discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

[CraigD]

Post and discuss interesting articles & videos about science and technology.

You don't need to be an expert - just interested in the wonders of modern science, technology, and the history of these fields.

Please keep it rational, and post articles from reputable sources.
Try not to editorialise headlines and keep the copy to just a paragraph with a link to the original source. When quoting excerpts from articles, I think the best method is to italicise the copy, and include a link to the source.

Have some fun with your comments and discussions... just keep the sources legitimate.

Other threads:
The Break Room has a number of other popular threads, so there is no need to post material here that is better suited to these other threads:

- Covid19-Coronavirus updates and news
- Conspiracy Thread Free For All
- The *religious* discussion thread

Please enjoy!

 

[CraigD]

Google opens paid-for Australian platform in drive to undercut Government's proposed content payment laws

Google has launched a platform in Australia offering news it has paid for after striking its own content deals with publishers.

It's part of a drive to show that world-first legislation proposed by the Federal Government to enforce payments is unnecessary.

Only rolled out previously in Brazil and Germany, the News Showcase platform was originally slated for launch last June.

But Alphabet-owned Google delayed plans when the Government moved to make it a legal requirement for Google and Facebook to pay Australian media companies for content.

The tech giant, still lobbying the Australian Government in private meetings, has previously said was the legislation was "unworkable" and would force it to pull out of the country altogether if implemented.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02...ralia-news-platform-to-undermine-law/13127648

 

[CraigD]

Stanford research could lead to injectable gels that release medicines over time

Injecting patients with a gel that would dissolve over several months could replace the need to administer daily or weekly shots. But to make this possible, researchers first had to create a Jello-like substance that could defy one of the fundamental laws of nature.

https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/04/injectable-gels-release-medicines-time/

 

[CraigD]

Nasa’s Golden Surfer is almost ready

Thirty years, $8.8 billion, multiple mishaps and budget crises, and a threatened congressional cancellation later, the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble, appears to be finally ready,

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...den-surfer-james-webb-telescope-b1796446.html

 

[CraigD]

Neanderthal gut microbiota and the bacteria helping our health

Neanderthals' gut microbiota included beneficial microorganisms that are also found in the modern human microbiome. An international research group ... achieved this result by extracting and analyzing ancient DNA from 50,000-year-old fecal sediments...

...their paper puts forward the hypothesis of the existence of ancestral components of human microbiota that have been living in the human gastrointestinal tract since before the separation between the Homo sapiens and Neanderthals that occurred more than 700,000 years ago.

"These results allow us to understand which components of the human gut microbiota are essential for our health, as they are integral elements of our biology also from an evolutionary point of view," ... "Nowadays, there is a progressive reduction of our microbiota diversity due to the context of our modern life: this research group's findings could guide us in devising diet- and lifestyle-tailored solutions to counteract this phenomenon."

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-neanderthal-gut-microbiota-bacteria-health.html

 

[CraigD]

Cacophony of human noise is hurting all marine life, scientists warn

A natural ocean soundscape is fundamental to healthy marine life but is being drowned out by an increasingly loud cacophony of noise from human activities, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the issue.

The damage caused by noise is as harmful as overfishing, pollution and the climate crisis, the scientists said, but is being dangerously overlooked. The good news, they said, is that noise can be stopped instantly and does not have lingering effects, as the other problems do.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...man-noise-hurting-marine-life-scientists-warn

 

[CraigD]

Venus flytraps produce magnetic fields when they eat

Carnivorous plants known as Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) lure insects between their blushing leaves with a fragrant nectar. When these insect-hungry plants snap down on their unassuming prey, they generate a measurable magnetic field, according to a new study.


