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]

Ecologists Saved Bald Eagles with Helicopter Parenting

One of the country’s largest captive-breeding programs for the once endangered species has helped it recover in California

Peter Sharpe dangled 100 feet beneath a helicopter, secured by a harness around his chest. In his hands, the research ecologist clutched a small box containing smooth oval objects sculpted from resin to resemble a bald eagle’s chalky eggs. The chopper pilot swung the craft above a wide bald eagle nest on a rock ledge high on a cliff—and Sharpe climbed in. Among the sticks and nesting material, he spotted two eggs with shells that would likely be crushed by the weight of brooding parents. In a flash, Sharpe swapped the eggs for the resin dummies, then signaled to the pilot that he was ready to go.

Scenes like this played out up to four times a year between 1989 and 2009 on Santa Catalina and Santa Cruz, two of the eight Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. Sharpe would transport the eggs to the San Francisco Zoo for incubation and return the hatchlings weeks later for the nesting parents to raise. Biologists also hiked to nests to check on eggs and collect them for off-site incubation as necessary.

These egg-swapping missions might sound extreme—but at the time, so were the circumstances for the national bird of the U.S. By 1963 the number of nesting pairs of bald eagles had dropped to a low of 417 in the contiguous 48 states. When the project in California began in 1989, that national number had climbed to 2,680, yet the U.S. population remained quite vulnerable. On the Channel Islands, the effects of the potent insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which was widely used in U.S. agriculture in the mid-20th century, had already helped wipe out a population of 35 bald eagle pairs by the mid-1950s. DDT thinned some eggshells so much that they were easily squashed, and the insecticide dehydrated others: it enlarged shell pores during maturation, allowing the fluid inside to evaporate.

Today 60 bald eagles live on the Channel Islands. And more than 316,000 of them thrive across the country, according to a 2020 survey recently released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Captive-breeding efforts such as those Sharpe helped with, along with natural population growth—thanks to federal protections, including a DDT ban—have yet to restore bald eagle numbers to what they were before the widespread use of the pesticide. But populations of bald eagles are rebounding, as are those of other raptor species affected by DDT, such as peregrine falcons and osprey.

 

[CraigD]

Even Closed Oil Wells Are Still Spewing Methane Into The Air, Scientists Warn

The legacy of abandoned oil wells in the US isn't hard to see, even leaving gaping holes in the landscape that are frightening to look at. But their invisible aftermath is more alarming still.

Across the US and Canada, there are millions of abandoned or inactive oil and gas wells left behind by their former operators, and often improperly sealed. These stranded reserves – sometimes called orphan wells – may have been deserted by humans, but they are not a spent force.

Abandoned wells, hundreds of thousands of which are thought to be undocumented, are estimated to spew vast amounts of heat-trapping methane emissions into the atmosphere, far exceeding the projections of environmental authorities such as the US EPA.

Conservative estimates suggest abandoned wells might represent up to 4 percent of methane gas emissions from oil and gas systems in the US, although the veracity of such estimates is debatable, given the relative lack of on-the-ground measurements.

It gets worse – in part due to the fractured nature of abandonment. Aside from outright abandoned wells, a sub-category of inactive wells known as 'shut-ins' can pose the same methane-leaking risks, but fly under the radar in official figures.

Shut-ins are idle wells that are not currently being used for oil production, likely due to market conditions, but which could be re-activated in the future. Despite all the growing concern over just how big the abandoned wells fiasco is, shut-ins, many of which are uncapped, have never been measured for their own contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/dorman...g-methane-into-the-atmosphere-scientists-warn

 

[CraigD]

How to Rewrite the Laws of Physics in the Language of Impossibility

Chiara Marletto is trying to build a master theory — a set of ideas so fundamental that all other theories would spring from it. Her first step: Invoke the impossible.

They say that in art, constraints lead to creativity. The same seems to be true of the universe. By placing limits on nature, the laws of physics squeeze out reality’s most fantastical creations. Limit light’s speed, and suddenly space can shrink, time can slow. Limit the ability to divide energy into infinitely small units, and the full weirdness of quantum mechanics blossoms. “Declaring something impossible leads to more things being possible,” writes the physicist Chiara Marletto. “Bizarre as it may seem, it is commonplace in quantum physics.”

