Questions
1.What was discovered on Mars?
2.What would the scientists use embryonic stem cell lines for?
3.What is researcher’s innovation at Islamic Azad University?
4.What does the machine do?
5.How does this machine work?
6.When does solar panel make it possible to produce fresh water?
7.What is another Iranian researcher’s project?
Answers
1.Mars is much like Venus-- it's very bright and therefore easily spotted in the night sky. Because of this,
we don't know who exactly discovered Mars. We do know it was named after the Roman god of war,
because its reddish color reminded people of blood.
In 1659, Christian Huygens discovered a strange feature on the surface of the Red Planet. It was later
called the Syrtis Major. We have been scared of Martians ever since. In 1802, one scientist was so
convinced there was life on Mars that he wanted to draw huge figures in the snow to signal the
Martians!
In 1877, astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli discovered what he believed to be several lines crossing one
another. He claimed they were water canals made by intelligent creatures.
In 1971, Mariner 9 visited Mars and sent back images of enormous volcanoes and vast canyons. It
discovered Olympus Mons, now the most famous volcano not on Earth. This massive volcano could
cover the state of Missouri, and reaches 15 miles above the surface! Mariner 9 also found evidence that
water once flowed on Mars. However, there were no sightings of Schiaparelli's famous canals.
In 1975, two spacecraft named Viking I and II landed on Mars to study its surface. They analyzed the
rocks and soil of the planet while providing us with information about its atmosphere and weather
patterns. Even today we are exploring Mars. The Mars Global Surveyor made a map of the planet in
1997.
Although Mars was never really discovered, its moons were! In 1877, astronomer Asaph Hall spotted the
two moons and named them Phobos, which means fear, and Deimos, which means panic. They were
named after the mythical horses that drew the chariot of the Roman god, Mars.
2. A stem cell line is a group of stem cells that is cultured in vitro and can be propagated indefinitely.
Stem cell lines are derived from either animal or human tissues and come from one of three sources:
embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, or induced stem cells. They are commonly used in research and
regenerative medicine.
Roughly 100,000 cells from rhesus macaques, grouped by similarity. Each colour highlights cells from a
different tissue, e.g. thymus and lymph nodes (shades of blue), bone marrow (red), blood (white), tonsil
(yellow), gut (shades of brown), brain (grey), liver (green), spleen (purple) and lung (pink)
By definition, stem cells possess two properties: (1) they can self-renew, which means that they can
divide indefinitely while remaining in an undifferentiated state; and (2) they are pluripotent or
multipotent, which means that they can differentiate to form specialized cell types. Due to the selfrenewal capacity of stem cells, a stem cell line can be cultured in vitro indefinitely.
A stem-cell line is distinctly different from an immortalized cell line, such as the HeLa line. While stem
cells can propagate indefinitely in culture due to their inherent properties, immortalized cells would not
normally divide indefinitely but have gained this ability due to mutation. Immortalized cell lines can be
generated from cells isolated from tumors, or mutations can be introduced to make the cells immortal.
A stem cell line is also distinct from primary cells. Primary cells are cells that have been isolated and
then used immediately. Primary cells cannot divide indefinitely and thus cannot be cultured for long
periods of time in vitro.
3.The Center for Innovation of SRB is one of the centers that offer diverse services to researchers with
the aim of applying and transforming science to wealth while providing support and diversification
to Entrepreneur University.
Students and owners of new ideas can use the facilities of the Center to generate their ideas and move
towards commercialization and wealth creation by attending the Center for Science and Research
Development and Innovation.
Companies and technology units are currently deployed in areas such as medicine, robotics automation,
jewelry, sports and health applications, quadcopter engines, which will soon accommodate various
technology companies and units. In addition, students can work as volunteer or student collaborators in
this Center activities.
