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Researchers unexpectedly discovered toxic airborne pollutants in Oklahoma. The image above depicts a field in Oklahoma. Credit: Shutterstock University of Colorado Boulder researchers made the first-ever airborne detection of Medium Chain Chlorinated Paraffins (MCCPs) in the Western Hemisphere. Sometimes, scientific research feels a lot like solving a mystery. Scientists head into the field with a clear goal and a solid hypothesis, but then the data reveals something surprising. That’s when the real detective work begins. This is exactly what happened to a team from the University of Colorado Boulder during a recent field study in rural Oklahoma. They were using a state-of-the-art instrument to track how tiny particles form and grow in the air. But instead of just collecting expected data, they uncovered something completely new: the first-ever airborne detection of Medium Chain Chlorinated Paraffins (MCCPs), a kind of toxic organic pollutant, in the Western Hemisphere. The teams findings were published in ACS Environmental Au. “It’s very exciting as a scientist to find something unexpected like this that we weren’t looking for,” said Daniel Katz, CU Boulder chemistry PhD student and lead author of the study. “We’re starting to learn more about this toxic, organic pollutant that we know is out there, and which we need to understand better.” MCCPs are currently under consideration for regulation by the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty to protect human health from long-standing and widespread chemicals. While the toxic pollutants have been measured in Antarctica and Asia, researchers haven’t been sure how to document them in the Western Hemisphere’s atmosphere until now. From Wastewater to Farmlands MCCPs are used in fluids for metal working and in the construction of PVC and textiles. They are often found in wastewater and as a result, can end up in biosolid fertilizer, also called sewage sludge, which is created when liquid is removed from wastewater in a treatment plant. In Oklahoma, researchers suspect the MCCPs they identified came from biosolid fertilizer in the fields near where they set up their instrument. “When sewage sludges are spread across the fields, those toxic compounds could be released into the air,” Katz said. “We can’t show directly that that’s happening, but we think it’s a reasonable way that they could be winding up in the air. Sewage sludge fertilizers have been shown to release similar compounds.” MCCPs little cousins, Short Chain Chlorinated Paraffins (SCCPs), are currently regulated by the Stockholm Convention, and since 2009, by the EPA here in the United States. Regulation came after studies found the toxic pollutants, which travel far and last a long time in the atmosphere, were harmful to human health. But researchers hypothesize that the regulation of SCCPs may have increased MCCPs in the environment. “We always have these unintended consequences of regulation, where you regulate something, and then there’s still a need for the products that those were in,” said Ellie Browne, CU Boulder chemistry professor, CIRES Fellow, and co-author of the study. “So they get replaced by something.” Measurement of aerosols led to a new and surprising discovery Using a nitrate chemical ionization mass spectrometer, which allows scientists to identify chemical compounds in the air, the team measured air at the agricultural site 24 hours a day for one month. As Katz cataloged the data, he documented the different isotopic patterns in the compounds. The compounds measured by the team had distinct patterns, and he noticed new patterns that he immediately identified as different from the known chemical compounds. With some additional research, he identified them as chlorinated paraffins found in MCCPs. Katz says the makeup of MCCPs are similar to PFAS, long-lasting toxic chemicals that break down slowly over time. Known as “forever chemicals,” their presence in soils recently led the Oklahoma Senate to ban biosolid fertilizer. Now that researchers know how to measure MCCPs, the next step might be to measure the pollutants at different times throughout the year to understand how levels change each season. Many unknowns surrounding MCCPs remain, and there’s much more to learn about their environmental impacts. “We identified them, but we still don’t know exactly what they do when they are in the atmosphere, and they need to be investigated further,” Katz said. “I think it’s important that we continue to have governmental agencies that are capable of evaluating the science and regulating these chemicals as necessary for public health and safety.” Reference: “Real-Time Measurements of Gas-Phase Medium-Chain Chlorinated Paraffins Reveal Daily Changes in Gas-Particle Partitioning Controlled by Ambient Temperature” by Daniel John Katz, Bri Dobson, Mitchell Alton, Harald Stark, Douglas R. Worsnop, Manjula R. Canagaratna and Eleanor C. Browne, 5 June 2025, ACS Environmental Au. DOI: 10.1021/acsenvironau.5c00038 Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.