The plant's magnetic field is more than a million times weaker than Earth's. Rather than serving a function for the plant this magnetic field is likely a byproduct of electrical energy that flows through its leaves, said lead author Anne Fabricant, a doctoral candidate at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz in Germany. Still, it's one of the first such fields ever detected in plants.

https://www.livescience.com/venus-flytrap-magnetic-field.html

 

[HotKey]

Gentlemen- extraordinary thread. Many thanks for the ongoing contributions. Though so much is beyond my comprehension, I value the opportunity to learn. Because we're never too old to do so. Have made a habit of sitting down my five year old to ingest some of this stuff, in the hopes to spark an interest and thus beget an understanding of a wonder.

Be well. Keep it up! I am hooked.

**

If we take this to the grand scheme of things, does the Universe use it's own schema? If so, schema must be in the very essence of all. The sense that it's dynamic is interesting. Came across this some years back searching for info on using rich snippets in sites.

Schema Theory: Schema theory’s central claim is that our knowledge of the world is organized and categorized, which can influence our cognition and behaviour..

 

[koolishman]

China's Tianwen-1 sends back its first picture of Mars

 

[koolishman]

Optical coating that could simultaneously reflect and transmit the same wavelength, or color.

For more than a century, optical coatings have been used to better reflect certain wavelengths of light from lenses and other devices or, conversely, to better transmit certain wavelengths through them. For example, the coatings on tinted eyeglasses reflect, or "block out," harmful blue light and ultraviolet rays

But until now, no optical coating had ever been developed that could simultaneously reflect and transmit the same wavelength, or color.

In a paper in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers at the University of Rochester and Case Western Reserve University describe a new class of optical coatings, so-called Fano Resonance Optical Coatings (FROCs), that can be used on filters to reflect and transmit colors of remarkable purity.


https://phys.org/news/2021-02-optical-coating.html

 

[koolishman]

Fecal transplant turns cancer immunotherapy non-responders into responders

Researchers at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) demonstrate that changing the gut microbiome can transform patients with advanced melanoma who never responded to immunotherapy--which has a failure rate of 40% for this type of cancer--into patients who do.


The results of this proof-of-principle phase II clinical trial were published online today in Science. In this study, a team of researchers from UPMC Hillman administered fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) and anti-PD-1 immunotherapy to melanoma patients who had failed all available therapies, including anti-PD-1, and then tracked clinical and immunological outcomes. Collaborators at NCI analyzed microbiome samples from these patients to understand why FMT seems to boost their response to immunotherapy.

 

[koolishman]

Imaging the first moments of a body plan emerging in the embryo

Egg cells start out as round blobs. After fertilization, they begin transforming into people, dogs, fish, or other animals by orienting head to tail, back to belly, and left to right. Exactly what sets these body orientation directions has been guessed at but not seen. Now researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have imaged the very beginning of this cellular rearrangement, and their findings help answer a fundamental question.

 

[CraigD]

Gentlemen- extraordinary thread. Many thanks for the ongoing contributions. Though so much is beyond my comprehension, I value the opportunity to learn. Because we're never too old to do so. Have made a habit of sitting down my five year old to ingest some of this stuff, in the hopes to spark an interest and thus beget an understanding of a wonder.

Be well. Keep it up! I am hooked.

**

If we take this to the grand scheme of things, does the Universe use it's own schema? If so, schema must be in the very essence of all. The sense that it's dynamic is interesting. Came across this some years back searching for info on using rich snippets in sites.

Schema Theory: Schema theory’s central claim is that our knowledge of the world is organized and categorized, which can influence our cognition and behaviour..

I hope your 5-yr-old learns something

Schema
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)

Well, that was an interesting rabbit-hole.

How far back in our evolutionary past does the development of this mental framework go?

 

[CraigD]

NASA, Boeing adjusting SLS Core Stage parameter limits for second Green Run firing

An in-depth look at the recent and up-coming Green Run test fire of NASA's new super-heavy rocket core-stage.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/02/adjusting-sls-core-parameter-second-greenrun

 

[BrandPlease]

This is Science-ish. Looking at Silver and all the future tech uses for, beyond the monetary value.

