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Certain symbols appear on temple walls at various locations in the ancient city of Dr-Šarrukīn, where Khorsabad, Iraq, is today. At the time of their creation, the city was ruled by Sargon II, who ruled over the Assyrian kingdom from 721 to 705 BCE. The king was already middle-aged by the time he took the throne (by force) from his brother, Shalmaneser V.He was remembered as a great king who founded the Sargonid Dynasty, which ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire for another century before it fell. He was particularly fond of building monuments as well as being a patron of the arts.The region, which encompasses modern Iraq, parts of Iran, Turkey, and Syria is often regarded as the “cradle of civilization” today. It is the place where empires were first born, along with cities and even written language. It was an incredibly important area for much of human history, and so interpreting the symbols may help us understand more about the ancient humans that lived there.Drawings of the eagle and bull symbols recorded by French excavators at the end of the 19th century.Image credit: The New York Public Library.The symbols tend to appear in the same sequence consisting of a lion, eagle, bull, fig tree and a plough. They were first recorded and transmitted to public audiences by French excavators who visited the location at the end of the 19th century.Since their rediscovery, many researchers have attempted to interpret their meaning. Some believe they are like Egyptian hieroglyphs, some sort of expression of imperial power, or may even spell out the king’s name.But now an Assyriologist from Trinity College Dublin has proposed a new explanation: the symbols may spell out Sargon’s name (šargīnu), while also representing specific constellations.“The study of ancient languages and cultures is full of puzzles of all shapes and sizes, but it’s not often in the Ancient Near East that one faces mystery symbols on a temple wall,” Dr Martin Worthington explained in a statement.   A drawing of the fig tree and the plough as recorded by French excavators at the end of the 19th century.Image credit: The New York Public Library.According to Worthington, the symbols can also be understood as a constellation. For instance, the lion represents “Leo”, and the eagle “Aquilla”. Many of our existing constellations were inherited from the Greeks who themselves inherited those from Mesopotamia, so we would recognize them today. However, we have dropped others, including the “jaw”, which Worthington believes was represented by the symbol of the fig tree. This, he argues, comes from the belief that the word for “tree” – iu – sounds similar to that for jaw – isu.“The effect of the five symbols, was to place Sargon’s name in the heavens, for all eternity – a clever way to make the king’s name immortal”, Worthington added. “And, of course, the idea of bombastic individuals writing their name on buildings is not unique to ancient Assyria…”.Yet Worthington is aware that his idea is not set in stone, as it were. “I can’t prove my theory, but the fact it works for both the five-symbol sequence and the three-symbol sequence, and that the symbols can also be understood as culturally appropriate constellations, strikes me as highly suggestive. The odd[s] against it all being happenstance are – forgive the pun – astronomical”.The study is published in the Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research.

Researchers working on a near-universal coronavirus vaccine that could stop outbreaks before they get started have reported success in mice. The vaccine confers immunity against the original SARS virus, despite it not being one of the viruses used to build it.There's little doubt that plenty of viruses currently circulating in animals will one day make the jump to humans. Moreover, viruses that have already made that leap will continue to mutate, creating new versions that will evade existing immunity. In a more connected world, such diseases have the potential to spread, and even kill, much faster.Swifter processes to produce new vaccines may help, but it's never great to be playing catch up. The solution lies in “proactive vaccinology”, finding ways to protect against viruses that don't yet exist or have not yet infected humans. Although we can never know with certainty the effectiveness of such a vaccine until the virus emerges, Dr Rory Hills of the University of Cambridge and colleagues hope to have something that would provide reasonable confidence.“Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started,” Hills, first author of the new study, said in a statement.  “We’ve created a vaccine that provides protection against a broad range of different coronaviruses – including ones we don’t even know about yet.”Defending against a truly new type of virus, one with no cousins already infecting humans, could be an almost impossible task. Threats like that are rare, however. Almost all the diseases that plague humanity have close relatives, most notably in the case of coronaviruses. “We don’t have to wait for new coronaviruses to emerge. We know enough about coronaviruses, and different immune responses to them, that we can get going with building protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now,” said Cambridge's Professor Mark Howarth.Their experimental vaccine is called a “Quartet Nanocage”. At its core is a ball of tightly-bound nanoparticles to which viral antigen chains are attached with a type of "protein glue" they and their colleagues created.Exposure to these chains trains the immune system to target regions of coronaviruses that remain consistent across multiple varieties. The team of researchers is hardly alone in attempting to produce a proactive coronavirus vaccine. A few scientists have been working on the idea since the original SARS outbreak in 2003, and inevitably efforts accelerated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine-making advances that came with it.However, the researchers claim their approach is simpler to develop than alternatives. That may sound unlikely, since they are using an array of antigens rather than just one, but if they're right it could make for a more rapid progress, particularly now its promise has been demonstrated. The team used Receptor-Binding Domains (RBDs) from the “Spikes” of four coronaviruses, including the original Wuhan strain of COVID-19 for injection into mice. They compared this with alternative approaches that used some of the same technology but lacked key stages of the process. Although all the methods tested produced an array of antibodies, the Quartet Nanocage produced both the broadest and strongest response.Crucially, the resulting antibodies were able to neutralize the original SARS1 virus. Replacing the Wuhan strain in the vaccine with the “Kraken” version of Omicron demonstrated the capacity to neutralize the original. Similarly, a version where an RBD from the original SARS1 virus was used proved effective against currently circulating variants. The broadening of responses also worked for mice whose immune systems had previously been primed with the Wuhan spike, indicating the approach could be helpful for people who have already received other COVID vaccines, or been infected.As the authors note, medical technologies that work in mice do not always translate to humans. Moreover, even if some protection is provided, the extent of that protection is not known, and probably can't be until the relevant virus emerges. Nevertheless, a widespread vaccine that reduces infections even modestly might have been all we needed in the early days of the pandemic to prevent it from running out of control. Perhaps most importantly, the same basic technique may prove applicable to other families of viruses, such as influenza.The study is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Here's a question that surfaces on the Internet every now and then (and not from the usual suspects of conspiracy theorists and cranks): why are there so few photographs of Neil Armstrong on the Moon?There are people under the belief that there are no photos of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. This is not the case. There are photographs of the first man on the Moon, as well as plenty of footage.     However, it is true that there are very few photographs of him on there. In fact, the trash bags the crew left on the lunar surface feature in more photographs than Neil Armstrong.There are photos of Armstrong on the Moon, although one is of him reflected in Buzz Aldrin's visor, and one is of his backside. Neil Armstrong reflected in Buzz Aldrin's visor.Image credit: NASANot his best angle.Image credit: NASAThere are other stills of Armstrong on the Moon, though they were shot by movie cameras onboard the Lunar Module. In one, he is seen raising the US flag with Buzz Aldrin, while another gives a view of his face.Neil Armstrong's face seen from the Lunar Module camera.Image credit: NASA/Andrew ChaikinThe reason for the lack of photographs is fairly simple; Armstrong was the one holding the camera for the majority of their time on the Moon. There are plenty of photos of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon as a result, though both later said that they were not at all focused on who was included in the photographs, concentrating on the mission at hand. 

