Science & Medicine

Here we bring you the latest on all things science from physical science, evolution, astronomy, space, physics, chemistry, and medicine.

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Are pig organs the future of transplantation?

Meghan Rosen / ScienceNews

Today, more than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant. They’re seeking kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs — organs from human donors that could give these patients a second chance at life. But every year, nearly 5,000 people on the national transplant list die waiting.

There’s a future, though, in which no one needs to wait ­— when doctors have enough organs for every patient who needs one. These organs will come from genetically engineered pigs, and they could be even better than the ones we’re born with: resistant to cancer and infection and able to tolerate extreme temperatures and pressures. In this future, drones might zip through the sky ferrying bespoke pig organs directly to surgeons waiting to plug them into patients’ bodies. 

“This may sound far-fetched and futuristic, but it really isn’t,” writes transplant surgeon Joshua Mezrich. His new book, Every Living Creature, chronicles the history of xenotransplantation, the practice of moving organs or tissues from one species into the body of another. If doctors can get it to work, xenotransplantation could one day help meet a critical need, increasing the number of organs available for transplant. Read more here.

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NASA’s Psyche Could Reveal the Secret Inside This Metal World

By University of Arizona – SciTechDaily

A massive crater on asteroid Psyche may hold the key to whether it’s a lost planet’s core or something more complex. New simulations suggest NASA’s upcoming mission could finally solve the mystery.

More than 200 years after asteroid 16 Psyche was first identified, scientists are still trying to understand how it formed.

Psyche is the 10th-most massive object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the largest known metal-rich asteroid, measuring about 140 miles across. NASA’s Psyche mission is set to arrive in 2029 to investigate its origin. Researchers think it could be a remnant of an early planet that was torn apart by massive impacts, or a fragment of a once-layered body that lost its rocky outer layer.

Other theories suggest Psyche may have started out rich in metal, or became a mixture of rock and metal after repeated collisions with other asteroids. Each possibility points to a different explanation for how planets formed in the early Solar System. Read more here.

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Asteroid Bennu’s Rugged Surface Baffled NASA, We Finally Know Why

NASA Science Editorial Team / NASA

In one of the biggest surprises of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, its target asteroid, Bennu, turned out to be a jagged, rugged world covered in large boulders, with few of the smooth patches that earlier observations from Earth-based instruments had indicated.

“When OSIRIS-REx got to Bennu in 2018, we were surprised by what we saw,” said Andrew Ryan, a scientist with the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, who led the mission’s sample physical and thermal analysis working group. “We expected some boulders, but we anticipated at least some large regions with smoother, finer regolith that would be easy to collect. Instead, it looked like it was all boulders, and we were scratching our heads for a while.”

Particularly puzzling were observations made in 2007 by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which measured low thermal inertia, indicative of an asteroid whose surface heats up and cools down rapidly as it rotates into and out of sunlight, like a sandy beach on Earth. This was at odds with the many large…Read more here.

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Chimps Seem To Love Crystals. It Could Solve 780,000-Year-Old Mystery

By Deborah Pirchner, Frontiers – SciTechDaily

Chimpanzee experiments suggest early humans were likely fascinated by crystals because of their unique transparency and geometric shapes.

Archaeologists have repeatedly uncovered crystals at ancient sites alongside the remains of early humans. Some of these finds date back 780,000 years, yet the stones show no signs of being used as tools, weapons, or jewelry.

If our ancestors weren’t using them, why were they collecting them at all?

A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology explored this mystery. Researchers in Spain examined which physical characteristics of crystals might have attracted early humans. To investigate this idea, they conducted experiments with chimpanzees, one of the two great ape species most closely related to humans, to see which properties of crystals might naturally capture their attention.

Chimpanzees Tested for Crystal Attraction… “We show that enculturated chimpanzees can distinguish crystals from other stones,” said lead author Prof Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, an Ikerbasque…Read more here.

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