A Birth Control Pill for Men Could Start Human Trials This Year!!

So while Scientists are still racing to create the first male contraceptive that isn’t a condom or surgery. Ed Cara
of Gizmodo reported couple of months ago that In new preliminary research, a team found they’ve developed a non-hormonal form of male birth control, one that kept lab mice sterile for four to six weeks with seemingly no side effects. Early human trials of the pill are expected to begin by the end of the year and so that means the non-hormonal pill was 99% effective at preventing pregnancy in mice. Excited yet guys?

The proposed contraceptive is the product of researchers at the University of Minnesota, who say it works by targeting how our bodies interact with vitamin A, known to be essential to fertility in mammals. Diets deficient in vitamin A have been linked to sterility, for instance. After a lengthy search, they found an experimental compound that blocks a protein responsible for binding to a form of vitamin A (retinoic acid) in our cells, known as retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-α). RAR-α is one of three proteins with a similar function, and the hope is that its selective blocking is enough to induce long-lasting but reversible sterility while causing little to no off-target effects elsewhere.

There are other potential male birth control treatments closer to fruition in clinical trials already, though it’s been a long and difficult road to get there. Most of these proposed options work by targeting testosterone, which could come with unwanted side effects like higher cholesterol or lower sex drive. The UMN team thinks their treatment could skate past these concerns, which could make it a more appealing option, according to lead researcher Md Abdullah Al Noman, a graduate student in medicinal chemistry at the university.

“Since men do not have to suffer the consequences of pregnancy, the threshold for side effects from birth control pills is rather low,” Noman told Gizmodo in an email. “That’s why we’re trying to develop non-hormonal birth control pills to avoid hormonal side effects.”

So far, the compound—dubbed GPHR-529—seems to work as intended. In new data presented Wednesday at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society, the team found that male mice dosed with the treatment for four weeks consistently experienced a sharp drop in sperm count and became sterile. Overall, GPHR-529 was estimated to be 99% effective in preventing pregnancy, with no noticeable side effects. And about four to six weeks after they stopped taking it, the male mice were no longer sterile. Other research of theirs in animals has similarly shown that inhibiting RAR-α should be safe and effective at inducing temporary male sterility.

“This all looks promising so far. But clinical trials are the definitive test for the safety of any drug candidate,” Noman noted. The team has since licensed GPHR-529 to the company YourChoice Therapeutics for further development, and should things go as planned, they hope to start early-stage clinical trials in people by the later half of the year. The UMN team is also still working to identify other promising candidates, both in case GPHR529 doesn’t pan out and to improve on their existing concept, which could allow them to get the same contraceptive effect at a lower dose.

Elsewhere, the male conceptive gel NES/T, which lowers levels of sperm and natural testosterone but then supplements its own testosterone to reduce side-effects, is rounding the corner. A larger scale Phase IIb trial of the gel is expected to be completed in early 2023, though more trials will be needed for FDA approval.

Scientists Levitate Small Plastic Plate Using Light

I’ve often said that the way we will use lightspeed will be when we learn to ride light itself like a tunel, and when we look at it as sort of a fiberoptic made of light where using the energy from the vacuum of space itself, and light being your source to move you forward we could use it along with Element 115 to travel the stars. Now it looks like science is catching up to one of my theories as they have used LED lights in a Vacuum chamber, and managed to do just that! But with small plastic so calm down this is still in it’s infant stages here but researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have managed to get two small plastic plates to hover using nothing but light, Wired reports.

Scientists have previously used the same physical phenomenon to float invisible aerosols in microfluidic devices, an object big enough to grasp was never moved before, making the study, published in Science Advances, a breakthrough. The researchers were able to have the Mylar plates, each as wide as a pencil’s diameter, hovering by using nothing but the energy from the light below. The hovering happens thanks to the energy from the LEDs heating up the Mylar’s specially coated underbelly. This energizes the air particles under the plastic and thrusts the plates away with a slight wind. 

