Welcome to this edition of Over a Cup of Coffee!

In this newsletter

• Billionaire could break Hubble Telescope

• Watch your supplements!

• Frozen brain works when thawed after 18 months

Billionaire could break Hubble Telescope

An American entrepreneur's proposal has NASA in a fix.

Having served humanity for over thirty years, the Hubble Telescope is in its last decade and slowly inching toward Earth. Left to its destiny, the telescope will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere in 2034.

41-year-old Jared Isaacman is more popular as a private astronaut than as CEO of Shift4 Payments. In 2021, he was the commander of Inspiration4, a private spaceflight that spent two days in orbit in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Capsule.

Isaacman has now offered to pay the costs of sending a maintenance crew to fix the Hubble Telescope, a move that would save NASA millions of dollars. But the space agency can’t make up its mind.

The idea was first proposed in 2022 but doubts have crept in.

The problem is that Isaacman wants to do this using the Polaris Program, which he founded and which could see him take flight to the Telescope as well.

The technology for the mission will come from SpaceX, which has never done a spacewalk before. Worse still, the SpaceX capsule has no airlock, meaning the entire capsule has to be depressurized and exposed to space when the hatch opens, risking all the crew.

Hubble isn’t the International Space Station either and isn’t easy to dock to and its energy-generating solar panels spread out in the path of the approaching spacecraft, risking critical damage, if something goes wrong.

For now, NASA had suspended all public communication regarding the proposal and NPR dug in to find out what might happen next.

To know more about what has transpired since 2022, read NPR’s report.

Watch your supplements!

A team of researchers at Chapman University in the US collected 54 samples of supplements sold online or through retailers in California.

These supplements claimed to contain Ayurvedic herbs such as ashwagandha, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, tulsi, vacha, and amla, among others.

The team led by Professor Rosalee Hellberg used DNA barcoding to verify if the supplements were authentic. The method allows researchers to verify the presence of a species, even when a small fragment of DNA is present.

To their surprise, the team found that 60 percent of their supplements did not contain traces of herbs mentioned on the label. Also, 19 products contained plant species that were not on the label.

Rice was a common ingredient likely used as a filler because it is cheap. The study raises concerns about quality control and the risk to consumers who might unknowingly ingest substances they are allergic to.

The research findings were published in the Analytical Science Journal.

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Frozen brain works when thawed after 18 months

Freezing is great way to stop organic matter from decomposing but the process itself can cause tissue damage.

As temperatures drop, water inside the cells turns to ice, expands and damages the cells from within. This can be tolerated if the frozen tissue needs to be consumed (meat) but what if the tissue has to be transplanted? It needs to retain its functionality.

Researchers at the Fudan University in China have arrived at a novel concoction in which lab-grown brain tissue survived the journey of freezing through liquid nitrogen.

The concoction was called MEDY since it contained methylcellulose, ethylene glycol, DMSO and Y27632 and protected the tissue from damage. Samples frozen for even 18 months showed functionality when they were thawed back.

The research findings were published in Cell Reports Methods.

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Until next time,
Ameya