Pierre The Bear

Science!

[materialsscienceandengineering]

DNA folds into a smart nanocapsule for drug delivery

New study of University of Jyvaskyla and Aalto University shows that nanostructures constructed of DNA molecules can be programmed to function as pH-responsive cargo carriers, paving the way towards functional drug-delivery vehicles.

Researchers from University of Jyväskylä and Aalto University in Finland have developed a customized DNA nanostructure that can perform a predefined task in human body-like conditions. To do so, the team built a capsule-like carrier that opens and closes according to the pH level of the surrounding solution. The nanocapsule can be loaded – or packed – with a variety of cargo, closed for delivery and opened again through a subtle pH increase.

The function of the DNA nanocapsule is based on pH-responsive DNA residues.

To make this happen, the team designed a capsule-like DNA origami structure functionalized with pH-responsive DNA strands. Such dynamic DNA nanodesigns are often controlled by the simple hydrogen-bonding of two complementary DNA sequences. Here, one half of the capsule was equipped with specific double-stranded DNA domains that could further form a DNA triple helix – in other words a helical structure comprised of three, not just two DNA molecules – by attaching to a suitable single-stranded DNA in the other half.

Read more.

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Colors of Jupiter

[spinningblueball]

Our Sun

[startswithabang]

This Is What We Know About Black Holes In Advance Of The Event Horizon Telescope’s First Image

“For hundreds of years, humanity has expected black holes to exist. Over the course of all of our lifetimes, we’ve collected an entire suite of evidence that points not only to their existence, but to a fantastic agreement between their expected theoretical properties and what we’ve observed. But perhaps the most important prediction of all — that of the event horizon’s existence and properties — has never been directly tested before.

With simultaneous observations in hand from hundreds of telescopes across the globe, scientists have finished reconstructing an image, based on real data, of the largest black hole as seen from Earth: the 4 million solar mass monster at the center of the Milky Way. What we’ll see on April 10 will either further confirm General Relativity or cause us to rethink all that we believe about gravity. Eager with anticipation, the world now awaits.”

The Event Horizon Telescope will, on April 10 (tomorrow, at the time of this writing), release an image two years in the making: of the event horizon of the black hole at the Milky Way’s center. Many will look at this as the first definitive proof that black holes truly exist, but we mustn’t forget all the (overwhelming!) evidence we already have in hand. There is a ton that we already know about black holes that has been demonstrated observationally, and all of it is in spectacular agreement with what we theoretically expect.

On the eve of the Event Horizon Telescope’s big announcement, take some time to get a little perspective, and learn what we already know about black holes!

[starwalkapp]

APOD: 2019 February 25 - Red Sprite Lightning over Kununurra ⠀ ⠀ What are those red filaments in the sky? It is a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 30 years ago: red sprites. Recent research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light and are quickly followed by a group of upward streaking ionized balls. The featured image, taken just over a week ago in Kununurra, Western Australia, captured some red sprites while shooting a time-lapse sequence of a distant lightning storm. Pictured, green trees cover the foreground, dark mountains are seen on the horizon, ominous storm clouds hover over the distant land, while red sprites appear in front of stars far in the distance. Red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side.⠀ ⠀ Image Credit & Copyright: Ben Broady⠀ Text Credit: NASA APOD (https://ift.tt/2T0DgV5) via Instagram https://ift.tt/2EdNuHo

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Few topics in fluid dynamics are more mathematically complicated than magnetohydrodynamics – the marriage between electromagnetism and fluids. That mathematical complexity, along with the vast range of scales necessary to describe physical systems like our sun, means that, until now, researchers had to simplify their assumptions when simulating solar physics. But now, for the first time, a group has built a comprehensive, three-dimensional simulation capable of generating realistic solar flares. This is what you see above.

Solar flares occur when a tangle of magnetic loops near the sun’s surface break and reconnect, releasing enormous magnetic energy and spewing a fountain of ionized plasma into the corona. They’re a danger particularly to satellites in orbit, so being able to simulate these events realistically is a major advance toward understanding the physics of space weather. (Image and video credit: NCAR & UCAR Science; research credit: M. Cheung et al.; via Bad Astronomy; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Storm on Jupiter

image credit:  NASA / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt / Seán Doran

[photos-of-space]

Beautiful Jupiter wallpaper by Juno space probe - Picture by NASA [1000x1910]

[ginge-r]

mother. friggin’. space. man. x

[theladybiologist]

[matthen]

a visual proof that ¼ + 1/16 + 1/64 + … = 1/3 [code] 

[humanoidhistory]

Gemini 11 blasts off from Cape Canaveral. (NASA)

[compoundchem]

Autumn is here! Here’s the chemistry behind the 🍁 colours we’ll be seeing over the coming weeks: https://wp.me/p4aPLT-sn

[historicaltimes]

NASA research pilot Bill Dana watches as the NB-52B mothership flies by overhead after a research test flight for the lifting body HL-10. Taken on May 20, 1969

[earthstory]

How wet is the Earth?

It seems like it should be easy to figure out the amount of water on the Earth, right? Just sum up the volume of the oceans and you’re 99% done. In fact, you might have seen graphs like this showing how moons like Europa have lots more water than the Earth.

That would seem to work except there’s a problem; minerals. Many minerals can hold water in their structures. Some of these minerals occur at the Earth’s surface; clay minerals, for example, hold large amounts of water that can be released if the minerals are heated. The same is true for minerals that sit deeper down.

Keep reading

[thetestpilots]

[earthstory]

Avulsion

This beautiful gif was prepared using data from the long-lived Landsat series of earth orbiting satellites, You are looking at the course of the Padma River in Bangladesh and how its course has varied over the last 30 years. This is a textbook example of river erosion processes. When rivers begin to meander, they evolve by growing their meanders wider, until the meander finally gets too sinuous and the river finds another path. Pick a point where the river bends and watch what happens – the outer bank of the river erodes and sediment deposits on the inner side of the curve, making the river arc farther outwards. The outer side of the river that is eroding is called a cut bank, and sediment is deposited on the inside of the river building a point bar.

Keep reading