The Thread To Remind Me We're Living In The Future

[elasto]

The article is 4 hours old and it claims to be foodsafe.

[EMTP]

This is a big one: Sickle cell disease cured via gene therapy.

Now a team in France seems to have developed a treatment that would work for everyone with the disorder. First, the team took bone marrow stem cells from the boy when he was 13, and gave them extra, mutated versions of the gene that codes for beta-globin. These were designed to make beta-globin that would interfere with the boy’s faulty proteins, stopping them from clumping together.

The researchers then put these stem cells back into the boy’s body. After around three months, he began producing large quantities of haemoglobin that behaves normally (New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1609677). “The patient is now 15 years old and free of all previous medication,” says Marina Cavazzana at the Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris, who led the team. “He has been free of pain from blood vessel blockages, and has given up taking opioid painkillers.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... 1488406696

[elasto]

Physicists have created a fluid with "negative mass", which accelerates towards you when pushed.

In the everyday world, when an object is pushed, it accelerates in the same direction as the force applied to it; this relationship is described by Isaac Newton's Second Law of Motion. But in theory, matter can have negative mass in the same sense that an electric charge can be positive or negative.

Prof Peter Engels, from Washington State University (WSU), and colleagues cooled rubidium atoms to just above the temperature of absolute zero (close to -273C), creating what's known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

In this state, particles move extremely slowly, and following behaviour predicted by quantum mechanics, acting like waves. They also synchronise and move together in what's known as a superfluid, which flows without losing energy.

To create the conditions for negative mass, the researchers used lasers to trap the rubidium atoms and to kick them back and forth, changing the way they spin. When the atoms were released from the laser trap, they expanded, with some displaying negative mass.

"With negative mass, if you push something, it accelerates toward you," said co-author Michael Forbes, assistant professor of physics at WSU.
He added: "It looks like the rubidium hits an invisible wall."

Wat?!?!

[Chen]

Well here's the abstract from the paper:

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/1 ... 118.155301

Frankly I don't understand a word of it and none of the articles I found have any explanation of whether this is a "trick" or not. Note the abstract does continually mention negative EFFECTIVE mass, which is not the same as all the typical news articles that just say negative mass.

[Mutex]

Doesn't anti-matter have negative mass? You take 2kg of matter, add 1kg of anti-matter, you end up with 1kg of matter. Scattered over a very wide area, of course.

[Diadem]

Doesn't anti-matter have negative mass? You take 2kg of matter, add 1kg of anti-matter, you end up with 1kg of matter. Scattered over a very wide area, of course.

No that's a common misconception. Anti-matter has opposite electric charge, but positive mass just like ordinary matter.

Remember that mass = energy (Einstein's famous E = mc^2). There are many forms of energy, and mass is one of them. Mass is a pretty stable form of energy, which is why ordinary physical or chemical processes (such as slamming objects into each other, or burning stuff) don't affect it. But things like nuclear explosions work by converting mass into other forms of energy (heat, light, shockwaves).

If you take 2 kg of matter, and 1 kg of anti-matter, you indeed end up with 1 kg of matter. But you also end up with a gigantic explosion. That's a lot of energy being released. That energy came from the mass of both the matter and anti-matter that you have just annihilated. What happens is that you turn the mass into energy, just like a nuclear explosion would, except much more efficiently.

Something with negative mass would have negative energy. That would be very very strange. It's not even clear what it means, physically, for something to have negative energy. It's like asking for a sphere with negative radius. Or having a plate with -3 slices of pie on it.

In all the above 'mass' refers to gravitational mass. There's another form of mass called inertial mass (how difficult it is to move something). That's the m in Newton's second law: F = m * a. For everything in the universe, as far as we can tell, gravitational and inertial mass seem to be identical. But why don't have a good explanation for why that is, there doesn't seem to be a fundamental reason for it. This is one of the open questions in physics. What the paper above is talking about is some kind of weird object with negative effective inertial mass. Whether that says anything interesting about the fundamental difference between inertial and gravitational mass I don't know.

*edit* Interesting side note: We know anti-matter has positive inertial mass. We assume it also has positive gravitational mass. We have no reason to think it doesn't, but as far as I know we've never measured it. Anti-matter is too hard to make, and too hard to contain, to make an experiment to answer that question.

