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]

NASA Scientists Design new Arecibo Message for Extraterrestrials​

La Canada Flintridge (USA) Scientists have been discussing active attempts to contact extraterrestrials for years under the keyword METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Mankind’s first message to extraterrestrial life was sent into space back in 1974 with the Arecibo telescope. It will be more than 20,000 years before it reaches its destination, the globular cluster Messier 13. Meanwhile, various institutions have sent dozens of similar such messages, which the targets will receive in decades to centuries.

According to a publication on the preprint server arXiv, scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have now worked out an update of the original Arecibo message. This new message contains significantly more information than the original that was sent 48 years ago.

As the team led by Jonathan H. Jiang from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) explains in their technical article, the message known as the “Beacon in the Galaxy” (BITG) is based on the idea of the “Arecibo message” sent into space on November 16, 1974 with the Arecibo radio telescope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

 

[Cannuck]

UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world’​

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed “a litany of broken climate promises” by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels.

“It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world,” he said.

The report isn’t without some hope, however...

https://apnews.com/article/climate-united-nations-paris-europe-berlin

​

5 takeaways from UN report on climate change​

1. Halting at 1.5 degrees will be decided in Beijing​

2. Capturing carbon is a must​

3. Failure to act means tough choices in the future​

4. Governments need to help people cut consumption​

5. Batteries are the answer for clean vehicles​

 

[koolishman]

Reading on a smartphone promotes overactivity in the prefrontal cortex and lowers reading comprehension, study finds​

A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports lends support to a body of research suggesting that reading on electronic devices reduces comprehension. The study found that reading on a smartphone promotes overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, less frequent sighing, and lower reading comprehension.

Study authors Motoyasu Honma and team launched a study to explore a possible reason for this effect. The researchers focused on two factors known to be associated with cognitive function and performance — the visual environment and respiration patterns. They proposed that the visual environment of reading on a screen may alter respiratory function and brain function, which may interact to impact cognitive performance.

 

[koolishman]

People around the world like the same kinds of smell​

What smells we like or dislike is primarily determined by the structure of the particular odour molecule. A collaborative study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and the University of Oxford, UK, shows that people share odour preferences regardless of cultural background. The study is published in the journal Current Biology.

Vanilla was considered most pleasant​

The odours the participants were asked to rank included vanilla, which smelled best then followed by ethyl butyrate, which smells like peaches. The smell that most participants considered the least pleasant was isovaleric acid, which can be found in many foods, such as cheese, soy milk and apple juice, but also in foot sweat.

 

[koolishman]

The world’s oldest pants are a 3,000-year-old engineering marvel​

With the help of an expert weaver, archaeologists have unraveled the design secrets behind the world’s oldest pants. The 3,000-year-old wool trousers belonged to a man buried between 1000 and 1200 BCE in Western China. To make them, ancient weavers combined four different techniques to create a garment specially engineered for fighting on horseback, with flexibility in some places and sturdiness in others.

 

[koolishman]

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims ​

Professor theorises electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms could be similar to human language.

To investigate, Prof Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England’s unconventional computing laboratory in Bristol analysed the patterns of electrical spikes generated by four species of fungi – enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungi.

He did this by inserting tiny microelectrodes into substrates colonised by their patchwork of hyphae threads, their mycelia.

The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, found that these spikes often clustered into trains of activity, resembling vocabularies of up to 50 words, and that the distribution of these “fungal word lengths” closely matched those of human languages.

 

[koolishman]

Microplastics found in human blood for first time​

The discovery shows the particles can travel around the body and may lodge in organs

Microplastic pollution has been detected in human blood for the first time, with scientists finding the tiny particles in almost 80% of the people tested.

Show attachment 212775


The scientists analysed blood samples from 22 anonymous donors, all healthy adults and found plastic particles in 17. Half the samples contained PET plastic, which is commonly used in drinks bottles, while a third contained polystyrene, used for packaging food and other products. A quarter of the blood samples contained polyethylene, from which plastic carrier bags are made.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12403-022-00470-8

Microplastics found deep in lungs of living people for first time​

Microplastic pollution has been discovered lodged deep in the lungs of living people for the first time. The particles were found in almost all the samples analysed.

