Science News

By Curiosity rover, 7May2022 Also at ---> https://www.facebook.com/Mars360VR/photos/552593076237538

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-judge-might-overturn-guilty-verdict-against-u-s-scientist-hiding-china-ties Arrested in June 2019, Tao was the first academic scientist prosecuted under the China Initiative, a controversial program begun in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump that was aimed at rooting out economic espionage. However, only two of some two dozen academics charged under the initiative were ever prosecuted for espionage-related offenses; the others were generally charged with failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions to U.S. funding agencies. U.S. universities once encouraged interactions with Chinese institutions, notes German,…

"Until May 12 rolls around, we won't know with any certainty what exactly it is that the NSF is going to announce." The US National Science Foundation Has 'Groundbreaking' News About The Milky Way (slashgear.com)

The first thing that has attracted my attention to this newly posted study was the long list of authors. 165 authors! From 103 different institutions! From dozens different countries! When you see what they did, you understand, why it is so. Big job. Here is quite detailed summary: The transitions from foraging to farming and later to pastoralism in Stone Age Eurasia (c. 11- 3 thousand years before present, BP) represent some of the most dramatic lifestyle changes in human evolution. We sequenced 317 genomes of primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals from across Eurasia combined with radiocarbon dates, stable isotope data, and pollen records. Genome imputation…

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-patients-hospitalization-covid-fully-recovered.html Study of 2,000 patients after hospitalization with COVID-19 shows only around 1 in 4 feel fully recovered after 1 year by European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases A new UK study of more than 2,000 patients after hospitalization with COVID-19 presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID 2022, Lisbon 23-26), and published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine shows that, one year after having COVID-19, only around one in four patients feel fully well again. The study is led by Professor Chris…

In this short paper renowned Harvard astrophysicist Abraham Loeb describes with "back of envelope calculation" a possible effect of a gravitational wave originated by a merger of two supermassive black holes in the center of Milky Way galaxy. Such merger would cause a measurable, up to 1 mm permanent increase of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It would happen because the gravitational attraction between the two bodies would weaken during the time that takes for the wave to cover the distance between them, which is about 1 s. [2205.02746] Two Novel Observational Tests of General Relativity (arxiv.org)

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-bilayer-graphene-two-universe-cosmological.html Bilayer graphene inspires two-universe cosmological model: Physicists sometimes come up with crazy stories that sound like science fiction. Some turn out to be true, like how the curvature of space and time described by Einstein was eventually borne out by astronomical measurements. Others linger on as mere possibilities or mathematical curiosities. In a new paper in Physical Review Research, JQI Fellow Victor Galitski and JQI graduate student Alireza Parhizkar have explored the imaginative possibility that our reality is only one half of a pair of interacting worlds. Their mathem…

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvm5b/scientists-discover-method-to-break-down-plastic-in-one-week-not-centuries If this is scalable, it could be a game-changer. Of course, we still need to get the plastic waste into recycle bins. So it would help if the enzyme also acted rapidly on human stupidity and laziness.

A new genetic study involving more than 2,000 dogs and 200,000 survey answers from dog owners has revealed that a dog's breed is a poor predictor of behavior on its own. The first-of-its-kind, peer-reviewed study—conducted by professors, students and researchers at University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School—is set to appear this month in the journal Science. The major findings go against the popular beliefs that breed plays a role in how aggressive, obedient or affectionate a dog can be. Those stereotypes can prompt breed-specific legislation, insurance restrictions and home bans for some dog breeds, including pit bulls and German Shepherds. more at li…

This new paper suggests an interesting way of clarifying, unifying, and generalizing notions of entropy from Clausius, Boltzmann, and Shannon, using a new concept of Information Reference Frame with a corresponding "observer", analogous to reference frames, with Bobs and Alices in other areas of science: [2103.16913] Information form of the second law of thermodynamics (arxiv.org)

In this study the authors found a significant correlation: global strong seismic activity followed about two weeks after detection of variations in cosmic rays. Causal connection is not clear, but the authors suggest either effects of massive movements of the liquid iron in the Earth core, or some effects of the Sun. They have noticed some additional correlations and periodicity, but these need more data. [2204.12310] Observation of large scale precursor correlations between cosmic rays and earthquakes (arxiv.org)

It is interesting that finds like this still happen, in a long and densely populated place, in an agricultural field rather than under some old construction... Plus, I drove through Khan Younis 40 years ago... Palestinian farmer finds 4,500-year-old statue of a goddess while working his land - CNN Style

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-blueprint-life-asteroids.html Using new analyses, scientists have just found the last two of the five informational units of DNA and RNA that had yet to be discovered in samples from meteorites. While it is unlikely that DNA could be formed in a meteorite, this discovery demonstrates that these genetic parts are available for delivery and could have contributed to the development of the instructional molecules on early Earth. The discovery, by an international team with NASA researchers, gives more evidence that chemical reactions in asteroids can make some of life's ingredients, which could have been delivered to ancient Earth by meteor…

A laser weapon capable of shooting down flying drones has been deployed for the very first time by the US Navy, though only for demonstration purposes. Until now, many questions had lingered over whether laser-based weaponry would ever become an effective tool in modern warfare, some of which have now been answered by official footage of the event. Installed aboard the USS Portland, the 150-kilowatt-class Technology Maturation Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD) was used to successfully disable an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on May 16, 2020, in what was the first use of a high-energy class solid-state laser weapon. "By conducting advanced at-sea tests agai…

Let me be the first to announce the birth of a new science. Lee Smolin et al. explain it in a new paper, Biocosmology: Towards the birth of a new science.