In our newest showcase, the FLIP Fluids Addon takes on a face that feels familiar – a chaotic canvas inspired by the Joker. Vibrant fluid simulations bring emotional depth and striking transitions, as color flows across skin with cinematic precision. 🎨 Using the Color Attribute in tandem with our Mixing Plugin, we craft mesmerizing blends that dance over the surface. Surface Tension and Sheeting enhance realism, allowing liquid trails to cling and slide in perfect harmony. 💧 A boosted friction value on the skin lets the fluid settle in haunting detail, while ShaderPLUS gives it a glossy, almost surreal look. Hair collisions? Solved via Geometry Nodes, converted to volumes and optimized meshes. And thanks to flip_color and Dynamic Paint, a vibrant wetmap forms – right where emotion meets simulation. 🛍️ FLASH SALE ALERT! From May 30 – June 2, FLIP Fluids is part of the FlippedNormals FLASH SALE – grab it now alongside other top Blender tools at a beautifully chaotic discount. #b3d #blender3d #motiondesign #vfx #jokerface #fluidsimulation #blenderaddons #3dart #digitalart #cgivfx #visualeffects #flippednormals #blendercommunity #shorts

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Human organs could be bioprinted for transplants within 10 years, according to Lithuanian startup Vital3D. But before reaching human hearts and kidneys, the company is starting with something simpler: regenerating dog skin. Based in Vilnius, Vital3D is already bioprinting functional tissue constructs. Using a proprietary laser system, the startup deposits living cells and biomaterials in precise 3D patterns. The structures mimic natural biological systems — and could one day form entire organs tailored to a patient’s unique anatomy. That mission is both professional and personal for CEO Vidmantas Šakalys. After losing a mentor to urinary cancer, he set out to develop 3D-printed kidneys that could save others from the same fate. But before reaching that goal, the company needs a commercial product to fund the long road ahead. That product is VitalHeal — the first-ever bioprinted wound patch for pets. Dogs are the initial target, with human applications slated to follow. Šakalys calls the patch “a first step” towards bioprinted kidneys. “Printing organs for transplantation is a really challenging task,” he tells TNW after a tour of his lab. “It’s 10 or 15 years away from now, and as a commercial entity, we need to have commercially available products earlier. So we start with simpler products and then move into more difficult ones.” Register Now The path may be simpler, but the technology is anything but. Bioprinting goes to the vet VitalHeal is embedded with growth factors that accelerate skin regeneration. Across the patch’s surface, tiny pores about one-fifth the width of a human hair enable air circulation while blocking bacteria. Once applied, VitalHeal seals the wound and maintains constant pressure while the growth factors get to work. According to Vital3D, the patch can reduce healing time from 10–12 weeks to just four to six. Infection risk can drop from 30% to under 10%, vet visits from eight to two or three, and surgery times by half. Current treatments, the startup argues, can be costly, ineffective, and distressing for animals. VitalHeal is designed to provide a safer, faster, and cheaper alternative. Vital3D says the market is big — and the data backs up the claim. Vital3D’s FemtoBrush system promises high-speed and high-precision bioprinting. Credit: Vital3D Commercial prospects The global animal wound care market is projected to grow from $1.4bn (€1.24bn) in 2024 to $2.1bn (€1.87bn) by 2030, fuelled by rising pet ownership and demand for advanced veterinary care. Vital3D forecasts an initial serviceable addressable market (ISAM) of €76.5mn across the EU and US. By 2027-2028, the company aims to sell 100,000 units. Dogs are a logical starting point. Their size, activity levels, and surgeries raise their risk of wounds. Around half of dogs over age 10 are also affected by cancer, further increasing demand for effective wound care. At €300 retail (or €150 wholesale), the patches won’t be cheap. But Vital3D claims they could slash treatment costs for pet owners from €3,000 to €1,500. Production at scale is expected to bring prices down further.  After strong results in rats, trials on dogs will begin this summer in clinics in Lithuania and the UK — Vital3D’s pilot markets. If all goes to plan, a non-degradable patch will launch in Europe next year. The company will then progress to a biodegradable version. From there, the company plans to adapt the tech for humans. The initial focus will be wound care for people with diabetes, 25% of whom suffer from impaired healing. Future versions could support burn victims, injured soldiers, and others in need of advanced skin restoration. Freshly printed fluids in a bio-ink droplet. Credit: Vital3D Vital3D is also exploring other medical frontiers. In partnership with Lithuania’s National Cancer Institute, the startup is building organoids — mini versions of organs — for cancer drug testing. Another project involves bioprinted stents, which are showing promise in early animal trials. But all these efforts serve a bigger mission. “Our final target is to move to organ printing for transplants,” says Šakalys. Bioprinting organs A computer engineer by training, Šakalys has worked with photonic innovations for over 10 years.  