The goal of constructor theory is to rewrite the laws of physics in terms of general principles that take the form of counterfactuals — statements, that is, about what’s possible and what’s impossible. It is the approach that led Albert Einstein to his theories of relativity. He too started with counterfactual principles: It’s impossible to exceed the speed of light; it’s impossible to tell the difference between gravity and acceleration.

Constructor theory aims for more. It hopes to provide the principles behind a vast class of theories of physics, including the ones we don’t even have yet, like the theory of quantum gravity that would unite quantum mechanics with general relativity. Constructor theory seeks, that is, to provide the mother of all theories — a complete “Science of Can and Can’t,” the title of Marletto’s new book.

Whether constructor theory can really deliver, and how much it truly differs from physics as usual, remains to be seen. For now, Quanta Magazine caught up with Marletto via Zoom and by email to find out how the theory works and what it might mean for our understanding of the universe, technology, and even life itself. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Read on...

https://www.quantamagazine.org/with...ara-marletto-invokes-the-impossible-20210429/

 

[CraigD]

A clock’s accuracy may be tied to the entropy it creates

A clock made from a wiggling membrane produces more disorder as it becomes more accurate

Today’s most advanced clocks keep time with an incredibly precise rhythm. But a new experiment suggests that clocks’ precision comes at a price: entropy.

Entropy, or disorder, is created each time a clock ticks. Now, scientists have measured the entropy generated by a clock that can be run at varying levels of accuracy. The more accurate the clock’s ticks, the more entropy it emitted, physicists report in a paper accepted to Physical Review X.

“If you want a better clock, you have to pay for it,” says physicist Natalia Ares of the University of Oxford.

Read on...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/clock-time-accuracy-entropy-disorder

 

[Cannuck]

A clock’s accuracy may be tied to the entropy it creates

Today’s most advanced clocks keep time with an incredibly precise rhythm. But a new experiment suggests that clocks’ precision comes at a price: entropy.

I'm a big fan of timepieces, chronometers, clocks and watches. I've got a small collection beginning with pocket watches, automatic self-winding, digital and electronic. I've bought and sold a number of them on eBay, which is a great source from around the world. The early Swiss timepieces are masterpieces of human ingenuity IMO. I can't afford the real exotic ones but I can sure appreciate them.

My favourite of all time, one that I have worn daily for 10 years now, is a Citizen titanium eco-drive (solar). Water-resistant to 10 atmospheres, I never have to wind or change the battery and keeps excellent time (-5 seconds/year). I've since purchased another eco-drive, but that movement does not even compare, so it really depends on the quality of the individual build.

 

[CraigD]

I'm a big fan of timepieces, chronometers, clocks and watches. I've got a small collection beginning with pocket watches, automatic self-winding, digital and electronic. I've bought and sold a number of them on eBay, which is a great source from around the world. The early Swiss timepieces are masterpieces of human ingenuity IMO. I can't afford the real exotic ones but I can sure appreciate them.

My favourite of all time, one that I have worn daily for 10 years now, is a Citizen titanium eco-drive (solar). Water-resistant to 10 atmospheres, I never have to wind or change the battery and keeps excellent time (-5 seconds/year). I've since purchased another eco-drive, but that movement does not even compare, so it really depends on the quality of the individual build.

I watched a documentary series about some master watch makers who each spent years building just one watch from scratch. It was amazing how they balanced tiny parts to make the movement perfect.

I just looked up the Citizen Eco-drive watches. They look very interesting!

 

[CraigD]

Slippery When Wet: New Law of Physics Helps Humans and Robots Grasp the Friction of Touch

Although robotic devices are used in everything from assembly lines to medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for the friction that occurs when those robots grip objects — particularly in wet environments. Researchers have now discovered a new law of physics that accounts for this type of friction, which should advance a wide range of robotic technologies.

At issue is something called elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) friction, which is the friction that occurs when two solid surfaces come into contact with a thin layer of fluid between them. This would include the friction that occurs when you rub your fingertips together, with the fluid being the thin layer of naturally occurring oil on your skin. But it could also apply to a robotic claw lifting an object that has been coated with oil, or to a surgical device that is being used inside the human body.