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-space-blocs-future-international-cooperation.html Space Blocs: The future of international cooperation in space is splitting along lines of power on Earth: Even during times of conflict on the ground, space has historically been an arena of collaboration among nations. But trends in the past decade suggest that the nature of cooperation in space is shifting, and fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted these changes. 'm an international relations scholar who studies power distributions in space—who the main players are, what capabilities they possess and whom they decide to cooperate with. Some scholars predict…

On the Origin of Hallucinations in Conversational Models: Is it the Datasets or the Models? (2204.07931.pdf (arxiv.org)) In knowledge-based conversational AI systems, "hallucinations" are responses which are factually invalid, fully or partially. It appears that AI does it a lot. This study investigated where these hallucinations come from. As it turns out, the big source is in the databases used to train these AI systems. On average, the responses, on which the systems are trained, contain about 20% factual information, while the rest is hallucinations (~65%), uncooperative (~5%), or uninformative (~10%). On top of this, it turns out that the systems thems…

May have detected dark energy. https://www.inverse.com/science/why-scientists-might-have-detected-dark-energy-on-earth Hypothesized by physicists to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe, dark energy has never been directly observed or measured. Instead, scientists can only make inferences about it from its effects on the space and matter we can see. What’s new — In the paper, the researchers claim that hints of dark energy were detected at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy during an experiment designed to detect dark matter.

https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/26616/perseverance-looks-toward-santa-cruz/ February 14, 2022 Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory performed tests on rocks such as this one to understand why the first attempt by the agency’s Perseverance rover resulted in a powderized sample. A duplicate of the rover’s drill attempted to create cores from crumbly rocks. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission…

https://www.livescience.com/first-interstellar-object-detected An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal By Brandon Specktor published about 9 hours ago Classified data prevented scientists from verifying their discovery for 3 years. A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo(opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC). The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-hubble-distant-star-distance-billion.html Closeup of the region on the sky, 1/250 of a degree across, where the gravity of a foreground cluster of galaxies magnifies the distant background star—nicknamed Earendil—thousands of times. Credit: NASA/ESA/Brian Welch (JHU)/Dan Coe (STScI)/Alyssa Pagan (STScI). With a fortuitous lineup of a massive cluster of galaxies, astronomers discovered a single star across most of the entire observable Universe. This is the farthest detection of a single star ever. The star may be up to 500 times more massive than the Sun. The discovery has been published today in the journal Nature. Gazin…

If I dont brush my teeth, will I die? Of course not. I THINK therefore I am, not I BRUSH therefore I bruh. The logic is impeccable. The argument against brushing teeth is thus demonstrated.

https://newatlas.com/energy/hb11-laser-fusion-demonstration/ Australian company HB11 says it's well on the way to nuclear fusion energy generation without the radioactive fuels or super-high temperatures kuligssen/Depositphotos HB11 is approaching nuclear fusion from an entirely new angle, using high power, high precision lasers instead of hundred-million-degree temperatures to start the reaction. Its first demo has produced 10 times more fusion reactions than expected, and the company says it's now "the only commercial entity to achieve fusion so far," making it "the global frontrunner in the race to commercialize the holy grail of clean energy." …

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-page-red-climate.html Accelerating global warming is driving a rising tide of impacts that could cause profound human misery and ecological disaster, and there is only one way to avoid catastrophe: drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Spread across 10,000 pages, these are the main takeaways from a trio of UN reports on climate change published in August 2021, February 2022 and on Monday. The three tomes—each with its own roster of hundreds of authors—focus on physical science, impacts and the need to adapt, and finally how to slash carbon pollution. This will be the sixth such trilogy since the Intergovernmental Panel o…

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-spiderweb-galaxy-field-feasting-black.html Spiderweb galaxy field: Feasting black holes caught in galactic spiderweb by Chandra X-ray Center: Often, a spiderweb conjures the idea of captured prey soon to be consumed by a waiting predator. In the case of the "Spiderweb" protocluster, however, objects that lie within a giant cosmic web are feasting and growing, according to data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The Spiderweb galaxy, officially known as J1140-2629, gets its nickname from its web-like appearance in some optical light images. This likeness can be seen in the inset box where data from NASA's Hubble Space T…