At his previous startup, Femtika, he harnessed lasers to produce tiny components for microelectronics, medical devices, and aerospace engineering. He realised they could also enable precise bioprinting.  In 2021, he co-founded Vital3D to advance the concept. The company’s printing system directs light towards a photosensitive bio-ink. The material is hardened and formed into a structure, with living cells and biomaterials moulded into intricate 3D patterns. The shape of the laser beam can be adjusted to replicate complex biological forms — potentially even entire organs. But there are still major scientific hurdles to overcome. One is vascularisation, the formation of blood vessels in intricate networks. Another is the diverse variety of cell types in many organs. Replicating these sophisticated natural structures will be challenging. “First of all, we want to solve the vasculature. Then we will go into the differentiation of cells,” Šakalys says. “Our target is to see if we can print from fewer cells, but try to differentiate them while printing into different types of cells.”  If successful, Vital3D could help ease the global shortage of transplantable organs. Fewer than 10% of patients who need a transplant receive one each year, according to the World Health Organisation. In the US alone, around 90,000 people are waiting for a kidney — a shortfall that’s fuelling a thriving black market. Šakalys believes that could be just the start. He envisions bioprinting not just creating organs, but also advancing a new era of personalised medicine. “It can bring a lot of benefits to society,” he says. “Not just bioprinting for transplants, but also tissue engineering as well.” Want to discover the next big thing in tech? Then take a trip to TNW Conference, where thousands of founders, investors, and corporate innovators will share their ideas. The event takes place on June 19–20 in Amsterdam and tickets are on sale now. Use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 at the checkout to get 30% off. Story by Thomas Macaulay Managing editor Thomas is the managing editor of TNW. He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers. Away from work, he e (show all) Thomas is the managing editor of TNW. He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers. Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse). Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Also tagged with

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Worms are decomposers. Many survive by breaking down dead things — dead bacteria, dead plants, dead animals, dead anything. So, they must be accustomed to the stench of death. Not so, a new study suggests — not when the dead organism is another worm.Published in Current Biology, the study states that C. elegans roundworms react adversely to the smell of a deceased counterpart. Not only does this smell invoke a behavioral response of corpse avoidance, but it also invokes a physiological response of increased short-term fertility and decreased long-term fitness and lifespan.“Caenorhabditis elegans prefers to avoid dead conspecifics,” or deceased members of the same species, the authors state in the study, with the worms reacting to death with a range of “aversion” and “survival” responses. Taken together, the results reveal a new signaling mechanism that’s available to worms and possibly other organisms, too, as a means of detecting and responding to death.Read More: These Fruit Flies Aged Faster After Seeing DeathWorms Signal and Detect DeathC. elegans roundworms aren’t the only small organisms that respond to the dead. Ants and bees dispose of the deceased from their colonies, for instance, while fruit flies avoid corpses (and shun flies that have seen corpses themselves). Death-exposed fruit flies even experience faster aging after seeing a deceased counterpart, and have shorter lifespans than those that have had no encounters with death. That these animals respond so strongly to the dead is widely documented. So, when the authors of the new study noticed C. elegans worms wriggle away from corpses, they saw the response as a chance to dig deeper into death signaling and detection. Indeed, while many species’ reactions to death are mediated mainly by sight, that certainly wasn’t the case for wiggling roundworms, which have no eyes and no sense of vision. “We