The scientists said microplastic pollution was now ubiquitous across the planet, making human exposure unavoidable and meaning “there is an increasing concern regarding the hazards” to health.


Samples were taken from tissue removed from 13 patients undergoing surgery and microplastics were found in 11 cases. The most common particles were polypropylene, used in plastic packaging and pipes, and PET, used in bottles. Two previous studies had found microplastics at similarly high rates in lung tissue taken during autopsies.

 

[koolishman]

New part of the body found hiding in the lungs​

Scientists have discovered a brand-new type of cell hiding inside the delicate, branching passageways of human lungs. The newfound cells play a vital role in keeping the respiratory system functioning properly and could even inspire new treatments to reverse the effects of certain smoking-related diseases, according to a new study.

The cells, known as respiratory airway secretory (RAS) cells, are found in tiny, branching passages known as bronchioles, which are tipped with alveoli, the teensy air sacs that exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the bloodstream. The new RAS cells are similar to stem cells — "blank canvas" cells that can differentiate into any other type of cell in the body — and are capable of repairing damaged alveoli cells and transforming into new ones.

 

[koolishman]

Solar panels that can generate electricity at night have been developed at Stanford​

While standard solar panels can provide electricity during the day, this device can serve as a "continuous renewable power source for both day- and nighttime," according to the study published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters.


The device incorporates a thermoelectric generator, which can pull electricity from the small difference in temperature between the ambient air and the solar cell itself.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0085205

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator

 

[koolishman]

World-first massive MRI study charts brain changes from birth to death​

Hundreds of scientists around the globe have shared data to create the world's first brain growth chart. The project incorporated MRI scans from subjects of all ages to offer a unique portrait of how our brains change over the course of a lifetime.

https://brainchart.shinyapps.io/brainchart/


The new research found, for example, the volume of gray matter in a human brain peaks at the age of six, but white matter continues to grow until around 29 years. At around the age of 50 the volume of white matter in a brain begins to decrease at a rapid pace.

 

[koolishman]

Tanis: Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim​

Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur.

The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota.

But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens are purported to represent.

The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth.
The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of mammals began.

 

[koolishman]

Turning back the clock: Human skin cells de-aged by 30 years in trial​

Researchers have reversed ageing in human skin cells by 30 years, according to a new study.

While findings are still in the early stages, they could revolutionise regenerative medicine, especially if it can be replicated in other cell types.

Scientists in the study, published in eLife, said they developed a method to time jump human skin cells by three decades, rewinding the ageing clock without cells losing their function.

Researchers were able to partly restore the function of older cells, as well as renew the biological age.

In experiments that simulated a skin wound, the partially rejuvenated cells showed signs of behaving more like youthful cells.

 

[koolishman]

AI predicts if and when someone will experience cardiac arrest ​

A new artificial intelligence-based approach can predict if and when a patient could die of cardiac arrest. The technology, built on raw images of patient's diseased hearts and patient backgrounds, significantly improves on doctor's predictions and stands to revolutionize clinical decision making and increase survival from sudden and lethal cardiac arrhythmias, one of medicine's deadliest and most puzzling conditions.

 

[koolishman]

Fungi Could Make Soil From Asteroids and Homes on Mars​

Imagine a long-term, manned mission into space: Astronauts moving about in artificial gravity, conducting research and sending signals back to Earth while they probe farther away. Maybe they land on the moon or Mars, or perhaps they sail past countless planets, stars and asteroids. When the astronauts get hungry, there’s freeze-dried food, of course — but carrying enough to feed an entire crew for multiple years would take up a lot of space. Some missions have had success growing plants in water, a method called hydroponics, but that requires a continuous resupply of nutrients from Earth.

