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Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s been a busy year-and-a-half for bioengineer Laura Niklason and her partners at the biotech firm Humacyte. Since winning a 2011 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award, the team’s lab-grown blood vessels were transplanted into primates for a six-month trial, where they were found to be safe. Now they’re being tested in Poland in a small group of humans with kidney failure, and the FDA has just approved a similar trial in the U....

Researchers found that a strain of genetically modified moths could help keep a much-feared crop pest at bay.Genetic modification lets scientists introduce new traits into specific groups without affecting all groups.Modified moths reached the same total area as unaltered moths, meaning they wouldn’t affect the whole population.Scientists have released a “self-limiting,” genetically engineered moth in hopes of curbing crop damage. The diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella) can absolutely wreck brassicas—a plant genus that includes broccoli and cabbage....

It was the catastrophe that wasn’t. Months of criticism, scathing editorials and more odds talk than a bookie convention has added up to this: NASA’s announcement today that Space Shuttle Discovery is 100% go for re-entry, having survived launch with nary a gap filler (at least a gap filler near a boundary interface) out of place. Now completing their sixth day in orbit, Discovery’s crew has transferred the Leonardo module to the ISS, completing half of their mission objectives....

Nuclear power, which already supplies 20 percent of the electricity in the United States, is a leading option for addressing the country’s energy crunch. In 2007, operators filed license applications with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for seven new reactors; experts say double that number could be filed this year. But with more nuclear power plants would come the need for more enriched uranium.America’s only domestic supplier of nuclear fuel, the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), has created an advanced centrifuge that officials say is the world’s fastest and largest, able to produce enriched uranium using just 5 percent of the electricity required by the company’s previous design....

For America’s national park system, the immediate crisis is over. With the government open (for three weeks, at least), parks from Glacier Bay in Alaska to Florida’s Everglades are officially welcoming visitors again and getting staff back to their crucial duties of safety, upkeep, and guidance. But while the return of park rangers is undoubtedly a cause for celebration, many fear the damages incurred during the historic shutdown will require a long recovery period....

A fire tornado forms as part of the Blue Cut Fire on August 17, 2016, near Wrightwood, California.David McNew//Getty ImagesIn the summer of 2014, Craig Clements was driving his lifted Ford F-250 down California State Route 44 when the postdoc from his lab, San Jose State’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory, said the words of every scientist’s dreams: “Oh my gosh. Look at that.” They had been making a wide pass around the Bald and Eiler wildfires in the Lassen National Forest, trying to get out of the smoke so they could see the dense plumes curling out of the top....

The wildfires that have ravaged Fort McMurray, Alberta, are blowing north of the city to the vast facilities where Suncor and Syncrude process the bitumen mined from oil sands. The threat of fire has halted oil production at the industrial sites—stopping 1 million barrels a day—and could endanger the sites themselves, though fire officials are calling that scenario unlikely.The good news for the oil plants is that they sit on vast tracts of land oil companies have already dug up, creating huge fields of blank space around some of the sites....

A pit containing a wall made entirely of human bones and skulls has been recently unearthed in Ghent, Belgium.Mysteriously, the bones seem to all be shins, thighs, and skull fragments with no other types being present.Researchers will continue to examine the bones to find out more information.Archaeologists working on excavating Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium made a grim discovery: a wall made entirely of human bones—mainly comprised of adult thigh and shin bones with shattered pieces of human skulls throughout....

Last week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country’s space agency had tested a new anti-satellite weapon by destroying a satellite already in orbit. Now, an announcement by NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine claims that India’s test could endanger other satellites and objects in orbit—including the International Space Station.India launched a missile at a satellite believed to be the Indian spy satellite Microsat-r, launched a few months ago. The blowup created a field of satellite debris at that altitude....

The sci-fi sub-genre of body-shrinking adventures could soon turn from fiction into reality. Engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have developed micro-submarines powered by nano-motors that can navigate through the human body to deliver medicine to diseased organs without surgery.“We already know that micro-motors use different external driving forces—such as light, heat, or magnetic field—to actively navigate to a specific location,” says Dr. Kang Liang, of both the School of Biomedical Engineering and School of Chemical Engineering at UNSW, in a press statement....