felt this was quite a unique opportunity to start diving into what is happening mechanistically that enables C. elegans to detect a dead conscript,” said Matthias Truttmann, a senior study author and a physiologist at the University of Michigan, according to a press release.To determine how C. elegans worms detect the dead, Truttman and his team exposed the worms to conspecific corpses and to fluids taken from the deteriorating cells of those corpses. The worms responded to both with avoidance, moving away regardless of their age and sex, suggesting that the corpses and fluids carried similar signatures of death. These death cues also resulted in short-term increases in fertility, long-term decreases in fitness (represented by a reduced thrashing rate), and long-term decreases in lifespan. But what were those death cues, exactly, and how did the worms pick up on them?Sounding a Sensory AlarmTo figure out what those cues could be, the study authors recorded the activity in the worms’ sensory neurons as they encountered the corpses and fluids. The recordings revealed that AWB and ASH, two neurons that are responsible for making sense of olfactory stimuli, were activated when the corpses and fluids were present, indicating that the worms were smelling the signature of death.“The neurons we identified are well known to be involved in behavioral responses to a variety of environmental cues,” Truttmann said in the release. According to the study authors, the metabolites AMP and histidine were probably responsible for the signal of death that the C. elegans worms recognized. Though these metabolites are typically contained in living cells, they are released when living cells die and deteriorate — in this case, triggering the behavioral and physiological responses in C. elegans. “They also detect a couple of intracellular metabolites that are not typically found in the environment. If they are around, it indicates that a cell has died, popped open, and that something has gone wrong,” Truttmann said in the release.It is possible that cellular metabolites serve as a signal of death in other organisms, too, Truttmann said, as the release of metabolites from dying and disintegrating cells in one tissue can cause changes in other tissues in humans, for instance. Whether this signal sounds the alarm in other organisms is still uncertain. While further research is required to understand the role of cellular metabolites in detecting death across species, for now, it’s clear that death is a sensitive subject, even for worms like C. elegans.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Current Biology. Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Cases News Noctua Has Competition: HAVN Performance Fans, BF360 Case, & Engineering DataMay 23, 2025Last Updated: 2025-05-23We take an early look at HAVN’s new BF360 case and the company’s new unique fans at Computex 2025The HighlightsFor its new products, HAVN has put a heavy emphasis on thermal performance and acousticsHAVN’s upcoming BF360 case brings in new fans in the 180mm, 140mm, and 120mm categoriesHAVN’s 180mm fan uses a 40mm thick frame and special shaping on the hub for what HAVN claims will improve pressure performance across the hub Visit our Patreon page to contribute a few dollars toward this website's operation (or consider a direct donation or buying something from our GN Store!) Additionally, when you purchase through links to retailers on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission.We visited HAVN’s lab in Taiwan during our Computex 2025 trip. We saw that they were experimenting with a 52mm thick fan for a case it was showing off. The company didn’t end up using that for its case and instead used a new fan design that we’ll discuss in this article.Editor's note: This was originally published on May 17, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.CreditsHost, WritingSteve BurkeCamera, EditingVitalii MakhnovetsMike GaglioneWriting, Web EditingJimmy ThangDuring our visit, the company showed off its new BF360 case, which follows up their HS 420.  Taking a closer look at the company’s new fan design, you can see some careful shaping to the fan’s hub, which is supposed to help with guiding air flow. We’ll have to see how it performs in our testing, but the idea is taking a thicker fan approach and thickening it even more. The company ended up using a 40mm-thick fan, which should help with pressure.    The company also uses 2x180mm fans mounted to the front of the case.  