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]

Wildflower believed to be extinct for 40 years spotted in Ecuador​

A South American wildflower long believed to be extinct has been rediscovered.

Gasteranthus extinctus was found by biologists in the foothills of the Andes mountains and in remnant patches of forest in the Centinela region of Ecuador, almost 40 years after its last sighting.


Extensive deforestation in western Ecuador during the late 20th century led to the presumed extinction of a number of plant species, including Gasteranthus extinctus – the reason scientists gave it that name.

 

[koolishman]

Diverse Microbial Life Forms Existed At Least 3.75 Billion Years Ago, Study Confirms​

“Using many different lines of evidence, our study strongly suggests a number of different types of bacteria existed on Earth between 3.75 and 4.28 billion years ago,” said Dr. Dominic Papineau, a paleontologist at the China University of Geosciences, the London Centre for Nanotechnology, the Department of Earth Sciences, and the Centre for Planetary Sciences at University College London & Birkbeck College London.

 

[J Sokol]

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

Or maybe an introvert.

 

[J Sokol]

What are the most effective ways to get cars out of cities?​

Getting cars out of cities has become an international focus. But city officials, planners and citizens still do not have a clear, evidence-based answer to the question: what works to reduce car use in cities?

Our study, carried out at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies and published in Case Studies on Transport Policy, finds that more than 75% of the urban innovations that have successfully reduced car use were led by a local city government – notably, those that have proved most effective, such as a congestion charge, parking and traffic controls, and limited traffic zones.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/16/12-most-effective-ways-cars-cities-europe

 

[Cal2]

Or maybe an introvert.

You found me out.

 

[J Sokol]

You found me out.

It takes one to know one!

 

[koolishman]

Actually, New Science Shows the Pandemic Was Harder on Introverts​

Back around a year ago, when health authorities started warning everyone to avoid crowds and stay home, introverts certainly didn't cheer, but at least a few of us thought, 'OK, I've got this.' Who is better placed to weather lockdowns than the type of people who thrive spending time at home alone?

A year on, we now have the data to say whether introverts' hunch that while absolutely no one enjoys a pandemic, their personality gave them a leg up in getting through a hugely difficult time was correct. Turns out that intuition was exactly backwards. New research reveals it was actually extroverts who coped better with this year's many restrictions.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.561609/full

Why extroverts are more resilient​

First, lockdowns often didn't lead to the pleasant solitude introverts first dreamed of. Many quickly realized that being stuck in the house with your family isn't restful (or productive).

When faced with a crisis, extroverts, being extroverts, are more likely to reach out to others (and also more likely to opt for other healthy coping strategies like exercise). That means that when the pandemic struck and the social butterflies among us realized the full scope of the challenges ahead, they didn't sit around fretting, they set up a remote happy hour with friends or went for a run.

 

[Cal2]

Actually, New Science Shows the Pandemic Was Harder on Introverts​

Back around a year ago, when health authorities started warning everyone to avoid crowds and stay home, introverts certainly didn't cheer, but at least a few of us thought, 'OK, I've got this.' Who is better placed to weather lockdowns than the type of people who thrive spending time at home alone?

A year on, we now have the data to say whether introverts' hunch that while absolutely no one enjoys a pandemic, their personality gave them a leg up in getting through a hugely difficult time was correct. Turns out that intuition was exactly backwards. New research reveals it was actually extroverts who coped better with this year's many restrictions.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.561609/full

Show attachment 214168

Why extroverts are more resilient​

First, lockdowns often didn't lead to the pleasant solitude introverts first dreamed of. Many quickly realized that being stuck in the house with your family isn't restful (or productive).

When faced with a crisis, extroverts, being extroverts, are more likely to reach out to others (and also more likely to opt for other healthy coping strategies like exercise). That means that when the pandemic struck and the social butterflies among us realized the full scope of the challenges ahead, they didn't sit around fretting, they set up a remote happy hour with friends or went for a run.

The pandemic gave me an 'excuse' to downsize and focus my life/lifestyle in directions I more preferred. So that's why I could be an anomaly to their findings. It also might have something to do with the personality type I seem to be, which isn't as common as other introverted personality type preferences.

 

[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.

For someone who would want to get into it, could be interesting to compare savanna theory with Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

https://www.google.com/search?q=car...2l7j46i512.4115j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[koolishman]

Decoding a direct dialog between the gut microbiota and the brain​

Gut microbiota by-products circulate in the bloodstream, regulating host physiological processes including immunity, metabolism and brain functions. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur (a partner research organization of Université Paris Cité), Inserm and the CNRS have discovered that hypothalamic neurons in an animal model directly detect variations in bacterial activity and adapt appetite and body temperature accordingly. These findings demonstrate that a direct dialog occurs between the gut microbiota and the brain, a discovery that could lead to new therapeutic approaches for tackling metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity. The findings are due to be published in Science on April 15, 2022.

 

[koolishman]

Scientists Say There’s an ‘Anti-Universe’ Running Backward in Time​

Scientists believe there could be an “anti-universe” somewhere out there that looks like the mirror image of our own universe, reciprocating almost everything we do. If this theory holds true, it could explain the presence of dark matter.

