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!

 

[CraigD]

Researchers have grown ‘human embryos’ from skin cells. What does that mean, and is it ethical?

Researchers have successfully grown model versions of early human embryos by “reprogramming” cells from human skin. The breakthrough potentially opens up new ways to study the earliest phases of human development, learn more about developmental disorders, infertility and genetic diseases, and perhaps even improve the success of IVF treatment.

In a study published in Nature today, a team led by our colleague Jose Polo discovered that when skin cells are treated in a particular way, 3D structures similar to early human embryos form. A US-Chinese research group led by Jun Wu also reported a similar feat, creating structures that resemble a very early stage of the embryo called a “blastocyst”.

While this is an exciting scientific advance, it will also be vital to consider the ethics behind this and other emerging approaches to modelling human development.


Read on...

https://theconversation.com/researc...-what-does-that-mean-and-is-it-ethical-157228

 

[CraigD]

Groundbreaking New Images of Cosmic Web Strands Revealed by Astronomers

Although the Universe is a large place, and all the stuff in it may seem just flung everywhere higgledy-piggledy, there's rather more structure than we can see.

According to our models of the Universe, and mounting evidence, filaments of dark matter connect massive objects such as galaxies and galaxy clusters in a vast, cosmic web.

It's along these filaments that hydrogen flows, feeding into the galaxies, but they're not so easy to see - among all the brightly glowing stars and galaxies and galactic nuclei, the faint emission from diffuse hydrogen in intergalactic space is hard to see, never mind map.

We just got a step closer, though. In the culmination of years of work, an international team of astronomers led by Roland Bacon of the Lyon Astrophysical Research Center in France has just directly imaged several filaments of the cosmic web in the early Universe, roughly 12 billion light-years away.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/strand...ve-been-revealed-in-groundbreaking-new-images

 

[CraigD]

New Ebola Outbreak Suggests The Virus Might Lurk For Years Inside People

This time last month, national authorities in the African nation of Guinea declared they were dealing with an outbreak of Ebola deep in its rural southern region of Nzérékoré.

With the outbreak currently consisting of 14 confirmed cases and four suspected, the World Health Organization is employing a range of protective and tracing measures to contain the virus's spread.

Suspicions over the source of the cluster have so far focused on a 51-year-old nurse who died at the end of January, having sought help from both medical facilities and a traditional healer after a bout of high fever, vomiting, weakness, and diarrhea.

After first being diagnosed with typhoid and later malaria, it now appears her illness was caused by the far more deadly Zaire ebolavirus, a pathogen so deadly that at least five of the cases in the latest outbreak have already succumbed to its effects.

It's a tragic outcome for the woman and her family, who made up six of the the first seven known cases identified – the last being the healer she turned to for help.

Yet the consequences of the virus's unmitigated spread could be far worse. From late 2013 until 2016, the pathogen raged across the nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in an outbreak that saw roughly 40 percent of the 28,610 infected die.

Smaller outbreaks have arisen since in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but researchers now have reason to doubt that this most recent emergence is connected to any of those outbreaks, and may even have been lurking inside a carrier in Guinea for the past five years or more.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-pers...idemic-might-have-just-sparked-a-new-outbreak

 

[Sutruk]

Researchers have grown ‘human embryos’ from skin cells. What does that mean, and is it ethical?

Researchers have successfully grown model versions of early human embryos by “reprogramming” cells from human skin. The breakthrough potentially opens up new ways to study the earliest phases of human development, learn more about developmental disorders, infertility and genetic diseases, and perhaps even improve the success of IVF treatment.

In a study published in Nature today, a team led by our colleague Jose Polo discovered that when skin cells are treated in a particular way, 3D structures similar to early human embryos form. A US-Chinese research group led by Jun Wu also reported a similar feat, creating structures that resemble a very early stage of the embryo called a “blastocyst”.

While this is an exciting scientific advance, it will also be vital to consider the ethics behind this and other emerging approaches to modelling human development.


Read on...

https://theconversation.com/researc...-what-does-that-mean-and-is-it-ethical-157228

I was already going to ask you what do you think about the matter, but at least you also got it from the news
Yes, it raises ethical questions there. And it's quite amazing what they have done just with skin cells!

Scientists say they've peeked into the 'black box' of early human development

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/sci...ked-black-box-early-human-development-rcna437

"For the first time, scientists have used human cells to make structures that mimic the earliest stages of development, which they say will pave the way for more research without running afoul of restrictions on using real embryos.

“Studying early human development is really difficult. It’s basically a black box,” said Jun Wu, a stem cell biologist at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center.

“We believe our model can open up this field,” he said, if “you can test your hypothesis without using human embryos.”

Wu’s team used embryonic stem cells and the second team used reprogrammed skin cells to produce balls of cells that resemble one of the earliest stages of human development."

