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Kula/Aurumin JV reports 98,500t maiden gold resource in WA Goldfields
Kula/Aurumin JV reports 98,500t maiden gold resource in WA Goldfields

West Australian

time28-07-2025

  • Business
  • West Australian

Kula/Aurumin JV reports 98,500t maiden gold resource in WA Goldfields

Kula Gold and Aurumin Limited have reported a maiden JORC-compliant inferred resource of 98,534 tonnes of old mine tailings grading 0.63 grams per tonne (g/t) gold at the joint venture's Mt Palmer gold mine in Western Australia's Southern Cross greenstone belt. The inferred resource, defined by 60 air core drill holes, contains 1996 ounces of gold at a 0.4g/t cut-off, with preliminary metallurgical testwork showing an average 86 per cent gold recovery rate. Dawson said Mt Palmer's bigger picture was painted by high grades intersected at shallow depths in the adjacent historic mine, where the company is moving towards diamond drilling and then resource definition. The tails resource lies within the joint-venture's granted mining lease, which was drilled by a Challenger RA-150 air core rig using a 3.5-inch face sampling hammer. Kula believes the hole-spacing adequately tests the tailings' lateral and depth extent, with collar locations surveyed to millimetre-level accuracy by a survey standard GPS. Samples were collected from 0.5-metre to 4m depth intervals - mostly at 1m – and were weighed at the rig, split via a cone splitter and assayed using Intertek's Photon method. Duplicates and standards were inserted at a 1:40 ratio, with minimal contamination risks, as the samples were dry. Dry bulk densities were measured from six trench and core samples, averaging 1.35 grams per cubic centimetre. The metallurgical testwork employed Intertek's Leachwell cyanide extraction on seven drill samples and reported gold recoveries between 60 per cent and 100 per cent, with an average of 86 per cent. One sample reported a 107.2 per cent recovery rate due to assay variability between the leach and original samples. The resource was computer-modelled using a 3D wireframe based on geological logging and assay data and was classified as inferred due to the current drill density and geological continuity. A 0.4g/t gold cut-off grade was established, based on the prevailing economic factors. The surface-stockpiled tailings, which are already pulverised and easily mined, offer Kula a low-cost opportunity for early monetisation. The Marvel Loch gold plant, 28 kilometres away, could be a processing option. Kula is already looking at extending its drilling program to include other untested parts of the tailings repository and will include a few more infill holes to sharpen up the entire model, if possible lift the resource classification to indicated, and further build the resource. Kula holds an 80 per cent stake in the joint venture. Under the terms of their agreement, Aurumin is now diluting its 20 per cent JV interest. With the gold price at about $5200 per ounce, the current tailings resource would have an unprocessed, at-surface value of more than $10 million. Combined with the tailings' high metallurgical recoveries and simple, short-range mining, transport and processing, the tails could significantly enhance the venture's value. Kula is now planning a diamond drilling program to develop its main focus on the hard-rock component at the Mt Palmer mine, where shallow high-grade intercepts indicate significant additional potential. Meanwhile, the tailings could be a timely and profitable stepping stone towards broader project development. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:

Space startup Varda raises $187 million in funding to make drugs in orbit
Space startup Varda raises $187 million in funding to make drugs in orbit

CNBC

time10-07-2025

  • Business
  • CNBC

Space startup Varda raises $187 million in funding to make drugs in orbit

Space startup Varda announced on Thursday that it has raised $187 million in Series C funding, led by venture capital firms Natural Capital and Shrug Capital, to continue advancing drug manufacturing in space. The latest round included participation from Peter Thiel, Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures and Caffeinated Capital. It brought the total capital Varda's raised to $329 million. "By expanding, we can support work on more complex molecules and ultimately increase cadence to achieve the turnaround times the pharmaceutical industry expects," Chief Science Officer Adrian Radocea said in a press release Thursday. Varda's main mission is to launch and return drugs made in space. The startup has said the medicines crystallize differently in orbit due to the gravity differences, which would allow it to complete drugs that are currently difficult to manufacture. In 2024, the space startup's W-Series 1 capsule received FAA approval to return after successfully creating the drug Ritonavir the previous year. So far, Varda said the company has been able to complete three space launches. Now, a fourth is in orbit, and the company expects to launch a fifth by the end of the year. Varda's system uses Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft for its operation and adds its manufacturing module and a heatshield-protected capsule. "With this capital, Varda will continue to increase our flight cadence and build out the pharmaceutical lab that will deliver the world's first microgravity-enabled drug formulation," said Varda CEO Will Bruey. Varda Space Industries is the first company to process materials outside the International Space Station. Recently, the space company has also operated a testbed for the U.S. government to use the W-series reentry vehicles to advance technology. Varda said it has expanded into Huntsville, Alaska, and opened a laboratory in El Segundo, California, to begin work to crystallize more drugs. "Our new lab space is an investment in our belief that in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing will drive the foundation of the orbital economy," Radocea said.

