discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

[CraigD]

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

 

[koolishman]

Digital Data Could Be Altering Earth's Mass Just a Tiny Bit, Claims Physicist​

In the past 24 hours, people uploaded more than 720,000 hours' worth of footage onto YouTube.

According to calculations made a few years ago by University of Portsmouth physicist Melvin Vopson, this literal mass of visual imagery – along with half a billion tweets, countless texts, billions of WhatsApp messages, and every other bit and byte of information we've created – could be making our planet a touch heavier.

It's a wild concept unlikely to be accepted without a ton of evidence. An experiment recently proposed by Vopson based on antimatter explosions might go some way in convincing the scientific community that information might not only have mass but that it could also be a strange new state of matter.


https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0019941

 

[koolishman]

Dangerous PFAS Chemicals Are in Your Food Packaging​

CR tested multiple samples of 118 products and calculated average organic fluorine levels for each. Overall, CR detected that element in more than half the food packaging tested. Almost a third—37 products—had organic fluorine levels above 20 ppm, and 22 were above 100 ppm.


Among the 24 retailers we looked at, nearly half had at least one product above that level, and most had one or more above 20 ppm. But almost all also had products below that amount. For example, while the two products with the highest average levels came from Nathan’s, the chain also had four products below 20 ppm. Nathan’s told CR that it was redoing its packaging and had eliminated the high-level items, as did Chick-fil-A, which had the item with the next highest level in CR’s tests.


CR’s test results are not representative of all the packaging from a retailer, and the packaging may have changed since CR conducted these tests.

 

[J Sokol]

Climate groups say a change in coding can reduce bitcoin energy consumption by 99%​

Bitcoin mining already uses as much energy as Sweden, according to some reports, and its booming popularity is revitalizing failing fossil fuel enterprises in the US. But all that could change with a simple switch in the way it is coded, according to a campaign launched on Tuesday.

The campaign, called Change the Code Not the Climate and coordinated by Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace USA and several groups battling bitcoin mining facilities in their communities, is calling on bitcoin to change the way bitcoins are mined in order to tackle its outsized carbon footprint.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/29/bitcoin-reduce-energy-consumption-climate-groups

 

[J Sokol]

Google’s Waymo to offer driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco​

Waymo’s self-driving ride-hailing service is branching out to San Francisco.

The autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said Wednesday that it started carrying employees in electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs without human backup drivers. Previously the company had been testing the vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel just in case.

Waymo didn’t elaborate on when it might offer autonomous rides to the public in San Francisco. The company has been using autonomous minivans without human backups to carry passengers in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area since 2020.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...hailing-service-san-francisco-alphabet-google

 

[koolishman]

An A380 superjumbo just completed a flight powered by cooking oil​

It's huge, it's wide, and it's potentially a lot more sustainable. The Airbus A380, a behemoth of the skies, has completed a trial flight powered on cooking oil.

The test airplane completed a three-hour flight from Blagnac Airport in Toulouse -- Airbus' French headquarters -- on 25 March. It was powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF -- predominantly made of used cooking oil and waste fats -- and operating on a single Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine.

Airbus then followed up with a second A380 flight, using the same cooking oil fuel, on March 29, flying from Toulouse to Nice. The second flight was to monitor SAF use during take-off and landing.

The fuel used was supplied by TotalEnergies, a company based in France's Normandy region. It was made from Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA), which is free of both aromatics and sulfur.

 

[koolishman]

Pluto’s peaks are ice volcanoes, scientists conclude ​

Strung out in the icy reaches of our solar system, two peaks that tower over the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto have perplexed planetary scientists for years. Some speculated it could be an ice volcano, spewing out not lava but vast quantities of icy slush – yet no cauldron-like caldera could be seen.

Now a full analysis of images and topographical data suggests it is not one ice volcano but a merger of many – some up to 7,000 metres tall and about 10-150km across. Their discovery has reignited another debate: what could be keeping Pluto warm enough to support volcanic activity?

Yet, Singer and her colleagues were cautious about calling them volcanoes: “It’s considered kind of a big claim to have icy volcanism,” she said. “It’s theoretically possible, but there aren’t a tonne of other examples in the solar system, and they are all really different looking, and do not look like the features on Pluto.”

 

[koolishman]

Life’s Preference for Symmetry Is Like ‘A New Law of Nature’​

Symmetry runs rampant in nature. It’s present wherever mirror images are repeated, like in the right and left halves of elephants or butterflies, or in the repeating patterns of flower petals and starfish arms around a central point. It’s even hiding in the structures of tiny things like proteins and RNA. While asymmetry certainly exists in nature (like how your heart is off to one side in your chest, or how male fiddler crabs have one enlarged claw), symmetrical forms crop up too often in living things to just be random.

