One of the most hotly anticipated concept cars in recent history, the Aptera solar-powered car took a large step towards reality recently as the first-ever production-grade body arrived at the company’s headquarters in San Diego.
This three-wheeler is advertised as containing 34 square feet of solar paneling that actually powers the car as it drives or while it’s parked, but so many aspects are completely new in a commercial automobile designed for mass production that extra precautions and preparations are needed before it can hit the road.
“We had so much fun last week celebrating a company milestone—the arrival of Aptera’s first production body in San Diego,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Now Team Aptera is back to work finalizing the cable routing, connectors, and placement of components in preparation for our first [production-intent] builds.”
According to Elektrek, the company has ordered all the parts for its production-intent battery packs, and other non-structural components are currently being “validated” in Italy by the company’s supply partner.
The suspension, safety equipment, and drivetrain are yet to be finalized for production models. Still, the company has gone further than many before them, because the design they are currently finalizing is not meant to be an eye-raiser or science project, like some GNN has reported on.
When the PI-2 Aptera solar trike is finally ready, it will be because the company is producing 10,000 a year.
Despite looking as dramatic as any Pagani or Lamborghini, the Aptera’s tapered backside, aerodynamic body, and arched, dolphin-like undercarriage are all designed to reduce drag.
In fact, the detail paid to the reduction of drag and energy use borders on obsessive. But it’s through this ultra-efficiency that solar power, a relatively limited form of electricity generation, can actually become a useful feature for powering a car.
“We think energy should be used to turn your wheels—that starts with aerodynamics,” says Co-CEO Chris Anthony, in a video released by the company in 2021 announcing it was taking preorders.
“In a typical vehicle you use 60% of your fuel just pushing the air out of the way at highway speeds; so if you could take that aerodynamic drag down to 0, you’d instantly get 60% better fuel economy.
“Instead of having 200-300 parts to the body, [the Aptera] have four parts to the main structure, and that makes it much easier to build, track, and assemble,” says Steve Fambro, the second co-founder of the company, in the same video.
The company says the Aptera’s solar panels will deliver 40 miles of range from charging per sunny day, but the car can be plugged in like any other EV. Aptera also maintains that its vehicle will have 1,000 miles of range because of this perfect aerodynamism, low-weight, and efficient drivetrain. Source: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/the-car-fueled-entirely-by-the-sun-takes-huge-step-towards-production/
Jem and Zoe, rescued from Tiger King Park – credit: Lions, Tigers, and Bears Animal Sanctuary
A San Diego wildlife sanctuary is proud to report that two of the 69 tigers rescued from the infamous collection of the ‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic are thriving at their Alpine, CA location.
Participating in the rescue of the cats, it took Lions, Tigers, and Bears Animal Sanctuary 3 years to help the pair of Bengal tigers, Jem and Zoe, to put on normal weight and get back to their wild ways, but that perseverance has paid off.
Netflix broke the world of the US tiger trade to the world with a landmark docu-series Tiger King in 2021, which centered around the private menagerie collection of Joe Exotic, and his difficulties with a woman named Carole Baskin, the owner of Big Cat Rescue.
Exotic is now in prison serving 21 years for conspiracy to commit murder after attempting to hire two hitmen to take Baskin out. Tiger King Park in Oklahoma was closed for ongoing violations of the Endangered Species Act.
An organized effort to relocate his 69 captive tigers to sanctuaries around the country saw Lions, Tigers, and Bears (LTB) take in two adults Jem and Zoe.
“Their condition was dire, marked by severe malnutrition, emaciation, dull skin, and other issues,” LTB told Fox News 5 San Diego. “The trauma from long-term abuse led to the development of uncharacteristic behavior, such as not eating for days at a time.”
However, LTB’s efforts succeeded, and after three years the pair are “living their best lives in their forever home.”
People can visit Zoe and Jem at the LTD Sanctuary by reservation only, but the sanctuary relies on visitors as well as contributions to perform life-saving rescues like those from Tiger King Park.
In a world first, marine biologists were able to have a discourse with a humpback whale, pushing out the boundaries of cooperation and understanding that could be possible between our two species.
An adult female humpback whale, known as Twain, in Southeast Alaska, was located along with a group of whales and called with a recording of another humpback’s “whup/throp” call.
The recording was made by whales of the same group the day before, but the team didn’t know if the calls recorded were made by the same whale or were part of an exchange between two or more whales. To find out, the researchers conducted the trial on two days, with the first to find out if the whup calls they had recorded would be socially acceptable.
It turned out that whatever the whale(s) had been saying the day before was appropriate as far as Twain was concerned, and after the team broadcast the playback, she drifted away from her group and participated both physically and acoustically in three phases of interaction with the crew and their boat including periods of engagement, agitation, and disengagement.
First she called back, then she circled the boat three times, surfaced, and dived again. After this interaction, she gradually left.
Twain’s whup calls on day 2 and the whup calls recorded on day 1 were acoustically analyzed for both spectral and temporal features, specifically the inter-call interval, or latency between calls as measured by the time difference between the preceding call’s offset and the subsequent call’s onset.
The scientists determined that this metric would be able to determine both arousal and valence, thereby allowing them to get some idea of the emotional content of the exchange. The results indicated that substantial variation was found among the latencies in Twain’s calling behavior, which they took to mean excitement or arousal.
“After playing the contact call three times, we got this huge response,” said Brenda McCowan told the BBC. “Then, to keep the animal engaged, I started trying to match the latency of her calls to our calls. So, if she waited 10 seconds, I waited 10 seconds. We ended up matching each other. We did this 36 times over a 20-minute period.”
