Science News

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…

This paper suggests some very interesting possibilities about life on other planets. Dense hydrogen atmospheres might support life on super Earth type planets! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284464/ Does this suggest that fire could take place? Would this indicate that hydrogen breathing life forms on super earths dominated by hydrogen might be more common than oxygen dominated terrestrial planets? If so what could this indicate for exo life and our search for such life?

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/string-theory-co-founder-sub-atomic-particles-are-evidence-0 Very intriguing stuff.

Elon Musk has a fantastic idea for putting people on Mars, in a ship SpaceX intends to design and build big enough to carry 100 people from Earth and Mars, and back if necessary. The attached video was not produced by SpaceX; rather, by an individual who studied statements by Musk and other SpaceX officials, and came up with the following: The booster for the MCT will be 10-15 meters in diameter and about 200 feet tall. We are living in an era of huge projects: extremely large optical telescopes, a square kilometer of radio telescope antenna, the Mars Colonial Transporter, and super sized cities. Musk has stated the purpose of SpaceX is to colonize Mars wit…

According to this MSN article, the rate of women dying during childbirth has risen from 7.2 per 100,000 birth in 1987 to 15.9 in 2013. This article says this increase is occurring at a rate higher than any other developed nation. The stated primary causes of this increasing mortality rate are cardiovascular and chronic diseases such as diabetes, which are likely the afflictions of an increasingly unhealthy diet among American women.

According to this Washington Post article, Scientific World Journal has uncovered an imposter amongst its reviewers . Posing as French engineering professor Xavier Delorme, the imposter managed to review or edit three papers before the caper was uncovered. This, according to the article, comes on the heels of a 2014 exposure of peer-review fraud involving some 60 papers. Shocking!

While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to deep space, including Mars. The space station also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space and how to protect astronaut health. video news: url deleted

http://www.nybg.org/exhibitions/2016/corpse-flower.php#diva Live streaming of the opening of the New York Botanical Gardens Corpse flower. First time they have had one bloom for 80 years - takes at least 10 years to bloom and lasts a day or so

The Atlas Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider has released data of a trillion or so proton proton collisions. You can download/access the 11 gigabytes of information at the CERN open data portal Basically you get the info from this when it was running at 8 terraelectronvolts So all the Speculators we get posting new models in the Speculations Forum can now empirically check their wacky ideas for the Higgs, Dark Matter, or new substructures beneath the Standard Model - and make sure the data back them up

Announced July 20th, researchers have discovered 97 previously unknown cortical regions, which brings our total from 83 to 180 per hemisphere. This CNN article contains an account of the research, its discoveries, and a link to the paper published in the journal Nature. Enjoy!

This is interesting, but I particularly like the "infographic" they used. You know, just in case you are not sure what 1.5m is... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36912700

They studied brains of macaque and mouse and found interconnections statically consistent with EDR. If their hypothesis is true, elephants and toothed whales, including dolphins and orca, must have mental problems often. If so, have these mental problems been reported? I've not heard of it. Can it be true without us knowing? We have minimal contact with whales, but elephants and people have lived and worked together in the East for a very long time; the people who train and work with elephants have not reported such things, AFAIK.

Reduce your carbon footprint and improve your health at the same time.

Last May in Portugal during four days only renewables were used to produce electricity. This is a first in a country that uses 70 percent of renewable sources annually. Sorry source only in portuguese http://shifter.pt/2016/05/durante-4-dias-portugal-so-consumiu-energia-renovavel/

I found a report of this AI chatbot on YouTube. It is a free service for people in New York and London, which advises a person on how to fight traffic tickets. It asks questions about your ticket and if it takes a case has a 64% success rate, and saved people over $4M. The person who developed this service intends to expand its services to other cities. It was launched in 2015 by a 19 year old. This means AI chatbots are relatively easy to develop, and I expect we will see a rapid increase in sophistication and a plethora of chatbot applications.

IDK how sensitive current cameras are in telescopes, but it if this one is better, then images can be captured faster, making more time for other observations, or fainter objects can be captured with long times, making it possible to see things that cannot currently be seen. Since the time photons arrive is captured, will that change the nature of optical interferometry? Will it make arrays of smaller telescopes practical, instead of building massive telescopes like the ELT?

Is this a crack in the wall called The Theory of Everything?

Real live monkeys and a dolly bird. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/36767373