While we were there, HAVN prepared some CFD simulations for the flow and some simulations for mechanical stresses, on the panel for example, which is pretty interesting.Taking a look at the BF360, the front panel pops out with a tug as it uses magnets to attach itself to the front of the case and has 3 plastic feet that help it snap in at the bottom. The interior of the case’s front panel has a removable fan tray. Its design is somewhat typical but refined from what we’ve seen. HAVN has done a lot of iterations on it. The top panel pulls off and its design is familiar to the HS 420 with its structural design. Once you remove the top panel, it exposes the case’s top fan/radiatory tray, which has rubber bumpers and a slide mechanism that lets you pull it out of the case, providing full access to the top of the chassis and should help with ease of installation. A lot of the steel on the case is either .8mm thick and there’s some that’s 1.0mm, which is thick by today’s standards. Taking a look at the backside of the case, we can see that it has marked cable management pathways, much like the HAVN HS 420 (read our review). This was kind of a nice thing for brand new system builders. Whereas the HS 420 used stickers, the BF360 incorporates it into the molding. Our understanding is that they may refine its design to try and get more light reflection so it’s easier to see. This is a nice attention to detail that adds to the ease of installation. HAVN learned from the HS 420 on the 3 and ½-inch drive support and improved its implementation. There are 2 bays on the back side of the case for those drives and they can be removed. HAVN also changed how it handles the grommets with the case. The string-like material in between is the same but there’s now a little rubber tab that helps to prevent it from popping out by accident once it’s filled with cables. The point here is that HAVN is trying to learn from what they’ve done with the HS 420 and to refine their designs. Taking a look at the BF360’s front panel, it’s supposed to look like stone, but is made of plastic as stone would be extremely heavy. Behind the front panel in the unit we saw are 2x180mm fans. HAVN has shoved a piece of steel at the top, which is supposed to prevent recirculation. This was a huge issue in old BitFenix cases, where due to the company’s design, it would recirculate hot air back into its fans. This design can improve performance in big ways.HAVN tells us that the best setup for the BF360 is to have the top front fan be intake and the top back fan be exhaust, providing you’re using 180mm fans on the top. This matches our testing for other cases in the past. We’ve also found that if you’re populated the top slots, doing intake in front of an air cooler works better because otherwise air gets in the front and would get stolen by an exhaust fan out of the top. The case we looked at had 4x180mm fans (2 in the front and 2 on top) and 1x140mm in the rear.   HAVN tried different types of power supply shroud designs. One had an angled scoop to bring in air from the front bottom 180mm fan. One design had what we’re calling a “toilet-bowl” design, but that ultimately didn’t go through. The next design we looked at featured a more cylindrical/conical design. We asked one of the company’s thermal engineers why that design didn’t work better as it looks like it would project air towards the GPU, which would be a hot spot, and the rep told us that going with a wider design ended up performing thermally better. HAVN provided us some numbers for that, which we’ll take a look at below, but we’ll eventually do our own testing if we can get an early sample. Taking a look at the first mock-up of the case, we can see some rails for the front fans. This design did not progress into the final. It uses a rail system and we’ve seen it in other cases. Corsair has implemented it and has a trademark for it which they call the “InfiniRail.”Looking at the second mock-up, the company moved to vertical rails coupled with horizontal slats. HAVN ended up ditching that design altogether and moved to a tray design, which is sort of moving to a tried-and-true approach. The company incorporated another change where they’ve stamped and folded the tooling. Then we took a look at a design that was closer to final, which has its full corner covered. HAVN showed us 3 different prototypes for the front panel of the case. The first one we looked at featured a wood panel design, which we’ve seen on a lot of cases lately. Wood has certain manufacturing challenges to consider. The white panel you see above is made of aluminum, which is very expensive.The last thing that HAVN is working on that they showed off are fans. There’s been a lot of fan development in the last few years. One of the big marketing phrases you hear a lot these days is LCP (liquid crystal polymer), which is something we talked a lot about at the last Computex. One of the benefits of LCP fans (which HAVN isn’t using here) is that you can get the blades way closer to the interior of the frame. The downside is that it’s incredibly expensive. We have an interview with Noctua’s Jakob Dellinger from 2 years ago that delves into how the company wanted to avoid using LCP for a long time but determined it was necessary to get the performance they wanted. HAVN isn’t using LCP but has designed a fan that has some “teeth” cut out on its blades, which is something we’ve seen before. The company has also shaped its fan hub to be able to scoop air in more. HAVN tells us that having the hub protrude out like a little mountain would offer the best performance but this presents clearance/compatibility issues, especially if you want to put a radiator up against it. Taking a look at the 180mm fan, there’s a 2.0mm distance from the blade to the frame of the fan. We asked if HAVN tried to get it closer and were provided with a lot of data. The company showed us 3 revisions. 