Maybe this link has more technical aspects. I posted the other just for information purposes. Florida's first 'clean' hydrogen production plant is being built in Polk County
another material advance. absorbs vibration without losing rigidity Scientists Dropped a New Material That Will Change How We Build Structures (msn.com) Most materials are either one or the other—they’re either super strong and tough or able to withstand the varying stresses and movements of vibrations. According to the team from the University of Amsterdam, the key to making a best-of-both-worlds material was to use objects that buckle rather than flex if you press on them from the top, like a sheet of metal. If you force the material to buckle, and then make a composite material out of several layers of that pre-buckled material, it becomes something else entirely. “When put together in a clever way, constructions made out of such buckled sheets become great absorbers of vibrations – but at the same time, they preserve a lot of the stiffness of the material they are made out of,” David Dykstra, the lead author of the study, said in a press release. “Moreover, the sheets do not need to be very thick, and so the material can be kept relatively light.” This lab-created substance is called a metamaterial—a material that has been engineered in a lab to have properties or combinations of properties that don’t exist in nature. Often, they are used to guide waves along desirable paths, whether that means electromagnetic waves or physical waves caused by vibration. Metamaterials aren’t new, but they are useful. While there are lots of things that nature does exquisitely well, and there are many instances where we take design and engineering inspiration from nature, there are certain situation where we need a substance to do something unnatural—like scatter solar rays or even turn something invisible. That’s where metamaterials come in.
Sounds like they are using natural gas and “scrubbing” the carbon. I’m not sure what happens to the scrubbed carbon, and I wonder how efficient this whole process is.
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-06-electric-heaters-renewable-energy-million.html Electric water heaters that store renewable energy could do the work of 2 million home batteries—and save billions
Using nat gas, a fuel source, to create another fuel source, doesn't make a lot of sense to me unless the hydrogen has substantially more energy per cf than the nat gas does. I thought that hydrogen was being made from water in everything Ive read
Me too, but I thought it took substantial energy to separate the hydrogen from water. Perhaps it’s easier to separate hydrogen from natural gas?
Hydrogen production - Wikipedia. Steam methane reforming (SMR) is a method of producing hydrogen from natural gas, which is mostly methane (CH4). It is currently the cheapest source of industrial hydrogen. Nearly 50% of the world's hydrogen is being produced by this method.[9] The process consists of heating the gas to between 700–1,100 °C (1,292–2,012 °F) in the presence of steam and a nickel catalyst. The resulting endothermic reactionbreaks up the methane molecules and forms carbon monoxide and molecular hydrogen (H2).[10] The carbon monoxide gas can then be passed with steam over iron oxide or other oxides and undergo a water-gas shift reaction to obtain further quantities of H2. The downside to this process is that its byproducts are major atmospheric release of CO2, CO and other greenhouse gases.[10] Depending on the quality of the feedstock (natural gas, naphtha, etc.), one ton of hydrogen produced will also produce 9 to 12 tons of CO2, a greenhouse gas that may be captured.[11]
I would think the goal would be for it to recognize and enable each specific function. Otherwise, the patient couldn’t have any real fine/advanced motor skills, like climbing stairs, etc. I’m only assuming, though.
