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!

 

[J Sokol]

California threatens ‘mandatory water restrictions’ if people don’t cut back​

California could face mandatory water restrictions if residents don’t use less on their own as the drought drags on and the hotter summer months approach, the state’s governor has said.

Gavin Newsom threatened the possibly of statewide mandates in a meeting with representatives from major water agencies, including those that supply Los Angeles, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area, according to his office. The Democratic governor has avoided issuing sweeping mandatory cuts in water use and instead favored an approach that gives local water agencies power to set rules for water use in the cities and towns they supply.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/23/california-drought-water-restrictions-gavin-newsom

 

[J Sokol]

Shell consultant quits, accusing firm of ‘extreme harms’ to environment​

A senior safety consultant has quit working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil fuel producer in a bombshell public video of causing “extreme harms” to the environment.

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for climate change risks” and urged others in the oil and gas industry to “walk away while there’s still time”.

The executive, who works for the independent agency Clout, ended her working relationship with Shell in an open letter to its executives and 1,400 employees. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she said she had quit because of Shell’s “double-talk on climate”.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/23/shell-consultant-quits-environment-caroline-dennett

 

[koolishman]

Gene-edited tomatoes could be a new source of vitamin D ​

​

​

Tomatoes naturally contain one of the building blocks of vitamin D3, called provitamin D3 or 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC), in their leaves at very low levels. Provitamin D3, does not normally accumulate in ripe tomato fruits.


Researchers in Professor Cathie Martin’s group at the John Innes Centre used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to make revisions to the genetic code of tomato plants so that provitamin D3 accumulates in the tomato fruit. The leaves of the edited plants contained up to 600 ug of provitamin D3 per gram of dry weight. The recommended daily intake of vitamin d is 10 ug for adults

​

 

[J Sokol]

Exxon must go to trial over alleged climate crimes, court rules​

The Massachusetts high court on Tuesday ruled that the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, must face a trial over accusations that it lied about the climate crisis and covered up the fossil fuel industry’s role in worsening environmental devastation.

Exxon claimed the case brought by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, was politically motived and amounted to an attempt to prevent the company from exercising its free speech rights. But the state’s supreme judicial court unanimously dismissed the claim in the latest blow to the oil industry’s attempts to head off a wave of lawsuits across the country over its part in causing global heating.

Healey’s lawsuit accuses Exxon of breaking the state’s consumer protection laws with a decades-long cover-up of what it knew about the impact on the climate of burning fossil fuels. The state also says the company deceived investors about the risks to its business posed by global heating.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...al-climate-crimes-fossil-fuels-global-heating

 

[koolishman]

California startup SpinLaunch flung a camera towards space at 1000+mph

Instead of launching satellites the traditional way, with giant rockets and a ton of fuel, SpinLaunch wants to load satellites into a “launch vehicle” and then spin the vehicle in a massive vacuum-sealed centrifuge until it is moving incredibly fast.

The centrifuge will then release the vehicle at just the right moment to send it hurtling toward space. Once it’s high above Earth’s surface, the vehicle will open up and a small booster will guide the satellite into orbit.

The system wouldn’t be able to carry large payloads, but SpinLaunch expects it’d be able to deliver two small satellites (about 440 pounds total) into orbit per launch, at a price far lower than what’s currently possible — and with the possibility of two launches per day.

 

[koolishman]

Why yawns are contagious—in all kinds of animals​

Q: So why do we yawn when we see someone else yawning?​

A: Contagious yawning may have evolved to synchronize group behavior—yawns often cluster during particular times of day that coincide with transitions and activity. It also may have evolved to increase vigilance within a group. The basic rationale is that if yawning is an indicator that one individual is experiencing diminished arousal, then seeing another person yawn might, in turn, increase the observer’s vigilance to compensate for the low vigilance of the yawner. The spreading throughout the group of contagious yawns might then increase the vigilance of the entire group.

I conducted a study last year that tested this. We showed people arrays of images that included threatening stimuli—images of snakes—and nonthreatening stimuli—images of frogs—and timed how fast they could pick out those images after seeing videos of people yawning or moving their mouths in other ways. After seeing other people yawn, their ability to identify and detect snakes, the threatening stimuli, rapidly improved. However, following the observation of yawning, frog detection was unaffected.

 

[koolishman]

Tiny robotic crab is smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot​

Just a half-millimeter wide, the tiny crabs can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump. The researchers also developed millimeter-sized robots resembling inchworms, crickets and beetles. Although the research is exploratory at this point, the researchers believe their technology might bring the field closer to realizing micro-sized robots that can perform practical tasks inside tightly confined spaces.