But, think about this as you realize how much Silver will be needed to meet all the tech initiatives.

Ok, Let's say in the early 1970s (when US coins were ending use of Silver) you took 1 silver dollar and buried it in you back yard and invested another in the stock market.

Now a silver dollar back then had 90% silver content (so, much less than an oz.) &&& was worth $1 (ignore silver value in the 70s for this example).

1 Silver dollar buried in your back yard:

1. Calculate 90% silver value : (26.96 × .0321507466 × 26.73 × .90) = $20.8522251323
$20.8522 is the rounded silver value ==== So, Let's sat $21 to make it easy(or 21 X$)

$1 invested in the stock market:

10-year, 30-year, and 50-year average stock market returns
Period Annualized Return (Nominal) Annualized Real Return (Adjusted for Inflation)
10 years (2011-2020) 13.9% 11.96%
30 years (1991-2020) 10.7% 8.3%
50 years (1971-2020) 10.9% 6.8%

Well, looks like Silver might have been a pretty good investment, wonder why it's never recommended?

HMMMMMM? Wonder if all the future of Technology realizes this? Because there is a very short supply of actual mined silver (ignore the paper trades, people cant get bulk silver).

Just a tech heads up

 

[Cal2]

Gentlemen- extraordinary thread. Many thanks for the ongoing contributions. Though so much is beyond my comprehension, I value the opportunity to learn. Because we're never too old to do so. Have made a habit of sitting down my five year old to ingest some of this stuff, in the hopes to spark an interest and thus beget an understanding of a wonder.

Be well. Keep it up! I am hooked.

**

If we take this to the grand scheme of things, does the Universe use it's own schema? If so, schema must be in the very essence of all. The sense that it's dynamic is interesting. Came across this some years back searching for info on using rich snippets in sites.

Schema Theory: Schema theory’s central claim is that our knowledge of the world is organized and categorized, which can influence our cognition and behaviour..

You might find the research work by Edward de Bono also of interest:

Edward de Bono
An Explanation of the Brain as a System and the Creative Tool PO

"The following text will explain how the brain organises itself, how it is a system that has to be beat in order to generate creative ideas and how it can be done. Simplicity as a value will also be discussed.

Edward de Bono is considered the leading authority in the field of creative thinking, and created the concept of lateral thinking (de Bono, 1967). His background is in medicine and psychology (Chiaramonte, 1989), and his book The Mechanism of Mind from 1969 was the first documentation of how the brain works as a system. All his ideas have stood unchallenged for 40 years; "fundamentals do not change" (Powell, 2007, p.1059)."

http://donnapace.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Edward-and-the-Brain1.pdf

 

[Cal2]

Btw, de Bono got onto the idea of the brain working as a system because of his medical background, where he saw the body working as self-organizing systems. A case of concept transfer, from one thing to another.

https://designerd.info/features/edward-de-bono-thinking-to-create-value/

You might find the research work by Edward de Bono also of interest:

Edward de Bono
An Explanation of the Brain as a System and the Creative Tool PO

"The following text will explain how the brain organises itself, how it is a system that has to be beat in order to generate creative ideas and how it can be done. Simplicity as a value will also be discussed.

Edward de Bono is considered the leading authority in the field of creative thinking, and created the concept of lateral thinking (de Bono, 1967). His background is in medicine and psychology (Chiaramonte, 1989), and his book The Mechanism of Mind from 1969 was the first documentation of how the brain works as a system. All his ideas have stood unchallenged for 40 years; "fundamentals do not change" (Powell, 2007, p.1059)."

http://donnapace.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Edward-and-the-Brain1.pdf

 

[CraigD]

It’s New Year’s Day On Mars. Here’s Why The ‘Red Planet’ Is In For A Busy First Week As 3 Spacecraft Approach

Feb 6, 2021

Here’s everything you need to know about the martian “Year 36,” how a year works on Mars as three spacecraft get captured by the ‘red planet’ and go into orbit after traveling 495 million miles from Earth.

