NASA will attempt to develop drugs in space

A team of researchers from the University of Southern California and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are sending fungi aboard a SpaceX flight to the ISS on April 8th. Not to expose them to Mars-like conditions like an earlier experiment did, but to see if they can be used to develop medicine in space. See, fungi produce molecules called secondary metabolites that can be used to develop medicine. One good and familiar example is penicillin. However, scientists (including USC professor Clay Wang who’s leading this project) found that in many cases, fungi can only generate secondary metabolites when they’re put in stressful conditions. And space can provide an environment harsh enough to activate the production of those molecules.

The researchers believe that the species they’re sending out, Aspergillus nidulans, could produce up to 40 different types of drugs in microgravity. It’s the perfect organism for the experiment, because it’s been used widely in pharmaceutical research and is already known to produce metabolites that can be used for osteoporosis drugs. Seeing as astronauts lose bone mass when they spend long stretches of time outside our planet, A. nidulans could be a valuable cargo for deep space missions. The team also believes the the organism can be used for cancer, anti-fungal and Alzheimer’s disease studies.

The fungi will be kept at 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the trip to the space station, where they’ll be thawed and stored at the ideal growth temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for up to seven days. Wang’s team will get the specimens back for testing in May, hopefully after having produced the molecules that can be used for drug development. If the experiment works, then that means the researchers successfully found a way to make medicine in space. And as Professor Wang said:

“Drugs have an expiration date. NASA’s human mission to Mars is expected to last anywhere from one to three years. Not all drugs are going to be stable in that time period, so the ability to make drugs in space will enable us to go further away from Earth and will also benefit future space explorations.”

Via: Motherboard

Source: University of Southern California, Clay Wang Lab

NASA takes a Super-Earth’s temperature

NASA researchers recently trained the Spitzer Space Telescope at a nearby Super-Earth, 55 Cancri e, and, for the first time, have managed to map its temperature as the exoplanet orbits its host star. The map reveals that the planet suffers from extreme temperature swings, depending on its orbit. Since 55 Cancri e circles so closely to its star (completing orbits in just 18 hours), it behaves much like the Earth’s moon. That is, one side of the planet continually faces the star and is therefore far hotter than the opposite side — 4400 degrees F and 2060 degrees F, respectively.

“The latest findings tell us the planet has hot nights and significantly hotter days,” lead author of the study, Cambridge University’s Brice Olivier Demory, said in a statement. “This indicates the planet inefficiently transports heat around the planet. We propose this could be explained by an atmosphere that would exist only on the day side of the planet, or by lava flows at the planet surface.” Researchers had initially discovered that 55 Cancri e does possess an atmosphere, however this data would suggest that the planet’s atmosphere is thin at best. NASA plans to follow up this study with additional observations using the James Webb telescope.

Source: NASA

Sprint is now selling monthly Amazon Prime subscriptions

Sprint announced on Thursday that it will begin selling Amazon Prime subscriptions to its customers for $11 a month. That’s slightly more than what you’d pay if you purchased Prime on your own but this is the only way to get the service for less than a year — and $100 — at a time. Interested Sprint customers can sign up through the company’s website.

This move comes as the battle between carriers for customer hearts and wallets continues to heat up. Sprint has brought back two-year contracts and is offering double the data allowance for those willing to switch carriers. Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, are offering up to $650 for people to jump ship. T-Mobile, for its part, will let customers binge on porn.

Source: Sprint

Former General Electric CEO Passed on Buying Apple for $2 Billion in 1996

Former chairman and CEO of General Electric Jack Welch had an opportunity to purchase Apple for $2 billion and passed at the chance, according to information shared by Bob Wright in an interview with The New York Post about his book The Wright Stuff: From NBC to Autism Speaks.

Back in 1996, when Apple was struggling ahead of Steve Jobs’ return, then CEO Michael Spindler, who took over after John Sculley was ousted, was “practically begging” General Electric to buy Apple.

“The stock price was $20, and [Spindler] was explaining he couldn’t get the company moving fast enough and the analysts were on his case,” Wright told The Post in an interview on Tuesday. “He was sweating like mad and everybody said, ‘We can’t manage technology like that.’ We had a chance to buy it for $2 billion.”

A purchase by General Electric would have radically changed the company’s history and it’s questionable whether Apple would still be around as a brand today had that happened. Later that same year, after GE declined to make the purchase, Apple bought NeXT for $427 million and Steve Jobs returned to lead the company in 1997.

One of Jobs’ first major projects was the iPod, which launched in 2001 and set the company on its current path. The iPhone followed in 2007, the iPad came in 2010, and the Apple Watch, Apple’s newest product, launched in 2015.

As of today, Apple is worth more than $600 billion, while General Electric is worth less than half of that. In fact, Apple holds more than two thirds of the value of General Electric in cash, with over $215 billion on hand.
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iPhone 7 May Use New Packaging Technology for Antenna Switching Module to Save Space

Rumors have suggested the iPhone 7 will be thinner and lighter than the iPhone 6s, and a new report from Korean site ETNews shares some technical details on the methods Apple may use to save space internally and shave off precious fractions of a millimeter from the device’s size.

Apple is said to be planning to use a new fan-out packaging technology for the antenna switching module and radio frequency chip in the iPhone 7, which is a feature that allows the iPhone to switch between LTE and other antennas like GSM and CDMA. Fan-out packaging technology allows for a greater number of I/O terminals while cutting down on chip size.

A mockup of what the iPhone 7 might look like

Fan Out technology is a technology that increases number of I/O (Input/Output) terminals within a package by pulling out wiring of I/O terminals to outside from a semiconductor chip (Die), which is a previous step before packaging. As area of a chip had become narrower as manufacturing processes had become finer, it was difficult to increase number of I/O terminals. Because industries do not want to increase size of a chip just for I/O terminals, they have been paying attention to Fan Out Packaging technology recently. It is most cost effective from production cost perspective if number of I/O terminals increases within a package while still decreasing size of a chip.

Using this packaging method, along with single-chip EMI shields, Apple will be able to fit more components into a single package while minimizing signal loss and also cutting down on the potential for interference in wireless communication. The radio frequency chip built into the antenna switching module is said to include two chips in one package rather than two chips built into a printed circuit board to save space.

Apple’s iPhone 7 is expected to launch in the fall of 2016. Rumors about the device suggest it will look similar to the iPhone 6s, but with redesigned antenna bands and a somewhat thinner chassis. Along with the chip packaging techniques shared today, Apple is rumored to be cutting down on the size of the device through the removal of the headphone jack and the slimming of the Lightning port.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: etnews.com
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