Twain’s calls were significantly shorter during engagement than either during the period defined as agitation, when she was circling the boat ejecting air through her blowhole, or as she was leaving.
North America will witness a rare astronomical phenomenon – a total solar eclipse today. Beginning over the Pacific Ocean, this celestial event will traverse Mexico, United States and Canada. As per Indian Standard Time (IST), the total solar eclipse will begin at 9:12 pm tonight and will end at 2:22 am early tomorrow morning. However, it will not be visible to skywatchers in India. A solar eclipse is an astronomical phenomenon where the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun and blocks the Sun’s light either entirely or partially. When the moon completely covers the sun, it casts a shadow on Earth, forming what is called a “path of totality.” The total darkening of the sky, also known as totality, will be visible across a 185-kilometre stretch between Mexico, the US, and Canada. North America to witness rare astronomical phenomenon – total solar eclipse
In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a breakthrough in xenotransplantation – when an organ, cells or tissues are transplanted from one species to another.
The world’s first transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney into a live human was announced last week.
Champions of xenotransplantation regard it as the solution to organ shortages across the world. In December 2023, 1,445 people in Australia were on the waiting list for donor kidneys. In the United States, more than 89,000 are waiting for kidneys.
One biotech CEO says gene-edited pigs promise “an unlimited supply of transplantable organs”.
Not, everyone, though, is convinced transplanting animal organs into humans is really the answer to organ shortages, or even if it’s right to use organs from other animals this way.
There are two critical barriers to the procedure’s success: organ rejection and the transmission of animal viruses to recipients.
But in the past decade, a new platform and technique known as CRISPR/Cas9 – often shortened to CRISPR – has promised to mitigate these issues.
What is CRISPR?
CRISPR gene editing takes advantage of a system already found in nature. CRISPR’s “genetic scissors” evolved in bacteria and other microbes to help them fend off viruses. Their cellular machinery allows them to integrate and ultimately destroy viral DNA by cutting it.
In 2012, two teams of scientists discovered how to harness this bacterial immune system. This is made up of repeating arrays of DNA and associated proteins, known as “Cas” (CRISPR-associated) proteins.
When they used a particular Cas protein (Cas9) with a “guide RNA” made up of a singular molecule, they found they could program the CRISPR/Cas9 complex to break and repair DNA at precise locations as they desired. The system could even “knock in” new genes at the repair site.
In 2020, the two scientists leading these teams were awarded a Nobel prize for their work.
In the case of the latest xenotransplantation, CRISPR technology was used to edit 69 genes in the donor pig to inactivate viral genes, “humanise” the pig with human genes, and knock out harmful pig genes.
How does CRISPR work?
A busy time for gene-edited xenotransplantation
While CRISPR editing has brought new hope to the possibility of xenotransplantation, even recent trials show great caution is still warranted.
In 2022 and 2023, two patients with terminal heart diseases, who were ineligible for traditional heart transplants, were granted regulatory permission to receive a gene-edited pig heart. These pig hearts had ten genome edits to make them more suitable for transplanting into humans. However, both patients died within several weeks of the procedures.
Earlier this month, we heard a team of surgeons in China transplanted a gene-edited pig liver into a clinically dead man (with family consent). The liver functioned well up until the ten-day limit of the trial.
How is this latest example different?
The gene-edited pig kidney was transplanted into a relatively young, living, legally competent and consenting adult.
The total number of gene edits edits made to the donor pig is very high. The researchers report making 69 edits to inactivate viral genes, “humanise” the pig with human genes, and to knockout harmful pig genes.
Clearly, the race to transform these organs into viable products for transplantation is ramping up.
From biotech dream to clinical reality
Only a few months ago, CRISPR gene editing made its debut in mainstream medicine.
In November, drug regulators in the United Kingdom and US approved the world’s first CRISPR-based genome-editing therapy for human use – a treatment for life-threatening forms of sickle-cell disease.
The treatment, known as Casgevy, uses CRISPR/Cas-9 to edit the patient’s own blood (bone-marrow) stem cells. By disrupting the unhealthy gene that gives red blood cells their “sickle” shape, the aim is to produce red blood cells with a healthy spherical shape.
Although the treatment uses the patient’s own cells, the same underlying principle applies to recent clinical xenotransplants: unsuitable cellular materials may be edited to make them therapeutically beneficial in the patient.
Medicine and gene technology regulators are increasingly asked to approve new experimental trials using gene editing and CRISPR.
However, neither xenotransplantation nor the therapeutic applications of this technology lead to changes to the genome that can be inherited.
For this to occur, CRISPR edits would need to be applied to the cells at the earliest stages of their life, such as to early-stage embryonic cells in vitro (in the lab).
In Australia, intentionally creating heritable alterations to the human genome is a criminal offence carrying 15 years’ imprisonment.
Even without creating inheritable gene changes, however, xenotransplantation using CRISPR is in its infancy.
For all the promise of the headlines, there is not yet one example of a stable xenotransplantation in a living human lasting beyond seven months.
While authorisation for this recent US transplant has been granted under the so-called “compassionate use” exemption, conventional clinical trials of pig-human xenotransplantation have yet to commence.
But the prospect of such trials would likely require significant improvements in current outcomes to gain regulatory approval in the US or elsewhere.
By the same token, regulatory approval of any “off-the-shelf” xenotransplantation organs, including gene-edited kidneys, would seem some way off.
credit – Aptera, via X
