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]

Scientists create a new metal foam mask with almost 100% filtration efficiency.

Scientists have created a new lightweight metal foam that can filter out tiny particulates, including droplets and aerosols containing the coronavirus, and is just as breathable as filters in current N95 masks.

The metal foams "exhibit outstanding filtration, near 100% efficiency" for particulate sizes that are key to combating COVID-19, according to a new study published Wednesday in Nano Letters. The copper-based metal foam is more sustainable than current filters in masks, as it can easily be cleaned — and decontaminated — before being reused or recycled. These foam filters can be used in a wide range of products, from respirators to air filters in personal homes.

Ultra-small particulates that are just microns in size (that is, one-millionth of a meter or one-hundredth of a human hair) play a huge role in spreading respiratory infections. They can be suspended in the air for hours or days, and travel over long distances.

While droplets a few microns in size are relatively easy to filter, the smaller aerosols are harder to capture — especially those less than 0.3 micrometers. These "lung-penetrating particles pose the most health risks to humans," but their size makes air filtration difficult, lead author and Georgetown University professor Kai Liu told The Academic Times. Filtering ultra-small particulates is also vital to addressing air pollution, which the World Health Organization identified as the largest environmental health risk before COVID-19.

https://academictimes.com/this-meta...-particles-than-n95-masks-and-its-recyclable/

 

[CraigD]

Suez Canal blocked after massive container ship Ever Given gets stuck sideways

A 400-metre-long container ship is holding up traffic in the Suez Canal after becoming wedged sideways as it passed through the major shipping route.

The drama of the container ship Ever Given that is stuck blocking one of the world's major trade-routes is spawning some interesting memes.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1374634903321649154

Suez canal drama – and a tiny bulldozer – inspire wave of memes

Big ship getting stuck in a too-narrow waterway has spawned invocations of poetry, the pandemic and Austin Powers

It is the David and Goliath story of our times: one of biggest container ships in the world got stuck in the Suez canal, blocking a route through which 12% of the world’s trade passes – and sent to rescue it was a very small bulldozer.

By Wednesday afternoon the ship had been partly refloated, said GAC, a Dubai-based marine services company, citing information from the canal authority. “Convoys and traffic are expected to resume as soon as the vessel is towed to another position,” it said on its website.

But ship broker Braemar told Agence France-Presse that it could be a while before the ship is moved. If tugboats are unable to pull it free, containers may have to be offloaded to make the vessel lighter, which could, said Braemar, “take days, maybe weeks”.

Read on...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ma-and-a-tiny-bulldozer-inspire-wave-of-memes

 

[CraigD]

Scientists discover why the human brain is so big

Molecular switch makes human organ three times larger than great apes’, study finds

It is one of the defining attributes of being human: when compared with our closest primate relatives, we have incredibly large brains.

Now scientists have shed light on the reasons for the difference, by collecting cells from humans, chimps and gorillas and turning them into lumps of brain in the laboratory.

Tests on the tiny “brain organoids” reveal a hitherto unknown molecular switch that controls brain growth and makes the human organ three times larger than brains in the great apes.

Tinker with the switch and the human brain loses its growth advantage, while the great ape brain can be made to grow more like a human’s.“What we see is a difference in cellular behaviour very, very early on that allows the human brain to grow larger,” said Dr Madeleine Lancaster, a developmental biologist at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. “We are able to account for almost all of the size difference.”

Read on...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/24/scientists-discover-why-the-human-brain-is-so-big

And another article:
Scientists Found a Key Neurological Switch That Makes Human Brains So Large (sciencealert.com)

 

[Cannuck]

Scientists discover why the human brain is so big

Too many ZZZ's and not enough Zebs, lol.

 

[CraigD]

Too many ZZZ's and not enough Zebs, lol.

So It’s Come to This: A Homer Simpson Profile (Part 1)
The psychology of Homer Simpson
https://lapsuspsych.com/2015/03/13/so-its-come-to-this-a-homer-simpson-profile/

 

[CraigD]

Something Invisible Is Tearing Apart The Nearest Star Cluster to Earth

Strange things are afoot in the Milky Way.

According to a new analysis of Gaia satellite data, the closest star cluster to our Solar System is currently being torn apart - disrupted not just by normal processes, but also by the gravitational pull of something massive we can't see.

This disruption, astronomers say, could be a hint that an invisible clump of dark matter is nearby, wreaking gravitational havoc on anything within its reach.