Bumps on ancient, armored fish may have given rise to teeth in animals, study finds
Bumps on ancient, armored fish may have given rise to teeth in animals, study finds

Yahoo

time21-05-2025

  • Science
  • Yahoo

Bumps on ancient, armored fish may have given rise to teeth in animals, study finds

Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. The sensitive interior of human teeth might have originated from a seemingly unlikely place: sensory tissue in fish that were swimming in Earth's oceans 465 million years ago. While our teeth are covered in hard enamel, it's dentine — the tooth's inner layer responsible for carrying sensory information to the nerves — that reacts to the pressure of a hard bite, pain, or changes like extreme cold or sweetness. When trying to determine the origins of teeth, one of the many possibilities considered by researchers over the years was that teeth may have evolved from bumps on the armored exoskeletons on ancient fish. But the true purpose of the structures, called odontodes, was unclear. Now, a new study and 3D scans of fossils have yielded evidence that the external bumps contained dentine, which likely helped fish sense their surroundings. Scientists reported the findings Wednesday in the journal Nature. 'Covered in these sensitive tissues, maybe when it bumped against something it could sense that pressure, or maybe it could sense when the water got too cold and it needed to swim elsewhere,' said lead study author Dr. Yara Haridy, postdoctoral researcher in the department of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, in an email. During its analysis, the team also uncovered similarities between the odontodes and features called sensilla, which exist as sensory organs in the shells of modern animals such as crabs and shrimp, and can be found in fossilized invertebrate arthropods. The development of odontodes in fish, which are vertebrates, and sensilla in arthropods, which are invertebrates, is a prime example of evolutionary convergence — when similar features evolve independently in different animal groups, Haridy said. 'These jawless fish and Aglaspidid arthropods (extinct marine arthropods) have an extremely distant shared common ancestor that likely had no hard parts at all,' Haridy said. 'We know that vertebrates and arthropods evolved hard parts independently and amazingly they evolved similar sensory mechanisms integrated into their hard skeleton independently.' While arthropods have retained their sensilla, odontodes appear to be the direct precursors to teeth in animals. As the researchers compared sensilla and odontodes, they also arrived at another finding: One species, once considered to be an ancient fish, was actually an arthropod. Haridy's original aim was to solve the mystery of the oldest vertebrate animal that exists in the fossil record. She approached museums across the country and asked whether she could scan any fossil specimens they had from the Cambrian Period, 540 million years to 485 million years ago. Then, she settled in for an all-nighter at the Argonne National Laboratory, where she used their Advanced Photon Source to capture high-resolution computer tomography, or CT, scans. 'It was a night at the particle accelerator; that was fun,' Haridy said. At first glance, a fossil of a creature called Anatolepis looked like a vertebrate fish – and indeed, previous research from 1996 had identified it as one. Haridy and her colleagues noticed that there was a series of pores filled with a material that appeared to be dentine. 'We were high fiving each other, like 'oh my god, we finally did it,'' Haridy said. 'That would have been the very first tooth-like structure in vertebrate tissues from the Cambrian. So, we were pretty excited when we saw the telltale signs of what looked like dentine.' To confirm their discovery, the team compared the scans with those of other ancient fossils, as well as modern crabs, snails, beetles, sharks, barnacles and even miniature suckermouth catfish that Haridy had raised herself. Those comparisons showed that Anatolepis more closely resembled arthropod fossils, including one from the Milwaukee Public Museum. And what the team thought were tubules lined with dentine were actually more similar to sensilla. But they did find dentine-containing odontodes in ancient fish like Eriptychius and Astraspis during the scans. The confusion over Anatolepis' true nature had stemmed from the fragmentary nature of the fossils. The most complete pieces are only about 3 millimeters (0.1 inches) in size, Haridy said, which proved to be a challenge for comparative research reliant on external imaging. But the new scans she conducted enabled a 3D look at the fossils, revealing their internal anatomy. 'This shows us that 'teeth' can also be sensory even when they're not in the mouth,' Haridy said. 