I think Magnets will also eventually come into play here, and that will help in making new tech from this discovery. Such things as possible as “Hoverboards” which we’ve wanted since the days of Back to the Future 2 are now an inch closer to becoming reality. Also this technology could actually be utilized to learn more about the mesosphere. Lying between 50 and 85 kilometers (31 and 53 miles) above our heads, this high-up region of the atmosphere is pretty difficult to study since we don’t have access to it. This is a bit of a nuisance since the pressure in Mars’ atmosphere is similar to Earth’s mesosphere, implying that studying our mesosphere could help us develop technologies for Mars and others like it for future space travel, and colonization. Remember folks this sort of tech is happening for reasons not just for fun gadgets.

With the first instance of stable photophoretic flight achieved, the researchers are also armed with an accompanying theoretical model that can simulate how different flying plates would behave in the atmosphere. Utilizing these technologies, the researchers now considering developing a flight system that can take small sensors into the mesosphere by using this light-powered hovering technology. 

The current model indicates that a hovering plate could carry 80 kilometers (50 miles) overhead while equipped with a sensor-sized load; however, the idea is rather in its infant stages, and like I said researchers state that there are many meteorological challenges that need to be overcome before such technologies could be deployed.  But think of the possibilities once again friends.

NASA finds active ‘Star Wars’ galaxy far, far away!

Well lets hope the Sith don’t know where here… lol TXS 0128+554, outlined in red on the pic below, is an elliptical galaxy located 500 million light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Heck I wanna know about the bright RED Dots on the left side there…

The active galaxy far, far away looks eerily reminiscent of a TIE fighter from “Star Wars.” Which is how it got it’s name “The Star Wars Galaxy” I hope Disney doesn’t sue NASA of naming rights. But in reality the galaxy, known as TXS 0128+554, is 500 million light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. TXS 0128+554 is considered an active galaxy, as it emits more light than all of its stars together. In 2015, researchers found TXS 0128+554 was a “faint source of gamma rays,” but it wasn’t until recently that they went in for a closer look.

“After the Fermi announcement, we zoomed in a million times closer on the galaxy using the [Very Long Baseline Array’s] radio antennas and charted its shape over time,” said Purdue University professor and study lead author Matthew Lister in a statement. “The first time I saw the results, I immediately thought it looked like Darth Vader’s TIE fighter spacecraft from ‘Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.’ That was a fun surprise, but its appearance at different radio frequencies also helped us learn more about how active galaxies can change dramatically on decade time scales.”

TXS 0128+554 has a “supermassive black hole” that is believed to be 1 billion times the sun’s mass, which may provide a reason for the gamma-ray emissions.

The galaxy is also producing two jets, “beams of high-energy particles traveling at nearly the speed of light in opposite directions,” that give it the TIE fighter-like appearance. It’s believed these jets may be producing some of the gamma-ray emissions.

The researchers used NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to look at the galaxy to get a better idea of what it looks like.

“The real-world universe is three-dimensional, but when we look out into space, we usually only see two dimensions,” study co-author Daniel Homan added. “In this case, we’re lucky because the galaxy is angled in such a way, from our perspective, that the light from the farther lobe travels dozens more light-years to reach us than the light from the nearer one. This means we’re seeing the farther lobe at an earlier point in its evolution.”

The research has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

TXS 0128+554 is not the only “Star Wars”-linked discovery in space in recent memory.

In June 2016, exoplanet Kepler-1647 b was discovered 3,700 light-years from Earth. It is part of a double-star system, similar to Luke Skywalker’s planet, Tatooine. Three years later, exoplanet LTT 1445 A b and its three stars were discovered. Also remember Researchers discovered what they described as “the first volcanically active exomoon” in August 2019, a celestial body eerily reminiscent of the tiny, fiery “Star Wars” planet, Mustafar, where Anakin Skywalker turned into Darth Vader. Seems like “The Force” is real, and we’re on the cusp of disclosure. Or to quote Yoda. “ Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter.” The Empire Strikes Back.

May the force be with you….. Always.

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