4.A machine is any physical system with ordered structural and functional properties. It may represent
human-made or naturally occurring device molecular machine that uses power to apply forces and
control movement to perform an action. Machines can be driven by animals and people, by natural
forces such as wind and water, and by chemical, thermal, or electrical power, and include a system of
mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and
movement. They can also include computers and sensors that monitor performance and plan
movement, often called mechanical systems.
Renaissance natural philosophers identified six simple machines which were the elementary devices
that put a load into motion, and calculated the ratio of output force to input force, known today as
mechanical advantage.
Modern machines are complex systems that consist of structural elements, mechanisms and control
components and include interfaces for convenient use. Examples include: a wide range of vehicles, such
as automobiles, boats and airplanes; appliances in the home and office, including computers, building
air handling and water handling systems; as well as farm machinery, machine tools and factory
automation systems and robots.
5. A machine is any device that makes work easier by changing a force. Work is done whenever a force
moves an object over a distance. The amount of work done is represented by the equation:
Work = Force x Distance
When you use a machine, you apply force to the machine. This force is called the input force. The
machine, in turn, applies force to an object. This force is called the output force. The output force may
or may not be the same as the input force. The force you apply to the machine is applied over a given
distance, called the input distance. The force applied by the machine to the object is also applied over a
distance, called the output distance. The output distance may or may not be the same as the input
distance.
How Machines Make Work Easier
Contrary to popular belief, machines do not increase the amount of work that is done. They just change
how the work is done. Machines make work easier by increasing the amount of force that is applied,
increasing the distance over which the force is applied, or changing the direction in which the force is
applied.
Q: If a machine increases the force applied, what does this tell you about the distance over which the
force is applied by the machine:
A: The machine must apply the force over a shorter distance. That’s because a machine doesn’t change
the amount of work and work equals force times distance. Therefore, if force increases, distance must
decrease. For the same reason, if a machine increases the distance over which the force is applied, it
must apply less force.
Increasing Force
Examples of machines that increase force are steering wheels and pliers (see Figure below). Read below
to find out how both of these machines work. In each case, the machine applies more force than the
user applies to the machine, but the machine applies the force over a shorter distance.
6.
A new system for removing salt from seawater using the waste heat from solar panels has been created
by Peng Wang and colleagues at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. The
team installed a multistage membrane distillation (MSMD) device directly underneath the solar panels
so that the system occupies the same footprint as the solar panels.
A new system for removing salt from seawater using the waste heat from solar panels has been created
by Peng Wang and colleagues at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. The
team installed a multistage membrane distillation (MSMD) device directly underneath the solar panels
so that the system occupies the same footprint as the solar panels.
Energy and water are two crucial resources that are often connected. Creating freshwater from
seawater consumes about 15% of electricity generated in Arab countries, for example, and finding
carbon-free sources of energy for desalination is a huge challenge facing countries in the driest regions
of the world.
Wang’s team have answered this challenge by creating a desalination system that uses waste heat
produced by solar power plants. While solar cells can convert about 20% of sunlight into electricity, the
remaining 80% simply heats up the solar panels. The team’s MSMD device comprises three stacked
layers of water distillation channels that run parallel to solar panels. Each layer is separated by porous
hydrophobic membranes and heat conduction layers.
Evaporation and condensation
Within each layer, seawater in the uppermost channel is evaporated by waste heat from the solar panel,
and then condenses to freshwater inside a second channel on the other side of the membrane. This
desalinated water then flows into a storage container, while the remaining seawater, along with the rest
of the waste heat, pass down to the layer below, where the process repeats.
Wang and colleagues show that the MSMD device can be installed directly underneath existing solar
panels; requiring no specialized mounting equipment, and no extra requirements for land use. While
previous attempts at this technique came at the cost of overall solar panel performance, the researchers
observed virtually no decrease in power generation efficiency in their system. At the same time, the
MSMD device was able to desalinate up to 1.64 l of fresh water per square metre per hour. According to
team member Wenbin Wang, this is more than double the water output of traditional solar stills, which
use a one-stage design.
