US developing hypersonic aircraftThe US government is funding a programme through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency that promotes new military technologies, to develop hypersonic aircraft (named Falcon HTV) that will allow it to maintain its air supremacy over other nations for the rest of this century. These aircraft are so fast that they can reach any location on earth within an hour, and circle the earth completely at the equator within two hours! Capable of flying at speeds of 16,700 miles per hour, about 22 times the speed of sound, the aircraft becomes red hot with a surface temperature of an incredible 3,500ºF as it travels through the atmosphere.
The aircraft made its maiden flight in April 2010 but crashed after flying for about nine minutes. A modified version of the aircraft, HTV-2, was then developed and flown on August 11, 2011, but it met the same fate, crashing into the Pacific Ocean after flying for eight minutes. The data collected during the flight will help the engineers to modify the aircraft. If successful on its third flight, it could herald a new era in air warfare at hypersonic speeds.
The future world military domination by USA depends on such fantastic weaponry under intensive development.
Spider silk and fireflies: gene therapy!Spiders are truly amazing creatures. There are some 40,000 different species of spiders known to man. The spider web that they produce, weight for weight, rivals steel in strength. The glue that holds the spider web together contains two interesting proteins that have evolved over millions of years and appear to be responsible for its strength. Fireflies represent another amazing insect. Have you seen fireflies glow at night? This is due to a special protein in them, luciferase, which reacts chemically with another substance (luciferin) to produce energy in the form of light. Prof David Kaplan and colleagues at Tufts University have now modified spider silk proteins and combined them with firefly proteins in order to develop an exciting new gene therapy against breast cancer.
Gene therapy involves the treatment of certain diseases by correcting defective genes (through insertion of functional genes into the genome or by modifying the defective genes). The scientists modified the genetic structure of spider silk by inserting a gene into it that results in its attaching itself to diseased cells and in the production of the same protein that causes fireflies to glow at night. The genetically modified spider silk proteins attached themselves selectively to cancer cells in breast cancer patients, and the resulting glow that was produced allowed the ready identification of the diseased areas (for details, see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bc200170u).
A single drug against many viruses?There are millions of different viruses, of which some 5,000 have been described in detail. They are responsible for many diseases in plants and animals. Scientists have been in search of a broad spectrum anti-viral drug, just as penicillin provided a powerful weapon against many bacteria in 1928. There are a few drugs available that are effective against specific viruses, but these soon develop resistance and lose their efficacy. Now MIT scientists led by Todd Rider in Lincoln Laboratory’s Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group may have found the answer. They have been able to design a drug that seems to be highly effective against a large number of different viruses. The drug attacks only cells that are infected with different viruses, and then kills them. It latches on to the infected cells by recognising a typical feature of such cells (presence of long strings of double-stranded RNA) and simultaneously sends a signal that causes the cells to commit suicide.
The new class of drugs, called DRACO, were found to be effective against all the 15 viruses tested, including the H1N1 influenza virus (for details, see https://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10. 1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572).
Spacecraft Juno to probe JupiterOur solar system comprises the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars and the outer giant gas planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In addition there are the five dwarf planets, Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris. Jupiter is the largest of these planets and it is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium.
On August 5, 2011, the US Space agency NASA launched the spacecraft Juno from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on a mission to Jupiter that will cost $1.1 billion. Juno will take about five years to reach Jupiter, the largest planet of our solar system. After reaching Jupiter in July 2016, it will spend one year in a polar orbit around Jupiter, sending back information about Jupiter’s magnetic and gravitational fields. It will also study the amount of water present on that planet, thereby providing valuable information about how the planets formed from a molecular cloud about 4.6 billion years ago and evolved.