So, scientists began thinking: What if we made soil in space?

That’s where fungi comes in. UCLA administrator Jane Shevtsov has teamed up with NASA scientists and researchers at the mushroom company Fungi Perfecti to explore how fungi could help turn asteroids into soil. The idea initially came to Shevtsov while she watched a video about the role of fungi in early soil formation on Earth. “I bet fungi can digest the organics in the asteroid because they do that kind of thing on Earth, and maybe they can even make soil out of that,” says Shevtsov. “So, let’s feed asteroids to fungi.”

 

[koolishman]

Terrawatch: Rare gas points to deep nebula origins for Earth​

Peter Olsen and Zachary Sharp, both from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, used the modern helium-3 leak rate to estimate how much of it might still be sitting inside the Earth’s core today. Their results, published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, indicate the core still contains a vast reservoir of helium-3 (up to a petagram – 1015grams).

According to Olsen and Sharp, the most likely way for our planet to acquire such high quantities of the gas within its interior is for Earth to have formed deep within an active solar nebula – not on its fringes or in a waning nebula.

Finding other nebula-created gases, such as hydrogen, leaking at similar rates and from similar locations will help to strengthen the evidence.

 

[koolishman]

Mystery of Moon's Far Side Explained by Massive Impact at the South Pole​

They used computer simulations to see what might've gone on long, long (long) ago, way before there was any volcanic activity on the moon's surface. More specifically, they re-created a massive impact that, billions of years ago, changed the base of the moon, forming a gigantic crater that we now refer to as the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin.

"We know that big impacts like the one that formed SPA would create a lot of heat," Matt Jones, a planetary scientist from Brown University and lead author of the study, said in a statement. "The question is how that heat affects the moon's interior dynamics."

What they found is that this huge smash would've created a plume of heat that carried a bunch of specific chemical elements to the near side of the moon, and not the far side. "We expect that this contributed to the mantle melting that produced the lava flows we see on the surface," Jones said.

In other words, those elements presumably contributed to an era of volcanism on the lunar face we can see from Earth but it left the far side untouched.

 

[koolishman]

5,500 New RNA Virus Species Discovered in the Ocean – Tracing the Origins of Viruses and the Origins of Life ​

Ocean water samples collected around the world have yielded a treasure trove of new data about RNA viruses, expanding ecological research possibilities and reshaping our understanding of how these small but significant submicroscopic particles evolved.


Combining machine-learning analyses with traditional evolutionary trees, an international team of researchers has identified 5,500 new RNA virus species that represent all five known RNA virus phyla and suggest there are at least five new RNA virus phyla needed to capture them.

The most abundant collection of newly identified species belong to a proposed phylum researchers named Taraviricota, a nod to the source of the 35,000 water samples that enabled the analysis: the Tara Oceans Consortium, an ongoing global study onboard the schooner Tara of the impact of climate change on the world’s oceans.

 

[koolishman]

Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy​

MIT spinout Frequency Therapeutics’ drug candidate stimulates the growth of hair cells in the inner ear.

The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss — not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy. The company uses small molecules to program progenitor cells, a descendant of stem cells in the inner ear, to create the tiny hair cells that allow us to hear.

Hair cells die off when exposed to loud noises or drugs including certain chemotherapies and antibiotics. Frequency’s drug candidate is designed to be injected into the ear to regenerate these cells within the cochlea. In clinical trials, the company has already improved people’s hearing as measured by tests of speech perception — the ability to understand speech and recognize words.

 

[koolishman]

Intelligent people became less happy during the pandemic — but the opposite was true for unintelligent people​

A person’s level of intelligence was related to their psychological response to COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in the Journal of Personality. The study found that more intelligent people tended to be less happy with their lives during the pandemic than their less intelligent counterparts.

The new findings provide evidence that higher intelligence can have a downside in the modern world and support a growing body of research known as the savanna theory of happiness.