*edit 2* As pointed out by several people below, I had inverted gravitational and inertial mass in the previous edit. Silly mistake. Fixed.

[jewish_scientist]

Does the paper claim that whatever they created negative inertial mass or gravitational mass, or does one imply the other.

Doesn't anti-matter have negative mass? You take 2kg of matter, add 1kg of anti-matter, you end up with 1kg of matter. Scattered over a very wide area, of course.

You would have 1kg of matter and 2kg of energy, and the total entropy of the system would increase dramatically i.e. explode. If 2kg of positive-mass matter reacted with 1 kg of negative-mass matter, then the result would be 1kg of positive-mass matter and the total entropy of the system would decrease dramatically i.e. implode.

Our work also sheds new light on related phenomena in optical lattices, where the underlying periodic structure often complicates their interpretation.

Wait... having a predictable and uniform pattern makes certain phenomena MORE difficult to study.

[Soupspoon]

Wait... having a predictable and uniform pattern makes certain phenomena MORE difficult to study.

When you image a grill,
And the view is not brill,
That's a moiré...

[DavidSh]

In all the above 'mass' refers to gravitational mass. There's another form of mass called inertial mass (how difficult it is to move something). That's the m in Newton's second law: F = m * a. For everything in the universe, as far as we can tell, gravitational and inertial mass seem to be identical. But why don't have a good explanation for why that is, there doesn't seem to be a fundamental reason for it. This is one of the open questions in physics. What the paper above is talking about is some kind of weird object with negative effective inertial mass. Whether that says anything interesting about the fundamental difference between inertial and gravitational mass I don't know.

*edit* Interesting side note: We know anti-matter has positive gravitational mass. We assume it also has positive inertial mass. We have no reason to think it doesn't, but as far as I know we've never measured it. Anti-matter is too hard to make, and too hard to contain, to make an experiment to answer that question.

I would have thought all of the work sending positrons around in particle accelerators would give a pretty good idea on how they respond to electromagnetic forces, pinning down the ratio of charge to inertial mass to high accuracy. Gravitational mass would be harder to measure.

[Opus_723]

Something with negative mass would have negative energy. That would be very very strange. It's not even clear what it means, physically, for something to have negative energy. It's like asking for a sphere with negative radius. Or having a plate with -3 slices of pie on it.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but what's so strange about negative energy? With potential energy, any system that is bound rather than repulsive has negative energy (ie: planetary orbits, chemical bonds). Absolute energy isn't really physical, only changes in energy, so it's all just a matter of reference points.

That being said, I'm less familiar with rest energy due to intrinsic mass. Am I missing something obvious?

I would have thought all of the work sending positrons around in particle accelerators would give a pretty good idea on how they respond to electromagnetic forces, pinning down the ratio of charge to inertial mass to high accuracy. Gravitational mass would be harder to measure.

CERN has an experiment, called AEGIS, to measure the gravitational mass of antimatter, but they haven't produced any results yet. I don't know how far along they are, I first heard of them years ago.

[Soupspoon]

A few years ago, I attended a presentation regarding ALPHA (trapped-antihydrogen experiment), and there is also GBAR, doing something similar, but those latter guys can't even come up with a snappy real-word acronym, so I don't know if that bodes well or ill for their actual research.

[Liri]

A few years ago, I attended a presentation regarding ALPHA (trapped-antihydrogen experiment), and there is also GBAR, doing something similar, but those latter guys can't even come up with a snappy real-word acronym, so I don't know if that bodes well or ill for their actual research.

Oh my goodness the names biologists come up with for various protocols, genes, etc.

I haven't seen a single protocol that wasn't made into a word/name/pun (some are pretty weak)

Linear DNA Amplification? LinDA

An RNA extraction protocol? RNEasy

[ahammel]

I haven't seen a single protocol that wasn't made into a word/name/pun (some are pretty weak)

Linear DNA Amplification? LinDA

An RNA extraction protocol? RNEasy

RNEasy is the name of a commerical product, though, isn't it? That's a little bit more forgivable

The one the always bothered me is "ENCODE" as an acronym for "Encyclopedia of DNA Elements". That's not even close!

