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Enamel enables teeth to take a stomping and keep on chomping. The hardest tissue in the human body is tough enough to resist dents, yet elastic enough not to crack during decades of jaw smashing. It’s so incredible that scientists haven’t created a substitute that can match it—until now. Researchers say they have designed an artificial enamel that’s even tougher and more durable than the real thing.

We have the technology.

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In ten low-budget films made by British exploitation studio Hammer, Lee portrayed the monstrous-yet-seductive blood-sucking nobleman as a very proper Englishman with “a certain lascivious sex appeal“—beginning with 1958’s Horror of Dracula (see a trailer above) and ending with 1973’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula. I find Lee’s Dracula so memorable that I was delighted to hear the audio above of him reading an adaptation of the novel, in ten parts. The video begins with titles and an establishing shot from the Hammer films, then segues to images from a 1966 Dracula graphic novel, the source of the “pretty faithful” adaptation by Otto Binder and Craig Tennis, for which Lee wrote an introduction.

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Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities.

The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.

Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges or other structures, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.

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Australia has become the second country after the United Kingdom to legalize a fertility procedure that mixes genetic material from three people. The technique is meant to prevent couples from having children with certain debilitating disorders caused by faulty mitochondria, the energy-generating structures in our cells. But it’s controversial because it involves a genetic change that can be passed to future generations, so its rollout in Australia will be extremely cautious.

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And without government-provided health care, there was no hope for Him.

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Associate professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911 – until now. The discovery, published in the journal Nature, makes use of 2D quantum materials and paves the way toward superconducting computing. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, all with zero energy loss.

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Astrophysicist Avi Loeb thinks that an interplanetary object that crashed into the Earth in 2014 was some kind of spaceship. His thesis is controversial in the science community.

According to information released last week by the United States Space Command (USSC), the object indeed came from another star system. The projectile – which sped across the sky off the shore of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea – was determined to be a meteor by the agency.

I’m sure Putin is involved somehow, with Trump as his sock-puppet.

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Transplants of immune cells that target the Epstein-Barr virus have shown promise for treating multiple sclerosis in an early stage trial. Brain scans suggest the progression of the condition was reversed in some participants, but this needs to be confirmed by larger trials.

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What is it that Rachel Maddow is always saying? “The walls are closing in….”

I have a dream: That Hillary Clinton will spend her golden years in an orange jumpsuit….

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Cue meltdown by anti-GMO Eco-Nazis.

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designed a heat engine with no moving parts. Their new demonstrations show that it converts heat to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency — a performance better than that of traditional steam turbines.

The heat engine is a thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell, similar to a solar panel’s photovoltaic cells, that passively captures high-energy photons from a white-hot heat source and converts them into electricity. The team’s design can generate electricity from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 degrees Celsius, or up to about 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Well, we shall see.

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Bacteria that convert methane in the air into useful products could be a vital tool for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, if we can crack how they do it. A new discovery could kickstart efforts to engineer methane-harvesting bacteria, fight greenhouse emissions, and “mine” the air for useful compounds.

Virginia Postrel has forgotten more about fibers than you or I know.

.. .polyester rules the textile world. It accounts for more than half of global fiber consumption, about twice that of second-place cotton. Output stands at nearly 58 million tons a year, more than 10 times what it was in the early ’80s. And nobody complains about polyester’s look and feel. If there’s a problem today, it’s that people like polyester too much. It’s everywhere, even at the bottom of the ocean.

I highly recommend her book, The Fabric of Civilization.

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Although nuclear power remains controversial, new reactors are being built in surprising numbers and these will provide the second largest share of the world’s carbon-free energy. It’s also an industry undergoing rapid change as new technology comes on line. So, what will nuclear power look like in the decades to come?

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If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

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Affordable non-polluting power would break a lot of rice bowls. I’m looking forward to it.

That is, of course, from the viewpoint of remaining Woke.

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Lawmakers advance proposals to let police forces across the EU link their photo databases—which include millions of pictures of people’s faces.