One reason friction is important is because it helps us hold things without dropping them.

“Understanding friction is intuitive for humans — even when we’re handling soapy dishes,” Hsiao says. “But it is extremely difficult to account for EHL friction when developing materials that controls grasping capabilities in robots.”

Read on...

https://scitechdaily.com/slippery-w...umans-and-robots-grasp-the-friction-of-touch/

 

[koolishman]

Fish have been swallowing microplastics since the 1950s

Forget diamonds--plastic is forever. It takes decades, or even centuries, for plastic to break down, and nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists in some form today. We've known for a while that big pieces of plastic can harm wildlife--think of seabirds stuck in plastic six-pack rings--but in more recent years, scientists have discovered microscopic bits of plastic in the water, soil, and even the atmosphere. To learn how these microplastics have built up over the past century, researchers examined the guts of freshwater fish preserved in museum collections; they found that fish have been swallowing microplastics since the 1950s and that the concentration of microplastics in their guts has increased over time.

"For the last 10 or 15 years it's kind of been in the public consciousness that there's a problem with plastic in the water. But really, organisms have probably been exposed to plastic litter since plastic was invented, and we don't know what that historical context looks like," says Tim Hoellein, an associate professor of biology at Loyola University Chicago and the corresponding author of a new study in Ecological Applications. "Looking at museum specimens is essentially a way we can go back in time."

The plastic left behind is too tiny to see with the naked eye, though: "It just looks like a yellow stain, you don't see it until you put it under the microscope," says Hou. Under the magnification, though, it's easier to identify. "We look at the shape of these little pieces. If the edges are frayed, it's often organic material, but if it's really smooth, then it's most likely microplastic." To confirm the identity of these microplastics and determine where they came from, Hou and Hoellein worked with collaborators at the University of Toronto to examine the samples using Raman spectroscopy, a technique that uses light to analyze the chemical signature of a sample.

The researchers found that the amount of microplastics present in the fishes' guts rose dramatically over time as more plastic was manufactured and built up in the ecosystem. There were no plastic particles before mid-century, but when plastic manufacturing was industrialized in the 1950s, the concentrations skyrocketed.

 

[koolishman]

Mysterious health attacks like those seen in Cuba have come to DC

US security official was reportedly sickened outside the White House last year.

At least two US government officials in the Washington, DC, area have experienced mysterious health incidents that are strikingly similar to the brain-damaging “health attacks” that plagued US diplomats in Cuba beginning in 2016.

Last November, a National Security Council official reported being sickened while near the Ellipse, the White House’s large, oval-shaped southern lawn, according to a report by CNN. In a separate 2019 incident, a White House staff member said she also experienced something akin to a health attack while walking her dog in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. The 2019 incident, which occurred just after Thanksgiving, was first reported by GQ last year. The magazine wrote at the time:


The staffer also said she had experienced a similar incident just a few months earlier, in August of 2019, while she was traveling in London with then-National Security Adviser John Bolton. According to GQ, the staffer reported again feeling a tingling in the side of her head, which was facing the window of her hotel room, as well as intense pressure and ringing in her ears. All of those symptoms stopped when she left the room.

The accounts are eerily similar to those from US and Canadian diplomats in Cuba, as well as later reports from US diplomats in China. Many of the diplomats reported experiencing directional high-pitch sounds, grinding noises, and/or vibrations that led to a constellation of symptoms, including dizziness, nausea, headaches, balance problems, ringing in the ears, nosebleeds, difficulty concentrating and recalling words, permanent hearing loss, and speech problems. A medical case report of some of the victims concluded that they had sustained “injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.”

 

[koolishman]

How Extreme Temperature Swings in Deserts, Stir Sand and Dust

Understanding the movement of particles, some of which enter the atmosphere, may help scientists improve climate models and forecast dust storms on Mars

The White Sands Dune Field is desolate and isolated, far removed from any human activity, traits that made the New Mexico desert an ideal spot for the U.S military to test the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945. It still serves today as an active missile range. The 275-square-mile expanse of white, gypsum sands also provide an ideal place for geomorphologist Andrew Gunn to conduct an unprecedented field experiment.