 

[CraigD]

I was already going to ask you what do you think about the matter, but at least you also got it from the news
Yes, it raises ethical questions there. And it's quite amazing what they have done just with skin cells!

There certainly is an ethical issue and it is being debated at the moment.

The team was led by the Monash University team in Melbourne Australia.

I saw the earlier reports today (mostly clickbait headlines) so refrained from posting them until I was on top of the story, which I am still not completely.

The following article is about 12-hours old now, so there may have been new developments:

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) said the Monash University team adhered to the rules governing research using human embryos.

The NHMRC said research on early human embryonic development has been limited to using what were called 'excess' embryos, created using Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), which encompassed all fertility treatments.

Under the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction Act, researchers must not allow the development of a human embryo outside the body of a woman for more than 14 days.

It is illegal to use human embryos for research unless given approval by the NHMRC.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-18/scientists-create-human-embryos-from-skin-cells/100015666


Anyway, I'll get on top of it and let you know what transpires on the ethical and legal front over the next few days

 

[Sutruk]

There certainly is an ethical issue and it is being debated at the moment.

The team was led by the Monash University team in Melbourne Australia.

I saw the earlier reports today (mostly clickbait headlines) so refrained from posting them until I was on top of the story, which I am still not completely.

The following article is about 12-hours old now, so there may have been new developments:

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) said the Monash University team adhered to the rules governing research using human embryos.

The NHMRC said research on early human embryonic development has been limited to using what were called 'excess' embryos, created using Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), which encompassed all fertility treatments.

Under the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction Act, researchers must not allow the development of a human embryo outside the body of a woman for more than 14 days.

It is illegal to use human embryos for research unless given approval by the NHMRC.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-18/scientists-create-human-embryos-from-skin-cells/100015666


Anyway, I'll get on top of it and let you know what transpires on the ethical and legal front over the next few days

Thanks! But putting the ethical question aside for a moment, it is still an amazing research and discovery... developing a human embryo from blastocyst and skin cells... amazing.

 

[CraigD]

Thanks! But even leaving the ethical question sideway, it is still an amazing research and discovery... developing a human embryo from blastocyst and skin cells... amazing.

Yes I agree, it is amazing, but also quite scary.

We had a similar debate here 25-years ago with cloning, and before that in the late 1970's with IVF, which I remember distinctly because I was a kid and was blown away by the concept of test-tube babies.

Each time we have these amazing breakthroughs, we open Pandora's box.

 

[Alop]

@Cannuck i appreciate the video of Pink Floyd ..Check this one out SMH

 

[koolishman]

How a metal with a memory will shape our future on Mars

A rover on the Moon has metal wheels that can flex around rocky obstacles, then reshape back to their original form. On Earth, surgeons install tiny mesh tubes that can dilate a heart patient’s blood vessels all on their own, without mechanical inputs or any wires to help.

These shape-shifting capabilities are all thanks to a bizarre kind of metal called nitinol, a so-called shape-metal alloy that can be trained to remember its own shape. The decades-old material has become increasingly common in a wide range of everyday applications. And in the next decade, the metal will face its most challenging application yet: a sample return mission on Mars.

Nitinol, made of nickel and titanium, works its magic through heat. To “train” a paper clip made of nitinol, for example, you heat it at 500 degrees Celsius in its desired shape, then splash it in cold water. Bend it out of shape, then return the same heat source, and the metal will eerily slink back into its original form.

 

[CraigD]

It's probably best to get this embryo story information straight from the source at Monash University in Australia.

Great article including graphics and video interviews with the scientists etc.

Meet the iBlastoid: A game-changer in unlocking the molecular mystery of early human life

Since 2014, Monash researchers have tried to understand the mysterious molecular processes that occur during the first few days of human life.

Late last year came the breakthrough. The University’s Polo Laboratory team unexpectedly produced a medical game-changer when it created what it calls an iBlastoid – the most accurate three-dimensional model of a blastocyst, or the cellular structure that becomes an early human embryo.

It’s made from skin cells and isn’t an embryo itself, so it can’t be used to make humans – to date, only a real embryo, made when sperm fertilises an egg, can do that. A “clone”, meanwhile, needs to begin with an unfertilised egg.

But an iBlastoid can be used for a short time to study specifically what happens in the first days after conception, in order to better examine infertility and congenital disease. The University has taken out a series of patents on the research.

The research was conducted with Monash University human ethics approval, in compliance with Australian law and international guidelines.

These reference the “primitive streak rule”, or “day 14 rule”, that states that human blastocysts cannot be cultured beyond the development of the “primitive streak”, a structure that forms during the early stages of embryonic development.

This means the experiments were stopped in the lab between the equivalent days six and 10. The iBlastoid collapses if it’s left in the conditions in which it’s made, but can survive a few additional days.

