling it to absorb more energy and deform more before returning to its original shape without any damage. These new knotted materials may find applications in biomedicine as well as in aerospace applications due to their durability, possible biocompatibility, and extreme deformability.

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God, I certainly hope so.

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In a historic step, four Nordic countries announced the combining of their fighter jet fleets under one operational command on Friday, March 24th, creating Europe’s most formidable fighter fleet after Russia’s.

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A “treasure map” has led researchers to one of the largest meteorites ever found in Antarctica — and more than 300,000 other space rocks could be waiting to be discovered on the icy continent.

We have the technology.

NewsMax.

The longest-serving Democrat in the Louisiana state Legislature, Francis Thompson, has changed parties, giving Republicans a 70-vote supermajority that allows the GOP to override a veto by the state’s Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, Newsweek reported over the weekend.

Read it. And watch the video.

Robotics are helping make minimally invasive surgeries even less invasive. Case in point: single-port robotic surgery, a relatively new type of approach where a robotic system controlled by a human surgeon executes the procedure by making only one incision into the patient.

Although still relatively uncommon, single-port surgery has been gaining momentum in recent years. The benefits are noticeable. Compared to traditional surgery, single-port surgery might leave patients with shorter recovery times, less scarring, and overall better outcomes.

Amazing stuff. Knowledge advances, but comes with a price: All of this equipment is really really expensive.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

MQ-9 Reaper Is Capable Of Defending Itself With Air-To-Air Missiles  Wouldn’t that be fun.

Ukraine Situation Report: Poland Could Give Ukraine MiG-29s “Within Four To Six Weeks”

Top Democrat Warns Putin Against Unintended Escalation After Black Sea Spat (Newsweek)

Space Force chief warns: China, Russia deploying space weapons to attack U.S. satellites, forces

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba: Russia must be removed from the United Nations Security Council (The Hill) That’s not going to happen.

8 More Churches Zelensky Is Banning In Ukraine

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Emergency preparedness is serious business but not all of our endeavors need to take on the gravity of life and death. This is a fun list, and while the suggestions are solid, it is by no means a list that covers everything you need to be prepared.

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No word on whether it will give you super powers.

Interesting Engineering.

Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) performed a breakthrough experiment in which they observed time reflections of electromagnetic signals in a tailored metamaterial.

The scientists, who published their findings in a paper in Nature Physics, were able to successfully cause time reversal as well as frequency conversion of broadband electromagnetic waves in their experiments.

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When it comes to assigning dates to military campaigns described in the Bible, the parameters of the debate take on almost biblical proportions. Exactly when did the Amalekites wage war against the Hebrews in the wilderness? Did Joshua fight the Battle of Jericho in 1500 B.C. or in 1400 B.C. — or at all?

Such uncertainty exists, in part, because the radiocarbon analysis that scientists use to date organic remains is less accurate for certain epochs. And, in part, because archaeologists often disagree over what the timelines for different narratives should be. But a new technique, which makes use of consistently reliable geomagnetic data, allows scientists to study the history of the Levant with greater confidence.

Ukraine Situation Report: Leopard 1 Tanks Will Arrive This Spring

Russian-Iranian Deal For Su-35s Finalized, State Media Reports

Poland’s New FA-50 Light Fighter Emerges

UK: Russian Advance in Bakhmut Could Come With Heavy Losses

US Winged Smart Bombs Are Now Operational In Ukraine

New Iron Curtain Strengthened: Poland Fortifies Belarus Border

Heading Off Chinese Dominance: Australia To Buy U.S.-Made Submarines

NAVAL AIR: Turkish Carrier Aircraft

Russian Advance Stalls in Ukraine’s Bakhmut, Think Tank Says

SHOCKER! TikTok Whistleblower Confirms CCP-Tied Platform’s Data Abuse

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Hunting and habitat loss drove many large mammals in Europe close to extinction. New data shows us that many of the continent’s mammal populations are flourishing again.

As John Hodgman famously said, “I am a friend to all the creatures of the earth, when I am not eating them or wearing them.”

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I’d live there.

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Room-temperature sodium-sulfur (RT Na-S) batteries are a promising alternative for renewable energy storage. They rely on chemical reactions between a sulfur cathode and a sodium anode to store and deploy electrical energy, and they use low-cost materials, which can even be easily extracted from saltwater.

 

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The mean age was 56 years (SD, 10), and 58% were women. Compared with the HCLF diet, participants on the LCHF diet had greater improvements in hemoglobin A_1c (mean difference in change, ?6.1 mmol/mol [95% CI, ?9.2 to ?3.0 mmol/mol] or ?0.59% [CI, ?0.87% to ?0.30%]) and lost more weight (mean difference in change, ?3.8 kg [CI, ?6.2 to ?1.4 kg]). Both groups had higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and lower triglycerides at 6 months.

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WD-40.

An atomic-scale experiment all but settles the origin of the strong form of superconductivity seen in cuprate crystals, confirming a 35-year-old theory.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Recovering from surgery.

Will return as soon as I can.

Check it out.

Just, you know, in case it should come up.