Gunn and his team headed out to White Sands in the springs of 2017 and 2018—the windy season—armed with a hypothesis and a collection of gizmos to test it. The scientists thought that as the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere became warmer than the air above, this would create winds that would move the sand. The researchers used a doppler lidar machine to scatter lasers into the air to measure winds roughly 1000 feet above the surface. They used a solar-powered tower with sensors, called a meteorological mast, to record heat and moisture. A sand saltation sensor detected when even a single grain of sand moved. And back in the lab, they analyzed satellite images using a machine-learning algorithm to measure dust entering the atmosphere.

They found that in the morning, sunlight heats the ground, which heats the lower atmosphere to the point that it becomes unstable and begins to convect—with hot, less-dense air rising and cooler, and denser air sinking. This convection stirs up the atmosphere and eventually drags a stream of fast-moving higher winds down to the ground.

“The idea is, basically, that dune fields create their own wind,” says Gunn.

Around noon, as surface temperatures peaked, the team discovered wind speeds reached their highest speeds while humidity in the sand had evaporated. Sand grains skipped along the surface, and dust moved up into the atmosphere. After sunset, the temperature of the air and sand dropped quickly. Wind speeds at the surface died down and the sand grains settled. Every day, the process repeated, with the desert moving a little and pumping more dust into the atmosphere.

“The transport of sand, the movement of the dunes, the emission of dust from the landscape—that is all intrinsically tied to this daily cycle,” says Gunn.

 

[koolishman]

New wearable sensor tracks scratching to measure itch

Scientists have devised a more objective way of measuring itch with a wearable sensing technology that tracks how often people scratch themselves and accurately distinguishes real scratching from similar motions, potentially giving physicians better information to help patients with eczema and other itch-related conditions find relief.

In a study published Friday in Science Advances, the device is described as an "advanced acousto-mechanic sensor" that captures the vibrations of people scratching their skin. Corresponding author Steve (Shuai) Xu, a dermatologist and physician-engineer at Northwestern University in Illinois, told The Academic Times that the sensor is designed to help physicians determine which medications really work for treating skin conditions, the severity of which often go unrecognized. "Itch gets no respect," he said. "Pain you know is serious and important to treat, but itch is kind of like, 'Eh.' But itch is a really debilitating symptom."

Enter the team's new soft, flexible sensor. Designed to be worn continuously, it looks like a thick Band-Aid. It's equipped with a seven-day battery and wireless charger, safe to be worn in the shower, and readily paired with iPhone and Android apps that track users' scratching habits. It is also designed to avoid false positives — in other words, miscategorizing non-scratching motions as scratching because they might look superficially similar.

"If you scratch your hand and you put your ear really close to it, you can hear there's sound of scratching, as well as motion," Xu said. "Our sensor actually captures the vibration that is generated from scratching, and that allows us to be more sensitive and specific to scratching itself." If you make a scratching motion in the air without touching your skin, for example, the sensor does not record the movement as a scratch. Using a novel algorithm, it picks up both low- and high-frequency signals from the body, separating the vibrations of scratching from background noise.

 

[J Sokol]

Dutch couple move into Europe’s first fully 3D-printed house

ADutch couple have become Europe’s first tenants of a fully 3D printed house in a development that its backers believe will open up a world of choice in the shape and style of the homes of the future.

Elize Lutz, 70, and Harrie Dekkers, 67, retired shopkeepers from Amsterdam, received their digital key – an app allowing them to open the front door of their two-bedroom bungalow at the press of a button – on Thursday.

Inspired by the shape of a boulder, the dimensions of which would be difficult and expensive to construct using traditional methods, the property is the first of five homes planned by the construction firm Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix for a plot of land by the Beatrix canal in the Eindhoven suburb of Bosrijk.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...europe-first-fully-3d-printed-house-eindhoven

 

[CraigD]

... According to NASA, Ingenuity has 30 sols (Mars days) to complete up to five tests. Flight managers will assess the results of each test and then send instructions for the next.

My hope is that if it completes the flight-test program, the team will extend the program.

Well it appears that Ingenuity has been given a reprieve to continue its mission!