Read on...

https://www.monash.edu/medicine/new...ing-the-molecular-mystery-of-early-human-life

 

[CraigD]

Elon Musk is selling a song about NFTs... as an NFT

https://twitter.com/x/status/1371549960030842893

 

[CraigD]

Gigantic Stone 'Tiger Stripes' Etched Across Ethiopia Pose an Ancient Mystery

If we want to predict our planet's future under climate change, we must better understand what has happened on Earth before, even hundreds of thousands of years in the past.

New research into the Ethiopian Highlands during the Last Glacial Period helps do just that. As well as answering some geological questions, it has also raised up a new one: What created the gigantic stone stripes across the central Sanetti Plateau in the Bale Mountains?

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/stone-...-highlands-pose-an-ice-age-geological-mystery

 

[CraigD]

NASA's re-run Green Run Hot Fire test of the Artemis SLS is about to start!


Update:

Here is the full 8-minutes footage of the test:

Post-test Briefing:

 

[CraigD]

^^ Success! Engines fired for 499.6 seconds ^^

Now the core stage of the SLS needs to be refurbished and shipped to Kennedy Space Center, where it will be stacked to launch configuration along with the two Solid Rocket Boosters, and primed for launch towards the end of this year.

The next time we see the Artemis SLS fire up, it will be on its way to the Moon!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1372651251582836738

 

[CraigD]

Enigmatic circling behavior captured in whales, sharks, penguins, and sea turtles

Technological advances have made it possible for researchers to track the movements of large ocean-dwelling animals in three dimensions with remarkable precision in both time and space. Researchers reporting in the journal iScience on March 18 have now used this biologging technology to find that, for reasons the researchers don't yet understand, green sea turtles, sharks, penguins, and marine mammals all do something rather unusual: swimming in circles.

"We've found that a wide variety of marine megafauna showed similar circling behavior, in which animals circled consecutively at a relatively constant speed more than twice," says Tomoko Narazaki of the University of Tokyo.

Narazaki's team first discovered the mysterious circling behaviors in homing green turtles during a displacement experiment. They had transferred nesting turtles from one place to another to study their navigation abilities.

"To be honest, I doubted my eyes when I first saw the data because the turtle circles so constantly, just like a machine!" Narazaki says. "When I got back in my lab, I reported this interesting discovery to my colleagues who use the same 3D data loggers to study a wide range of marine megafauna taxa."

What came next surprised the researchers even more: they realized that various species of marine animals showed more or less the same circling movements. This finding is surprising in part because swimming in a straight line is the most efficient way to move about. It suggests there must be some good reason that animals circle.

Read on...

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-enigmatic-circling-behavior-captured-whales.html

 

[CraigD]

See the world's smallest origami bird fold itself into nanoscale art

Scientists and engineers have previously taken robotics inspiration from origami, the art of folding flat paper into 3D objects. But a new creation is shrinking the idea down to nanoscale size.

On Wednesday, a team led by researchers at Cornell University unveiled what they believe to be the world's smallest self-folding origami bird. They published a paper on the work in the journal Science Robotics this week.

Read on...

https://www.cnet.com/news/see-the-worlds-smallest-origami-bird-fold-itself-into-nanoscale-art/

 

[Tryjake]

New study suggests climate change, not overhunting by humans, caused the extinction of North America’s largest animals

New research suggests that overhunting by humans was not responsible for the extinction of mammoths, ground sloths, and other North American megafauna.

A new study published in Nature Communications on February 16 suggests that the extinction of North America’s largest mammals was not driven by overhunting by rapidly expanding human populations following their entrance into the Americas.

Instead, the findings, based on a new statistical modeling approach, suggest that populations of large mammals fluctuated in response to climate change, with drastic decreases of temperatures around 13,000 years ago initiating the decline and extinction of these massive creatures.

Still, humans may have been involved in more complex and indirect ways than simple models of overhunting suggest.

Poachers?

 

[CraigD]

SPACE
A Photographer Spent 12 Years Making This Milky Way Pic. It Will Crush Your Tiny Heart

To load the full image in its 11.5 MB glory, click here.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "Gosh, I sure wish I could feel extremely small and awed right now"? Do we ever have the solution for you!

After over a decade of painstaking work, Finnish astrophotographer J-P Metsavainio has released an absolutely jaw-dropping 1.7-gigapixel mosaic of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

Metsavainio has been publishing his astrophotography online since 2007, but his work on the mosaic started in 2009, with photographing various nebulae around the Milky Way as independent compositions.

The total exposure time between 2009 and 2021 is around 1,250 hours. (To load the full image in its 11.5 MB glory, click here.)