1 had a 1.8mm spacing, another had 2.0mm of spacing, and the third had 2.2mm. What they ended up seeing for pressure in mmH2O, is that a 2.0mm spacing ran at 2.19. The 1.8mm fan ran at 2.23, which is an improvement. The CFM (cubic feet per minute) for both was nearly indistinguishable at around 165. The 2.2mm spacing, however, had a big drop off, which is a design they didn’t go with. It had a 2.21 mmH2O pressure, which is more or less within error of the others, but the 159.9 is where that drop off occurs in the CFM. Comparing the 1.8 vs the 2.0mm spacings, they are basically hitting diminishing returns. Seeing this information is nice. We imagine that the benefits here weren’t worth the yields and costs because getting the blades closer to the inner frame could lead to a bad yield during manufacturing or might have the blades expand and hit the frame as it ages with time. This is what happened with a lot of Enermax fans in the past.  Grab a GN15 Large Anti-Static Modmat to celebrate our 15th Anniversary and for a high-quality PC building work surface. The Modmat features useful PC building diagrams and is anti-static conductive. Purchases directly fund our work! (or consider a direct donation or a Patreon contribution!)Now we’re going to go over HAVN’s first-part numbers, but we plan to do our own performance review of the case and fans once they’re available. First-party data should be looked at with some reasonable care. Thermal comparisons should only be made against their own results here, not against ours, as the benches are different. The flat, typical shroud style was comparable to the rectangular type in result, with the rectangular type slightly better. We think this will see a larger impact in our testing, but we'd need the three types to know for sure. The important comparison is against the cylindrical type, where HAVN saw worse results by a measurable amount. Performance worsened by 1-2 degrees on the CPU and about 2 degrees on the GPU. That's a large GPU temperature increase.In their next test slide, HAVN tested various fan configurations with the flat shroud. The results were mostly as expected: CPU performance is hurt drastically by having only a bottom intake fan, to no surprise.More interestingly, the ramp type shroud makes comparisons in "B" with a fan level with the top of it and "A" with a fan sunken to the floor of the ramp. The sunken approach resulted in marginally worse CPU thermals in A as compared to B, with GPU thermals mostly unchanged.This slide shows CFD simulation and flow mapping for ramp angles at 120 and 135 degrees. HAVN has drawn a few highlights around areas of re-circulation or heat accumulation, particularly marked at "1" where the 120-degree ramp angle shows worse areas of heat build-up. HAVN tested this in 5-degree increments from 120 to 140, finding that 135 was a good balance when noise normalized.In the above image, they show the fan spacing again, with a 20mm height increase benefiting performance.HAVN didn't shy away from competitive comparisons. The company says its BF 360 with its final front panel, shown above in light blue, had competitive performance against the H6. They also suggest significant reductions in flow resistance (which is a good thing) versus the Lancool 3, with the HS 420 also making some appearances here.HAVN began studying its slot spacing and porosity of the ventilation slots in the panels next. The company found that a ratio of length divided by depth being ideally about equal to 6 was optimal for minimizing flow resistance, with the only downside being potential structural challenges. These charts show their flow performance with different slot sizes.As shown in this set of images, the point is that HAVN is really mocking up a ton of different styles of panels, from the shrouds to the slot spacing, to try and determine the thermal performance and optimize for it. This is a major progression for them. It’s a lot of work to do all of this, which is cool to see. Of course, we have to test the product to see how it came together, but the CFM performance of type 4, as they called it, was the best, but we're ultimately looking at tiny differences here. Still, all of those small differences across the case will add up