Mars Ingenuity helicopter takes a break after successful test flights over the Martian surface

NASA's little Mars helicopter has been given a reprieve.

Instead of wrapping up flight tests at the beginning of May, NASA is giving its Ingenuity helicopter at least an extra month to tackle tough new terrain and serve as a scout for its companion rover, Perseverance.

Officials announced the flight extension Friday, following three short flights in under two weeks for the $85 million tech demo.

Soon afterwards, there was more good news: Ingenuity — the first powered aircraft to soar at another planet — had aced its fourth flight at Mars.

For Friday's trip, Ingenuity travelled 266 meters at a height of 5 meters for two minutes — considerably farther and longer than before.

An attempt on Thursday had failed because of a known software error.

Read on...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05...er-mission-perseverance-rover-scout/100109478

 

[CraigD]

Surface electromagnetic fields mapped in 3D at the nanoscale

The first three-dimensional map of the electromagnetic field that “clings” to the surface of a cube less than 200 nm across casts a fresh light on how materials dissipate heat at the nanoscale. The images, obtained by researchers in France and Austria, reveal the presence of infrared photon-like excitations known as surface phonon polaritons near the cube’s surface – a phenomenon that might be exploited to convey waste heat away from nanoelectronic components and so cool them down.

Phonons are particle-like collective vibrational excitations (or atomic vibrations) that occur in ionic solids. They give rise to oscillating electric fields, which couple with photons at the surface of the solid to create surface phonon polaritons (SPhPs). These hybrids of vibrational and photonic excitations are found only on an object’s surface and are thus typically of little importance in bulk materials. However, their influence dramatically increases as objects shrink and their surface-to-volume ratio increases.

SPhPs also concentrate electromagnetic energy in the mid-infrared (3 to 8 mm) up to the far-infrared (15 to 1000 mm) wavelength range. This property might make it possible to use them in applications such as enhanced (Raman) spectroscopy of molecules.


Read on...

https://physicsworld.com/a/surface-electromagnetic-fields-mapped-in-3d-at-the-nanoscale/

 

[CraigD]

Scientists discover new vulnerability affecting computers globally

In 2018, industry and academic researchers revealed a potentially devastating hardware flaw that made computers and other devices worldwide vulnerable to attack.

Researchers named the vulnerability Spectre because the flaw was built into modern computer processors that get their speed from a technique called "speculative execution," in which the processor predicts instructions it might end up executing and preps by following the predicted path to pull the instructions from memory. A Spectre attack tricks the processor into executing instructions along the wrong path. Even though the processor recovers and correctly completes its task, hackers can access confidential data while the processor is heading the wrong way.

Since Spectre was discovered, the world's most talented computer scientists from industry and academia have worked on software patches and hardware defenses, confident they've been able to protect the most vulnerable points in the speculative execution process without slowing down computing speeds too much.

They will have to go back to the drawing board.

Read on...

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-04-scientists-vulnerability-affecting-globally.html

 

[CraigD]

NASA, SpaceX pause work on the lunar lander deal due to contract challenges

Although NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to work on a Starship-based lunar landing system two weeks ago, both companies that lost out on the deal have filed protests with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Now NASA says that while the challenges from Dynetics and Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin are reviewed, SpaceX will have to halt any work it's doing.

NASA spokesperson Monica Witt:

"On April 26, NASA was notified that Blue Origin Federation and Dynetics filed protests challenging the Option A human landing system selection with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement. NASA cannot provide further comment due to the pending litigation."​

https://www.engadget.com/lunar-lander-gao-223702744.html

 

[CraigD]

NASA, SpaceX pause work on the lunar lander deal due to contract challenges

Although NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to work on a Starship-based lunar landing system two weeks ago, both companies that lost out on the deal have filed protests with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Now NASA says that while the challenges from Dynetics and Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin are reviewed, SpaceX will have to halt any work it's doing.

NASA spokesperson Monica Witt:

"On April 26, NASA was notified that Blue Origin Federation and Dynetics filed protests challenging the Option A human landing system selection with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement. NASA cannot provide further comment due to the pending litigation."​

https://www.engadget.com/lunar-lander-gao-223702744.html

Sour grapes?

