Science & Technology news & discussion

One of the benefits of living in a cold climate is body side moulding doesn't deteriorate as quickly. Older cars had more rubber parts. I've sent a bundle to places with drier climate and deserts, like Australia.

 

I was wondering...

What happens if you put your head in a particle accelerator?




Please don't try this at home!

 

Researchers come one step closer to ‘insulin in a pill’

By using nanomaterial layers to package insulin, researchers have developed a stable and effective method for administering the hormone orally to rats without subjecting it to destruction by stomach acids, solving a long-time problem in pharmaceutical science.





The system, described in a study published April 6 in Chemical Science, could replace traditional subcutaneous administration of insulin for patients with diabetes. This would eliminate the need for self-injection and make treatment more accessible.

"Imagine being able to take insulin in a pill instead of injecting it a couple of times a day," said first author Farah Benyettou, a research scientist in the Trabolsi Research Group at New York University Abu Dhabi. "The insulin was loaded in a system that protects it from the acidic environment of the stomach. Once in the body, the system can sense the sugar blood level and can release the loaded insulin on demand."

 

Raindrops also keep fallin' on exoplanets

Researchers found that raindrops are remarkably similar across different planetary environments, even planets as drastically different as Earth and Jupiter. Understanding the behavior of raindrops on other planets is key to not only revealing the ancient climate on planets like Mars but identifying potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.

One day, humankind may step foot on another habitable planet. That planet may look very different from Earth, but one thing will feel familiar -- the rain.

In a recent paper, Harvard researchers found that raindrops are remarkably similar across different planetary environments, even planets as drastically different as Earth and Jupiter. Understanding the behavior of raindrops on other planets is key to not only revealing the ancient climate on planets like Mars but identifying potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.

"The lifecycle of clouds is really important when we think about planet habitability," said Kaitlyn Loftus, a graduate student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and lead author of the paper. "But clouds and precipitation are really complicated and too complex to model completely. We're looking for simpler ways to understand how clouds evolve, and a first step is whether cloud droplets evaporate in the atmosphere or make it to the surface as rain."

"The humble raindrop is a vital component of the precipitation cycle for all planets," said Robin Wordsworth, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the paper. "If we understand how individual raindrops behave, we can better represent rainfall in complex climate models."

 

Discovery is key to creating heat-tolerant crops

By 2050, global warming could reduce crop yields by one-third. To modify plants' response to heat, scientists must first understand how plants sense temperature. Researchers have discovered a gene that's key to this process.


Warmer temperatures signal to plants that summer is coming. Anticipating less water, they flower early then lack the energy to produce more seeds, so crop yields are lower. This is problematic as the world's population is expected to balloon to 10 billion, with much less food to eat.






"We need plants that can endure warmer temperatures, have a longer time to flower and a longer growth period," said UCR botany and plant sciences professor Meng Chen. "But, to be able to modify plants' temperature responses, you first have to understand how they work. So, that's why identifying this gene that enables heat response is so important."

The work that Chen and his colleagues did to uncover the heat-sensing gene was published this week in the journal Nature Communications. It is the second gene they've found involved in temperature sensing.

They located the first gene, called HEMERA, two years ago. Then they did an experiment to see if they could identify other genes involved in controlling the temperature-sensing process.

Ordinarily, plants react to shifts of even a few degrees in weather. For this experiment, the team began with a mutant Arabidopsis plant completely insensitive to temperature, and they modified it to once again become reactive.

 

I've seen crops flower early only to be damaged by a late frost.

I'm not a big fan of genetically altering staple crops, so I wonder how many generations it would take for these plants to adapt to seasonal changes naturally?

 

Length of growing season and first frost is definitely a limitation and inhibitor to a successful outdoor harvest. Growing my own medicine (ganja), I've observed much has to do with the strain and it's natural ability to adapt to the climate where its grown. Another criteria is length of vegetative/flowering periods. If it doesn't have the ability to flower during the warmer part of summer, yield is significantly reduced. I've experimented by taking two different strains and hybridize them to produce auto-flowering plants. The auto-flower fly through the vegetative stage directly into the budding stage, and therefore grow to considerable size with incredible yield. Of course, tweaks need to be done ie. bud tightness etc. (as late stage moisture can cause mould). Another consideration is the cannabinoid ratio, auto-flowering plants tend to be higher in CBD, which is fine because I generally reduce the plants into a topical analgesic cream.