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The UK has created a new visa for High Potential Individuals. Under the HPI visa any graduate from a top university as defined by “in the top 50 of at least two of the following three ranking systems: (1) Times Higher Education World University Rankings, (2) Quacquarelli Symonds, (3) The Academic Ranking of World Universities” will be allowed to stay in the UK for two (BA, MA) or three years (PhD). Moreover, a job or sponsor is not required and spouses and dependents are also included.

The US is slowly–very slowly–working towards something similar.

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British outfit First Light Fusion claims it has achieved nuclear fusion with an approach that could provide cheap, clean power.

Rather than rely on expensive lasers, complicated optical gear, and magnetic fields, as some fusion reactor designs do, First Light’s equipment instead shoots a tungsten projectile out of a gas-powered gun at a target dropped into a chamber.

We’re told that, in a fully working reactor, this high-speed projectile will hit the moving target, which contains a small deuterium fuel capsule that implodes in the impact. This rapid implosion causes the fuel’s atoms to fuse, which releases a pulse of energy.

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A woman who was bedridden for 18 months because she fainted every time she stood up is now walking long distances again, thanks to a spinal cord stimulator.

Her doctors at Switzerland’s NeuroRestore research center have published a case study on her successful treatment in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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The $35 Chipolo Card Spot sounds like a great solution to fears of lost or stolen wallets, but there are some caveats. Although it’s the size of a credit card, it’s as thick as three cards. It doesn’t support Ultra Wideband precision finding that enables the Find My app to points you in the right direction with an exact distance. Also—most disappointingly—the battery isn’t replaceable and has an estimated life of only 2 years. Chipolo offers a 50%-off replacement discount and recycles the dead unit, but that’s still annoying and wasteful. Currently, the Chipolo Card Spot is sold out and not shipping until May.

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More than 80 years ago, the Hindenburg Zeppelin LZ 129 exploded and crashed as it approached landing at Lakehurst New Jersey on May 6, 1937.

The behemoth 250-meter long vessel rigid airship had been in service for just under a year. At the time, numerous such vessels had been produced and employed with relative commercial success between the 1900s and the late 1930s. But the dramatic, fiery explosion of the Hindenburg spelled the end of dirigibles as a mode of transport.

The problem with the Hindenburg was a design flaw that is known and can be avoided. Nevertheless, popular mythology has panicked the public about hydrogen dirigibles ever since. This might not prove a problem with cargo craft.

According to the company’s promotional video, the new vessel uses “green hydrogen” for propulsion and with it the company hopes to transform air freight and shipping worldwide.

Using liquid hydrogen and fuel cell technology, the H2 Clipper is claimed to “operate efficiently at service ranges from under 500 to well over 6,000 miles” and travel at 175 mph. It would be able to “deliver goods directly from a factory in China to a distribution center in the U.S. in less than 36 hours.”

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One of the most worrisome trends reported by the Secure World Foundation and Center for Strategic and International Studies is the increase in the number of countries seeking to develop counterspace capabilities.

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Epic Games announced on Monday a new app called “RealityScan,” which will let anyone use the iPhone camera to scan objects and turn them into high-fidelity 3D models. The app was developed using technologies from Capturing Reality, a company specializing in photogrammetry that was acquired by Epic in 2021.

As the company explained, capturing real-world assets can be tricky since this usually requires advanced equipment. However, more creators and hobbyists are embracing 3D photogrammetry, and for these people RealityScan makes the whole process much easier.

We have the technology.

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Promising new research has raised the possibility of treating type 2 diabetes without drugs. Across three different animal models researchers have demonstrated how short bursts of ultrasound targeted at specific clusters of nerves in the liver can effectively lower insulin and glucose levels.

Reporting in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team led by GE Research, including investigators from the Yale School of Medicine, UCLA, and the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, demonstrated a unique non-invasive ultrasound method designed to stimulate specific sensory nerves in the liver. The technology is called peripheral focused ultrasound stimulation (pFUS) and it allows highly targeted ultrasound pulses to be directed at specific tissue containing nerve endings.

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A weapon, you will note, that we did not have when space flight was a monopoly of the government.