NASA awarded all three contractors huge sums of money for development proposals. Blue Origin received $579m, Dynetics received $253m, while Space X received $135m.

Out of the three, Space X put in the best proposal based on their Starship prototype which is already in development and flying. The other two have achieved very little and didn't meet the design phase requirements. I believe that NASA chose the competitor that has shown it has the best chance of meeting the 2024 deadline.

I wonder where all that money went?

 

[Cannuck]

Sour grapes?

From sour grapes to rotten canteloupe... how our life expectancy has been increased by the discovery and development of medicines to treat and eradicate disease, only to face more hurdles from longevity - overpopulation, environmental degredation and pandemic.

An excerpt from a book by Steven Johnson, a read worth exploring:

“Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/magazine/global-life-span.html

https://www.peoriamagazines.com/pm/2019/dec/moldy-mary-or-simple-messenger-girl

 

[CraigD]

China launches first module of new space station

China has launched a key module of a new permanent space station, the latest in Beijing's increasingly ambitious space program.

The Tianhe module - which contains living quarters for crew members - was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre on a Long March-5B rocket.

China hopes to have the new station operational by 2022.

The only space station currently in orbit is the International Space Station, from which China is excluded.

China has been a late starter when it comes to space exploration. It was only in 2003 that it sent its first astronaut into orbit, making it the third country to do so, after the Soviet Union and the US.

So far, China has sent two previous space stations into orbit. The Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 were trial stations though, allowing only relatively short stays for astronauts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-56924370?piano-modal

Great video from Scott Manley about China's new space station

China's ISS Competitor Begins Construction In Orbit

Yesterday China's Long March 5 carried the first module of their space station into orbit, a 20 ton module derived from the Russian DOS designs, which will be the core of a much larger 60 ton orbital facility able to host astronauts for months at a time.

 

[CraigD]

Scientists Have Identified Four Distinct Types of Alzheimer's And What They Do to Us

The more we understand about Alzheimer's, the faster we can work towards better treatments and ultimately a cure, which makes discovering four distinct subtypes of the brain disease an important one.

Using machine learning algorithms trained at brain scans of 1,143 people either with healthy brains or brains affected by Alzheimer's, scientists have identified four distinct ways tau proteins get tangled up among neurons.

Misshapen tau proteins are closely linked to the development and progression of Alzheimer's, but it was thought that the pattern of tau entanglement in the brain was more or less the same in everyone with the disease.

The first variant, discovered in 33 percent of cases, sees tau spreading mainly within the temporal lobe and affecting patient memory. The second, found 18 percent of the time, spreads across the other parts of the cerebral cortex – memory problems are less common, but difficulties in planning and performing actions are more common.

The third variant, found in 30 percent of all cases, is where tau spreads in the visual cortex (used for processing sight) – patients have trouble orienting themselves, judging distance, and identifying shapes. The fourth and final variant, seen in 19 percent of cases, spreads asymmetrically in the brain's left hemisphere and affects language processing.

Read the full article:

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-identified-four-distinct-types-of-alzheimer-s

 

[CraigD]

Medieval Skeletons Might Be Hiding a Cancer Rate Far Higher Than Expected

Cancer isn't just a modern-day affliction. A new archaeological analysis suggests malignant growths in medieval Britain were not as rare as we once thought.

Even before widespread smoking, the Industrial Revolution, and the modern surge in life expectancy, it seems cancer was still a leading cause of disease.

Scanning and X-raying 143 medieval skeletons from six cemeteries in and around the city of Cambridge, archaeologists have predicted cancer cases between the 6th and the 16th century were roughly a quarter of what they are today.

That's 10 times higher than previous estimates, which had put cancer rates at less than one percent.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/analys...eveals-a-cancer-rate-far-higher-than-expected

 

[CraigD]

The Same Handful of Websites Are Dominating The Web And That Could Be a Problem

The online world is continuously expanding – always aggregating more services, more users, and more activity. Last year, the number of websites registered on the ".com" domain surpassed 150,000,000.

However, more than a quarter of a century since its first commercial use, the growth of the online world is now slowing down in some key categories.

We conducted a multi-year research project analyzing global trends in online diversity and dominance.

