Pictures: First look at Kennedy Space Center's Gantry at LC-39 attraction
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Needle-free vaccine method delivers antibodies through dental floss in early study
Dental floss could eventually do much more than improve oral hygiene. A new study led by Texas Tech University and the University of North Carolina suggests that the thin filament could eventually double as a vaccine mechanism. In animal models, the researchers showed that dental floss can effectively release vaccines through the tissue between the teeth and gums, according to a press release. In the study, the flossing technique triggered the production of antibodies in "mucosal surfaces," such as the lining of the nose and lungs, the release stated. The findings were published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering. "Mucosal surfaces are important, because they are a source of entry for pathogens, such as influenza and COVID," said co-author Harvinder Singh Gill, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University, in the release. With the traditional method of injecting vaccines, the antibodies are primarily produced in the bloodstream, he noted. "But we know that when a vaccine is given via the mucosal surface, antibodies are stimulated not only in the bloodstream, but also on mucosal surfaces," said Gill. "This improves the body's ability to prevent infection, because there is an additional line of antibody defense before a pathogen enters the body." The vaccine enters through the "junctional epithelium," which is a thin layer of tissue in the deep pocket between the tooth and the gum. This tissue doesn't have the same barrier as other tissue linings, which means it can release immune cells into the body. In the study, the researchers added a peptide flu vaccine to unwaxed dental floss before flossing the teeth of lab mice, according to the release. Next, they compared the effectiveness of the floss-delivered vaccine to techniques that delivered it nasally or orally. "It would be easy to administer, and it addresses concerns many people have about being vaccinated with needles." "We found that applying vaccine via the junctional epithelium produces a far superior antibody response on mucosal surfaces than the current gold standard for vaccinating via the oral cavity, which involves placing vaccine under the tongue," said first author Rohan Ingrole, a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University. "The flossing technique also provides comparable protection against the flu virus as compared to the vaccine being given via the nasal epithelium." In addition to flu, the test was repeated for three other vaccine types: proteins, inactivated viruses and mRNA. For all types, the flossing technique produced "robust antibody responses in the bloodstream and across mucosal surfaces," the release stated. Next, the research team aims to test the effectiveness of vaccine delivery to the epithelial junction in humans through the use of floss picks, which are easier to hold. "It would be easy to administer, and it addresses concerns many people have about being vaccinated with needles," Gill said. "And we think this technique should be comparable in price to other vaccine delivery techniques." Hua Wang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois' Grainger College of Engineering, was not involved in the study but shared his reaction to the findings. "This study presents a promising floss-based vaccination method that can avoid needle injection or any potentially painful procedure," he told Fox News Digital. "The authors demonstrated that vaccine components in the floss coating can penetrate the junctional epithelium in gingival sulcus and reach the underlying tissues, leading to systemic antibody responses." The floss-based vaccination method could help to improve patient compliance if it goes through the full evaluation process, he noted. There are some limitations and drawbacks associated with floss-based vaccines, the researchers acknowledged. Babies and toddlers who don't have teeth yet wouldn't be candidates for the technique, for example. "In addition, we would need to know more about how or whether this approach would work for people who have gum disease or other oral infections," Gill added. Wang agreed that many questions remain to be answered about this experimental vaccination method. "In addition to the unclear impact of gingival tissue infection on vaccination, the local and systemic side effects of this vaccination method remain to be understood," he told Fox News Digital. "For example, vaccination at the gingival tissue may initiate local inflammation that eventually induces undesirable side effects." It's also not yet clear what exact path the vaccine components follow when traveling from the tooth site to the tissues or how the immune responses are generated, Wang noted. For more Health articles, visit "Lastly, from the translation perspective, the efficacy of floss-based vaccines would need to be comparable to conventional needle-based vaccines." The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by funds from the Whitacre Endowed Chair in Science and Engineering at Texas Tech University.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Alien: Earth Boss Teases the Show's New Alien Species Designed to ‘Get Into Your Nightmares'
