Slow-motion video of boiling ice, a research project of the Nature-Inspired Fluids and Interfaces Lab at Virginia Tech. Dash a few drops of water onto a very hot, sizzling skillet and they’ll levitate, sliding around the pan with wild abandon. Physicists at Virginia Tech have discovered that this can also be achieved by placing a […]
Enlarge / A tray of prepared syringes for booster vaccinations with Moderna’s vaccine. (credit: Getty | Picture alliance) Amid the stratospheric rise of the omicron variant, real-world data on the effectiveness of COVID-19 booster doses is now rolling in—and it is only looking up for boosters. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported three […]
Enlarge / Don’t try this at home. Seriously. We mean it. (credit: Anna Efetova) Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have tested a wide range of drugs to see if they inhibit the virus. Most of these tests didn’t end up going anywhere; even the few drugs that did work typically required concentrations […]
Enlarge / If all goes well, this is how Lunar Resources’ extractor could appear on the lunar surface in a few years. (credit: Lunar Resources) In recent years, much has been said about mining water ice in shadowed craters at the Moon’s South Pole for use as rocket propellant. Enthusiasm for this idea has led […]
Enlarge (credit: Vidal et al 2022) The oldest known Homo sapiens fossil is about 36,000 years older than previously thought, according to a recent study. Volcanologists matched a layer of ash above the fossil skull to an eruption of southern Ethiopia’s Shala volcano 233,000 years ago. Their findings seem to line up well with other […]
Enlarge / SpaceX launched its third mission of 2022 on January 18. The rocket carried 49 Starlink satellites. (credit: SpaceX) Welcome to Edition 4.29 of the Rocket Report! There is plenty to discuss this week, including an accident in the Mojave (oh no!) and flights by two different rocket-carrying aircraft within days of each other […]
The shell of a water/glycerol gas marble (bubble) remains liquid and spherical even after 101 days, and it reacts as a liquid film when punctured. These human-made bubbles could be used to create stable foams. (credit: A. Roux et al., 2022) Blowing soap bubbles never fails to delight one’s inner child, perhaps because they are […]
Enlarge / Cloned piglets that are engineered to be useful for organ transplants to humans. (credit: Getty Images / Staff) Last week, when we reported on the first pig-to-human heart transplant, we complained that the commercial company behind the transplant wasn’t more forthcoming about the genetic engineering that had converted the pig into a viable […]
Enlarge / A person takes a rapid COVID-19 test. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg ) Federal and state investigations into a large national chain of COVID-19 testing sites have turned up tests that were never labeled with patients’ names, tests piled into trash bags stored for long periods at room temperature, tests that were in no […]
Enlarge / A drive-up COVID-19 vaccination site from Renown Health on December 17, 2020, in Reno, Nevada. (credit: Getty | Patrick Fallon) Even before their rollout, a distinct feature of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines has been their “reactogenicity“—that is, their tendency to cause mild symptoms that signal immune responses firing up after a shot, […]