Next Big Future - 4 new articles

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Subject: Next Big Future - 4 new articles

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"Next Big Future" - 4 new articles

1. Nasal Spray gene therapy could protect against flu and pandemic flu
2. Electric Solar Sail
3. Is the Phillippines shifting to prolonged 6-7% annual GDP growth ?
4. NASA Eagleworks Space Warping and Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster - Propellentless propulsion
5. More Recent Articles
6. Search Next Big Future
7. Prior Mailing Archive

Nasal Spray gene therapy could protect against flu and pandemic flu Researchers have come up with an alternative, faster (than vaccine) strategy for when a pandemic influenza virus surfaces: Just squirt genes for the protective antibodies into people's noses. The method—which borrows ideas from both gene therapy and vaccination, but is neither—protects mice against a wide range of flu viruses in a new study.   James Wilson, a leading gene therapy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, credits the idea to a meeting with Bill Gates in April 2010. Wilson had studied whether a harmless gene therapy tool called adeno-associated virus (AAV) can serve as a gene delivery vehicle to treat inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. Gates, whose foundation focuses on global health, "asked me whether the AAV-mediated approach could be used in the context of a pandemic or emerging infection," Wilson recalls. Power tool. An antibody called F16, seen here attached to an influenza virus protein, protected animals against a range of flu viruses. Credit: D. Corti and A. Lanzavecchia, Annu. Rev. Immunol. 31 (2013) Wilson was intrigued by the idea. Building off of animal studies done by AIDS researchers as well as his own work with cystic fibrosis, he wondered whether a specially engineered AAV could deliver the genes encoding influenza antibodies to the cells that line people's airways. If it worked, these so-called epithelial cells would produce influenza antibodies right at the site where the virus attempts to establish an infection. Science - Intranasal Antibody Gene Transfer in Mice and Ferrets Elicits Broad Protection Against Pandemic Influenza Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Electric Solar Sail ESTCube-1, launched earlier early May 2013, is proving out the electric solar sail. Even though it uses but a single 10-meter wire, its rotation rate should change once the tether is fully extended and powered up. Bear in mind that ESTCube-1 is deep within the Earth's magnetosphere, so the charged particles it will be interacting with are not from the solar wind, but a proof of principle is sought here that could make electric sailing a candidate for outer system-bound spacecraft.   Numerical results show that the E-sail propulsion system, once qualified for flight, could be an interesting option for a wide class of deep space missions that include scientific payloads in the range 30 to 1000 kg, and require a characteristic acceleration up to about 3 mm=s^2. Moreover, some rather straight-forward near-term component level improvements have the potential of reducing the effective E-sail mass further (28% in the specific case) with a consequent improvement in mission performance. Future work will concentrate on prototyping and testing the E-sail subsystem as well as measuring the E-sail performance in small scale in the real environment, that is, within the solar wind. The electric sail takes advantage of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that streams constantly from the Sun at speeds ranging from 300 to 800 kilometers per second. The sail's tethers would be thinner than a human hair but would extend tens of meters into the solar wind flow, with each tether yielding the effective area of a sail roughly a square kilometer in size. Using multiple tethers like these, Janhunen's team believes speeds of up to 100 kilometers per second (20 Astronomical units per year) are possible, fast enough to reach Pluto in just four years and to push deeply into the nearby interstellar medium in fifteen. The solar wind cannot be used in interstellar space, but a mission to another star propelled by other means could use an electric sail like this do decelerate, braking against the destination star's own solar wind as it arrives. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • Is the Phillippines shifting to prolonged 6-7% annual GDP growth ? Growth forecasts for the Philippine economy have been hiked by two institutions after the strong performance registered in the first quarter.   Nomura, in a report released Friday, expects the gross domestic product (GDP) -- the broadest measure of the economy -- to grow by 7.3% this year and 6.2% in 2014. Its earlier estimates were 6.4% and 5.8%, respectively. "This strong first quarter GDP print continues to validate our long-held bullish view on the Philippines," the Japanese bank said, adding, "We expect economic momentum to remain strong." The country will likely be boosted by a pick-up in investment, with business sentiment on a high and the government's Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program now on track, Nomura said. "This would add to what we see as a self-reinforcing dynamic currently in play, in which strong growth generates even more fiscal space to boost higher-quality public spending that, in turn, crowds in private spending," it noted. With investments pouring in -- especially foreign direct investments -- the bank said, it is "only a matter of time" before they trickle down to consumption and employment. The GDP soared to 7.8% in the first quarter, beating expectations of both the government and the market. The Philippines became the fastest-growing country in Asia. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • NASA Eagleworks Space Warping and Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster - Propellentless propulsion Popular Science discusses the Harold space warping project at NASA and Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster White shows me into the facility and ushers me past its central feature, something he calls a quantum vacuum plasma thruster (QVPT). The device looks like a large red velvet doughnut with wires tightly wound around a core, and it's one of two initiatives Eagleworks is pursuing, along with warp drive. It's also secret. When I ask about it, White tells me he can't disclose anything other than that the technology is further along than warp drive ... Yet when I ask how it would create the negative energy necessary to warp space-time he becomes evasive. The Quantum Vacuum plasma thruster is discussed in a ten page NASA paper. It is Harold White version of the Woodward Mach effect propulsion system. Nextbigfuture covered the papers. In quantum mechanics a vacuum is filled with electromagnetic waves that come into existence, and then immediately disappear. While these electromagnetic waves are extraordinarily small, they do have many measurable effects. One of these effects is that as the electromagnetic waves appear and disappear they leave behind a measurable momentum. Harol White wants to transform this momentum for propulsion. The Casimir Force might be key in creating an abundance of electromagnetic fluctuation that could result in propulsion. According to NASA, "The Casimir force is a QV phenomenon such that two flat plates placed in close proximity in the vacuum preclude the appearance of particles, whose wavelength is larger than the separation gap, and the resultant negative pressure between the two surfaces is more negative than the pressure outside the two surfaces, hence they experience an attractive force" This attractive force could be used to create a pool of electromagnetic particles whose momentum could be used to drive a spacecraft. But what does all of this Quantum Mechanics business have to do with our QVTP? Well, the pool of electromagnetic particles that's been created by the Casimir force is going to be the fuel for the QVPT. That means that a QVPT doesn't have to carry a fuel source to propel itself onward, it can generate propulsion through the manipulation of quantum electro dynamics. NASA's initial projections for a QVPT estimate that if a 100MW, 200 Ton (QVPT) could be engineered, the timeframe for transit between the Earth and Neptune would be just over 100 days. Read more »      • Email to a friend • Article Search • More Recent Articles Attosecond clock accuracy that is one thousand times better than atomic clocks of 20 years ago Building the 1.5 gigapixel 360 degree Reality Deck Green the deserts by using seawater to cool greenhouses Cheap gigapixel holographic microscope using an off the shelf scanner China announces carbon trading and more aggressive emission targets for peak emissions by 2025 will mean more nuclear and hydro power

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