[Soupspoon]

"ENCyclopedia Of Dna Elements"... I actually like that there's a stretch of the first initialism, whilst treating-as-a-word the sub-initialism. It smells of desperation, just to get some sort of aptonym, but gloriously so!

[Liri]

I haven't seen a single protocol that wasn't made into a word/name/pun (some are pretty weak)

Linear DNA Amplification? LinDA

An RNA extraction protocol? RNEasy

RNEasy is the name of a commerical product, though, isn't it? That's a little bit more forgivable

The one the always bothered me is "ENCODE" as an acronym for "Encyclopedia of DNA Elements". That's not even close!

It might be commercial, but it's just following in the established vein.

RAGE makes me chuckle (Receptor for Advanced Glycation Endproducts).

[elasto]

It's not the future until we get flying cars.

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Holy crap! Are we getting flying cars..?

The once fanciful concept of flying cars appears to be a step closer to reality, after a German company completed successful test flights of a “flying taxi”.

Munich-based Lilium, backed by investors who include Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, said the planned five-seater jet, which will be capable of vertical take-off and landing, could be used for urban air-taxi and ride-sharing services.

In flight tests, a two-seat prototype executed manoeuvres that included a mid-air transition from hover mode – like a drone – to wing-borne flight - like a conventional aircraft, Lilium said.

Lilium said its jet, with a range of 190 miles and cruising speed of 186mph, is the only electric aircraft capable of both vertical take-off and jet-powered flight.

The jet, whose power consumption is comparable to an electric car, could offer passenger flights at prices comparable to normal taxis but with speeds five times faster, Lilium said.

link


(The answer is that, no, we are not, this is more akin to a personal drone, but it'd still be very cool if it worked...)

[KnightExemplar]

It's not the future until we get flying cars.

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.
.
.
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Holy crap! Are we getting flying cars..?

The once fanciful concept of flying cars appears to be a step closer to reality, after a German company completed successful test flights of a “flying taxi”.

Munich-based Lilium, backed by investors who include Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, said the planned five-seater jet, which will be capable of vertical take-off and landing, could be used for urban air-taxi and ride-sharing services.

In flight tests, a two-seat prototype executed manoeuvres that included a mid-air transition from hover mode – like a drone – to wing-borne flight - like a conventional aircraft, Lilium said.

Lilium said its jet, with a range of 190 miles and cruising speed of 186mph, is the only electric aircraft capable of both vertical take-off and jet-powered flight.

The jet, whose power consumption is comparable to an electric car, could offer passenger flights at prices comparable to normal taxis but with speeds five times faster, Lilium said.

link


(The answer is that, no, we are not, this is more akin to a personal drone, but it'd still be very cool if it worked...)

Fun fact: a low-end used airplane doesn't cost much more than a car. And honestly, if airplanes were mass-produced on the same level as cars, they probably would be only a bit more expensive. A modern Cessna is an obscure low-volume purchase...

EDIT: In case the link dies (it is an auction site after all... Price: $ 29,995)

[Whizbang]

Meh. I see the way people drive on the roads. Talk to me when we have self-driving flying cars. Then I'll be excited.

[elasto]

Meh. I see the way people drive on the roads. Talk to me when we have self-driving flying cars. Then I'll be excited.

Self-flying planes/drones is a much much easier problem to solve than self-driving cars.

The take-off/landing part is the most difficult bit - and even that is rendered trivial if you have vertical take-off and landing.

[Whizbang]

Meh. I see the way people drive on the roads. Talk to me when we have self-driving flying cars. Then I'll be excited.

Self-flying planes/drones is a much much easier problem to solve than self-driving cars.

The take-off/landing part is the most difficult bit - and even that is rendered trivial if you have vertical take-off and landing.

Even when you get a few billion people in the air?

[elasto]

Even when you get a few billion people in the air?

Yup. Still much much easier technologically to have a few billion self-flying planes than a few billion self-driving cars.

Self-flying planes only have to avoid each other and birds, and have a whole extra dimension of freedom. Compare that with the nightmare of what self-driving cars have to deal with...

[ucim]

How far away does a person have to stand from one of these VTOL jet cars when it takes off? Do I burn my neighbor's house down every time I go to work?

Jose

[Liri]

It's electric, so I think you're fine being relatively close.

[ucim]

It's electric, so I think you're fine being relatively close.