In 2019, astronomers revealed they had found evidence in the second Gaia data release of tidal tails streaming from the Hyades; at 153 light-years away, it's the closest star cluster to Earth.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-ne...is-being-torn-apart-by-something-we-can-t-see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyades_(star_cluster)

 

[CraigD]

Lego’s New Space Shuttle Discovery With Hubble Telescope Will Send Your Inner NASA Nerd Into Orbit

Lego’s continued push to create impressively detailed replica sets targeted at older builders is making it harder to be a fiscally responsible adult. To help celebrate NASA’s latest success with landing another rover on Mars, Lego’s new Discovery Space Shuttle commemorates one of the space agency’s previous achievements: launching the Hubble Space Telescope over 30 years ago.

Read on...

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/03/...pe-will-send-your-inner-nasa-nerd-into-orbit/

------------------

I'm in two minds about these intricate modern LEGO kits.

When I was a youngster, LEGO was mostly bricks that you could make into literally anything, but with the introduction of the mini-figures in 1978, the kit pieces have become very specialised and you need quite an investment in kits to have the raw ingredients to make anything outside of the box so to speak.

My older peers still bemoan the downfall of Meccano as it once inspired generations of kids to become engineers.

 

[CraigD]

Global Warming Is 'Fundamentally' Changing The Structure of Our World's Oceans

Climate change has wrought major changes to ocean stability faster than previously thought, according to a study published Wednesday, raising alarms over its role as a global thermostat and the marine life it supports.

The research published in the journal Nature looked at 50 years of data and followed the way in which surface water "decouples" from the deeper ocean.

Climate change has disrupted ocean mixing, a process that helps store away most of the world's excess heat and a significant proportion of CO2.

Water on the surface is warmer – and therefore less dense – than the water below, a contrast that is intensified by climate change.

Global warming is also causing massive amounts of fresh water to flush into the seas from melting ice sheets and glaciers, lowering the salinity of the upper layer and further reducing its density.

This increasing contrast between the density of the ocean layers makes mixing harder, so oxygen, heat and carbon are all less able to penetrate to the deep seas.

"Similar to a layer of water on top of oil, the surface waters in contact with the atmosphere mix less efficiently with the underlying ocean," said lead author Jean-Baptiste Sallee of Sorbonne University and France's CNRS national scientific research center.

He said while scientists were aware that this process was under way, "we here show that this change has occurred at a rate much quicker than previously thought: more than six times quicker."

The report used global temperature and salinity observations obtained between 1970 and 2018 – including those from electronically tracked marine mammals – with a focus on the summer months, which have more data.

It said that the barrier layer separating the ocean surface and the deep layers had strengthened world-wide – measured by the contrast in density – at a much larger rate than previously thought.

Researchers also found that, contrary to their expectations, winds strengthened by climate change had also acted to deepen the ocean surface layer by five to 10 metres per decade over the last half century.

A significant number of marine animals live in this surface layer, with a food web that is reliant on phytoplankton.

But as the winds increase, the phytoplankton are churned deeper, away from the light that helps them grow, potentially disrupting the broader food web.

These are "not small changes that only some experts care about," Sallee told AFP.

"They represent a fundamental change in the underlying structure of our oceans. Way more pronounced than what we thought until now."

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/fundam...ans-are-occurring-much-faster-than-we-thought

 

[Cannuck]

So It’s Come to This: A Homer Simpson Profile (Part 1)
The psychology of Homer Simpson
https://lapsuspsych.com/2015/03/13/so-its-come-to-this-a-homer-simpson-profile/

An alter vesrion of Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs...they forgot the crayon, lol

 

[Cannuck]

He said while scientists were aware that this process was under way, "we here show that this change has occurred at a rate much quicker than previously thought: more than six times quicker."

The report used global temperature and salinity observations obtained between 1970 and 2018 – including those from electronically tracked marine mammals – with a focus on the summer months, which have more data.

It said that the barrier layer separating the ocean surface and the deep layers had strengthened world-wide – measured by the contrast in density – at a much larger rate than previously thought.

I suppose I had some input on that study through my company's research using ROV's in the North Atlantic. Little did we know at the time the temperature and salinity measurements would become so invaluable. Plankton samples were collected by a bucket dragged behind the ship near the surface.

 

[CraigD]

How 'Meccano' inspired generations of engineers

'Meccano' was the brainchild of Frank Hornby (1863-1936) who developed and patented in 1901, a metal model construction kit for boys called “Mechanics Made Easy”, which was the precursor of “Meccano”. The name change came about in 1908, and is thought to have emanated from the expression “Make and know” as pronounced with a Scouse accent, as Hornby was a Liverpudlian and got his brainwave by watching the cranes loading ships at Liverpool Docks. In Victorian and Edwardian times it was common for a father to make wooden toys for his children, however, Hornby would cut strips and plates from off-cuts of sheet metal to make toys for his two sons - Roland and Douglas. His hobby would in time become a business and make him a millionaire.