Could it be that a newly discovered “anti-universe” might run parallel to our own universe, but backward in time? If so, it would essentially spread out “backward” in time, prior to the Big Bang, in the same way our universe progressed “forward” in time. In a new paper, published last month in the journal Annals of Physics, researchers from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, suggest that the Big Bang might have been smaller and more symmetrical than we think.

“Among other things, we shall describe in detail a remarkable consequence of this hypothesis, namely a highly economical new explanation for the cosmological dark matter,” the researchers write.

 

[koolishman]

Scientists breed threatened Florida coral species in step toward reef restoration​

Scientists have successfully bred a threatened species of coral as part of a project that hopes to restore damaged reefs off the coast of Florida that are under threat by a relatively new disease, a coral rescue organization said on Thursday.

Reefs in Florida and the Caribbean are facing growing threat of destruction by the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease that strips coral of its color and ultimately its life altogether.

The Florida Coral Rescue Center has in recent weeks bred hundreds of new coral of a species called rough cactus coral at a 2,000-square-foot (185.80-square-meter) facility that houses a total of 18 Florida coral species that are threatened by the disease.

 

[koolishman]

The Hunt for Life On Jupiter's Moon Europa Just Got a Little Easier​

It’s hard not to love Europa. It is far and away the most promising of Jupiter’s 79 moons, covered in a rind of water ice perhaps 30 km (18 mi.) thick. Beneath the ice lies a salty, globe-girdling ocean that astronomers estimate could be up to 150 km (93 mi.) deep. As its larger sister moons—Io, Ganymede and Callisto—pass by in their orbits, their gravity causes Europa to flex slightly, generating interior heat that prevents the water from freezing. Give a warm, salty, amniotic ocean like that a few billion years, and there’s no telling what kind of life it could cook up.

The problem has always been that even if NASA were able to land a probe on Europa, it would have to drill through that 30 km ice crust to sample what lies beneath. However, a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications suggests that liquid water might exist in lakes and pools much closer to Europa’s surface, where a spacecraft could more easily get at it. Those tantalizing findings come not from studying Europa itself, but a much more familiar—and decidedly more accessible—place: Greenland.

 

[koolishman]

Surprised astronomers find new type of star explosion - a micronova​

Astronomers have detected a previously unknown type of stellar explosion called a micronova involving thermonuclear blasts at the polar regions of a type of burned-out star called a white dwarf after it has siphoned material from a companion star.

The researchers said on Wednesday a micronova is by far the least powerful type of star explosions now known - less energetic than a blast called a nova in which a white dwarf's entire surface blows up and tiny compared to a supernova that occurs during the death throes of some giant stars.

Micronovae are observed from Earth as bursts of light lasting about 10 hours. They were documented on three white dwarfs - one 1,680 light years away from Earth, one 3,720 light years away and one 4,900 light years away. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

 

[Cal2]

Scientists Say There’s an ‘Anti-Universe’ Running Backward in Time​

Show attachment 214401


Scientists believe there could be an “anti-universe” somewhere out there that looks like the mirror image of our own universe, reciprocating almost everything we do. If this theory holds true, it could explain the presence of dark matter.

Could it be that a newly discovered “anti-universe” might run parallel to our own universe, but backward in time? If so, it would essentially spread out “backward” in time, prior to the Big Bang, in the same way our universe progressed “forward” in time. In a new paper, published last month in the journal Annals of Physics, researchers from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, suggest that the Big Bang might have been smaller and more symmetrical than we think.

“Among other things, we shall describe in detail a remarkable consequence of this hypothesis, namely a highly economical new explanation for the cosmological dark matter,” the researchers write.

Time Can Actually Flow Backward, Physicists Say​

• A new paper suggests that time can actually flow forward and backward.

Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock more or less sums up how we understand time: the arrow of time only moves forward, cruelly robbing us of the chance to revisit our past.

Not everyone takes that for granted though, as evidenced by Albert Einstein, whose 1905 theory of special relativity stated that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer. Today, physicists like Julian Barbour, who has written a book on the illusion of time, say change is real, but time is not; time is only a reflection of change. And just last week, a team of physicists published a new paper suggesting that quantum systems can move both forward and backward in time.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/tech...pc=U531&cvid=7bbefa9b46874f848eaa04f3048881f9

 

[koolishman]

Large hadron collider: A revamp that could revolutionise physics​

For the past 20 years, Sam has been trying to find evidence of a fifth force of nature, with gravity, electromagnetism and two nuclear forces being the four that physicists already know about.

He's pinning his hopes on a major revamp of the Large Hadron Collider. It's the world's most advanced particle accelerator - a vast machine that smashes atoms together to break them apart and discover what is inside them.

It's been souped up even further in a three-year upgrade. Its instruments are more sensitive, allowing researchers to study the collision of particles from the inside of atoms in higher definition; its software has been enhanced so that it is able to take data at a rate of 30 million times each second; and its beams are narrower, which greatly increases the number of collisions.