in theory.This image was cool: After all of this thermal testing, HAVN next did mechanical stress simulation for torsional forces against the panel, which allowed them to dial-in the thickness and makeup of the plastics.That continued in this image, where the so-called "type 4" gets another highlight.HAVN highlighted "Design C" for having a 0.8mm metal thickness with the chosen hole sizing.By shaping the fan hub itself to guide flow, HAVN claims that it can better maintain pressure across the hub of the fan and along the inner wall of the blades. This is the area of worst performance in every fan, so optimizing here can also help minimize dead zones behind the hub. HAVN says that the molded flow guide in the hub benefited its noise significantly. The company claims its flow rate also improved significantly for the guided hub.The image above is really cool. Referencing whale-fin evolution, HAVN used tooth-like leading edges on the fan to improve its thermal performance. We've seen this plenty of times in the past, but it never seems to stick around and we're not sure why. In this simulation though, HAVN suggests that the air stream is more uniform along the wavy blade design.Using a 30% glass fiber composite, HAVN saw performance with the new design slightly improve in CFM but largely improve in static pressure, going from 2.21 to 2.40 mmH2O.There's a ton more that HAVN did. The P/Q chart above shows the mock-up performance, including the stall region centrally. We'll save all this discussion for the review, though.HAVN had about 41 pages of this technical presentation, which is actually greatly appreciated. A lot of what remains will be covered in our review, so we'll leave that for now.The bearings are also interesting to talk about. These are called FDBs (Fluid Dynamic Bearings), depending on how you want to define that. We looked at one that was designed for the company’s 180mm fan. It was a 15mm-tall FDB.  One of the things with fans, in terms of the support, is how the fan’s rod seats into the bearing. As we’re told, the longer the bearing is, the more it will help with the wobble of the blades. Internally looking at the 15mm-tall bearing for the 180mm fan, you can see 3 grooved channels. In our bearings-factory tour, we learned that the grooves are part of the mechanism that allows the fluid to circulate to keep that pressure even across the bearing. That’s supposed to be what's special here but we don’t test bearings individually, but the idea is that 3 channels are supposed to help with the stability of the fluids across the bearing. For the 120mm fans, HAVN is going for roughly a 12mm tall bearing. The company claims that most are between 9-11mm tall for 120mm fans. HAVN allowed us to look at the company’s thermal chamber. There are pros and cons to HAVN’s solution. The pro is that it’s supposed to help control the thermal environment as it circulates the air. The downside to the chamber is that we found it can influence the results, though it depends on the chamber. We found that for our testing specifically, having a larger, open-room environment works better. It is very environment-specific. The company also had a flow-rate tester, which is similar to ours, that can do PQ charts, which the company used to test its new fans. It has a throttle control and a laser tachometer, which provides a reading of the speed of the fan. On one side of the flow-rate tester, there are tubes for the counter blower, which our system also has. Their flow-rate tester also has an air compressor, which is used for actuating some of the nozzles inside the system. We also saw that their flow-rate tester also came with an inexpensive desktop OEM computer (in this case, a ThinkCentre PC running an i5-12400).HAVN also has an acoustic chamber, which has a pass-through on the outside coupled with a noise meter, which collects noise levels. One thing we liked seeing once we looked inside the chamber is that we saw a mechanical rigging for the fan, which allows it to be free flowing. They put their microphone in the corner, which we used to do when we had a chamber of a similar size. Putting the mic here allows you to maximize the distance of the chamber by going diagonal, providing maybe a half a meter of space. They also have a foam floor as well, which makes it closer to an anechoic chamber as opposed to something like our hemi-anechoic chamber. Grab a GN Tear-Down Toolkit to support our AD-FREE reviews and IN-DEPTH testing while also getting a high-quality, highly portable 10-piece toolkit that was custom designed for use with video cards for repasting and water block installation. Includes a portable roll bag, hook hangers for pegboards, a storage compartment, and instructional GPU disassembly cards.HAVN is targeting a launch around September for its new products at which point we aim to run our own benchmarks to see how it all performs.