Read on...

http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/how-meccano-inspired-generations-engineers


The Magic of Meccano Show 2016

More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano

ALAN'S MECCANO PAGES - A great look at vintage Meccano kits
https://alansmeccano.org/

 

[CraigD]

One of Earth’s giant carbon sinks may have been overestimated - study

The potential of soils to slow climate change by soaking up carbon may be less than previously thought.

The storage potential of one of the Earth’s biggest carbon sinks – soils – may have been overestimated, research shows. This could mean ecosystems on land soaking up less of humanity’s emissions than expected, and more rapid global heating.

Soils and the plants that grow in them absorb about a third of the carbon emissions that drive the climate crisis, partly limiting the impact of fossil-fuel burning. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can increase plant growth and, until now, it was assumed carbon storage in soils would increase too.

But the study, based on over 100 experiments, found the opposite. When plant growth increases, soil carbon does not. The finding is significant because the amount of organic carbon stored in soils is about three times that in living plants and double that in the atmosphere. Soils can also store carbon for centuries, whereas plants and trees rot quickly after they die.

Read on...

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...b-carbon-emissions-may-be-overestimated-study

 

[CraigD]

I suppose I had some input on that study through my company's research using ROV's in the North Atlantic. Little did we know at the time the temperature and salinity measurements would become so invaluable. Plankton samples were collected by a bucket dragged behind the ship near the surface.

It must be amazing to realize that something you worked on years ago is now being utilised for a purpose that you may not have foreseen at the time!

The data you guys collected is collated with other datasets and it will just keep growing, and as long as it is freely available, will be utilised for generations to come.

 

[koolishman]

Why do Americans share so much fake news?


Many Americans share fake news on social media because they’re simply not paying attention to whether the content is accurate — not necessarily because they can’t tell real from made-up news, a new study in Nature suggests.

Lack of attention was the driving factor behind 51.2% of misinformation sharing among social media users who participated in an experiment conducted by a group of researchers from MIT, the University of Regina in Canada, University of Exeter Business School in the United Kingdom and Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico. The results of a second, related experiment indicate a simple intervention — prompting social media users to think about news accuracy before posting and interacting with content — might help limit the spread of online misinformation.

“It seems that the social media context may distract people from accuracy,” study coauthor Gordon Pennycook, an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Regina, said. “People are often capable of distinguishing between true and false news content, but fail to even consider whether content is accurate before they share it on social media.”

Pennycook and his colleagues conducted seven behavioral science and survey experiments as part of their study, “Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online,” published last week. Some experiments focused on Facebook and others focused on Twitter.


https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/03/w...arent-paying-attention-new-research-suggests/

 

[koolishman]

Data Turned Into Sounds of Stars, Galaxies, Black Holes

From NASA.

This latest installment from our data sonification series features three diverse cosmic scenes. In each, astronomical data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes are converted into sounds. Data sonification maps the data from these space-based telescopes into a form that users can hear instead of only see, embodying the data in a new form without changing the original content.

 

[koolishman]

Long trip to Mars may cause astronauts to misread emotions

A study here on Earth simulating the weightless conditions of space travel showed that the longer the participants were exposed to a low-gravity environment, the more they perceived facial expressions as angry.

Astronauts on long space missions might experience a cognitive decline that causes them to be slower to read the emotions on other people’s faces and and more likely to perceive facial expressions as angry. That’s according to a new study by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and German Aerospace Center (DLR), published on March 17, 2021, in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Physiology.

In their study, the scientists subjected people to simulated weightlessness for two months and tested their cognitive skills, such as finding the one item that does not belong in a group of objects, or memorizing 10 shapes. In these cognitive tests, the participants showed an initial decline in speed but then remained unchanged over time. The exception was emotion recognition, or being able to describe the emotion on the face of someone in a photo, which continued to deteriorate. The decline of these kinds of abilities, say the researchers, could have serious consequences for the wellbeing of a crew on a long mission to Mars, because of the essential need for teamwork and harmony on such a precarious mission.

The study details experiments conducted to test for cognitive functioning on a long Mars mission. The study had 24 subjects spend 60 days confined to bed with their heads tilted downward by 6 degrees in order to simulate a weightless environment. Some of participants also underwent 30 minutes a day in a centrifuge to simulate short periods of gravity, a method that could be used in space to help counteract the effects of weightlessness.

 

[CraigD]

Why do Americans share so much fake news?


Many Americans share fake news on social media because they’re simply not paying attention to whether the content is accurate — not necessarily because they can’t tell real from made-up news, a new study in Nature suggests.

