Science News

I have read 2 articles on when humanity will end and they both said that humanity will end in the year 2100 .

A nonsensical paper generated by iOS autocomplete has been accepted by an international conference on atomic and nuclear physics in Atlanta, Georgia.They must have considered gobbledegook to be as impressive as their other entries. Grauniad newspaper

Elon musk recently revealed his plan to colonize mars. Personally I really want his plan to be possible and to be completely started by the time I get to my mid thirties. What are your thoughts on his plan? Do you think it could work, do you think it will be soon, and do you think anyone would want to go?

This youtube SciShow, Could Life be Older than Earth, gives a tiny bit of evidence that the panspermia seeded life on Earth. Alexi Sharov and Richard Gordon wrote Life Before Earth that is the basis of this youtube video. The paper abstract from arXiv.org (Cornell University Library) follows: Prior to hearing this evidence for panspermia, I thought it to be unlikely, but now it seems most probable. Is it possible the Mars sized body that hit Earth and created the Moon is the rogue planet that originally spawned life, or is a more complex chain of events more likely. Will we ever be able to simulate the chain of events to find the/a Mother planet of life that may…

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane, J. Michael Kosterlitz Share this: 0 English English (pdf) Swedish Swedish (pdf) The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 with one half toDavid J. Thouless University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA and the other half to F. Duncan M. Haldane Princeton University, NJ, USA and J. Michael Kosterlitz Brown University, Providence, RI, USA "for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter” https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2016/press.html Shame abou…

Mr. Yoshinori Ohsumi will receive the Nobel Prize in Medical Science 2016 for his great achievement of discovering and understanding the process of autophagy. Autophagy is the body's internal recycling process by which scrap cell parts are captured and the useful parts are utilized to generate energy. Ohsumi has been successful in explaining in detail how this process works. He reported that he was a bit shocked when he got the phone call from the Noble Prize Committee. Further reading : www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/03/yoshinori-ohsumi-wins-nobel-prize-in-medicine

Prior to the fire ant invasion, we had other kinds of ants, including carpenter ants, which ate holes in the house. Since the fire ants arrived, I've not seen any carpenter ants in more than a decade, and few others species of ant as well. Anyone else notice changes from fire ants that may be beneficial? While the lack of carpenter ants prevents damage to my house, the decay rate of fallen trees and branches is slower, I suspect, which may slow CO2 being released into the atmosphere and lessen global warming.

Interesting sudy... "Potential voters who see the nation as being in dire economic straits view a presidential candidate as more “presidential” when he or she uses high-intensity, emotional language, a new study suggests" http://neurosciencenews.com/political-language-psychology-4925/ Incidently, this is exactly how the parliament & presidential campains were ran by the right wing party in Poland earlier this year. They were able to convince many of the voters that the nation is in terrible condition and built their entire campain of emotional, high intensity language on that notion. They won both the parliamnet and the presidential elections by quite a mar…

Here is a link to an abstract of article published by Physical Review Letters on this very subject. Apologies, I do not have a link to the full article outside of University access. According to the abstract, "Including all degrees of freedom simultaneously for the first time, anisotropic expansion of the Universe is strongly disfavored, with odds of 121 000:1 against." Enjoy!

Hi, Not sure which is the best forum to ask here so I have placed in Science News. I am looking for some sort of digital microscope for my son that is easy transport and provides reasonable quality images and accuracy. He has an iphone and I found a website that sells a range of microscope parts and microscope kits and discovered thay sell an iphone adapter that clips on somehow and turns your iphone into a microscope. Is this a toy or does it actually work well as a microscope? the website is call proscope The digital microscope iphone adapter I am looking to buy is http://proscopedigital.com/product/digital-microscope-kit-iphone-6-plus/ I would appre…

Interesting work being done around this neutrino experiment with the US Department of Energy: url link deleted

Twenty four members of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Leicester - the great majority of the members of the department - have been informed that their post is at risk of redundancy, and will have to reapply for their positions by the end of September. Find out more and sign the petition http://speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/no-cuts-no-confidence-at-university-of-leicester/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/largest-structure-in-universe-discovered/ I stumbled across this today and thought to myself, didnt i hear about this a while ago...and after a bit of searching yes the original story was reported a year ago by royal astronomical society: https://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2693-5-billion-light-years-across-the-largest-feature-in-the-universe Has any headway been made on this particular discovery? Sorry but after reading the original article a few times over, i cannot get over this line: Most current models indicate that the structure of the cosmos is uniform on the largest scales. This ‘Cosmological Principle’ i…

My edits: Lithium and during charging. If I understand this research correctly, the number of charges on lithium batteries can be increased and their volume and weight can be reduced by half, provided this research can be used in mass produced batteries. Unfortunately, lithium is relative rare, and increased volume will probably result in higher bulk Li prices.