What spacecraft are arriving at Mars this week?
After a seven-month journey from Earth three major missions will this arrive at Mars and go into orbit around the “red planet.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiec...to-get-3-visitors-from-earth/?sh=6131a84a65d7

 

[SirDrago]

Discovering there's intelligent life beyond our planet could be the most transformative event in human history— but what if scientists decided to collectively ignore evidence suggesting it already happened?




https://phys.org/news/2021-02-harvard-astronomer-alien-vessel-paid.amp

I for one will go on forum record and say we have been, are presently being visited by other worldly entities.

Your thoughts on the matter?

 

[CraigD]

Discovering there's intelligent life beyond our planet could be the most transformative event in human history— but what if scientists decided to collectively ignore evidence suggesting it already happened?




https://phys.org/news/2021-02-harvard-astronomer-alien-vessel-paid.amp

I for one will go on forum record and say we have been, are presently being visited by other worldly entities.

Your thoughts on the matter?

I've yet to see any compelling evidence.

In the case of the article you referenced about Oumuamua, I think the most likely explanation is that the erratic orbit was due to unobserved outgassing.

 

[CraigD]

Possible evidence of an extrasolar object striking the Earth in 2014
April 17, 2019

A pair of researchers has found possible evidence of an extrasolar object striking the Earth back in 2014.

Abraham Loeb is the Harvard University astronomer who made headlines recently when he suggested that the space object known as 'Oumuamua might have been part of an alien spacecraft. 'Oumuamua was believed to have come from outside of the solar system because its trajectory showed it was not gravitationally bound to the sun—also, it traveled faster than traditional space objects.

In this new effort, Loeb and his undergraduate assistant Siraj claim to have found evidence of another object from outside of the solar system.

[They] described a meteor that was believed to be slightly less than a meter wide that had been observed disintegrating in the atmosphere on January 8th, 2014, at a height of 18.7 kilometers near Papua New Guinea. Its speed had been measured by a government sensor at 216,000 km/h. By looking at its trajectory and tracing backward, the researchers report that it likely came from somewhere outside of our solar system. If the evidence pans out, the sighting would be the first known instance of an extrasolar object striking the Earth.

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-evidence-extrasolar-earth.html

 

[Cal2]

Discovering there's intelligent life beyond our planet could be the most transformative event in human history— but what if scientists decided to collectively ignore evidence suggesting it already happened?

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-harvard-astronomer-alien-vessel-paid.amp

I for one will go on forum record and say we have been, are presently being visited by other worldly entities.

Your thoughts on the matter?

Interesting, intriguing article, but not enough evidence in it to say aliens were involved.

Whether alien life does exist or not, I couldn't say one way or the other which is right.

 

[koolishman]

Why some scientists believe life may have started on Mars

On February 18, NASA's Perseverance rover will parachute through thin Martian air, marking a new era in red planet exploration. Landing on the Jezero Crater, which is located north of the Martian equator, will be no easy feat. Only about 40 percent of the missions ever sent to Mars succeed, according to NASA. If it does, Perseverance could drastically change the way we think about extraterrestrial life. That's because scientists believe Jezero, a 28 mile-wide impact crater that used to be a lake, is an ideal place to look for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.

Once it lands, Perseverance will collect and store Martian rock and soil samples, which will eventually be returned to Earth. This is known as a "sample-return mission," an extremely rare type of space exploration mission due to its expense. (Indeed, there has never been a sample return mission from another planet.) And once Martian soil is returned to Earth in a decade, scientists will set about studying the material to figure out if there was ever ancient life on Mars.

Yet some scientists believe that these samples could answer an even bigger question: Did life on Earth originate on Mars?