new Alzheimer drug goes 30 for 30 in curing mice with Alzheimer's. long way to go to transfer to humans but 30 for 30 is pretty damn impressive.. totally different approach to curing the disease by introducing a new molecule to the brain that helps reenergize cells killed by the disease Alzheimer's Cure Stuns Scientists Who Create Artificial Solution (msn.com) The peer-reviewed research focused on a new approach to developing an Alzheimer’s cure, which Ben-Gurion University scientists say is highly effective in the mice they tested. While existing treatments exist to manage and mitigate the spread of Alzheimer’s within the brain, Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz and her team have begun trials that address plaque build-up within the brain. The molecule which the team developed didn’t do much to physically remove or reduce the plaque from the brains of their test mice, but it did seem to have overwhelmingly positive outcomes, curing all 30 of the mice in the trial. ....................................................... The mitochondria is, of course, the powerhouse of the cell, providing energy in individual cells like those located within the brain. With plaque buildup causing blockages within the Alzheimer’s infected brain, these cells are slowed to a halt, demanding significantly more power to traverse the infected landscape. That’s where the molecule comes in, providing the cells with additional power in order to regain function and serve as the closest thing to an Alzheimer’s cure we can currently attain. Despite the mitochondrial dysfunction serving as a significant block for all other attempts at developing an Alzheimer’s cure, there are currently no other published studies that focus on the mitochondria and their needed increase in energy. The Ben-Gurion University team have been invaluable scientific minds in this regard, as their method of targeting plaque buildup led to the discovery that external molecules can behave as backup batteries for near-dead cells. Furthermore, the team has discovered a protein segment that plays a crucial role in the regulation of the energetic functions of the cell, indicative of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. While a full-scale Alzheimer’s cure will still take years to develop and prepare for human trials, this discovery will surely serve as a significant stepping stone in understanding how and why an Alzheimer-affected brain behaves in the way that it does. The team has created a startup company called Tamarix, which aims to take the next step in eradicating this disease from the millions worldwide suffering from it.
interesting. That article had a couple of sentences poorly worded. This drug does not work on plaques. Israeli scientists say they cured mice of Alzheimer’s using newly developed molecule | The Times of Israel “We are taking a very different approach than efforts at Alzheimer’s medicines that we have seen so far,” Prof. Varda Shoshan-Barmatz, the lead author, told The Times of Israel. “Most are trying to address plaque that forms in the brain, but we are addressing dysfunction elsewhere. Alzheimer’s research was set back many years maybe decades based on a prior study that associated amaloyd plaque reduction as the means of treatment, and the study was later found to be flawed. For many years after that study much of the work was done on plaques but it now seems like plaques may be a result, not the cause.
Having some AD trials for about 9 years I’d argue that Amyloid plaque plays a huge role. The question is what causes the normal shaped amyloid to change and form plaques. The recently approved Biogen drug and the soon to be approved Lilly drug target the amyloid plaques have shown by removing the plaque disease progression is slowed by about 40% on average in some sub groups much more. The trouble is there can be a bit of a wide range in the subjects some are much better to start than others and the cognitive testing can be a bit of a blunt instrument(they use a main end point of the CDR-sb). Having done over 1000 CDR exams on both normal and normal subjects the scale is designed to track decline and not really improvement. We ran the biogen phase 3 trial and the Lilly phase 2 and phase 3 trial at our site. Had about 55 subjects combined on all three trials. The Lilly trial stacked the deck against themselves a bit as they not only required a Positive Amyloid PET scan but also a TAU PET scan showing some level of tau tangles (a finding associated with more advanced progression). Currently we are running a Lilly trial with the same drug (Donanamab) subjects who are “normal” but at risk based on blood bio markers to be used as a “prevention”. In general the people I see with lower amyloid levels and at higher function seem to do very well for sometimes years so it seems like the early intervention will likely have benefit.
if you know how hard/long is it to go from mice trials to human trials if the human trials are on a compassionate use basis, ie advanced alzheimers patients? 30 for 30 is damned impressive in any endeavor, let alone curing alzheimers
Years, and the other thing is mice are close but not the same as humans as you can understand. Mice that get AD have mostly been engineered to get the illness by knocking out certain genes, so the translation isn’t exact to humans as we don’t know all the factors that cause it in humans. We ran a trial about 5 years ago for a company that in clinical trials had mice that were designed to have strokes, they had 100% recovery within a week of the “strokes”. It was a drug that increased neuroplasticity, inhuman trials we saw ZERO benefit, mind you the trial was only 6 months long and perhaps a longer trial would have shown benefits. The really interesting way they measure mice “memory” is through maze trials and introducing new “toys”. Mice are very curious so when a new item is introduced they play with it for a time. It’s assumed that if they continue to play with the item they have forgotten it’s new. Maze tests are self explanatory. Not sure that completely translates to the human memory and thinking.
If true, that would be groundbreaking. I suspect it will take quite a while before it is affordable on a mass produced basis.