Lack of attention was the driving factor behind 51.2% of misinformation sharing among social media users who participated in an experiment conducted by a group of researchers from MIT, the University of Regina in Canada, University of Exeter Business School in the United Kingdom and Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico. The results of a second, related experiment indicate a simple intervention — prompting social media users to think about news accuracy before posting and interacting with content — might help limit the spread of online misinformation.

“It seems that the social media context may distract people from accuracy,” study coauthor Gordon Pennycook, an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Regina, said. “People are often capable of distinguishing between true and false news content, but fail to even consider whether content is accurate before they share it on social media.”

Pennycook and his colleagues conducted seven behavioral science and survey experiments as part of their study, “Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online,” published last week. Some experiments focused on Facebook and others focused on Twitter.


https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/03/w...arent-paying-attention-new-research-suggests/

I think that being the first to post within your group likely has a lot to do with it.

The prolific and quick posters collect more likes and followers, and as the momentum increases, the fact checking and thought behind the posts goes out the window.

 

[koolishman]

Bill Gates-funded Study to Dim Sunlight May Be Needed Against 'Horrific' Climate Change

Widespread use of technology that dims natural sunlight to help fight climate change should only be used as a last resort, scientists have warned.

Large scale use of the process—known as solar geoengineering—is a "terrifying" concept that is only likely to be used in the future if significant regions of the planet become too warm to be habitable, Harvard University Professor Frank Keutsch told The Times.

Despite the concern, Keutsch is leading a project to study such technology, which could start later this year.

In theory, solar geoengineering is based on the idea that experts can reduce the impact of global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space using chemicals.

In the case of Keutsch's experiment, the chemical will be calcium carbonate, which is essentially a chalk dust. If the plan is green-lit, a high-altitude balloon would disperse the mineral dust to study the viability, and risks, of solar geoengineering.

The process is not without controversy, as some experts have voiced fears that blasting chemicals into our immediate orbit tampers with the natural order, making weather less predictable or threatening populations' food supplies by causing drought.

For now, research into the field is fairly limited. That's what the Harvard project, called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, or SCoPEx, aims to fix.

 

[CraigD]

It’s been 20 years since the launch of Mac OS X

It was two decades ago to the day—March 24, 2001—that Mac OS X first became available to users the world over. We're not always big on empty sentimentality here at Ars, but the milestone seemed worthy of a quick note.

Of course, Mac OS X (or macOS 10 as it was later known) didn't quite survive to its 20th birthday; last year's macOS Big Sur update brought the version number up to 11, ending the reign of X.

But despite its double life on x86 and ARM processors and its increasingly close ties to iOS and iPadOS, today's macOS is still very much a direct descendant of that original Mac OS X release. Mac OS X, in turn, evolved in part from Steve Jobs' NeXT operating system—which had recently been acquired by Apple—and its launch was the harbinger of the second Jobs era at Apple.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/its-been-20-years-since-the-launch-of-mac-os-x/

 

[Cannuck]

Neanderthals Used a Really Familiar Tool For Their Dental Hygiene, Study Shows

The plain wooden toothpick is among the simplest of all manufactured objects and is considered the oldest instrument for dental cleaning, one that spans more than just human species.

Neanderthal among other hominid teeth show accidental scratches that reveal how humans became (mostly) right-handed

 

[CraigD]

Plumage and song split two nearly identical birds into different species

In Iberá National Park in Argentina, two wren-sized, nearly identical species of bird live side by side, spending their days foraging for the same kinds of seeds and nesting in the same kinds of places. These species can breed together successfully-- but they normally don’t, for seemingly trivial reasons, evolutionary biologists have just discovered. Differences in belly color and song appear to be enough to keep the birds from mating with each other, generation after generation.

Read the article:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ve-split-two-nearly-identical-birds-different

 

[koolishman]

Narcissism Driven by Insecurity, Not Grandiose Sense of Self, New Psychology Research Shows

Narcissism is driven by insecurity, and not an inflated sense of self, finds a new study by a team of psychology researchers. Its research, which offers a more detailed understanding of this long-examined phenomenon, may also explain what motivates the self-focused nature of social media activity.

“For a long time, it was unclear why narcissists engage in unpleasant behaviors, such as self-congratulation, as it actually makes others think less of them,” explains Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and the senior author of the paper, which appears in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. “This has become quite prevalent in the age of social media—a behavior that’s been coined ‘flexing’.

“Our work reveals that these narcissists are not grandiose, but rather insecure, and this is how they seem to cope with their insecurities.”