Still, the downrushing air, even if cool, has to be able to support the weight of the vehicle and passengers. It'll at least blow the neighbor's garbage cans all over the yard, scattering their contents in an artful manner. But, it could be a good way of shoveling the driveway.

Jose

[Zamfir]

I don't think these concepts are intended (or suitable) as drop-in replacements for a family car, more as a taxi service. Think of the essential taxi trip - from the main airport to the centre and back. Just that kind of trip alone is already a sizable market.

There are various of these projects around, electric VTOL planes with many propellers (though this one is pushing the boundaries with 36 props...). They seem intriguingly feasible, with a promise of relatively low operation costs. Perhaps like a cessna prop, not helicopter-expensive. Especially as they can test unmanned, which creates a very different development process compared

[elasto]

But, it could be a good way of shoveling the driveway.

Driveway..?

If this tech took off (pun intended) people might not have driveways but instead take-off/landing pads - perhaps on their rooftops, perhaps in front of their houses or perhaps, if wind effects are too strong as you suggest, a communal garage shared between neighbours.

(Obviously it's all just speculation at this point - maybe VR will become so all-encompassing for work and leisure that hardly anyone drives...)

[mfb]

How often does the electric airplane has to recharge if it is used as taxi, and how long does that take?

*edit* Interesting side note: We know anti-matter has positive gravitational mass. We assume it also has positive inertial mass. We have no reason to think it doesn't, but as far as I know we've never measured it. Anti-matter is too hard to make, and too hard to contain, to make an experiment to answer that question.

No experiment has measured the gravitational mass directly. You can argue that most of the mass of a nucleus is matter/antimatter symmetric, so everything should behave as expected, but the direct tests are still too insensitive to measure the gravitational force on antimatter directly. We should get a first direct measurement within the next 5 years.
The inertial mass has been measured decades ago already. Every particle accelerator using positrons or antiprotons does it, and the charge to inertial mass ratio is measured to 8 digits accuracy now for positrons.


The negative effective mass thing means the applied force and acceleration point in opposite directions. Plug that into F=ma and you get a negative effective mass. That works only in very special conditions and with quasiparticles, hence "effective" mass.

[Diadem]

Interesting side note: We know anti-matter has positive gravitational mass. We assume it also has positive inertial mass. We have no reason to think it doesn't, but as far as I know we've never measured it. Anti-matter is too hard to make, and too hard to contain, to make an experiment to answer that question.

I would have thought all of the work sending positrons around in particle accelerators would give a pretty good idea on how they respond to electromagnetic forces, pinning down the ratio of charge to inertial mass to high accuracy. Gravitational mass would be harder to measure.

You are right of course. I had accidentally inverted the two. Thanks for the correction.

[Zamfir]

How often does the electric airplane has to recharge if it is used as taxi, and how long does that take?

Should work the same as for an electric car, or phones, etc. If the charger is large enough, and the battery chosen well, you can get to 70% in half an hour or so, somewhat less if you're willing to compromise battery life time. After that point, charge rate has to be gradually lowered, and a (nearly) full charges will take a few hours.

They promise a range of 300km, on a similar battery as an electric car. So, similar mileage as a car. That's at least in the ballpark of possible, for cruise conditions. The big question is, how much power does it take to take off and land. That can go fast, for a VTOL vehicle.

[Soupspoon]

I've often wondered if the disadvantages¹ of a cartridge-type trickle-charged battery pack would help with both waiting time, for charging, and longevity of the unit's capacity as it was more smoothly and sensitively repowered.

And that was for electric cars. For aircraft, the lack of a hand road shoulder to drift to a stop in (and the redundancy that's being asked for being far more liable to 'outweigh' the advantages of compactness) might mean I wouldn't rush to be a first adopter of the tech.


¹ Extra wight for both packaging and hot-swap dock. The issue of compatibility as upgrades/improvements are flooded through the system (without proper workshop installation and testing). The packs, as a common resource, being subject to wear and tear of various kinds. The possibility of a tricked-out pack being fed into the system to 'surprise' a future recipient, fooled into expecting capacity/lack-of-going-all-explodey. Etc.