 

California is on the brink of drought – again. Is it ready?

California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating megafires.

On Thursday, the unofficial end of California’s wet season, officials announced that the accumulation of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Cascades was about 40% below average levels. The state doesn’t have enough snow and rain banked to replenish its groundwater supplies, feed its rivers and streams or fill depleted reservoirs.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-is-on-the-brink-of-drought-again-is-it-ready

This is scary.

 

First US trachea transplant offers hope to Covid patients with windpipe damage

Surgeons in New York City have performed the first windpipe transplant in the US, giving a woman who suffered severe asthma a new trachea, the tube that transports air from the mouth to the lungs.

Doctors say such operations could help Covid-19 patients left with serious windpipe damage from breathing machines.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/06/first-us-trachea-transplant-windpipe-damage

 

Why is the universe the way it is?

 

Your Brain Is Literally Going to Get Bigger This Summer

A new study finds your brain changes size from season to season.

Scientists from Hartford Hospital’s Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center studied the brain scans of more than 3,000 healthy people over a 15-year period. The researchers found the sizes of different brain portions were consistently larger during the northern hemisphere’s warm summer months and smaller during the cold winter months.





Hartford, Connecticut, which averages a high of 84 degrees Fahrenheit in July and a high of 36 degrees in January, is “an ideal location to test weather and seasonal effects because it is near sea-level, experiences four distinct seasons, and a wide range of weather conditions,” the scientists say. They continue:

Change in daylight is a significant factor in seasonal studies, but few studies have taken into account weather conditions, and no studies have examined the effects of weather on brain volume. Weather is often described as temperature, precipitation, and wind speed, but the most significant driver of weather is barometric pressure. Unlike temperature and humidity which are well-controlled in MRI scanning environments, pressure is ubiquitous and thus a good weather variable to explore.

 

Diamond battery powered by nuclear waste runs for 28,000 years

A U.S. startup combined radioactive isotopes from nuclear waste with ultra-slim layers of nanodiamonds to assemble a ridiculous battery that allegedly can last 28,000 years.

According to the California startup in question, called NDB (Nano Diamond Battery), their product is a “high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery.”





The energy comes from waste graphite that was previously used in graphite-cooled nuclear reactors. The radioactive graphite is encased in layers of nano-thin, single crystalline diamond, which act both as a semiconductor and heat sink.

The product is supposed to come in two versions. The “forever” version that is supposed to last 28,000 years before it runs out of charge. This hard-core version is meant for niche applications, such as deep space where it could power instruments onboard spacecraft and satellites. These spacecraft, for instance, could be sent to other star systems on centuries-long voyages and they would still have enough power to beam back messages.

There is also a consumer version, meant for powering electric vehicles, smartphones, and other small devices. Since the graphite would be wrapped in multiple coatings of synthetic diamond, there would be no radiation leaking out of your phone. NDB even claims that the radiation levels emitted by the cells will be less than those emitted by the human body.

 

Tire-related chemical is largely responsible for adult coho salmon deaths in urban streams

Every fall more than half of the coho salmon that return to Puget Sound’s urban streams die before they can spawn. In some streams, all of them die. But scientists didn’t know why.



Now a team led by researchers at the University of Washington Tacoma, UW and Washington State University Puyallup have discovered the answer. When it rains, stormwater flushes bits of aging vehicle tires on roads into neighboring streams. The killer is in the mix of chemicals that leach from tire wear particles: a molecule related to a preservative that keeps tires from breaking down too quickly.

 

These fish stole an antifreeze gene from another fish and became natural GMOs

Evidence suggests gene moved from herring to smelt in process similar to genetic modification in the lab

Millions of years before scientists created genetically modified Atlantic salmon with genes from two other fish, nature created genetically modified smelt with a gene from herring, growing evidence showsAnd now the Canadian scientists who first proposed that controversial idea say they have a hunch how nature might have done it.




A new study by Queen's University researchers Laurie Graham and Peter Davies finds "conclusive" evidence for the controversial idea that the antifreeze gene that helps rainbow smelt survive icy coastal waters originally came from herring and was somehow stolen by smelt about 20 million years ago.

They propose in their new paper in Trends in Genetics that this could have happened through a process quite similar to the way genes are sometimes transferred from one species to another by scientists in the lab today.