Why does symmetry reign supreme? Biologists aren’t sure — there’s no reason based in natural selection for symmetry’s prevalence in such varied forms of life and their building blocks. Now it seems like a good answer could come from the field of computer science.

In a paper published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers analyzed thousands of protein complexes and RNA structures as well as a model network of molecules that control how genes switch on and off. They found that evolution tends toward symmetry because the instructions to produce symmetry are easier to embed in genetic code and follow. Symmetry is maybe the most fundamental application of the adage “work smarter, not harder.”

 

[koolishman]

First Fully Complete Human Genome Has Been Published After 20 Years​

The first fully complete human genome with no gaps is now available to view for scientists and the public, marking a huge moment for human genetics. Announced in a preprint in June 2021, six papers have now been published in the journal Science. They describe the painstaking work that goes into sequencing an over 6 billion base pair genome, with 200 million added in this new research. The new genome now adds 99 genes likely to code for proteins and 2,000 candidate genes that were previously unknown.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj6987

 

[J Sokol]

The Dunedin study at 50: landmark experiment tracked 1,000 people from birth​

In 1972, a researcher in a small city at the bottom of New Zealand set out to track the development of more than 1,000 newborn babies and their health and behaviour at age three, not realising then that over the next 50 years, the research would morph into one of the world’s most important longitudinal studies.

The study did not stop at three years, instead it gathered pace, following the lives of the participants from birth into adulthood, and creating a comprehensive body of data that has yielded more than 1,300 peer-reviewed research papers, reports and books.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ark-experiment-tracked-1000-people-from-birth

 

[koolishman]

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Puff, Whir, Zap Sounds from Mars​

 

[Cal2]

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Puff, Whir, Zap Sounds from Mars​

And people obsess about going there to live(?)

 

[koolishman]

And people obsess about going there to live(?)

I too don’t get the hype.

Just send AI robots. All the experiments can be done without spending a fortune to build a habitable dome.

 

[Cannuck]

Russia to sever links with Western space agencies ending International Space Station co-operation​

Roscosmos boss Dmitry Rogozin said it will no longer work with Western partners including Nasa and the European Space Agency on the joint space laboratory after their nations’ refusals to lift sanctions on Russia.

He said sanctions from the US, Canada, the European Union and Japan were “aimed at blocking financial, economic and production activities of our high-tech enterprises” and the purpose was “to kill the Russian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees”.

Specific proposals from Roscosmos, he said, were now being reported to the Russian authorities for the “completion of cooperation within the ISS” with the space agencies of the US, Canada, the European Union and Japan.

Mr Rogozin had written to space agencies around the globe last month asking them to lift sanctions on Russian forms in the space industry, giving a deadline of the end of the month.

No indication was given by any of the agencies that the sanctions would be lifted.

https://inews.co.uk/news/russia-sev...ernational-space-station-co-operation-1554083

Russia threatens space co-operation and warns ISS space station could come crashing down to Earth​

Vladimir Putin ally Dmitry Rogozin, chief of Roscosmos, claimed the continuation of sanctions could disrupt the operation of the Russian element of the ISS that assists in correcting its orbit.

If Russian operations were to be affected it could cause the 500-tonne space staion to “fall down into the sea or onto land”, Mr Rogozin claimed on Telegram.

“The populations of other countries, especially those led by the ‘dogs of war’, should think about the price of the sanctions against Roscosmos,” he said.

“The price of international space co-operation maniacally destroyed by the West. Crazy.”

Mr Rogozin shared a map of where the ISS could crash on Earth – claiming that it was unlikely to land in Russia and could hit the United States.

Nasa as already committed to keeping the station in orbit until 2030. Earlier this month it emerged that it is exploring ways to keep the ISS in its course around the Earth without Russia’s assistance.

https://inews.co.uk/news/russia-thr...iss-international-station-crash-earth-1514539

 

[Cal2]

Russia to sever links with Western space agencies ending International Space Station co-operation​

Roscosmos boss Dmitry Rogozin said it will no longer work with Western partners including Nasa and the European Space Agency on the joint space laboratory after their nations’ refusals to lift sanctions on Russia.

He said sanctions from the US, Canada, the European Union and Japan were “aimed at blocking financial, economic and production activities of our high-tech enterprises” and the purpose was “to kill the Russian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees”.

Russia threatens space co-operation and warns ISS space station could come crashing down to Earth​

“The populations of other countries, especially those led by the ‘dogs of war’, should think about the price of the sanctions against Roscosmos,” he said.

“The price of international space co-operation maniacally destroyed by the West. Crazy.”

Of course, it's all the West's fault. Nothing to do with Putin/Russia.