[wumpus]

Remember that mass = energy (Einstein's famous E = mc^2). There are many forms of energy, and mass is one of them. Mass is a pretty stable form of energy, which is why ordinary physical or chemical processes (such as slamming objects into each other, or burning stuff) don't affect it. But things like nuclear explosions work by converting mass into other forms of energy (heat, light, shockwaves).

If you are going to quote E=mc^2 in response to negative masses, you should admit that the equation isn't exactly correct (or at least neither theory nor experiment has as yet shown us to expect it). The correct equation is E^2=m^2c^4, which Einstein simplified into the more famous form. But negative mass should be assumed to have positive energy (gods help us if we encounter complex mass) [and there is no reason for negative mass to have negative energy any more than positive mass].

From what I've been told about general relativity, inertial mass and gravitational mass should be identical. But I have no idea how many people on the planet can follow the actual mass to catch a subtle mistake there.

[Qaanol]

I think you mean E² = p²c² + m²c⁴.

[mfb]

Accelerate a negative mass from rest using a force F. It accelerates against the force (that is the point of negative masses), based on F=dE/dx it loses energy. It gains momentum (sign doesn't matter here) as p=γmv. If you consider E²=p²c² + m²c⁴, the right hand side increases. In order to have the left side increasing with decreasing energy, we have to start with negative energy. In particular, we have to start with E=mc² for negative masses at rest, and we get E=γmc² as more general formula.
A negative energy means this (plus its positive mass partner) could appear out of nowhere, and the two together could change their speed arbitrarily.
Good reasons to expect that negative masses cannot exist as free objects, but only as quasiparticles like reported here.



In vivo cure of HIV using CRISPR-associated protein Cas9
Figures as PDF
We are at the beginning of a revolution in medicine.

[Liri]

In vivo cure of HIV using CRISPR-associated protein Cas9
Figures as PDF
We are at the beginning of a revolution in medicine.

That is pretty neat. The precision of the deletion you can get is honestly the cooler part, not that it's HIV they chose to work with.

[mfb]

It is an approach to cure HIV.
Approaches to use it against various cancer types exist as well.
It can be used against various genetic diseases like sickle-cell disease.
It could be used to eradicate Malaria.

CRISPR/Cas9 is not just a random drug targeting some disease. It is an incredibly powerful toolbox, we just started exploring it, and even this small start has promising approaches to cure several of the most deadly diseases already.

[Liri]

It is an approach to cure HIV.
Approaches to use it against various cancer types exist as well.
It can be used against various genetic diseases like sickle-cell disease.
It could be used to eradicate Malaria.

CRISPR/Cas9 is not just a random drug targeting some disease. It is an incredibly powerful toolbox, we just started exploring it, and even this small start has promising approaches to cure several of the most deadly diseases already.

Right, I know. But they probably definitely chose HIV rather than another retrovirus because of the funding and hype that would come along with it.

[mfb]

Oh sure, if you do the same with the Visna virus (randomly picked Wikipedia page about a related virus) you don't make big headlines with it. But a cure for HIV would be much more interesting than a cure for the Visna virus.

[KnightExemplar]

May 4th was the last post? You know what people need? Some good news.

A company just got a 90+% immune response rate against the HIV / AIDS virus

These preliminary results are from a study supported by the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in collaboration with Inovio. The study evaluated a four-dose regimen of PENNVAX-GP DNA vaccine administered by intradermal (ID) or intramuscular (IM) administration in combination with a DNA encoded immune activator, IL-12 (INO-9012). Overall, 71 of 76 (93%) evaluable vaccinated participants showed a CD4+ or CD8+ cellular immune response to at least one of the vaccine antigens (env A, env C, gag, or pol). Similarly, 62 of 66 (94%) evaluated participants demonstrated an env specific antibody response. None of the placebo recipients (0 of 9; 0%) demonstrated either a cellular or an antibody response in the study. Notably, amongst the participants receiving PENNVAX-GP vaccine and IL-12 with intradermal immunization, 27 of 28 (96%) participants demonstrated a cellular response and 27 of 28 (96%) demonstrated an HIV env specific antibody response.

How's about that for some good news for once?

[LaserGuy]

AlphaGo, a Google-developed Go playing program, clobbered reigning world champion 2-0 in a best of three Go series.

[Soupspoon]

Kiwis can fly (almost!) into orbit...