Though the idea that life started on Mars before migrating on Earth sounds like some far-fetched sci-fi premise, many renowned scientists take the theory seriously. The general idea of life starting elsewhere in space before migrating here has a name, too: Panspermia. It's the hypothesis that life exists elsewhere in the universe, and is distributed by asteroids and other space debris.


The evidence starts with how space debris moved around in the young solar system. Indeed, we have evidence of an exchange of rocks from Mars to Earth. Martian meteorites have been found in Antarctica and across the world — an estimated 159, according to the International Meteorite Collectors Association.

 

[koolishman]

What was before the Big Bang? Everything you need to know

The Universe has not existed forever. It was born. Around 13.82 billion years ago, matter, energy, space – and time – erupted into being in a fireball called the Big Bang. It expanded and, from the cooling debris, there congealed galaxies – islands of stars of which our Milky Way is one among about two trillion. This is the Big Bang theory.


A universe popping into existence out of nothing is so bonkers that scientists had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the idea. But the evidence is compelling. The galaxies are flying apart like pieces of cosmic shrapnel. And the heat of the Big Bang is still around us. Greatly cooled by cosmic expansion, this ‘afterglow’ appears not as visible light but principally as microwave radiation – the ‘cosmic background radiation’, which was discovered by radio astronomers in 1965.

 

[koolishman]

Robots which can reproduce and colonize planets.


Autonomous Robot Evolution: Cradle to Grave

Imagine an environment where autonomous systems (robots) are not designed by humans (or indeed designed at all) but are created through a series of steps that follow evolutionary processes. These robots will be “born” through the use of 3D manufacturing, with novel materials and a hybridised hardware-software evolutionary architecture. “Child” robots will learn in a safe and controlled environment where success will be rewarded. The most successful individuals will make available their genetic code for reproduction and for the improvement of future generations. Such a process will ultimately lead to a change in the way things are designed and manufactured. This project is a first step towards this vision, and will lay the foundations and create the instruments to help progress this vision for the future.

This project focuses on a disruptive robotic technology where robots are created, reproduce and evolve in real-time and real space. The long-term vision is a technology enabling the evolution of entire autonomous robotic ecosystems that live and work for long periods in challenging and dynamic environments without the need for direct human oversight. This means radically new autonomous systems are needed, where robots are conceived and born, rather than designed and manufactured. Such robots will fundamentally change the concept of machines, showcasing a new breed that can change their form and behavior, not in error but on purpose. The targeted breakthrough of this project is the construction of a facility that enables the reproduction of robots and the real-time evolution of a robot colony that can perform user-defined tasks.


Impact
The most significant impact of this work is in the fields of Robotics, Evolutionary Computing and Artificial Life research. The project will have impact in research and development into evolutionary robotics. It will provide the “design strategy” for a new generation of autonomous systems. The project will contribute to advances in evolutionary computing for real-world applications through the hybridised hardware-software evolutionary architecture that will be developed. The project will provide excellent real and simulated robotic models and implementation pathways, which will facilitate autonomous systems strategies for a range of emerging technologies and applications. The exchange of research staff during the project will impact on their professional development.

 

[Sutruk]

Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210205085718.htm

"Global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses, by driving growth of forest habitat favoured by bats."

"A new study published today in the journal Science of the Total Environment provides the first evidence of a mechanism by which climate change could have played a direct role in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study has revealed large-scale changes in the type of vegetation in the southern Chinese Yunnan province, and adjacent regions in Myanmar and Laos, over the last century. Climatic changes including increases in temperature, sunlight, and atmospheric carbon dioxide -- which affect the growth of plants and trees -- have changed natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous woodland. This created a suitable environment for many bat species that predominantly live in forests.

The number of coronaviruses in an area is closely linked to the number of different bat species present. The study found that an additional 40 bat species have moved into the southern Chinese Yunnan province in the past century, harbouring around 100 more types of bat-borne coronavirus. This 'global hotspot' is the region where genetic data suggests SARS-CoV-2 may have arisen."