Category: Innovation

A new blood test that detects sepsis in under ten minutes could be available in up to 11 US states by the end of the year. The test identifies sepsis by analyzing changes in the shape of white blood cells.

This test, developed by Cytovale, works by passing a small blood sample through a tube to observe if white blood cells become elongated and flattened, a sign of sepsis. Traditional methods for detecting sepsis through cell shape have taken up to two days and often resulted in incorrect diagnoses.

The IntelliSep test uses an ultra-high-speed camera to capture over 500,000 frames per second, which are then analyzed by an AI-powered computer. This process provides results in minutes with an accuracy rate of 97%.

Cytovale, the Silicon Valley company behind the IntelliSep, has received FDA approval for the test, and it is currently in use at a hospital in Louisiana. It will be rolled out to ten more hospitals by the end of 2024. Professor Michael Atar, a leading expert on sepsis, describes the test as a major advancement in medical diagnostics, capable of saving millions of lives.

Sepsis is currently the third most common cause of death in U.S. hospitals and affects 1.7 million people nationwide each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Nuclear-powered spacecraft have the potential to significantly reduce travel times to Mars and beyond.

Last year, NASA and DARPA awarded Lockheed Martin a $499 million contract to develop the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO). This project employs several innovations to navigate regulations related to nuclear testing and aims to help the US maintain its lead over China’s rapidly advancing space sector.

The DRACO rocket, designed to be approximately 49 feet long and 17.7 feet in diameter, will be launched using the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which had its maiden flight in January this year.

Nuclear rockets could drastically cut travel times to Mars, potentially reducing the journey from six or seven months to around three months. Shorter travel times would benefit astronaut health by reducing exposure to harmful cosmic radiation and enabling quicker return trips, aligning with the optimal Mars-Earth windows.

A New Fuel
The concept of nuclear thermal rockets dates back to the US Air Force’s Rover program in the mid-1950s, which remained experimental.

Instead of weapons-grade uranium, which poses significant risks in the event of a launch failure, DRACO will utilize high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). HALEU, enriched to less than 20 percent, meets stringent security requirements for on-ground testing, as reported by Ars Technica.

If successful, NASA and DARPA could soon have a nuclear rocket, vastly expanding humanity’s capacity to explore the Solar System.

In a recent study, scientists from Sydney and Liverpool discovered that a commonly available blood thinner can also act as an antidote to cobra venom. The research utilized CRISPR gene-editing technology to identify cells immune to snake venom and determine a mechanism to prevent necrosis from snake bites.

The authors describe snake bites as “the deadliest neglected tropical disease,” noting that approximately 140,000 people die and 400,000 suffer permanent injuries annually due to snake bites. Cobra venom, in particular, causes necrosis and can affect the nervous system, heart, and brain.

Antivenom is often prohibitively expensive, costing about seven times the average daily wage in countries where cobra bites are prevalent. This has led some pharmaceutical companies to discontinue production.

The study, led by Professor Greg Heely and Ph.D. student Tian Du at the University of Sydney, found that cobra venom targets the “heparan/heparin sulfate biosynthesis pathway” in human cells. This pathway produces heparan and heparin, the latter being a blood thinner. The venom binds to these molecules, attacking the cells.

The researchers used this information to repurpose heparin as an antidote. By introducing exogenous heparin, they were able to prevent necrosis in human cells and mice by diverting the venom away from endogenous heparin. Cobras, part of the Elapidae family, are responsible for more bite deaths and amputations in parts of Asia and Africa than any other snake group.

The team also suggested that their method could be used to develop antivenoms for other venomous species. Professor Neely noted that the three-finger toxins found in cobra venom are also present in the blue bottle jellyfish, a subject for future research.

A Norwegian company is developing an innovative wind energy concept called the “Windcatcher,” an offshore floating facility. Instead of using a few giant turbines, the Windcatcher will comprise hundreds of small turbines packed together. This visionary project is spearheaded by Wind Catching Systems (WCS).

The Windcatcher has reached a significant milestone by receiving certification from DNV, a leading global classification agency. This certification confirms the technical feasibility of the design, allowing the project to advance to the next stage.

The Windcatcher concept involves a floating offshore wind farm that uses multiple small 1MW turbines instead of traditional large turbines. These innovative turbines can capture 2.5 times more energy per square meter of wind flow compared to standard three-blade turbine designs. The unique design, resembling a “floating wall of wind,” aims to double energy output.

The company plans for the Windcatcher to generate 40MW of power in the future. In the long term, WCS aims to add units with a capacity of up to 126 MW.

The Windcatcher is designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the open sea. It is a modular system that can be scaled up or down based on energy needs. Each unit connects to a central substation, which transmits the electricity to the grid.

This is a very interesting concept. One of the issues surrounding wind turbines is there tendency to kill large amounts of birds. Hopefully these are big enough for flocks of birds to recognize that they need to go around it.

In the dark depths of Earth’s ocean floors, a spontaneous chemical reaction is quietly producing oxygen, without the need for life. This discovery challenges the long-standing belief that photosynthesizing organisms are necessary to create the oxygen we breathe.

Biogeochemist Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and his team stumbled upon this finding while measuring seafloor oxygen levels to assess the impact of deep-sea mining.

In the Pacific Ocean, black, rounded rocks are scattered across the seafloor at depths of over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). Surprisingly, the scientists observed increasing oxygen levels in these areas.

“When we first got this data, we thought the sensors were faulty, because every study ever done in the deep sea has only seen oxygen being consumed rather than produced. We would come home and recalibrate the sensors but over the course of 10 years, these strange oxygen readings kept showing up,” explains Sweetman.

Sweetman and the team decided to test it using a different type of sensor and were amazed when it came back with the same results.

To explore the mystery, the researchers collected some of these nodule rocks in the lab to see if they were the source of this ‘dark oxygen’ production.

These nodules are natural deposits of rare-earth metals like cobalt, manganese, and nickel, mixed in a polymetallic blend. These exact metals are used in batteries, and it turns out the rocks may be acting similarly on the ocean floor.

The researchers found that single polymetallic nodules produced voltages of up to 0.95 V. When clustered together, they can easily reach the 1.5 V required to split oxygen from water in an electrolysis reaction.

“It appears that we discovered a natural ‘geobattery,'” says Northwestern University chemist Franz Geiger. “These geobatteries are the basis for a possible explanation of the ocean’s dark oxygen production.”

While there is still much to investigate, such as the scale of oxygen production by these nodules, this discovery offers a potential explanation for the persistence of ocean ‘dead zones’ long after deep-sea mining has ceased.

In 2016 and 2017, marine biologists discovered that sites mined in the 1980s still lacked even bacteria, while unmined regions flourished. The persistence of these ‘dead zones’ remains unknown, but this new discovery could be the reason for the dead zones in what would otherwise be such high faunal diversity areas.

Additionally, the discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ production raises new questions about the origins of oxygen-breathing life on Earth, which had previously been attributed to ancient microbial cyanobacteria.

“We now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light,” said Sweetman. “I think we, therefore, need to revisit questions like: Where could aerobic life have begun?”

This research was published in Nature Geoscience.