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!

 

[Sutruk]

Just a follow-up to our discussion.

I was thinking pines and gums that only live for a few hundred years.

I spoke with my friend this week who has been working in the plant-nursery and arborist field for the last 35-years.

His suggestion is that we plant long-living trees like sequoia - trees that live for thousands of years, so that we can be sure the carbon is trapped for that amount of time

The sequoia sounds great, it's such an amazing tree. But it won't work everywhere, as every forest has its own climate conditions. Whatever is the tree, it will help to catch the CO2 from the atmosphere and will give O2 in exchange. And all that without any external effort or maintenance.
The invention to catch CO2 from the atmosphere was already invented millions of years ago, and those are the trees.

 

[Sutruk]

How a tiny spider uses silk to lift prey 50 times its own weight

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tiny-spider-uses-silk-lift-prey-50-times-its-own-weight-video

"A family of spiders can catch prey many times their own weight by hitching silk lines to their quarry and hoisting the meaty prize up into the air.

Tangle web spiders, in the Theridiidae family, are masters of using silk to amplify muscle power. Their webs are “a messy tangle,” says Gabriele Greco, who studies biological materials at the University of Trento in Italy. Silk strands slant and crisscross in a cobwebby scribble."

 

[Sutruk]

Empty seas: Oceanic shark populations dropped 71 percent since 1970

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/env...k-populations-dropped-71-percent-1970-rcna243

"Scientists have known for decades that individual shark species are declining, but a new study drawing on 57 global datasets underscores just how dramatically worldwide populations have collapsed in the past half century.

Globally, the abundance of oceanic sharks and rays dropped more than 70 percent between 1970 and 2018, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

And 24 of the 31 species of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction, while three species — oceanic whitetip sharks, scalloped hammerhead sharks and great hammerhead sharks — are considered critically endangered."

 

[CraigD]

Square Kilometre Array: 'Lift-off' for world's biggest telescope

One of the grand scientific projects of the 21st Century is 'Go!'.

The first council meeting of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory has actioned plans that will lead to the biggest telescope on Earth being assembled over the coming decade.

Member states approved a thousand pages of documents covering everything from the power to open a bank account to engaging with industrial contractors.

The SKA telescope will comprise a vast formation of radio receivers.

These will be positioned across South Africa and Australia.

The array's resolution and sensitivity, allied to prodigious computing support, will enable astronomers to address some of the most fundamental questions in astrophysics today.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55933958

 

[CraigD]

We’re more like primitive fishes than once believed
People traditionally think that lungs and limbs are key innovations that came with the vertebrate transition from water to land. But in fact, the genetic basis of air-breathing and limb movement was already established in our fish ancestor 50 million years earlier. This, according to a recent genome mapping of primitive fish conducted by the University of Copenhagen, among others. The new study changes our understanding of a key milestone in our own evolutionary history

https://www.miragenews.com/were-more-like-primitive-fishes-than-once-510025/

 

[koolishman]

50 years ago, the Apollo 14 astronaut hit a golf ball that traveled roughly 40 yards.

Remastered images reveal how far Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the Moon

Fifty years ago this week, NASA astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. made space history when he took a few golf swings on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission, successfully hitting two golf balls across the lunar surface. Space enthusiasts have debated for decades just how far that second ball traveled. It seems we now have an answer, thanks to the efforts of imaging specialist Andy Saunders, who digitally enhanced archival images from that mission and used them to estimate the final resting spots of the golf balls.

 

[koolishman]

Arctic Ocean was once a tub of fresh water covered with a half-mile of ice

At at least two points in history, the Arctic was cut off from other oceans.

The Arctic Ocean was once a pool of fresh water capped with an ice shelf half as thick as the Grand Canyon is deep.

If that's hard to envision, don't despair. Scientists were surprised at the discovery, published Wednesday (Feb. 3) in the journal Nature, as well. The trick to envisioning this odd arrangement is to think about the relationship between ice sheets and the ocean. When ice sheets melt, they dump water into the ocean, raising the sea level. But when ice sheets grow, as they have during Earth's glacial periods, sea level drops.

Greenland, Iceland, and northern Europe and Siberia acting as the rim of a bowl containing the Arctic. (Ice itself could have further restricted circulation.) Land and sea alike were overlain with an ice sheet 2,952 feet (900 meters) thick.

 

[koolishman]

How elephants evolved to become big and cancer-resistant

A study shows that elephants possess a large toolbox of genes for evading cancer, and suggests that evolution of tumor suppression capabilities contributed to the development of big bodies.

 

[koolishman]

Deep Vision: Near-Infrared Imaging and Machine Learning Can Identify Hidden Tumors

Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging combined with machine learning can visualize tumors in deep tissue and covered by a mucosal layer, scientists show

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors are tumors of the digestive tract that grow underneath the mucus layer covering our organs. Because they are deep inside the tissue, these "submucosal tumors" are difficult to detect and diagnose, even with a biopsy. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a novel minimally invasive and accurate method using infrared imaging and machine learning to distinguish between normal tissue and tumor areas. This technique has a strong potential for widespread clinical use.

 

[Technical Support]

Wow, This thread is very informative and I'm going to bookmark it for further reading, really interesting

 

[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.