“My collaborators, Professor Norman P. Li (Singapore Management University) and Dr. Jose C. Yong (Northumbria University), have proposed the savanna theory of happiness, which avers that modern happiness is affected not only by what the individual circumstances mean in the current environment but also by what they would have meant in the ancestral environment, on the African savanna more than 12,000 years ago,” explained study author Satoshi Kanazawa, a reader in management at the London School of Economics.

 

[koolishman]

Over 15% of world population has a headache on any given day, new global estimate finds​

Headaches are among the most common health problems worldwide. According to a comprehensive review of 357 prevalence studies whose findings have been published in The Journal of Headache and Pain, 52% of the world population is affected by a headache disorder every year, and 14% of these disorders are migraines.

The authors, who work at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, also estimated that on any given day 15.8% of the world population has had a headache disorder.

 

[koolishman]

4 billion-year-old relic from early solar system heading our way ​

​

An enormous comet — approximately 80 miles across, more than twice the width of Rhode Island — is heading our way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. Fortunately, it will never get closer than 1 billion miles from the sun, which is slightly farther from Earth than Saturn; that will be in 2031.

Comets, among the oldest objects in the solar system, are icy bodies that were unceremoniously tossed out of the solar system in a gravitational pinball game among the massive outer planets, said David Jewitt. The UCLA professor of planetary science and astronomy co-authored a new study of the comet in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The evicted comets took up residence in the Oort cloud, a vast reservoir of far-flung comets encircling the solar system out to many billions of miles into deep space, he said.

​

 

[koolishman]

Mystery of why humans die around 80 may finally be solved​

Previously, experts have suggested that size is the key to longevity, with smaller animals burning up energy more quickly, requiring a faster cell turnover, which causes a speedier decline.

But a new study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge suggests the speed of genetic damage could be the key to survival, with long-living animals successfully slowing down their rate of DNA mutations regardless of their size.

It helps explain how a five-inch long naked mole rat can live for 25 years, about the same as a far larger giraffe, which typically lives for 24.

When scientists checked their mutation rates, they were surprisingly similar. Naked mole rats suffer 93 mutations a year and giraffes 99.

In contrast, mice suffer 796 mutations a year and only live for 3.7 years. The average human lifespan in the study was 83.6 years, but the mutation rate was far lower at around 47.

 

[koolishman]

Singapore scientists demonstrate that some tropical plants have potential to remove toxic heavy metals from the soil​

A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Singapore’s National Parks Board (NParks), has demonstrated that some plant species could help to remove toxic heavy metals and metalloids from contaminated soil.

Phytoremediation is the use of plants to extract and store contaminants from soil. As a first step to determine if candidate plants had phytoremediation abilities, the team examined samples of them for levels of heavy metals and metalloids. A high concentration detected suggested an ability to absorb the pollutants.

 

[koolishman]

US military confirms an interstellar meteor collided with Earth​

Researchers discovered the first known interstellar meteor to ever hit Earth, according to a recently released United States Space Command document. An interstellar meteor is a space rock that originates from outside our solar system -- a rare occurrence.

This one is known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, and it crash-landed along the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014.

 

[Cal2]

Intelligent people became less happy during the pandemic — but the opposite was true for unintelligent people​

Show attachment 213918


A person’s level of intelligence was related to their psychological response to COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in the Journal of Personality. The study found that more intelligent people tended to be less happy with their lives during the pandemic than their less intelligent counterparts.

The new findings provide evidence that higher intelligence can have a downside in the modern world and support a growing body of research known as the savanna theory of happiness.

“My collaborators, Professor Norman P. Li (Singapore Management University) and Dr. Jose C. Yong (Northumbria University), have proposed the savanna theory of happiness, which avers that modern happiness is affected not only by what the individual circumstances mean in the current environment but also by what they would have meant in the ancestral environment, on the African savanna more than 12,000 years ago,” explained study author Satoshi Kanazawa, a reader in management at the London School of Economics.

I was happier during the pandemic. Guess that makes me one of the unintelligent.