Scroll through social media during the summertime and it wouldn’t be unusual to come across plenty of people enjoying the sunshine and warmth. But in the last few years, there have also been those putting out warnings that antidepressants can make you more vulnerable to the effects of heat – so how true are these claims?What's the evidence?The center for regulating body temperature, or thermoregulation, is a tiny structure in the middle of the brain called the hypothalamus. It’s this region that some evidence suggests a class of antidepressant medication known as tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) might affect in such a way that it makes it more difficult to regulate heat.When we can’t regulate our body’s response to warmer weather, it’s known as heat intolerance, which can cause people to feel overheated and sweat excessively."Also [typically] the body has a good way of telling us when we are thirsty, but these medications can diminish that – and they can also lower blood pressure slightly, which can lead to a chance of fainting in the heat," Dr Lawrence Wainwright, a researcher in the University of Oxford’s psychiatry department, told the BBC.However, TCAs aren’t prescribed as often nowadays; people are more often given a newer class of drugs known as selective serotonin or serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs or SNRIs. Wainwright also said there’s some evidence to suggest that SSRIs impact thermoregulation too.But on the whole, the body of evidence that could explain why people on antidepressants are reporting struggling in the heat remains incompletely understood, at least until further research is carried out – though scientists have some ideas.“What we know is that different types of antidepressants [such as SSRIs and SNRIs] influence different chemical messengers called neurotransmitters,” Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya, consultant psychiatrist at Nightingale Hospital, told Stylist. “The main ones are noradrenaline/norepinephrine, dopamine and, predominantly, serotonin – and the heat intolerance some people experience is most likely caused by a complex interplay between these.”Sweaty side effectsThough the effect of antidepressants on the brain’s temperature regulation center is unclear, there’s a known side effect of several of these medications that could still put people at risk of heat-related illness: excessive sweating.Known as hyperhidrosis, it’s a common side effect for both SSRIs and TCAs, particularly at night. This sweating can then ramp up even more during a heatwave, which can put people at increased risk of dehydration and the effects that come with that, such as headaches, dizziness, and fatigue.How to stay coolIf you’re on antidepressants and feeling the heat, it’s not recommended to stop taking your medication; going cold turkey comes with its own set of uncomfortable side effects. Instead, it’s suggested to take the usual advice when it comes to staying cool:Drink plenty of fluidsAvoid going outside if possibleKeep cool inside by closing windows and keeping curtains/blinds closedAvoid exercisingAll “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

If you look at a current version of the periodic table, it appears complete. Since 2010, the entire seventh period has been filled, but the eighth period has not been started. It’s easy to wonder if we have discovered, or created, every element possible. Even if this is not the case, one might wonder whether some future maximum exists, beyond which it is impossible to create further elements. The answer is probably not – but there are some interesting complications to that.First, a little chemistry refresher. Elements are defined by the number of protons in their nucleus. Six protons and it’s carbon, 26 protons mean iron, 92 uranium. An element’s atomic number equals its proton count. All elements, other than hydrogen, need some neutrons to hold the protons together, but it’s the number of protons that matter. Indeed, in most cases, the nucleus will be either stable or fairly long-lasting with several different numbers of neutrons, creating different isotopes of the element. For example, there are five stable isotopes of nickel.The periodic table was initially constructed from naturally occurring elements based on similarities in their chemistry, and filled as far as uranium. Realizing elements with more than 92 protons were not found in nature, scientists started trying to make them.Synthetic elementsWe’ve now made 26 of these “transuranic” elements. None of them are stable. The reason we don’t find them in nature is not that they were never produced; almost certainly many of them have been made in supernovae and kilonovae. However, all are sufficiently radioactive that any whose origins predate the Earth have long since decayed to other elements. Production by more recent events has been far too limited to introduce detectable quantities to the Solar System.Producing the first transuranic elements proved relatively easy. Neptunium and plutonium were made by bombarding uranium with light nuclei so that some got captured to produce still heavier elements. Producing enough plutonium to make an atomic bomb may have been a major challenge during World War II, but as the process was refined it proved too easy for humanity’s good thereafter. With half-lives of hundreds of thousands or millions of years, neither element had survived from the Earth’s beginning, but once made there was plenty of time to study their properties.The next elements along the seventh period, americium and curium, were made only a few years later by a similar process and without much greater difficulty. Their half-lives are shorter, but still easily long enough to build up stocks of either element for research. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, new elements were announced every few years, steadily stepping further along the table – and even making it to song.   