In space, you don't just have xenomorphs to worry about anymore. FX's new series Alien: Earth — premiering Tuesday, Aug. 12 — brings the Alien film franchise to the small screen with a fresh story about a research vessel full of alien specimens that crash-lands on Earth. Yes, the infamous xenomorph from the Alien movies is onboard… but so are a number of new alien species developed for the TV show, including a creepy-crawly centipede that crawls inside your body like the ear bugs from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and a jellyfish-like creature that sucks out your eyeball and takes over your body. Scared yet? More from TVLine Alien: Earth Boss Talks Bringing the Sci-Fi Franchise to TV - and Down to Earth for the First Time Casting News: Olivia Colman and Brie Larson's FX Drama, Jax Taylor Exits The Valley and More Casting News: Alison Brie's FX Pilot, One Tree Hill Vet Joins Emily in Paris and More 'One of the things that you can never reproduce in an audience that has seen an Alien movie is the feeling you had the first time you saw the life cycle of this creature in that first film,' showrunner Noah Hawley told a group of reporters at a recent press screening. 'It's just unreproducible. You know that it's an egg, and it's face huggers, it's chest bursters, all that. So that's where the idea for other creatures came from.' He wants Alien: Earth viewers to feel the same dread that moviegoers felt seeing the xenomorph for the first time: 'I want you to have that feeling, because that feeling is integral to the Alien experience. But I can't do it with these creatures. So let's introduce new creatures where you don't know how they reproduce or what they eat, so that you can have that 'I'm out' feeling multiple times a week.' When it came time to dream up the new creatures, Hawley says, 'some of it is just, 'What's the worst thing I could think of?' And the fun of it is not just: What's the design of the creature? And who do they kill? And what do they eat? But also, then you have the opportunity of, 'Well, how do they reproduce?' And that's going to be gross.' The new aliens are specimens in a space lab, Hawley explains: 'They're in a zoo, basically, but they don't stay in the zoo.' And every aspect of the creatures' design 'all goes to the 'get into your nightmares' part of it. Mostly, my hope is that people who watch the show will never do anything comfortably again. Like, 'Should I eat that? I should probably pick that piece of bread up. Look at what's under it.'' Best of TVLine Summer TV Calendar: Your Guide to 85+ Season and Series Premieres Classic Christmas Movies Guide: Where to Watch It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Elf, Die Hard and Others What's New on Netflix in June
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
NASA, SpaceX punch through weather threat for Crew-11 launch
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX was back one day after a weather-related scrub and threaded the needle amid threatening clouds to send up the Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station. A Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A at 11:43 a.m. Eastern time carrying NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to space. 'I have no emotions but joy right now. That was absolutely transcendent — ride of a lifetime,' said Cardman, making her first trip to space. 'Boy, it's great to be back in orbit again,' Fincke added as he returned for his fourth trip to orbit. 'Thank you to SpaceX and NASA to get us here. What a ride.' The first-stage booster for this mission made its third flight and touched back down for what was SpaceX's final use of Landing Zone 1 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station sending a sonic boom across the Space Coast. The quartet shot through a break amid darkening clouds and into space. The previous day, they had their launch scrubbed with one minute and seven seconds on the countdown clock when a storm cell opened up right over the pad. They actually had to put on raincoats over their spacesuits as they made their way out of the capsule for what turned out to be just a one-day delay. The quartet, who arrived to KSC on Saturday, were back Friday getting prepped for launch, donning their spacesuits after 7 a.m. at the Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building. They made their walkout after 8 a.m. to ride over to launch pad in black Teslas with license plates that read 'Live,' 'Laugh' and 'Launch.' By 9 a.m. the had made their way up the launch tower to climb back on board their spacecraft. With an hour to go, all were prepped in their seats with the hatch closed awaiting fueling and arming of the launch escape system. When it does launch, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said it will be groundbreaking for NASA use of a commercial spacecraft. 'We worked very hard with SpaceX to complete all the reuse activities for this vehicle. We had certified the vehicles — the Dragons — for only five flights. Now, we've completed all that work, and we're really ready to go,' he said. It was the same Crew Dragon that flew the first astronauts for SpaceX back in 2020, now part of a stable of five crew-capable Dragons. With Crew-11's launch, SpaceX will have flown 74 humans across 19 missions in just over five years. The mission will relieve the Crew-10 members who have been on board the space station since mid-March, but won't undock until they complete a short handover period during with the space station population will grow from seven to 11. Crew-11 is targeting docking with the station around 3 a.m. Saturday after a 16-hour trip. The crew will be on the station for at least six months, but NASA could stretch the mission to as long as eight months. For its members, Cardman and Platonov are rookies while Yui is making his second trip having flown to the station a decade ago, and Fincke is making his fourth trip to space having last flown to the station as part STS-134, the last flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, as well as two previous missions on Soyuz spacecraft. Cardman had originally been tapped to command the Crew-9 mission, but was bumped after NASA needed space on board to allow for the return flight to the two Boeing Starliner astronauts that were left behind on the station when their spacecraft was sent home without crew because of safety concerns. Fincke and Yui had both been training to fly future crewed missions of Starliner, but were shifted to this SpaceX mission as Boeing's beleaguered spacecraft continues to face delays. With their arrival to the station, the orbiting laboratory will have welcomed 290 people from 26 nations. The station will mark 25 years of continuous human presence in November having began Expedition 1 in 2020. The Crew-11 crew will become of Expedition 73 when they arrive and continue on as part of Expedition 74 that begins in November when the next replacement crew from Russia arrives. _____ Solve the daily Crossword