Ukraine Situation Report: Kyiv’s Modern Tank Corps Begins To Take Shape

F-22 Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon Off Carolinas With Missile

US downs Chinese balloon, drawing a threat from China (Associated Press)

Kremlin-Linked Group Arranged Payments to European Politicians to Support Russia’s Annexation of Crimea (OCCRP)

Here’s how spy balloons work (CNN)

LEADERSHIP: Mistrust And Diversification

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I posted last month about the Greater Idaho movement, which aims to move the border of Oregon to the west, allowing rural Oregonian counties to join Idaho, with which they are culturally and politically compatible. Initially there would be eleven counties that would switch from Oregon to Idaho, while others would be added later, possibly including several from northern California, and giving Idaho a Pacific coastline.

A bill to begin the consultation process with Oregon was formally introduced in the Idaho legislature earlier this week.

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You’re probably familiar with the four main blood types—A, B, O, and AB. But this isn’t the only blood classification system. There are many ways of grouping red blood cells based on differences in the sugars or proteins that coat their surface, known as antigens. The grouping systems run concurrently, so your blood can be classified in each—it might, for instance, be type O in the ABO system, positive (rather than negative) under the Rhesus system, and so on.

Thanks to differences in antigens, if someone receives incompatible blood from a donor, for example, the recipient’s immune system may detect those antigens as foreign and react against them. This can be highly dangerous, and is why donated blood needs to be a suitable match if someone is having a transfusion.

On average, one new blood classification system has been described by researchers each year during the past decade. These newer systems tend to involve blood types that are mind-bogglingly rare but, for those touched by them, just knowing that they have such blood could be lifesaving. This is the story of how scientists unraveled the mystery of the latest blood system—and why it matters.

Like most modern ‘journalism’, you have to wade through a tear-jerking anecdote before you get to the actual reporting.

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A team of researchers has successfully converted methane into methanol using light and scattered transition metals such as copper in a process known as photo-oxidation. The reaction was the best achieved to date for converting methane gas into liquid fuel at ambient temperature and pressure (25 °C and 1 bar, respectively), according to a study published in the journal Chemical Communications.

The term bar as a pressure unit comes from the Greek word meaning weight (baros). One bar equals 100,000 Pascals (100 kPa), close to the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level (101,325 Pa).

The study’s findings are a crucial step toward making natural gas accessible as a source of energy for the production of alternative fuels to gasoline and diesel. Despite the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel, its conversion into methanol produces less carbon dioxide (CO2) than other liquid fuels in the same category.

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In some cases, it is now possible to genetically engineer the immune system to banish cancers like T-cell leukaemia that were previously unresponsive to treatments.

Ukraine: Boris Johnson says Putin threatened him with missile strike (BBC)

Putin Threatened To ‘Hurt’ Former UK PM Boris Johnson ‘With A Missile’ (CNN)

U.S. ‘On the Verge’ of War With Russia—Deputy Foreign Minister (Newsweek)

Japan, Netherlands Agree to Limit Exports of Chip-Making Equipment to China

White House Refuses To Say If Ukraine Will Get Toxic Depleted Uranium Ammo

Russia Claims Gains in Relentless Battles in East Ukraine

War Games

WINNING: Paying For Defeat

SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Russia Recruits Exiled Afghan Operators

U.S. arms left in Afghanistan are turning up in a different conflict (NBC) Thank you, Joe Biden.

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Oklo, a California-based energy startup, has submitted its licensing project plan for a commercial-scale nuclear fuel recycling facility to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The fuel recycling facility will be the first of its kind and is meant to make use of nuclear waste, which still has up to 90% of its energy content that could be used to meet energy needs in the U.S.

The submitted licensing project plan outlines the company’s “pre-application engagement activities” ahead of licensing for the fuel recycling facility. The engagement activities are meant for Oklo to identify and reconcile regulatory requirements, “enabling efficient and effective NRC license application review through a process which is equivalent to a staged licensing approach with the benefits of flexibility and customization,” the company said in a press release.

The company’s fuel recycling facility would be capable of recycling used nuclear fuel from its own reactors as well as reactors from other companies. According to Oklo, the spent fuel is about 95% recyclable, and the energy available in nuclear waste could meet U.S. energy needs for over 150 years.

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced that it has successfully demonstrated the operation of a rocket engine technology for the first time in space. This experiment proved the efficiency of a rotating detonation engine (RDE) which converted the shock waves generated when a mixture of fuel and oxygen reacts explosively into thrust.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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For airliners, cargo ships, nuclear power plants and other critical technologies, strength and durability are essential. This is why many contain a remarkably strong and corrosion-resistant alloy called 17-4 precipitation hardening (PH) stainless steel. Now, for the first time ever, 17-4 PH steel can be consistently 3D-printed while retaining its favorable characteristics.

A team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Argonne National Laboratory has identified particular 17-4 steel compositions that, when printed, match the properties of the conventionally manufactured version. The researchers’ strategy, described in the journal Additive Manufacturing, is based on high-speed data about the printing process they obtained using high-energy X-rays from a particle accelerator.

New Atlas.

These strangely-shaped twisted-toroid propellers look like a revolutionary (sorry) advance for the aviation and marine sectors. Radically quieter than traditional propellers in both air and water, they’re also showing some huge efficiency gains.