 

[koolishman]

Bacteria with antibiotic resistant genes discovered in Antarctica, scientists say​

Bacteria in Antarctica have been discovered with genes that give them natural antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance and have the potential to spread out of the polar regions, according to scientists in Chile.

Andres Marcoleta, a researcher from the University of Chile who headed the study in the Science of the Total Environment journal in March, said that these “superpowers” which evolved to resist extreme conditions are contained in mobile DNA fragments that can easily be transferred to other bacteria.

 

[koolishman]

Scientists can now grow wood in a lab without cutting a single tree​

The researchers at MIT performed an experiment that gave stem cell-like properties to normal plant cells. They extracted cells from the leaves of a flowering plant called Common zinnia (Zinnia elegans) and then stored the same in a liquid medium for a couple of days. In the next step, the researchers treated the plant cells with a gel-based medium enriched with nutrients and hormones.

After some time, the cells gave rise to new plant cells. The researchers also noticed that by changing the hormonal concentration in the gel medium, they could control the physical and mechanical properties of the newly grown cells. During the experiments, plant material that contained high hormone concentrations turned stiff.

 

[koolishman]

World’s largest vats for growing ‘no-kill’ meat to be built in US​

The building of the world’s largest bioreactors to produce cultivated meat has been announced, with the potential to supply tens of thousands of shops and restaurants. Experts said the move could be a “gamechanger” for the nascent industry.

The US company Good Meat said the bioreactors would grow more than 13,000 tonnes of chicken and beef a year. It will use cells taken from cell banks or eggs, so the meat will not require the slaughter of any livestock.


There are about 170 companies around the world working on cultured meat, but Good Meat is the only company to have gained regulatory approval to sell its product to the public. It began serving cultivated chicken in Singapore in December 2020.

 

[J Sokol]

BOTTLING THE SUN

Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France — From a small hill in the southern French region of Provence, you can see two suns. One has been blazing for four-and-a-half billion years and is setting. The other is being built by thousands of human minds and hands, and is — far more slowly — rising. The last of the real sun’s evening rays cast a magical glow over the other — an enormous construction site that could solve the biggest existential crisis in human history.

It is here, in the tiny commune of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, that 35 countries have come together to try and master nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun — and all stars — but is painfully difficult to replicate on Earth.

Fusion promises a virtually limitless form of energy that, unlike fossil fuels, emits zero greenhouse gases and, unlike the nuclear fission power used today, produces no long-life radioactive waste.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/

 

[DomainNature]

Not sure if this was shared before but it looks amazing!
Health monitoring tattoo changes the way we live.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1536843544723431437

 

[Kenny]

Bro, that is not a tattoo.
That is the dreaded imbedded chip.

Peace,
Kenny

 

[Cannuck]

Shaky oasis for some polar bears found, but not for species​

With the polar bear species in a fight for survival because of disappearing Arctic sea ice, a new distinct group of Greenland bears seem to have stumbled on an icy oasis that might allow a small remote population to “hang on.”

But it’s far from “a life raft” for the endangered species that has long been a symbol of climate change, scientists said.

A team of scientists tracked a group of a few hundred polar bears in Southeast Greenland that they show are genetically distinct and geographically separate from others, something not considered before. But what’s really distinct is that these bears manage to survive despite only having 100 days a year when there’s sea ice to hunt seals from. Elsewhere in the world, polar bears need at least 180 days, usually more, of sea ice for them to use as their hunting base. When there’s no sea ice bears often don’t eat for months.

With limited sea ice, which is frozen ocean water, these Southeast Greenland polar bears use freshwater icebergs spawned from the shrinking Greenland ice sheet as makeshift hunting grounds, according to a recent study.

https://www.science.org/toc/science/376/6599

 

[Cal2]

Blockchains Vulnerable to Centralized Control, DARPA Report Finds​

A newly released report commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) titled “Are Blockchains Decentralized?” found key vulnerabilities potentially capable of jeopardizing blockchain tech’s supposed “decentralized” ethos.

The report, conducted in partnership with the research firm Trail of Bits, specifically points to a handful of, “unintended centralities,” that the authors argue can potentially concentrate blockchain power in the hands of a few select individuals or groups. Those unintended centralities range from powerful new cryptocurrency miners and outdated computers vulnerable to attacks, to a select cohort of internet service providers responsible for handling Bitcoin traffic. .......

The DARPA-commissioned report’s warnings around unintended crypto centralization partly echoes recent claims voiced by prominent Web3 naysayers. Possibly the biggest name in the “Web3 isn’t what you think it is” crowd is Block CEO and former Twitter king Jack Dorsey. Dorsey has spoken critically of venture capitalists’ involvement in Web3 companies even going as far as to call the supposed new era of the internet, “ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.”

https://gizmodo.com/blockchains-vul...tter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2022-06-21

 

[koolishman]

Scientists unveil bionic robo-fish to remove microplastics from seas​

Scientists have designed a tiny robot-fish that is programmed to remove microplastics from seas and oceans by swimming around and adsorbing them on its soft, flexible, self-healing body.

