The first Goldilocks black hole; Toxoplasma gondii metabolism; pumping at the speed of muscle

This week, physicists conducted biological research, engineers developed waste-recycling suits for astronauts (and worm riders), and astronomers identified the first known intermediate-mass black hole — and it’s right in our own galaxy’s backyard.

Pumping

Physicists at the University of Michigan noted that human muscle tissue is about 70% water. Theoretical model The role of water in muscle contraction and the rate at which fluid passes through the muscle Muscle fibers decide Muscle contraction speed. But they also discovered a strange type of elasticity, which they call paradoxical elasticity, following the “snakes on a plane” principle. This allows muscles to generate energy through deformation in three dimensions. This is observed when muscles bulge vertically when contracted lengthwise, as in posing in front of a mirror, referring to the admission fee to a gun show.

“Our results suggest that a more integrated and holistic view of muscles, not just as clumps of molecules but as complex, hierarchically organized materials, may provide new and unexpected answers to fundamental questions like how fast a muscle can contract and how many ways a muscle can exert force,” said Suraj Shankar, a physicist at the University of Michigan. “Muscles are much more than the sum of their parts.”

Rhythmic spacewalk

Ideally, astronauts should enjoy spacewalks as observers of the cosmos’s grandeur, without the stigma and debilitating obligation to wear adult diapers. The unhygienic reality of space life is that human biological needs take precedence over our evolution into interdimensional, floating star children, and astronauts wear diapers entirely. Another drawback is that urination during spacewalks bypasses the International Space Station’s recycling system and becomes waste in a resource-poor environment.

Inspired by the waste-recycling distillery suits worn by the Fremen in the films Dune: Part I and Dune 2, researchers at Cornell University have developed an undersuit that could solve the problem for future astronauts. The undersuit incorporates a vacuum-fed external catheter that routes urine to a reverse osmosis unit, providing a continuous supply of drinking water. This is a simplified description of the more technical kit, which you can read about in detail below. here.

Parasite Eve

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, an incurable disease that can lead to behavioral changes. It reproduces in felines and eventually infects mice, which it hopes will gain access to the cat. There is no vaccine for toxoplasmosis, in part because the biological mechanisms of infection are poorly studied. So a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a Optical imaging studies were performed To understand it better, they used a non-invasive technique called optical metabolic imaging. Metabolic activity In real time within cells.

During infection, host cells are reported to become more oxidized and NAD(P)H lifetimes increased – this extra energy powers the parasite as it replicates – and there are changes in the way Toxoplasma interacts with the host cell surface, leading to a change that has been dubbed the vaguely unpleasant “kiss and spit” effect.

“If a cell is infected, the cells around it may not be infected. It seems that the parasite ‘kisses’ those cells and injects its proteins – a kiss and saliva,” says scientist Gina Gallego Lopez. “Surprisingly, we saw the same changes as with a full infection, so it seems that a simple ‘kiss’ from the parasite is enough to induce changes in the host cell.”

A new black hole appears

Omega Centauri is a globular cluster in the Milky Way galaxy, 17,090 light-years from the Sun and visible in the southern sky. It is a collection of 10 million stars bound together by gravity and is the most massive globular cluster in the galaxy. Scientists believe it is the surviving core of another galaxy that was captured by the Milky Way and stripped of its outer stars. Astronomers have long speculated that if it is indeed the core of a galaxy, Omega Centauri may contain a central black hole.

Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have confirmed this suspicion. Detailed Study The researchers took a detailed look at the orbits of the stars in the cluster. They calculated the speeds of 1.4 million stars from 500 images from the Hubble Space Telescope, creating a huge catalog of the movements of stars in Omega Centauri. Eventually, they focused on seven fast-moving stars in the central region, whose speeds and movements can only be explained by invisible gravitating bodies.

What’s interesting is that this black hole has a stellar mass Black Hole and Supermassive black hole— An intermediate-mass black hole. It has been predicted but never observed before. The reason this black hole is much smaller than the ones we usually find at the centers of galaxies is because Omega Centauri itself is frozen in time. With a stable number of stars in the center and no stars on the outer side, the black hole cannot feed and gain mass.

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