'So, there's sensitive armor in these fish. There's sensitive armor in these arthropods. This explains the confusion with these early Cambrian animals. People thought that this was the earliest vertebrate, but it actually was an arthropod.' The cutting edge modern imaging used in the study is resolving the debate over Anatolepis, said Dr. Richard Dearden, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. Dearden was not involved in the new research. '(The study authors) use cutting edge modern imaging approaches to try and settle this question, assembling an impressive swathe of comparative data to convincingly establish that Anatolepis is indeed not a vertebrate,' Dearden said in an email. Armored jawless fish like Astraspis and Eriptychius and ancient arthropods like Anatolepis coexisted in the muddy shallow seas of the Ordovician period, which occurred between 485.4 million and 443.8 million years ago. Other contemporaries of these animals included large cephalopods such as giant squid, as well as huge sea scorpions. Features like odontodes and sensilla would help fish and arthropods distinguish predators from prey. 'When you think about an early animal like this, swimming around with armor on it, it needs to sense the world. This was a pretty intense predatory environment and being able to sense the properties of the water around them would have been very important,' said senior study author Dr. Neil Shubin, the Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, in a statement. 'So, here we see that invertebrates with armor like horseshoe crabs need to sense the world too, and it just so happens they hit on the same solution.' Several modern fishes have odontodes, while sharks, skates and some catfishes are covered in small toothlets called denticles, which cause their skin to feel like sandpaper, Haridy said. Haridy studied the tissues of the catfish she raised and realized their denticles were connected to nerves much in the same way that teeth are in animals. When comparing teeth, odontodes and sensilla, they were all incredibly similar, she said. 'We think that the earliest vertebrates, these big, armored fish, had very similar structures, at least morphologically. They look the same in ancient and modern arthropods, because they're all making this mineralized layer that caps their soft tissue and helps them sense the environment,' Haridy said. It's likely that the genes necessary to form odontodes also produced sensitive teeth in animals — including humans — later, according to the study authors. The findings support the idea that sensory structures appeared first on exoskeletons, which then provided the genetic information that could then be used to create teeth as they became a necessary part of life, the study authors noted. 'Over time, fish evolved jaws, and it became advantageous to have pointy structures around and in the mouth,' Haridy said. 'Little by little some fish with jaws had pointy odontodes at the edge of the mouth and then eventually some were directly in the mouth and then lost across the body. The relationship between odontodes and teeth is continuously being clarified by new fossils and modern genetics.' The new research refines the timeline for the first appearance of hard tissues and the earliest ancestors of jawed fishes by removing Anatolepis from the fish tree of life, said Dr. Lauren Sallan, assistant professor and head of the macroevolution unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. Sallan, who was not involved in the new study, said it also raises an intriguing new hypothesis that the scalelike precursors of teeth evolved to detect prey, friends or predators in the water. 'This is a real challenge to seemingly obvious assumptions that hard tissues like dentine and structures like scales and teeth evolved (primarily) for protection on the body or feeding in the throat,' Sallan said. 'Instead, they may have been 'exapted' (subsequently modified) for these uses, much like how limbs evolved before they were used to walk on land. It's also interesting to see the degree of convergence between early armored arthropods and fishes, and raises questions about how much ecological overlap occurred between these two groups.' Haridy wants to continue the search for fossils that could lead to the oldest vertebrate, given that researchers expect there are earlier vertebrates than Astraspis and Eriptychius. And even though they didn't discover it through this research, they made worthwhile findings, Shubin said in an email. 'We were disappointed that (Anatolepis) wasn't a vertebrate but we were amazed by the new ideas that arose,' Shubin said. 'And that took us in an entirely new direction. That's science.'

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