Our research, published Thursday in Public Library of Science (PLOS One), is the first to reveal some long-term trends in how businesses compete in the age of the web.

We saw a dramatic consolidation of attention towards a shrinking (but increasingly dominant) group of online organizations.

So, while there is still growth in the functions, features, and applications offered on the web, the number of entities providing these functions is shrinking.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-re-going-to-fewer-and-fewer-websites-and-that-could-be-a-problem

 

[CraigD]

Are chemical pollutants altering behaviour of wildlife and humans?

International scientists from around the world are warning that chemical pollutants in the environment have the potential to alter animal and human behaviour.

A scientific forum of 30 experts formed a united agreement of concern about chemical pollutants and set up a roadmap to help protect the environment from behaviour altering chemicals. The conclusions of their work have been published today in a paper led by Professor Alex Ford, Professor of Biology at the University of Portsmouth, in Environmental Science and Technology. Until now the effect of chemical pollutants on wildlife has been studied and risk assessed in relation to species mortality, reproduction and growth. The effect on behaviour has been suspected but never formally tested or assessed – the scientists say this needs to change.

The forum have come up with a roadmap they are urging policy makers, regulatory authorities, environmental leaders to act upon.

The recommendations are:

• Improve the mechanisms of how science studies contaminated-induced behavioural changes.
• Develop new and adapt existing standard toxicity tests to include behaviour.
• Develop an integrative approach to environmental risk assessment, which includes behaviour. Not just mortality, growth and reproduction.
• Improve the reliability of behavioural tests, which need to allow for variation in behavioural reactions.
• Develop guidance and training on the evaluation of reporting of behavioural studies.
• Better integration of human and wildlife behavioural toxicology.

Read the full article:

https://www.miragenews.com/are-chemical-pollutants-altering-behaviour-of-551656/

 

[CraigD]

From sour grapes to rotten canteloupe... how our life expectancy has been increased by the discovery and development of medicines to treat and eradicate disease, only to face more hurdles from longevity - overpopulation, environmental degredation and pandemic.

An excerpt from a book by Steven Johnson, a read worth exploring:

“Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/magazine/global-life-span.html

https://www.peoriamagazines.com/pm/2019/dec/moldy-mary-or-simple-messenger-girl

Thanks, the New York Times article was a very enjoyable read!

I particularly liked the quote towards the end that "The truth is the spike in global population has not been caused by some worldwide surge in fertility. What changed is people stopped dying."

One of the big issues I see at the moment is that many elderly people do not have good quality of life in their later years, but now that more people are living longer, more resources are also being spent on diseases that affect the elderly like dementia, osteoarthritis, heart disease etc. and the results of these studies will also influence other fields that benefit all age groups.

 

[Samer]

Even Closed Oil Wells Are Still Spewing Methane Into The Air, Scientists Warn

The legacy of abandoned oil wells in the US isn't hard to see, even leaving gaping holes in the landscape that are frightening to look at. But their invisible aftermath is more alarming still.

Across the US and Canada, there are millions of abandoned or inactive oil and gas wells left behind by their former operators, and often improperly sealed. These stranded reserves – sometimes called orphan wells – may have been deserted by humans, but they are not a spent force.

Abandoned wells, hundreds of thousands of which are thought to be undocumented, are estimated to spew vast amounts of heat-trapping methane emissions into the atmosphere, far exceeding the projections of environmental authorities such as the US EPA.

Conservative estimates suggest abandoned wells might represent up to 4 percent of methane gas emissions from oil and gas systems in the US, although the veracity of such estimates is debatable, given the relative lack of on-the-ground measurements.

It gets worse – in part due to the fractured nature of abandonment. Aside from outright abandoned wells, a sub-category of inactive wells known as 'shut-ins' can pose the same methane-leaking risks, but fly under the radar in official figures.

Shut-ins are idle wells that are not currently being used for oil production, likely due to market conditions, but which could be re-activated in the future. Despite all the growing concern over just how big the abandoned wells fiasco is, shut-ins, many of which are uncapped, have never been measured for their own contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/dorman...g-methane-into-the-atmosphere-scientists-warn

If Closed Oil wells still leak...
There’s no hope for Chernobyl...

jus comparin 2 natural manmade disasters