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Canada will ban most foreigners from buying homes for two years and provide billions of dollars to spur construction activity in an attempt to cool off a surging real-estate market.

The measures will be contained in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s budget on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter, asking not to be named because the matter is private.

All oligarchs, all the time.

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On Tuesday Amazon announced deals with Arianespace, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Blue Origin (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ pet project) to launch the majority of its 3,236 Kuiper satellites into low Earth orbit. “It is the largest commercial procurement of launch vehicles in history,” the web giant modestly proclaimed.

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First Light Fusion (First Light), the University of Oxford fusion spin-out, today confirms it has achieved fusion. The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has independently validated the result.
This is the first time fusion has been achieved using the unique targets developed by First Light, and the corresponding projectile technology. First Light’s mission is to solve the problem of fusion power with the simplest machine possible. Projectile fusion is a new approach to inertial fusion that is simpler, more energy efficient, and has lower physics risk. First Light has achieved fusion having spent less than £45 million, and with a rate of performance improvement faster than any other fusion scheme in history.

If fusion power becomes commercial, who will the climate change Nazis have to hate on?

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HB11 is approaching nuclear fusion from an entirely new angle, using high power, high precision lasers instead of hundred-million-degree temperatures to start the reaction. Its first demo has produced 10 times more fusion reactions than expected, and the company says it’s now “the only commercial entity to achieve fusion so far,” making it “the global frontrunner in the race to commercialize the holy grail of clean energy.”

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Earlier this month, the FDA approved genome-edited cattle for use in meat production. They were bred with climate change in mind, and they have extremely slick, short hair, which is said to help the animals cope with hot weather more effectively.

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A privately-owned tokamak in the United Kingdom has reportedly achieved ignition temperature for nuclear fusion, meaning the reactor has reached the threshold for commercial energy production.

Tokamak Energy, an amusingly hard-to-Google company based in Oxford in the south of England, has been working on tokamak reactors since 2009. Even before that, the group was founded as part of England’s national Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, with decades of history as part of the world’s nuclear fusion research efforts. (Private companies like Tokamak Energy, which spin off of research facilities housed at universities or as part of government programs, are surprisingly common. One battery researcher tells Popular Mechanics that the reason is simple: students and public funds should be doing new research, not slogging through the long road of research and development on an emerging commercial product.)

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Early success with a procedure called a mitochondrial transplant offers a glimmer of hope for people fighting for survival after cardiac arrest, stroke, and more.

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Apparently our long national nightmare is over.

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Genetically modified purple tomatoes are potentially days away from FDA approval, according to the team that created the colorful fruit. The fruits are modified to be packed with antioxidants.

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Ukrainian forces have captured a lot of modern Russian weapons and military equipment and made these discoveries available to Western countries that are supplying Ukraine with modern weapons and economic and diplomatic pressure on Russia.

This loot includes largely intact Iskander short range ballistic missiles, new EW (Electronic Warfare) equipment that had proven effective in Syria and Ukraine and new Azart combat radios and associated equipment. Some defective Islander missiles were recovered largely intact, which allowed close inspection of the missile design and the countermeasures Russia often spoke of but never provided details of. The countermeasures were, as expected, small decoys deployed as the Iskander came within range of the targets, as well as Western ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems like Patriot, Thaad or the naval Standard missile defense system. Now that there were undamaged examples of these decoys available, Western ABM systems can be modified to defeat them.

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The concept of a smart contact lens has been around for many years, but one company working on the tech says that its device is now feature-complete, but will require FDA clearance.

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Companies are scrambling to turn the greenhouse gas into useful products — but will that slow climate change?

…

Industrial CO2 emissions are warming the climate, and many countries are working on capturing the gas and storing it underground. But why not recycle it into products that are both virtuous and profitable? As long as the recycling process avoids creating more carbon emissions — by using renewable energy, or excess resources that would otherwise be wasted — it can reduce the CO2 that industry pumps into the atmosphere and lower the demand for fossil fuels used in manufacturing. That’s a double climate win, proponents say.