Researchers at Sichuan University have revealed an innovative solution to track down these pollutants when it comes to water contamination: designing a tiny self-propelled robo-fish that can swim around, latch on to free-floating microplastics, and fix itself if it gets cut or damaged while on its expedition.

The robo-fish is just 13mm long, and thanks to a light laser system in its tail, swims and flaps around at almost 30mm a second, similar to the speed at which plankton drift around in moving water.

The researchers created the robot from materials inspired by elements that thrive in the sea: mother-of-pearl, also known as nacre, which is the interior covering of clam shells. The team created a material similar to nacre by layering various microscopic sheets of molecules according to nacre’s specific chemical gradient.

 

[koolishman]

Scientists Develop “Nanomachines” That Can Penetrate and Kill Cancer Cells​

The research team headed by Dr. Youngdo Jeong from the Center for Advanced Biomolecular Recognition at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has reported the development of a novel biochemical nanomachine that penetrates the cell membrane and kills the cell via the molecular movements of folding and unfolding in certain cellular environments, such as cancer cells. They collaborated with the teams of Professor Sang Kyu Kwak from the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering and Professor Ja-Hyoung Ryu from the Department of Chemistry at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), and Dr. Chaekyu Kim of Fusion Biotechnology, Inc.

 

[J Sokol]

More flowers, fewer cars: the rewilders turning parking spaces into parks

Leen Schelfhout’s Citizen Garden is one of four in Brussels.

My partner, Xavier Damman, and I moved to Brussels in February 2020, a month before lockdown. We live in a typical Brussels house that has no garden and just a mini terrace. It has a garage but we don’t have a car. There is a 12 sq metre area in front of our garage door where no one can park. I have green fingers and love gardening so I figured I could turn it into a garden. Then we started getting letters from the council saying you can’t use this space for gardening, it’s for cars. We wanted to create a conversation about use of public space – why, if you are a car owner, can you privatise a public space?

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ders-turning-parking-spaces-into-parklets-aoe

 

[J Sokol]

Los Angeles may ban new gas stations to help combat climate emergency​

Los Angeles could become the largest city to prohibit the construction of new gas stations, joining a movement that seeks to limit fossil fuels at the local level as part of efforts to combat the climate crisis.

Officials in America’s second largest city, along with Bethlehem, New York, and Comox valley regional district, British Columbia, said on Wednesday morning that they were working on policies to stop the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/22/los-angeles-ban-new-gas-stations-climate

 

[koolishman]

Chinese fossils show human middle ear evolved from fish gills​

According to Prof. Gai Zhikun from IVPP, first author of the study, researchers from the institute successively found over the last 20 years a 438-million-year-old Shuyu 3D braincase fossil and the first 419-million-year-old galeaspid fossil completely preserved with gill filaments in the first branchial chamber. The fossils were found in Changxing, Zhejiang Province and Qujing, Yunnan Province, respectivel

"These fossils provided the first anatomical and fossil evidence for a vertebrate spiracle originating from fish gills," said Gai.

A total of seven virtual endocasts of the Shuyu braincase were subsequently reconstructed. Almost all details of the cranial anatomy of Shuyu were revealed in its fingernail-sized skull, including five brain divisions, sensory organs, and cranial nerve and blood vessel passages in the skull.

 

[Cal2]

Cement formed with biogenic limestone promises carbon-neutral concrete​

Playing an indispensable role in global construction, cement contributes around seven percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions owing to its carbon-intensive production process. ....

Limestone is a key ingredient in cement, but adding it to the mix is incredibly energy intensive. It first needs to be extracted from the earth, then crushed up, baked at extremely high temperatures and treated, which involves burning huge amounts of fossil fuels and also releases stored carbon as a result. Scientists have made promising advances toward more sustainable methods by substituting limestone for discarded clay or volcanic rock, but the latest advance comes about through a snorkeling trip to Thailand in 2017.

Material scientist Wil Srubar was visiting coral reefs in the area and drew inspiration from the way the structures are naturally formed by calcium carbonate, a key component of limestone. He wondered if this natural process could be leveraged to produce the material in a more environmentally friendly manner, which led him and his team to a form of microalgae called coccolithophores.

These tiny creatures naturally sequester and store carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, using sunlight and seawater to turn it into calcium carbonate at a faster rate than coral reefs. They also live in warm water, cold water, saltwater and freshwater, which bodes well for the potential to cultivate them around the globe. .......