The team points that new technology could encourage energy and water companies to work together in
dry regions. Furthermore, they point out that creating fresh water offers a way of mitigating the
inherent low efficiency of solar panels and could make their deployment more attractive.
As a next step, the team wants to study how the system could be used in an agricultural setting – with
the water used for irrigation.
7.Iran has made considerable advances in science and technology through education and training,
despite international sanctions in almost all aspects of research during the past 30 years. Iran's
university population swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to 2 million in 2006. In recent years, the growth in
Iran's scientific output is reported to be the fastest in the world.
Throughout history, Iran was always a cradle of science, contributing to medicine, mathematics,
astronomy and philosophy. Trying to revive the golden time of Iranian science, Iran's scientists now are
cautiously reaching out to the world. Many individual Iranian scientists, along with the Iranian Academy
of Medical Sciences and Academy of Sciences of Iran, are involved in this revival.
US economic and financial sanctions are having a devastating impact on Iran's economy—and its
researchers.
After almost a year of sanctions put in place by US President Donald Trump, Iran is experiencing
economic recession, a depreciating currency and high inflation. All of this is stretching budgets for
equipment, supplies and travel, endangering research projects and sapping morale, say researchers.
It is now almost impossible to purchase research materials and services from abroad, they add, because
companies and banks are being prevented from doing business in Iran.
The country's science minister Mansour Gholami told Nature that international collaboration has been
hit, and researchers are being prevented from travelling to scientific conferences abroad. Active
research collaborations between the US and Iran are also on hold.
“The sanctions are affecting health, research and education, things that were not supposed to be their
target,” says Parham Habibzadeh, a human geneticist at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Iran.
“Planning a research study in any field of science seems to be almost impossible,” he adds.
Vahid Ahmadi, head of the National Research Institute for Science Policy in Tehran, and an adviser to
Gholami is critical of the international scientific community for not acknowledging the plight of
researchers.
"Iranian researchers expect their colleagues and scientific societies abroad to be more active in speaking
out against the impact of US sanctions on them," he says.
The sanctions
The United States has imposed waves of sanctions on Iran since 5 November 2018, months after the US
president unilaterally withdrew his country from a nuclear deal agreed between Iran and six other world
powers. Under this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — originally signed by then-US president Barack
Obama in July 2015 — Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear activities that would have made it
impossible for the country to quickly divert its nuclear programme to develop an atomic bomb.
John Kerry shakes hands with Mohammad Javad Zarif. The US and Iranian flags are in the background.
US secretary of state John Kerry meeting Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in 2016.Credit:
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
The 2015 deal lifted earlier nuclear-related sanctions put in place by the United Nations, the United
States, the European Union and others. “The 2015 agreement was like a new hope,” recalls Mohammad
Farhadi, a physician and former Tehran University president, who was Iran’s science minister from 2014
to 2017.
After withdrawing from the deal, the United States has now adopted a more aggressive ‘maximum
pressure’ policy to isolate Iran. The Trump administration argues that its predecessor should have held
out for more concessions, such as curbs on Iran’s ballistic-missile programme.
The reimposed US sanctions apply to all people and organizations worldwide. This makes it extremely
difficult for Iran to sell the oil, petrochemicals and metals that are its main exports. China, however, is
among a handful of countries that continues to defy sanctions and imports Iranian oil.
The sanctions also apply to banks, which are now refusing to process transactions involving Iranian
companies and citizens. The international banking payments-transfer system known as SWIFT
disconnected Iran's banks last year.
“Being unable to do the simplest things like ordering books online or paying registration fees for
conferences should speak volumes about the significance of being cut off from the international
financial institutions,” says one academic, who requested anonymity.
A steep drop in the value of the Iranian rial has also decimated the purchasing power of university
budgets. In 2015, 28,000 rials would buy US$1 at official exchange rates, but that figure is now closer to
42,000 rials to $1, or 115,000 on the black market. Iran has also experienced inflation of 40.4% over the
past year.