 

POINTER: Seeing Through Walls to Help Locate Firefighters

A unique positioning technology is being developed to pinpoint firefighters inside buildings where other positioning technologies fail.




When mounting a rescue inside a building, firefighters are often confronted with a fast-changing environment obscured by smoke and flames. Navigating the structure may become confusing and, should a firefighter become lost or injured, the rescuer can quickly become the one who needs rescuing.

To help mitigate those dangers, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) are developing POINTER, a system to locate and track firefighters inside structures when they risk their lives to save others. Short for Precision Outdoor and Indoor Navigation and Tracking for Emergency Responders, the system began taking shape in 2014, and now the technology is being matured for use by fire departments nationwide.

“Even with all of the advances made in firefighting technology, we still lose far too many firefighters each year,” said Greg Price, who leads S&T’s first responder research-and-development programs. “We want them to know that we have their backs, that we are working to give them the tools they need to ensure their own safety. POINTER is one of those life-saving solutions.”

Unlike positioning technologies such as GPS or radio-frequency identification, POINTER doesn’t use radio waves. Though radio waves offer a reliable means to determine your location in a relatively open space, they can become unpredictable if you go indoors or find yourself surrounded by high buildings. This may be a minor annoyance when trying to find the location of an appointment, but it could be a life-or-death situation when trying to locate firefighters in a burning building.

 

Iceland’s Eruptions Reveal the Hot History of Mars

After 15 months of increasingly intense and disruptive earthquakes on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, the region finally let off some pressure. On March 19, lava roared out of the ground in the uninhabited valley of Geldingadalur, marking the first time in 800 years that this southwesterly strip of land has been rocked by an eruption.




Volcanologists are thrilled, but this spectacle isn’t just an opportunity to explore Iceland’s fiery underworld. It’s also a window into another world entirely. “The eruption is, in my view, a fantastic analogue for Mars,” said Christopher Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona.

Mars is an unquestionably volcanic planet. In its earliest eras, it built volcanoes so immense that their formation deformed its surface. At one point, they caused the entire planet to tip over by 20 degrees. Its volcanic output gradually slowed, but Mars continued to make small volcanoes and spill lava for most of its lifetime. It may even be volcanically active today, with magma still gurgling below ground, perhaps gearing up for a future eruption.

 

Scientists harness chaos to protect devices from hackers

Researchers have found a way to use chaos to help develop digital fingerprints for electronic devices that may be unique enough to foil even the most sophisticated hackers.

Just how unique are these fingerprints? The researchers believe it would take longer than the lifetime of the universe to test for every possible combination available.

“In our system, chaos is very, very good,” said Daniel Gauthier, senior author of the study and professor of physics at The Ohio State University.

The study was recently published online in the journal IEEE Access.





The researchers created a new version of an emerging technology called physically unclonable functions, or PUFs, that are built into computer chips.

Gauthier said these new PUFs could potentially be used to create secure ID cards, to track goods in supply chains and as part of authentication applications, where it is vital to know that you’re not communicating with an impostor.

“The SolarWinds hack that targeted the U.S. government really got people thinking about how we’re going to be doing authentication and cryptography,” Gauthier said.

“We’re hopeful that this could be part of the solution.”

 

Oldest DNA from a Homo sapiens reveals surprisingly recent Neanderthal ancestry

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00916-0

"Scientists have sequenced the oldest Homo sapiens DNA on record, showing that many of Europe’s first humans had Neanderthals in their family trees. Yet these individuals are not related to later Europeans, according to two genome studies of remains dating back more than 45,000 years from caves in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic1,2.

The research adds to growing evidence that modern humans mixed regularly with Neanderthals and other extinct relatives, says Viviane Slon, a palaeogeneticist at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel. “It’s different times, different places, and it happens again and again."

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Europe’s oldest known humans mated with Neandertals surprisingly often

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/europe-oldest-known-humans-mated-neandertals-dna-fossils

"When some of the earliest human migrants to Europe encountered Neandertals already living there around 45,000 years ago, hookups flourished.

Analyses of DNA found in human fossils from around that time — the oldest known human remains in Europe — suggest that interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neandertals, who were on the fast track to extinction, occurred more commonly than has often been assumed, two new studies suggest. Both reports appear April 7 in Nature Ecology & Evolution."