“More specifically, the results suggest that narcissism is better understood as a compensatory adaptation to overcome and cover up low self-worth,” adds Mary Kowalchyk, the paper’s lead author and an NYU graduate student at the time of the study. “Narcissists are insecure, and they cope with these insecurities by flexing. This makes others like them less in the long run, thus further aggravating their insecurities, which then leads to a vicious cycle of flexing behaviors.”

The survey’s nearly 300 participants—approximately 60 percent female and 40 percent male—had a median age of 20 and answered 151 questions via computer.

 

[koolishman]

Parrots Voluntarily Help Each Other to Obtain Food Rewards

Study: African parrots taught to use tokens for buying food. When paired up, token-rich parrots gave broke partners tokens so they could eat too.

Helping others to obtain benefits, even at a cost to oneself, poses an evolutionary puzzle

1]. While kin selection explains such “selfless” acts among relatives, only reciprocity (paying back received favors) entails fitness benefits for unrelated individuals

2]. So far, experimental evidence for both prosocial helping (providing voluntary assistance for achieving an action-based goal) and reciprocity has been reported in a few mammals but no avian species

3]. In order to gain insights into the evolutionary origins of these behaviors, the capacity of non-mammalian species for prosociality and for reciprocity needs to be investigated. We tested two parrot species in an instrumental-helping paradigm involving “token transfer.” Here, actors could provide tokens to their neighbor, who could exchange them with an experimenter for food. To verify whether the parrots understood the task’s contingencies, we systematically varied the presence of a partner and the possibility for exchange. We found that African grey parrots voluntarily and spontaneously transferred tokens to conspecific partners, whereas significantly fewer transfers occurred in the control conditions. Transfers were affected by the strength of the dyads’ affiliation and partially by the receivers’ attention-getting behaviors. Furthermore, the birds reciprocated the help once the roles were reversed. Blue-headed macaws, in contrast, transferred hardly any tokens. Species differences in social tolerance might explain this discrepancy. These findings show that instrumental helping based on a prosocial attitude, accompanied but potentially not sustained by reciprocity, is present in parrots, suggesting that this capacity evolved convergently in this avian group and mammals.

 

[koolishman]

Octopuses may be able to dream and change colour when sleeping


Octopuses change colour when they sleep, and it might be because they are dreaming.

Sidarta Ribeiro at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, and his colleagues have found that octopuses go through two distinct stages of sleep – active and passive. The researchers recorded four common octopuses (Octopus vulgaris) in the laboratory over several day and night periods, amassing more than 180 hours of footage.

During the day, the animals slept for more than half the time, says Ribeiro. “In quiet sleep they stay in the same position for long periods of time – very quiet, very pale the pupils closed – and breathe regularly in a very quiet matter,” he says.

This passive sleep was punctuated every 30 to 40 minutes by a brief period of active sleep, lasting 1 to 2 minutes. In this phase, the octopuses showed changes in body colour and texture, including the protrusion of fine bumps on their skin known as papillae. The animals’ eyes and arms also moved, their suckers contracting. “It’s clearly a very active state,” says Ribeiro.

The team tested whether the octopuses were truly asleep in this state by presenting them with a video of some crabs. “When we stimulated the animal with visual or vibratory stimuli, they did not react,” says Ribeiro – in marked contrast with their responses when awake.

A similar pattern of sleep occurs in birds and reptiles, and the researchers suggest that the active sleep state in octopuses might be analogous to REM sleep in mammals

 

[koolishman]

A gene defect may make rabbits do handstands instead of hop

One defective gene might turn some bunnies’ hops into handstands, a new study suggests.

To move quickly, a breed of domesticated rabbit called sauteur d’Alfort sends its back legs sky high and walks on its front paws. That strange gait may be the result of a gene tied to limb movement, researchers report March 25 in PLOS Genetics.

Sauteur d’Alfort rabbits aren’t the only animal to adopt an odd scamper if there’s a mutation to this gene, known as RORB. Mice with a mutation to the gene also do handstands if they start to run, says Stephanie Koch, a neuroscientist at University College London who was not involved with the rabbit work. And even while walking, the mice hike their back legs up to waddle forward, almost like a duck.

“I spent four years looking at these mice doing little handstands, and now I get to see a rabbit do the same handstand,” says Koch, who led a 2017 study published in Neuron that explored the mechanism behind the “duck gait” in mice. “It’s amazing.”

While moving slowly from place to place, rabbits with the defective gene can walk normally, alternating their front and hind legs. But rabbits hop to move fast or to travel over long distances. And hopping requires synchronized hind legs to jump at the same time, says study coauthor Miguel Carneiro, a molecular geneticist at Universidade do Porto in Vairão, Portugal.