 

[koolishman]

Drones Have Transformed Blood Delivery in Rwanda​

Six years ago, Rwanda had a blood delivery problem. More than 12 million people live in the small East African country, and like those in other nations, sometimes they get into car accidents. New mothers hemorrhage. Anemic children need urgent transfusions. You can’t predict these emergencies. They just happen. And when they do, the red stuff stored in Place A has to find its way to a patient in Place B—fast.

In 2016, Rwanda’s government signed a contract with Zipline, a San Francisco-based drone startup, to streamline blood deliveries. Zipline’s autonomous drones would fly the blood from a distribution hub to the health care facility. The blood, contained within an IV bag, would parachute down in an insulated cardboard box, and the drone would zip back. Today, Zipline has two hubs in Rwanda; each can make up to 500 deliveries per day.



And now for the first time, there’s proof that drone blood services improve delivery speed and reduce waste. Writing in the April issue of Lancet Global Health, Nisingizwe analyzed nearly 13,000 drone orders between 2017 and 2019 and found that half of the orders took 41 minutes or less to deliver by drone. On the road, that median time would be at least two hours. Reports of wasted blood donations dropped.

 

[koolishman]

Gravitational waves gave a new black hole a high-speed ‘kick’​

Scientists recently observed two black holes that united into one, and in the process got a “kick” that flung the newly formed black hole away at high speed. That black hole zoomed off at about 5 million kilometers per hour, give or take a few million, researchers report in a paper in press in Physical Review Letters. That’s blazingly quick: The speed of light is just 200 times as fast.

Ripples in spacetime, called gravitational waves, launched the black hole on its breakneck exit. As any two paired-up black holes spiral inward and coalesce, they emit these ripples, which stretch and squeeze space. If those gravitational waves are shot off into the cosmos in one direction preferentially, the black hole will recoil in response.

 

[koolishman]

All of the bases in DNA and RNA have now been found in meteorites​

More of the ingredients for life have been found in meteorites.


Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications.

These “nucleobases” — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — combine with sugars and phosphates to make up the genetic code of all life on Earth. Whether these basic ingredients for life first came from space or instead formed in a warm soup of earthly chemistry is still not known (SN: 9/24/20). But the discovery adds to evidence that suggests life’s precursors originally came from space, the researchers say.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29612-x



So, they are our cousins out there!

 

[koolishman]

The US Military’s Naval Research Laboratory Transmits Electricity Wirelessly Using Microwaves Over Long Distances​

Washington (USA) Scientists at the NRL (Naval Research Laboratory), a research facility of the United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy, wirelessly transmitted 1.6 kilowatts of electrical energy over one kilometer. To do this, they converted electricity into microwaves, which were then sent to a receiver in a directed beam. To precisely focus the microwave beam, the researchers used a dish as a transmitting antenna. According to the NRL, this is “the most significant demonstration of power beaming in almost 50 years”.


Microwave power beaming is the point-to-point transfer of electrical energy across free space by a directed microwave beam. The project was funded by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund and is called “Safe and Continuous Power beaming – Microwave (SCOPE-M)”.

 

[koolishman]

Plastic-eating Enzyme Could Eliminate Billions of Tons of Landfill Waste​

An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days.

The enzyme was able to complete a “circular process” of breaking down the plastic into smaller parts (depolymerization) and then chemically putting it back together (repolymerization). In some cases, these plastics can be fully broken down to monomers in as little as 24 hours.

This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: What to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water. The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would allow major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level.

 

[koolishman]

It is official, alignment of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. The alignment of the telescope across all of Webb’s instruments can be seen in a series of images that captures the observatory’s full field of view

 

[koolishman]

Honeybees join humans as the only known animals that can tell the difference between odd and even numbers ​

We trained individual bees using comparisons of odd versus even numbers (with cards presenting 1-10 printed shapes) until they chose the correct answer with 80% accuracy.

Remarkably, the respective groups learnt at different rates. The bees trained to associate odd numbers with sugar water learnt quicker. Their learning bias towards odd numbers was the opposite of humans, who categorise even numbers more quickly.

We then tested each bee on new numbers not shown during the training. Impressively, they categorised the new numbers of 11 or 12 elements as odd or even with an accuracy of about 70%.

​

 

[koolishman]

Researchers manage to charge a lithium-ion battery to 60 percent in 5.6 minutes​

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has successfully managed to increase the speed of charging a lithium-ion battery to a rate of 5.6 minutes for a 60% charge, according to a report by TechXplore published on Thursday. They achieved this impressive feat by adding a copper coating and nanowires to the battery's anode in order to effectively improve ordering.

 

[koolishman]

Here’s what the world’s first floating city in Busan, South Korea, could look like​

The United Nations, a floating city development firm called Oceanix, and the South Korean city of Busan on Tuesday unveiled the prototype for a floating, sustainable version of the key shipping hub.

Floating cities could be a way to mitigate the effects of sea level rise caused by climate change. “Sea level rise poses an existential threat for some small islands and some low-lying coasts,” according to policymaker-summary remarks in the most recent IPCC report out from the United Nations at the end of February. Rising sea levels threaten coastal electricity and transportation infrastructures, according to the report.