 

Anyone have any thoughts as to how this "real game changer in cybersecurity" possibly might affect companies, products that are already in the cybersecurity industry? Eg. Blackberry with their QNX software? Would just add another layer of security? Or.....?

https://obj.ca/article/techopia/blackberry-qnx-software-help-power-hyundai-av-technology

 

Rates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chemical may be to blame

To date, the clearest evidence around the risk of TCE to human health is derived from workers who are exposed to the chemical in the work-place. A 2008 peer-reviewed study in the Annals of Neurology, for example, found that TCE is “a risk factor for parkinsonism.” And a 2011 study echoed those results, finding “a six-fold increase in the risk of developing Parkinson’s in individuals exposed in the workplace to trichloroethylene (TCE).”

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...e-exploding-a-common-chemical-may-be-to-blame

 

A Tiny Particle’s Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of Physics

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/science/particle-physics-muon-fermilab-brookhaven.html

"Experiments with particles known as muons suggest that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science.

Evidence is mounting that a tiny subatomic particle seems to be disobeying the known laws of physics, scientists announced on Wednesday, a finding that would open a vast and tantalizing hole in our understanding of the universe.

The result, physicists say, suggests that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science.

The particle célèbre is the muon, which is akin to an electron but far heavier, and is an integral element of the cosmos. Dr. Polly and his colleagues — an international team of 200 physicists from seven countries — found that muons did not behave as predicted when shot through an intense magnetic field at Fermilab.

“This is strong evidence that the muon is sensitive to something that is not in our best theory,” said Renee Fatemi, a physicist at the University of Kentucky.

At a virtual seminar and news conference on Wednesday, Dr. Polly pointed to a graph displaying white space where the Fermilab findings deviated from the theoretical prediction. “We can say with fairly high confidence, there must be something contributing to this white space,”

“Today is an extraordinary day, long awaited not only by us but by the whole international physics community,” Graziano Venanzoni, a spokesman for the collaboration and a physicist at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, said in a statement issued by Fermilab. The results are also being published in a set of papers submitted to several peer-reviewed journals."

 

A bit late for April Fools?

The Nano-Diamond Battery (NDB) — Is It Too Good To Be True?

We have so many electronic devices that run on a battery. It requires recharging at least once a day when in constant use. What if a battery that doesn’t require charging were invented? That would sound too good to be true, but it might be possible. That is the claim made by NDB about a new battery technology that utilizes nuclear waste material to generate electrons for thousands of years.

The company has not yet invented the product, in fact the battery they describe does not yet exist in 2020. They are going to develop it using their own proof-of-concept after raising the funds. Their goal is to build a universal life-long self-charging green battery, for use with electric cars and other electronic devices. This could be disruptive, but it is best to look further into how such a battery is even possible or not possible at all.

https://medium.com/0xmachina/the-nano-diamond-battery-ndb-too-good-to-be-true-548066508c49

 

The new research will take time to mature and become a reality.

I imagine that the companies already existing in the space will likely just license the technology and adapt it to their existing products and services.

 

People add by default even when subtraction makes more sense

This tendency to think more is better could underlie modern-day excesses, experts say

Picture a bridge made of Legos. One side has three support pieces, the other two. How would you stabilize the bridge?

Most people would add a piece so that there are three supports on each side, a new study suggests. But why not remove a piece so that each side has two supports instead? It turns out that getting people to subtract — whether a Lego block, ingredients in a recipe or words in an essay — requires reminders and rewards, researchers report April 7 in Nature.



This default to addition isn’t limited to assembling blocks, cooking and writing. Rather, thinking in pluses instead of minuses could well contribute to modern-day excesses such as cluttered homes, institutional red tape and even an overburdened planet, says behavioral scientist Benjamin Converse of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “We’re missing an entire class of solutions.”

He and his colleagues first observed the behavior when they asked 1,585 study participants to tackle eight puzzles and problems that could be solved by adding or removing some things. For example, one puzzle required shading or erasing squares on a grid to make a pattern symmetric. In another, individuals could add or subtract items on a travel itinerary for the optimal experience. Across all experiments, the vast majority of participants chose addition over subtraction. For instance, out of 94 participants who completed the grid task, 73 added squares, 18 subtracted squares and another three simply reworked the original number of squares.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y

 

Thanks. A very interesting study that I'm going to look into.

I guess our brains are hardwired to add.

I'm not a good writer, but have done quite a lot of editing over the years, and it's really important to have someone else (an editor) cut out the superfluous chaff and reduce information and concepts to their core basics.