The scientists calculate that between 1-2 million acres of open ponds would be needed to cultivate enough microalgae to meet the cement demands of the US, which they note is just one percent of the land used to grow corn. Applied globally, they say the technique could mitigate two billion gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Perhaps most promisingly, the biogenic limestone is described as "plug and play" with current cement production processes, and could theoretically be implemented as quickly as overnight.

https://newatlas.com/materials/ceme...ail&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-b9399123fe-90628689

 

[Cal2]

A space tech company stumbled on a new way to cut emissions on Earth​

Steel factories emit around 3 billion tons of CO2 a year. A new way of producing it eliminates direct CO2 emissions and cuts energy use in half.

The Israel-based company discovered the new method while developing an approach to generate oxygen from regolith, the rocky covering on the moon. (One of the challenges for moon landings is the expense of transporting oxygen from Earth, for use both by astronauts and in rocket propellant.) On Earth, the simplest way to separate oxygen from iron oxide is to use carbon (and create pollution), but there’s little carbon on the moon. The team “needed to throw everything out and come up with a completely new concept,” Geifman says.

For proprietary reasons, the startup declined to describe the details of the chemical process that happens in its new reactor. But the basic approach is simple, and substitutes another material for carbon. ......

The process can happen inside a direct reduction iron (DRI) furnace, a type of equipment that many steelmakers already have. It eliminates direct emissions, and because it also uses half the energy of the typical process, it also significantly cuts emissions from fossil energy used in the equipment. If the equipment is converted to use clean energy, emissions can drop to zero.

https://www.fastcompany.com/9076186...m_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=39497

 

[J Sokol]

Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of ‘digital amnesia’​

Last week, I missed a real-life meeting because I hadn’t set a reminder on my smartphone, leaving someone I’d never met before alone in a café. But on the same day, I remembered the name of the actor who played Will Smith’s aunt in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1991 (Janet Hubert). Memory is weird, unpredictable and, neuroscientifically, not yet entirely understood. When memory lapses like mine happen (which they do, a lot), it feels both easy and logical to blame the technology we’ve so recently adopted. Does having more memory in our pockets mean there’s less in our heads? Am I losing my ability to remember things – from appointments to what I was about to do next – because I expect my phone to do it for me? Before smartphones, our heads would have held a cache of phone numbers and our memories would contain a cognitive map, built up over time, which would allow us to navigate – for smartphone users, that is no longer true.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/...ning-your-memory-the-rise-of-digital-amenesia

 

[J Sokol]

Utah’s Great Salt Lake hits new historic low amid drought in western US​

The Great Salt Lake has hit a new historic low for the second time in less than a year, a dire milestone as the US west continues to weather a historic megadrought.

The Utah department of natural resources said in a news release on Monday that the Great Salt Lake dipped over the weekend to 4,190.1ft (1,277.1 meters).

That is lower than the previous historic low set in October, which at the time matched a 170-year record low. Lake levels are expected to keep dropping until fall or winter, the agency said, as conditions exacerbated by the climate crisis continue to put a strain on water levels.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/05/utah-great-salt-lake-new-low-drought

 

[Cal2]

World's first commercial sand battery begins energy storage in Finland​

This is a thermal energy storage system, effectively built around a big, insulated steel tank – around 4 metres (13.1 ft) wide and 7 metres (23 ft) high – full of plain old sand. When this sand is heated up, using a simple heat exchanger buried in the middle of it, this device is capable of storing an impressive 8 megawatt-hours of energy, at a nominal power rating of 100 kW, with the sand heated to somewhere around 500-600 degrees Celsius (932-1112 °F).

When it's needed, the energy is extracted again as heat in the same way. Vatajankowski is using this stored heat, in conjunction with excess heat from its own data servers, to feed the local district heating system, which uses piped water to transmit heat around the area. It can then be used to heat buildings, or swimming pools, or in industrial processes, or in any other situation that requires heat.

This helps make it extremely efficient, the company tells Disruptive Investing in a video interview. "It's really easy to convert electricity into heat," says Polar Night CTO Markku Ylönen. "But going back from heat to electricity, that's where you need turbines and more complex things. As long as we're just using the heat as heat, it stays really simple." The company claims an efficiency factor up to 99 percent, a capability to store heat with minimal loss for months on end, and a lifespan in the decades.

There's nothing special about the sand – the company says it just needs to be dry and free from combustible debris. Indeed, the company sees it as a super-low or even zero-cost storage medium. The whole thing's so simple and cheap that Polar Night Energy claims the setup costs are less than €10 (US$10.27) per kilowatt-hour, and it runs itself in a fully-automated fashion, using no consumables, at a minimal cost as well.

https://newatlas.com/energy/sand-ba...ail&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-4e2fbca8ad-90628689