 

[koolishman]

‘Magnetic turd’: scientists invent moving slime that could be used in human digestive systems​

Scientists have created a moving magnetic slime capable of encircling smaller objects, self-healing and “very large deformation” to squeeze and travel through narrow spaces.

The slime, which is controlled by magnets, is also a good electrical conductor and can be used to interconnect electrodes, its creators say.

 

[jhm]

‘Magnetic turd’: scientists invent moving slime that could be used in human digestive systems​

Scientists have created a moving magnetic slime capable of encircling smaller objects, self-healing and “very large deformation” to squeeze and travel through narrow spaces.

The slime, which is controlled by magnets, is also a good electrical conductor and can be used to interconnect electrodes, its creators say.

Just been looking up your posts. Very interesting stuff

 

[koolishman]

Just been looking up your posts. Very interesting stuff

Please feel free to contribute to this thread.

 

[koolishman]

Do insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions? Evidence is building that they can​

Professor Andrews is a research chair in animal minds at the University of York in Canada.

Alongside biologist and primate behaviour expert Frans der Waal, Professor Andrews argues in a recent issue of Science that the weight of evidence says many invertebrates experience what we might call emotions, and that this morally matters.

"If they can no longer be considered immune to pain, invertebrate experiences will need to become part of our species' moral landscape," they wrote.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found the strongest evidence for sentience in octopus, but crabs, crayfish and cuttlefish also scored highly.

Professor Godfrey-Smith says those animals were the right place to start in terms of broadening the scope of sentience.

"They chose cephalopods and crustaceans as the central cases to think about, and I think that was the right move," he says.

 

[koolishman]

New 83 million pixel image of sun released by esa.

 

[Alop]

German engineer predicted man named ‘Elon’ would conquer Mars in 1952 novel​

 

[koolishman]

​

German engineer predicted man named ‘Elon’ would conquer Mars in 1952 novel​

Elon's parents were inspired by this story to name him, perhaps?

 

[koolishman]

Virtual reality can induce mild and transient symptoms of depersonalization and derealization, study finds​

New research sheds light on how virtual reality (VR) can influence a person’s sense of reality. The findings have been published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

For their study, the researchers randomly assigned 80 participants (who were free of psychiatric or neurological disorders) to play the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim either using a head-mounted VR display or using a classic PC computer screen. The participants completed the German state version of the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale during four different time points: immediately before gaming, immediately after gaming, one day after gaming, and one week after gaming. They also completed assessments of emotional responsiveness, VR-induced motion sickness, and perceptual realness immediately after gaming.

Braun and his colleagues found that depersonalization and derealization tended to be higher immediately after gaming among both groups of participants. However, they observed a greater increase among those who played Skyrim via a head-mounted VR display. The researchers also found that the perceptual realness of Skyrim was rated significantly higher in the VR group than PC group.

 

[mr-x]

 

[koolishman]

Longer-lasting lithium-ion​

Chemical engineers have figured out a way to more than double the lifespan of high-voltage lithium-ion batteries.

The international team of researchers, based at the University of Queensland, has developed a lithium-ion battery which has a higher energy density than conventional batteries, uses less precious metal, and can stay stable for over 1000 cycles.




They’ve published their technique in Nature Communications.

Wang and colleagues discovered that an extremely thin epitaxial layer could protect a cathode made from lithium, nickel, and manganese. Epitaxy is a type of crystal growth in which the crystal’s atoms are aligned with the atoms in the substrate (the thing they’re growing on).

In this case, the researchers found that a specific material (made from lanthanum, nickel, manganese and oxygen) grown epitaxially on cathode particles could stop the cathode from dissolving.

The layer of crystal is only an atom thick – so it doesn’t require much material to have a big effect.

He predicts that the battery could be ready for the market in two or three years.

 

[koolishman]

Bacteria engineered to produce Parkinson’s disease drug in the gut ​

New research presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting has demonstrated the potential for genetically engineered bacteria to be an effective Parkinson’s disease treatment. The researchers created a bacteria that can synthesize a consistent source of medicine inside a patient’s gut, and animal tests have demonstrated it is safe and effective.

Several mouse studies demonstrated that the engineered bacteria resulted in steady, consistent blood concentrations of L-DOPA. Then experiments with Parkinson’s disease animal models found the treatment led to improved motor and cognitive functions, indicating the engineered bacteria were producing therapeutically effective volumes of the drug.

The researchers also claim the levels of L-DOPA produced by the bacteria can be finely controlled. This can be done by either limiting the daily doses of bacteria consumed in capsules or by modulating consumption of a sugar called rhamhose. This rare sugar is needed by the bacteria to go on and produce L-DOPA.

Anumantha Kanthasamy, another researcher working on the project, said the team is working on adapting the approach to treat other diseases that require continual measured doses of drugs. The next step is optimizing the engineered bacteria as the research looks to human trials.