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White Castle – the world’s first fast-food hamburger chain – announced plans to further expand its work with Miso Robotics and install Flippy 2 in 100 standalone locations. The announcement is the latest milestone for the partnership, which began in September 2020 with the deployment of the original Flippy to a White Castle in the Chicagoland area. Following an upgrade to Flippy 2 in November 2021, White Castle’s commitment to Miso’s technology was cemented after seeing an immediate positive impact on daily operations and the productivity of its team members.

Couldn’t hurt.

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A new study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has found that cells carrying oncogenic KRAS mutations harbor elevated levels of a specific kind of iron. This iron could be used to activate drugs that target cancer cells, avoiding harm to normal, healthy cells.

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FROM THE BIZARRE creatures in the depths of the oceans to the bacteria inside our bodies, all life on Earth consists of cells. But we have only a very rough idea of how even the simplest of those cells function.

Now, as described recently in Cell, a team at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and their colleagues have created the most complete computer simulation ever of a living cell. With this digital model, biologists can burst through nature’s constraints and accelerate their exploration of how the most basic unit of life ticks—and what would happen if it ticked differently.

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A new process introduced by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the “flash graphene” technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods.

“This is a big deal,” Tour said. “The world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We’ve already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene.”

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fter receiving a medical treatment that included a round of antibiotics and an X-ray scan, Californian Will Osman thought he got stuck with a $69,000 hospital bill. Luckily, Osman’s insurance covered most of the bill, but that still left him on the hook for $2,500.

“I avoided surgery, but they still billed nearly $70,000,” Osman tells Popular Mechanics, adding that the bill included an abdominal CT scan, medication, and two nights in a hospital room. Annoyed with the exorbitant cost of hospital treatments and procedures, Osman, a YouTuber and engineer, decided to build his own fully-functional homemade X-ray machine.

We have the technology.

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Methanotrophic bacteria consume 30 million metric tons of methane per year and have captivated researchers for their natural ability to convert the potent greenhouse gas into usable fuel. Yet we know very little about how the complex reaction occurs, limiting our ability to use the double benefit to our advantage.

By studying the enzyme the bacteria use to catalyze the reaction, a team at Northwestern University now has discovered key structures that may drive the process.

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Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton today announced the formal creation of the country’s Defense Space Command, the formal launch of a new Space Strategy, and millions of dollars of investment in an aging military base — the next wave in a flurry of announcements from the incumbent Liberal party as it gets closer to election day.

Dutton made the announcement at the Royal Australian Air Force’s Air Force and Space Power Conference in Canberra. “It works in close collaboration with the [civilian] Australian Space Agency, industry partners, and our research and scientific institutions,“ Dutton said.

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Traditionally, we think of chemistry being done in a lab with test tubes, flasks, and gas burners. But it has also benefited from developments in computing and quantum mechanics, both of which rose to prominence in the early-mid 20th century. Early applications included using computers to help solve physics-based calculations; by blending theoretical chemistry with computer programming, we were able to simulate (albeit far from perfect) chemical systems. Eventually, this vein of work grew into a subfield now called computational chemistry. The subfield started to gain momentum in the 1970s and was featured in the Nobel Prizes of 1998 and 2013. Even so, while computational chemistry has gained more and more recognition over the past few decades, its importance has been largely overshadowed by that of lab experiments – the cornerstone of chemical discovery.

However, with current advancements in AI, data-centric techniques, and ever-growing amounts of data, we might be witnessing a change where computational approaches are used not just to assist lab experiments but to guide them.

The number of possible chemical compounds is as vast as the number of possible English sentences.

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Instead of injecting themselves with a medication to prevent bone loss, astronauts on Mars may be able to eat their way to a stronger skeleton, thanks to lettuce that’s been genetically engineered to make a bone-stimulating hormone.

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Now, an MIT team has engineered a composite made mostly from cellulose nanocrystals mixed with a bit of synthetic polymer. The organic crystals take up about 60 to 90 percent of the material — the highest fraction of CNCs achieved in a composite to date.

The researchers found the cellulose-based composite is stronger and tougher than some types of bone, and harder than typical aluminum alloys. The material has a brick-and-mortar microstructure that resembles nacre, the hard inner shell lining of some molluscs.