A cataclysmic asteroid collision may not sound like the starting place for life. But 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs and much of the Cretaceous period’s fauna also kick-started a hydrothermal system that became a hotbed for life to recover in the local area. That’s the finding from a recent paper published in Nature Communications. Chicxulub Impact and Rapid RecoveryThe impact itself was truly a catastrophe, says Philippe Claeys, Chair of the Large Research Group AMGC at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a co-author on the paper. When the asteroid – estimated at 10 to 15 kilometers [about 6 miles to 9 miles] in diameter – slammed into the earth it sent vast amounts of energy into the atmosphere, resulting in a massive cloud plume that lead to the collapse of photosynthesis, large-scale cooling, and the demise of up to 70 percent of life on earth, including the dinosaurs.  That extended to the oceans. “At least for 500,000 years, there's good evidence to show that the world's oceans were not functioning exactly as modern or Cretaceous oceans were,” Claeys says.Past research found that within decades, the waters around the site recovered quickly. This recent paper suggests that it is because the massive impact and the resultant melt sheet created a hydrothermal system that funneled hot water and nutrients to the surrounding area, enabling this surprisingly quick comeback.“What is interesting in this new paper is that we teamed up with geochemists, crater specialists, and micropalaeontologists to look at the effect on the biosphere, on the micro plankton within the region surrounding the crater in the Gulf of Mexico,” Claeys says. “The conclusion, that was a little bit surprising, is that the recovery of life seems to be accelerated compared to the rest of the oceans.”Read More: Two Asteroids May Have Wiped Out The DinosaursHydrothermal System Funneled Nutrients That multi-disciplinary team traced levels of osmium – an element found in asteroids like the Chicxulub impactor – in sediments taken from core samples in the crater. Sean Gulick, a research professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences, and a co-author on the study, was part of a 2016 drill team that took core samples from the crater. These samples were vital to these recent findings.He explains that in this instance, osmium acts as a “tracer for all sorts of nutrients that might be enriching the oceans above.” That showed that the hydrothermal system following the collision was likely funneling nutrients to the ocean above for at least 700,000 years.“We do know that an asteroid impact with all of this energy, if it's large enough, can cause a mass extinction event globally, because of all the atmospheric effects,” Gulick says. “But it also turns out to be beneficial to life, at least locally.”Even though the Chicxulub impact resulted in a “kiss of death for dinosaurs,” it also acted as a “cradle for life,” Gulick says. Possibility of Life on Other Planets Their research also showed that during the time the hydrothermal system functioned, the type of marine life mainly comprised of plankton species adapted to high-nutrient environments. This shifted to species that thrive in low-nutrient environments over time.In Gulick’s view, their findings open up the possibility of a mechanism to kick-start life on other planets. “Everything out there gets smacked with objects flying around. From the original creation of the planets and from collisions in the asteroid belt and everything else,” Gulick says. “Every one of those planets has a way to have their surface changed by impact cratering that then reorganizes things, brings things to the surface, and adds heat.”  As long as there are fluids or ice that could result in a hydrothermal system, Gulick adds. “So, if this is a viable mechanism to get life going, then that means it's entirely possible to have life on a lot of different planets.”Read More: Did a Dust Plume Kill the Dinosaurs?Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this articleUniversity of Texas Institute of Geophysics. Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid. A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped.University of Texas Geosciences. Drilling into Dino Doomsday Sean Mowbray is a freelance writer based in Scotland. He covers the environment, archaeology, and general science topics. His work has also appeared in outlets such as Mongabay, New Scientist, Hakai Magazine, Ancient History Magazine, and others.

A few hours ago, publisher Bethesda Softworks revealed that id Software's DOOM: The Dark Ages has already reached 3 million players, making it the biggest launch ever in the franchise. For comparison, it was seven times quicker than the previous entry, DOOM Eternal, to get to this milestone. However, it should be noted that Eternal did not launch on Game Pass right away like The Dark Ages. Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda was completed in March 2021, while DOOM Eternal was released about a year before. It's always hard to make comparisons between games in the same franchise when the new one is available on Microsoft's subscription service, because it inevitably skews data. Still, it does seem like the reception has been positive overall. DOOM: The Dark Ages is currently sitting at an 86% average user review score on Steam. Here on Wccftech, resident DOOM expert Chris Wray also gave it an 8.5/10 in his review: So, to put it all quite simply, DOOM: The Dark Ages is a good game—no, it's a very good game. I would recommend it to fans of the genre and people who want to have fun without the risk of anything transmissible via bodily fluids. Unless we're talking about demon blood and guts, there's lots of that. DOOM: The Dark Ages is yet another success from Id Software, and long may they continue. DOOM: The Dark Ages is a rip-tearing fun ride that reigns in some of the excesses of DOOM Eternal, bringing the gameplay closer to DOOM (2016), while adding meat to the story in a long, meaty, campaign across over twenty stages. Put simply, if you liked DOOM and DOOM Eternal, you will like this, even if there are a few minor missteps. In other news, NVIDIA has confirmed that the game will receive its path tracing update at some point in June. The patch will also add denoising through NVIDIA's DLSS Ray Reconstruction. Meanwhile, in an interview with Digital Foundry, id Software's Billy Khan explained why DOOM: The Dark Ages wouldn't have been possible without ray tracing. How are you enjoying this new entry? Let us know below! Products mentioned DOOM: The Dark Ages USD 69.99 Buy from Amazon Deal of the Day