Some were produced deliberately by bombarding heavy elements with light nuclei, others found in the fallout from nuclear weapons tests.However, the further along period 7 one goes, the harder it has proven to make new elements, and the shorter their half-lives have turned out to be, although the pattern is not perfect. Roentgenium (atomic number 111) and Darmstadtium (110) both have their longest-lived isotopes measured in seconds, but Roentgenium lasts longer than Darmstadtium, despite being one step further along.Once you get to Moscovium (115) even the longest half-life is measured in milliseconds. We can’t really study its chemistry, because even if we could make a lot of it, very little would be left in the time it took to conduct an experiment. No new elements have been announced since 2010 when tennessine (117) was made, although names and official recognition of the most recent elements occurred in 2015/2016. Oganesson (118) produced earlier than tennessine, has an even shorter half-life at less than a millisecond, and only a handful of atoms have been made.So, is this it?Probably not. There is no theoretical reason why heavier elements should not be possible. The table’s periods reflect the elements’ chemistry, caused by electrons, rather than the physics of the nucleus, so there is nothing theoretically stopping us from starting another row. Nevertheless, given how hard it has proven to make the last few elements, we can expect it to be harder still to make more and observe them before decay. There’s no unbreakable limit like the speed of light, but the level of difficulty can be expected to keep increasing.Plot Twist – A Possible Island Of Stability More than 50 years ago physicists proposed that somewhere around atomic number 164 there could be an “island of stability”. More recently one of the main proponents has been Dr Yuri Oganessia, whose name might look rather familiar, reflecting the respect with which he is viewed by colleagues in the heavy element-making field.Producing elements with such a large nucleus would still be difficult, to say the least. Yet if we can get there, the idea runs, they would last for long periods of time.A prediction for the stablity of isotopes based on their numbers of protons and neutronsImage Credit: Yuri OrganessianRecently, the idea got a kick-along from the fact that asteroids such as 33 Polyhmnia and Psyche appear to be very dense, astonishingly so in Polyhmnia’s case. It’s likely this apparent density just reflects measuring errors – we may be overestimating the mass and underestimating their volume.A much more tantalizing explanation, however, is that these asteroids are built around cores of elements near the proposed island of instability. Elements’ density does not increase exactly in line with atomic number, but generally speaking, those with higher numbers are denser, and anything with an atomic number in the 160s should be staggeringly heavy.If forged by the phenomenal force of a kilonova, such elements would be eternal, or nearly so. Small amounts could have made their way to our Solar System. Within planets, they would sink to the center and represent such a small part of the core as to be undetectable, but a decent lump could raise the average density of an asteroid to the point we notice something odd.A more whimsical vision of the quest to find distant islands of stability.Image Credit: Yuri OrganessianIf this is true, and we could return a sample of such elements to Earth, it could form the basis for making elements with atomic numbers into the 170s. These might be beyond the island of stability, and therefore very short-lived, but could still be possible to produce very briefly.

Having a permanent human presence on the lunar surface requires being able to use resources found on the Moon – not everything can be brought from Earth. But it is unlikely that the base will be on the hot spot of everything it needs. Some stuff will have to be transported. Cars (well, buggies) on the Moon are nothing new, but researchers are considering something quite different: A levitating railway system.The project is called FLOAT, standing for Flexible Levitation On A Track. The goal is to provide payload transportation that is autonomous, reliable, and efficient. It aims to move payloads to and from spacecraft landing zones to the base, and transport lunar soil (regolith) from the mining location to the place where resources are extracted or where the soil is used for construction.What’s exciting about the technology is that the tracks are not fixed. They are unrolled directly onto the lunar regolith, so FLOAT needs minimal site preparation. Levitating robots will move over the tracks, and not having wheels or legs is advantageous as they do not have to deal with the sharp regolith and its damaging power.The flexible film track is made of a graphite layer that allows for diamagnetic levitation, while a flex circuit generates electromagnetic thrust. The third layer is actually optional, but it is a solar panel so that when in sunlight, the system doesn’t even require external energy. While the robots might have different sizes, the team estimates that 100 tons of material can be moved by multiple kilometers every day.FLOAT is one of the six NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) that have moved to phase II. Others include a new propulsion system to send astronauts to Mars quickly and a liquid space telescope concept. For FLOAT, phase II will focus on designing and manufacturing a scaled-down version of the system to be tested on a Moon-analogous environment, as well as a better understanding of environmental impacts on tracks and robots, and what else is needed to turn this concept into a reality.“These diverse, science fiction-like concepts represent a fantastic class of Phase II studies,” said John Nelson, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “Our NIAC fellows never cease to amaze and inspire, and this class definitely gives NASA a lot to think about in terms of what’s possible in the future.” These projects received $600,000 to continue investigating feasibility. The FLOAT leader is Ethan Schaler, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. If the system continues to show its capabilities, it might be a crucial infrastructure on the Moon as soon as the 2030s.Phase I projects have also been announced and the proposals go from new telescope designs, technologies to make Mars less toxic, and even a swarm of tiny spacecraft that could travel to our nearest stars in a couple of decades.