This Russian experiment resulted in domesticated foxes that the researchers sell for pets. I believe their claim to have replicated dog domestication must be exaggerated, because 50 yr evolution can't equal thousands of yr, given similar lifespans. It seems improbable that dog evolution occurred in 50 yr and stopped. I'm biologically challenged, so there may be additional variables. I don't know how long it has taken to develop GMO organisms, but I believe the process speeds evolution. That evolution may work quickly has implications regarding climate change. I'd guess that short lived organisms such as microbes and other organisms with shorter generations may adapt …

That half billion cores can share a single memory, which a memory fetch to be shared among all those processors; thereby, decreasing total memory fetches and power requirements while improving distributed processing performance. This kind of optimization improves data center cloud performance, and should work well with many common applications and deep learning AI.

Edible dormice: High food availability slows down cell aging http://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/en/infoservice/presseinformation/presseinformationen-2016/edible-dormice-high-food-availability-slows-down-cell-aging/ This is worth reading and rechecking by other researchers, and with different kind animals. More scientific paper http://jeb.biologists.org/content/219/16/2469 Best Regards!

I wonder what improvement is typical. Ironically, this technology has appeared as gasoline engines are being replaced by electric motors.

The journal Science reports scientist have found the oldest known fossil of life in the rocks of Greenland. At 3.7 billion years these stromatolite fossils predate the previously known Australian stromatolite fossils by 300 million years. Other than zircon crystals at 4.1 billion years, according to the article, these fossils are the earliest evidence of complex planetary life. Enjoy!

Farmbot is fashioned after a 3D printer, except its X and Y travel is larger than a typical 3D printer and the print head has been replaced with a manipulator that plants seeds, weeds, and uses various tools to mind your garden. It plants seeds, weeds, tests soil moisture, and waters, which are time consuming activities. It does not manage pests or harvest, so there is room for improvement. Return on Investment is supposed to be 3 to 5 years. I suspect further development will reduce the ROI, and farm and garden automation will become commonplace. However, IMO it needs to be able to harvest produce before its use is widespread; it only does the easy things so far.

The idea is fantastic, and may create controversy. I imagine Hollywood will try to capitalize on this research with a renewal of zombie movies. I can't think of any ethical reasons not to do the research (i.e., try to revive the 20 patients). On the other hand, if revived patients do not recover memories and must be trained as an infant, it may be best to let brain dead people die, because affected families might be stressed beyond their ability to cope. Hope I never have to make a decision about a brain dead person.

Scientists have discovered a planet that appears to be similar to Earth circling the star closest to the sun, potentially a major step in the quest to find out if life exists elsewhere in the universe, research published on Wednesday showed. The relative proximity of the planet, known as Proxima b, gives scientists a better chance to eventually capture an image of it, to help them establish whether it has an atmosphere and water, which is believed to be necessary for life. Future studies may reveal if any atmosphere contains tell-tale chemicals of biological life, such as methane, according to a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Nature... The planet, loc…

According to this MSN article, MIT researchers have found a way to edit a CRISPR gene to record histories in human DNA. Though not necessarily for storing our medical history, the article suggests this technique could have uses in cancer related studies. The article also has a link to the MIT announcement. Enjoy!

Prepare for a new age of secure communication. According to this New York Times article on MSN, China has launched the first--that we know of--quantum satellite, which uses entangled photons to transmit information. The article says that the current transmission rate is glacial and compared the current status of this technology to that of the telegraph. The article contains links to other announcements about the launch and the nature of the technology. Enjoy!

BBC Report " New 6th Mass Extinction Event " now underway . The following link will identify this report . To quote this report :- " The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded, and humans could be among the first casualties. The report, led by the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley, said vertebrates were disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal. The findings echo those in a report published by Duke University last year. One of the new study's authors said: "We are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event." Apparently it is already underway . " link :- http://www.bb…