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Researchers have developed a possible way to keep colonies of Staphylococcus aureus — the bacteria behind MRSA — in check without doing damage to the beneficial microbes living in our gut microbiome. Such a therapy could help reduce the risk of infection while maintaining the delicate ecosystem inside our digestive tract.

Their technique uses a digested probiotic of Bacillus subtilis, a beneficial bacteria. When taken orally, the B. subtilis successfully and safely reduced S. aureus colonies in both the gut and nose in a phase 2 clinical trial.

“The probiotic we use does not ‘kill’ S. aureus, but it specifically and strongly diminishes its capacity to colonize,” Michael Otto, a senior investigator at the National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who led the study, said.

“We think we can target the ‘bad’ S. aureus while leaving the composition of the microbiota [the organisms living in the microbiome] intact.”

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This study presents a class of magnetoactive phase transitional matter (MPTM). MPTMs exhibit a combination of high mechanical strength, high load capacity, fast locomotion, excellent controllability, and robust morphological adaptability. This unique combination of properties is enabled by the reversible transition of MPTMs between rigid and fluidic states through alternating magnetic field heating and ambient cooling. To illustrate the unique capabilities of MPTMs, we demonstrate smart soldering machines to manipulate and solder electronic components to create a functional circuit. We also use MPTMs as universal screws to assemble parts in hard-to-reach space and as a capsule machine for removing foreign objects or delivering drugs in a model stomach. MPTMs are promising for future applications in flexible electronics, healthcare, and robotics that depend on dynamic shape reconfigurability and repair.

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Didn’t know these guys were even a thing any more.

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For decades, a family of crystals has stumped physicists with its baffling ability to superconduct — that is, carry an electric current without any resistance — at far warmer temperatures than other materials.

Now, an experiment years in the making has directly visualized superconductivity on the atomic scale in one of these crystals, finally revealing the cause of the phenomenon to nearly everyone’s satisfaction. Electrons appear to nudge each other into a frictionless flow in a manner first suggested by a venerable theory nearly as old as the mystery itself.

Minister: Germany won’t block Poland giving Ukraine tanks (Associated Press)

What Western armour gives Ukraine in the next round of the war (The Economist)

Russia Holds Drills Focused On “Repelling Air Attacks” On Moscow

Russia’s Lavrov: Conflict With West ‘Almost a Real War’  Yeah, it’s kinda close.

AIR WEAPONS: Switchblade 600 In Lithuania

SURFACE FORCES : Prefab Constellation-Class

Poland Signals Intent to Send Leopard Tanks to Ukraine

China’s Tax-Deductible Operation to Influence American Students

Ships With No Purpose

Report: US Weapons Industry Unprepared for China Conflict (Newsmax)

U.S. Weapons Industry Unprepared for a China Conflict, Report Says (WSJ)

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Personally, I find my $500 50″ Roku sitting on my mantel perfectly adequate.

SciTechDaily.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and IBM Research have created a virtual library of thousands of “command sentences” for cells using machine learning. These “sentences” are based on combinations of “words” that direct engineered immune cells to find and continuously eliminate cancer cells.

This research, which was recently published in the journal Science, is the first time that advanced computational techniques have been applied to a field that has traditionally progressed through trial-and-error experimentation and the use of pre-existing molecules rather than synthetic ones to engineer cells.

The advance allows scientists to predict which elements – natural or synthesized – they should include in a cell to give it the precise behaviors required to respond effectively to complex diseases.

The next Russian civil war is already under way. (Center for European Policy Analysis)

Bafflement after battle

Rescue Hopes Fade in Ukraine’s Dnipro Apartment Complex, Dozens Feared Dead  Don’t build high-rise apartments in a war zone.

U.S. begins expanded training of Ukrainian forces for large-scale combat (Washington Post)

AIR DEFENSE: Supercharged Spyder

Cargo Ship Carrying Ukraine Peas Refloated After Running Aground In Bosphorus Strait

Ukraine prepares for new offensive as Russia and Belarus begin joint drills (NBC)

UK to send Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, Rishi Sunak confirms (BBC)

Ukrainian Army Still Uses Soviet Era Tanks (CNN)

Soledar May Be ‘Bargaining Tool’ in Wagner Chief’s Push for Authority: ISW (Newsweek)

Russia’s Wagner mercenaries lead bloody battle in Ukraine’s east (CBS)

Rifts in Russian military command seen amid Ukraine fighting (Associated Press)

Interview: U.S. General Ben Hodges On Russia’s Lack Of A ‘Coherent Plan’ (Radio Free Europe)

Why Biden Is Wrong About North Korea (Newsweek)

Detailed Report Exposes CIA-Backed ‘Zero Units’ In Afghanistan

As Russians Steal Ukraine’s Art, They Attack Its Identity, Too (N.Y. Times)

Iraqi PM Backs Indefinite US Troop Presence in Country

ARTILLERY: Truck-Mounted 120mm Mortar

British Govt Set to Ship ‘Game-Changer’ Apache Helicopters to Ukraine

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We have the technology.