Life finds a way in some of the deepest, darkest parts of the oceanNASA is interested in these places because that’s what life on other planets or moons could look likeOn August 20, NASA will send a submarine to the seafloor near Hawaii to study this extreme environment.NASA is about to send a submarine to the bottom of the ocean.The mission may seem like a departure from the agency’s primary occupation of lofting things into space, but NASA has a very good reason to be taking a closer look at the Earth’s seafloor....

While the Bitcoin stumbles through its cycles of hype and crashing, in upstate New York, it’s facing a new challenge: a ban on mining. The city council of Plattsburgh, New York has placed an 18-month moratorium on Bitcoin mining, believed to be the first such ban in the country.“My goal is to protect the ratepayers,” Mayor Colin Reed said at a crowded city council meeting on Thursday. “We don’t have an unlimited amount of electricity....

Employees at MIT’s Bates Research and Engineering Center in Middleton, Massachusetts may have been exposed to radioactive materials, the Associated Press reports. In an October 17 letter, university officials announced they would work together with state public health officials to determine whether the claims had merit. The facility is home to a particle accelerator, which would be the source of the radioactive material.Massachusetts Institute of Technology is under investigation for potentially exposing workers at its Bates Research and Engineering Center to hazardous radioactive materials....

A pair of Russian strategic heavy bombers recently flew near an important U.S. military base in the Aleutian islands chain. The bombers were intercepted by Alaska-based U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighters, but at no point entered U.S. airspace. The exercise may be an early part of, or training for, this month’s Vostok-2018 Russian military exercises. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the two Tu-95MS “Bear” bombers flew near the Shemya island in the Aleutian islands chain....

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is winning the race for satellite supremacy. On Thursday, the aerospace company won approval from the Federal Communications Commission to launch 7,000 new internet satellites into low-Earth orbit, markedly increasing the number of satellites currently deployed. The Commission voted in favor of Musk’s juggernaut, which has long held ambitions to expand global broadband internet access by way of a satellite constellation called Starlink, which the company hopes will include 12,000 satellites by the mid-2020s....

SpaceX is now cleared to launch the first non-government vehicle to berth with the International Space Station. The launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft is set for April 30 from Cape Canaveral. If anything goes wrong, the next opportunity to launch will be on May 3. NASA and its partners in the International Space Station approved the launch plan during yesterday’s Flight Readiness Review, or FRR. This is the biggest milestone in a six-year program by NASA to use private launch companies to send first supplies and then crew to the ISS....

The bedrock below the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is rising more rapidly than expected, according to an international team of researchers. The unexpected discovery has several implications for the future of the Antarctic continent. The fast rate of the rising earth beneath the icy continent, which is twice the size of Australia, could mean increased stability for the ice sheet in the face of catastrophic collapse due to ice loss....

Elon Musk has a space company. Elon Musk has a car company. Elon Musk likes to tweet odd things at odd hours. Here is the inevitable result:View full post on TwitterAccording to the tweet sent late Friday evening—because of course—the payload for the first ever flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy will be Musk’s very own prototype Tesla Roadster. The car will be launched during the rocket’s first test flight early next year and end up in orbit of Mars....

There’s an American flag stuck to a hatch on the International Space Station. The first space shuttle mission, STS-1, flew the flag in 1981. The final shuttle flight, in 2011, left the flag behind in orbit, a prize to be claimed by the next crew to fly into space from U.S. soil.ISS American flag.NASABoeing and SpaceX are locked in a duel to be the first to reach orbit with people on board their capsules....

Update 9:17 p.m. EDT: Tiangong-1 has deorbited and reentered the atmosphere, as confirmed by the U.S. Air Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron. The space station came down at 8:16 p.m. EDT on April 1 (00:16 UTC on April 2), and burned up over the southern Pacific Ocean. View full post on TwitterUpdate 8:30 p.m. EDT: Tiangong-1 may have already reentered, or it may be approaching the Pacific coast of South America....