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/feast-your-eyes-on-this-1-250-hour-exposure-of-the-milky-way

 

[CraigD]

Scientists uncover the underlying genetics that make flies champion fliers

Flies have developed excellent flying skills thanks to a set of complicated interactions between numerous genes influencing wing shape, muscle function, and nervous system development, as well as the regulation of gene expression during development. Adam Spierer and David Rand in collaboration with colleagues at Brown University identified these interactions, which they report March 18th in the journal PLOS Genetics.

Just like their name suggests, flies are exceptional fliers who rely on flight for vital tasks, like courtship, finding food and dispersing to new areas. But despite the importance of this ability, scientists know little about the genetics underlying flight performance. In the new study, Spierer, Rand and colleagues performed a genetic analysis, called a genome-wide association study, to identify genes associated with flight. Using 197 genetically different fruit fly lines, they tested the flies' ability to pull out of a sudden drop. Then, using multiple computational approaches, they related the flies' performance to different genes and genetics variants, as well as to networks of gene-gene and protein-protein interactions.

Read on...

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-scientists-uncover-underlying-genetics-flies.html

 

[koolishman]

Poachers?

From the link

“We must consider the ecological changes associated with these climate changes at both a continental and regional scale if we want to have a proper understanding of what drove these extinctions,” explains group leader Huw Groucutt, senior author of the study. “Humans also aren’t completely off the hook, as it remains possible that they played a more nuanced role in the megafauna extinctions than simple overkill models suggest.”

 

[koolishman]

Japanese study: Stronger brain activity after writing on paper than on phone or tablet.

Unique, complex information in analog methods likely gives brain more details to trigger memory


A study of Japanese university students and recent graduates has revealed that writing on physical paper can lead to more brain activity when remembering the information an hour later. Researchers say that the unique, complex, spatial and tactile information associated with writing by hand on physical paper is likely what leads to improved memory.

“Actually, paper is more advanced and useful compared to electronic documents because paper contains more one-of-a-kind information for stronger memory recall,” said Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, a neuroscientist at the University of Tokyo and corresponding author of the research recently published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. The research was completed with collaborators from the NTT Data Institute of Management Consulting.

Contrary to the popular belief that digital tools increase efficiency, volunteers who used paper completed the note-taking task about 25% faster than those who used digital tablets or smartphones.

 

[koolishman]

Plastic particles pass from mothers into foetuses, rat study shows

Nanoparticles found in foetal brains and hearts, but impact on human health is as yet unknown


Tiny plastic particles in the lungs of pregnant rats pass rapidly into the hearts, brains and other organs of their foetuses, research shows. It is the first study in a live mammal to show that the placenta does not block such particles.

The experiments also showed that the rat foetuses exposed to the particles put on significantly less weight towards the end of gestation. The research follows the revelation in December of small plastic particles in human placentas, which scientists described as “a matter of great concern”. Earlier laboratory research on human placentas donated by mothers after birth has also shown polystyrene beads can cross the placental barrier.


Microplastic pollution has reached every part of the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans, and people are already known to consume the tiny particles via food and water, and to breathe them in.

The health impact of tiny plastic particles in the body is as yet unknown. But scientists say there is an urgent need to assess the issue, particularly for developing foetuses and babies, as plastics can carry chemicals that could cause long-term damage.

Prof Phoebe Stapleton, at Rutgers University, who led the rat research, said: “We found the plastic nanoparticles everywhere we looked – in the maternal tissues, in the placenta and in the foetal tissues. We found them in the foetal heart, brain, lungs, liver and kidney.”

 

[koolishman]

'Winged' eagle shark soared through oceans 93 million years ago

A bizarre shark with wing-like fins and a wide, gaping mouth soared through the seas of what is now Mexico about 93 million years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, a new study finds.


This odd shark — dubbed Aquilolamna milarcae, or eagle shark of the Milarca Museum, where its fossil will go on display — looks remarkably like manta and devil rays, which also sport finned "wings." (Rays are closely related to, but are not, sharks.) This shark lived more than 30 million years before either of those creatures existed, the researchers said.

That's not the only similarity: This ancient shark was likely a filter feeder that gulped down tiny plankton-like critters when it was hungry, just like manta and devil rays do today. So, it's likely that the eagle shark lived in the same type of marine real estate that modern manta and devil rays do now, said study lead researcher Romain Vullo, a vertebrate paleontologist with the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Geosciences Rennes, in France.

 

[CraigD]

10 Optical Illusions that Will Blow Your Mind

 

[CraigD]

Simulation of a Nuclear Blast in a Major City

A collaboration between documentary filmmaker Neil Halloran and Nobel Peace Prize - Research and Information, this short data-driven film simulates a nuclear blast in a major city in order to tally the estimated deaths that would result. Using data from leading researchers and highlighting present day technology developments, the film illustrates the very real danger nuclear weapons still pose to humanity and life on Earth.