Most scientists cannot now afford to travel to conferences, says Abbas Edalat, a British-Iranian
computer scientist based at Imperial College London. And there is little their international collaborators
can do about it, he says.
Damaged livelihoods
Even basic necessities, including drugs and medical care, have become unaffordable, says Reza
Malekzadeh, a biomedical researcher at Tehran University of Medical Sciences and a former health
minister.
For researchers, the costs of reagents and equipment can be as much as four times what they were
before the sanctions, particularly for goods and services purchased abroad, says Ali Gorji, an Iranian
neuroscientist based at the University of Münster in Germany who founded the Shefa Neuroscience
Research Center in Tehran and the Razavi Neuroscience Research Center in Mashhad. “Many research
projects are under real pressure,” he says, especially those with fixed budgets.
A man counts Iranian rials at a currency exchange shop
The value of the Iranian rial has dropped sharply in recent years.Credit: Essam Al Sudani/Reuters
That includes a project that Gorji started in 2016 with researchers at the two centres in Iran to develop
human stem-cell therapies for spinal-cord injuries. The project has run into difficulties as its budget for
supplies — 450 million rials this year — is now worth about one-third of its 2016 value. The project is
almost a year behind schedule, Gorji adds.
Collaborations on ice
The near-collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal has also affected international collaborations between the
US and Iran. Since 2000, the US National Academies have led a major science-for-peace collaboration
with Iranian research groups. Their goal has been to achieve scientific benefits for both sides and to
encourage more amiable relations between the two countries' governments.
This project is now on ice partly because of the sanctions, but also because of deteriorating relations
between the governments. The project's last engagement was a joint workshop in Italy in 2017, says
Glenn Schweitzer, the academies' director for programmes in central Europe and Eurasia. He says the
academies hope to revive it should relations improve.
Also in 2017, the US treasury department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blocked five US
scientists from attending the tenth International Conference on Magnetic and Superconducting
Materials, which was held in Tehran in September.
A month before the conference, the department informed delegates that their participation was
"prohibited" but gave no justification for why, according to two of the invited US delegates — physicists
Warren Pickett of the University of California, Davis, and Laura Greene of Florida State University in
Tallahassee — writing in APS News, the magazine of the American Physical Society. The scientists' legal
counsel could see no reason why conference attendance would violate sanctions, they added. Asked to
comment, a Treasury spokesperson said the department "generally does not comment on individual
licenses".
One bright spot is in high-energy physics, where Iran has a strong intellectual tradition and historically
solid links with researchers worldwide. CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva,
Switzerland, maintains close links with Iranian scientists, notably those from the Institute for Research in
Fundamental Sciences in Tehran, according to a CERN spokesperson, and Iran is continuing to
strengthen its contributions to the laboratory’s experiments.
All of the world powers that signed the 2015 deal are opposed to the US withdrawal and the subsequent
sanctions. In a leaked May 2018 cable, Kim Darroch, then UK ambassador to the United States,
described the US withdrawal as “an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and
personality reasons — it was Obama’s deal”.
The EU has forbidden companies under its jurisdiction from complying with US sanctions, and those that
do can face criminal penalties. EU companies face a dilemma: they must choose between breaking EU
law or potentially breaching US sanctions.
In a gesture of political goodwill, several EU countries led by France, Germany and the United Kingdom
are establishing a special payments channel to coordinate barter exchanges with Iran called the
Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX). The aim is to help their companies and Iran to
circumvent US sanctions.
Researchers such as Gorji are not optimistic about the potential of INSTEX to ease their predicament.
However, France's president Emmanuel Macron, it's main architect, has said he is determined to make it
work.
With Iran facing yet more pressure from the United States and its allies including Saudi Arabia, the
outlook for its scientists doesn't look promising. “The international scientific community needs to wake
up to the problem and make more efforts to better support collaborative projects with their Iranian
colleagues,” says Gorji.