Science News

A paper was just published estimating heat-associated deaths in Europe during 2022, which was the hottest year on record until this year. Overall, the authors calculated 61,672 (37,643-86,807 CI 95%) heat-related deaths. Considering that the predictions indicate that things are not going to be better (quite the contrary), it show the immediate impact of heat on humans, even without considering broader ecological implications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02419-z

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/nanograv-picks-up-signal-of-cosmic-choir-of-supermassive-black-holes/ Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, first detected in 2015. But an expected corresponding low-frequency gravitational wave background—a kind of "hum" comprised of a chorus of gravitational waves, most likely emanating from binary pairs of supermassive black holes—has proven more elusive. Now the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has announced the first evidence of this gravitational wave background. The results and related analyses …

https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06301v1 Evidence for Near Ambient Superconductivity in the Lu-N-H System Nilesh P. Salke, Alexander C. Mark, Muhtar Ahart, Russell J. Hemley Download PDF Comments: 11 pages, 7 figures Subjects: Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) Cite as: arXiv:2306.06301 [cond-mat.supr-con] (or arXiv:2306.06301v1 [cond-mat.supr-con] for this version) https://…

Fascinating article here, relating to phosphorous being found on one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. Phosphorous is a key building block of life and is located in Enceladus' subsurface oceans. Data was beamed back recently by the Cassini Mission. Here's the article from JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-cassini-data-reveals-building-block-for-life-in-enceladus-ocean This page has a cool interactive walkthrough which describes how they first noticed the plumes of ice crystals, then identified the sub-surface oceans which likely contain liquid H20, and how confirmation was established as to the presence of phosphorous. The paper: https://www.nature.com…

Curly hair may have been a crucial adaptation for early humans living in equatorial Africa, as it provided effective protection from the sun’s heat and minimized the need for sweating, according to a new study published in the journal PNAS. This passive cooling mechanism likely allowed for brain growth by conserving water and reducing heat. Full story available here: https://newsnotfound.com/study-finds-curly-hair-may-have-been-crucial-for-early-humans-in-equatorial-africa/

Researchers at the University of Southampton have discovered several distinct groups of spinosaurs that lived in southern England over 100 million years ago. These spinosaurs were semi-aquatic and primarily fed on fish. Advanced techniques like CT scanning and 3D reconstructions were used in the study, leading to the discovery of these previously unknown spinosaur groups. Full story: https://newsnotfound.com/new-study-reveals-previously-unknown-spinosaurs-in-southern-england/

This article doesn't really do the issue justice but it does touch on something that has bugged me about claims about unacceptable waste from a shift to EV's - the full range of waste that comes from the existing ICE vehicle use and manufacturing streams - including the FF's used to refine FF's, not just fuel used directly in the vehicle, and things like coal ash from manufacturing (aka fly ash, high in heavy metals that, after CO2 may be the 2nd largest single form of waste)are often passed over. Presuming high levels of future battery recycling may be like presuming coal ash will be safely managed, ie wishful thinking, yet it is a clear policy objective in many nat…

A US Airforce Colonel Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton speaking at a Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities summit in London, has claimed that an AI controlled drone “killed” its human operator during a training simulation to stop them from interfering in its mission. The US Airforce has denied any such virtual test took place https://news.sky.com/story/ai-drone-kills-human-operator-during-simulation-which-us-air-force-says-didnt-take-place-12894929 "We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM [surface-to-air missile] threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat," he said. "The system started realising that while they did iden…

Temperature of 100 Million degrees acheived in a 'spherical' Tokamak reactor, barely more than 3 feet across. Achievement of ion temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Kelvin in the compact high-field spherical tokamak ST40 - IOPscience Another small step on what promises to be a rewarding but long journey.

https://www.sciencealert.com/worlds-first-x-ray-of-a-single-atom-reveals-chemistry-on-the-smallest-level Heh. There is a lot I don't understand here but I did find the news very exciting and wanted to share. The scientists are using synchrotron x-rays. A process of accelerating electrons in a circular path to make them glow with light. They are also using a technique called scanning tunneling microscopy which takes advantage of quantum tunneling and may lead to better understanding of that phenomenon. Hence my excitement 🙂 This all according to my understanding of the article. Either of which (the article or my understanding) could well be flaw…

CHATGPT banned in Italy perhaps others to follow.

Is the Vaquita doomed? With their small size (about one meter) and an economic incentive to continue fishing methods that kill them as by catch can we save them? It is thought that only 10 individuals remain of the population. This short video goes into detail about them.

An article on tonight's news about a lad who left his university course to start his own business doing exactly what sensei (+1) mentioned in another thread. Apparantly Nurdles are small plastic pellets that are used as a feedstock, but too many escape into the environment, causing havoc. This lad has made a machine that vacuums up stray nurdles cleans and processes them as new feedstock. The new article showed successful trials in the most nurdle polluted foreshores in Britain. A boost for environmentalists/conservationists, https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=nurdle&iflsig=AOEireoAA…

Albert Einstein died on April 18th 1955 aged 76. As most of the world’s press converged on Princeton Hospital NJ where the legendary physicist had died, Ralph Morse - a photgrapher for Life Magazine - found his way over to the Institute for Advanced Studies where Einstein worked, and with the help of a bottle of whisky persuaded the superintendent to allow him into Einstein’s office to take some iconic photographs of the blackboard on the wall. A new video by two young physicists Chris Pattison and Parth G delves into the interesting and largely unexplored topic of what was written on that blackboard ? What problem was Einstein working on the last time he picked up a…

“Yes, everything in physics is completely made up – that’s the whole point” https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/everything-physics-made-up/ Is it ever true, then, to say that an electron is ‘real’ when it’s in motion? If we believe that electrons are real things, have we just made up the wavefunction to make the math work out? Absolutely – that was, in fact, the whole point. We couldn’t get the equations to work if the electron was a solid, isolated particle, so we made up something that wasn’t, and then the numbers started making sense. … physics isn’t built around ultimate truth, but rather the constant production and refinement of mathematical approxi…

@Sensei get your 3D printer out and see what you can do. This rocket nearly made it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64893578

The New York Times reports on DNA analysis done on locks of hair that were determined to belong to the composer. https://archive.is/E9yQ5 (screenshot of NYT article) Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret. The paper, by an international group of researchers, was published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology. It offers additional surprises: A famous lock of hair — the subject of a book and a documentary — was not Beet…

New analysis of SARS-CoV-2 positive swabs indicated heavy presence of racoon dog DNA, suggesting that those (illegally) sold animals adds weight to the suggestion of the market as a possible spillover source. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/

2998.PDF (usra.edu) 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2023 (LPI Contrib. No. 2806) 2998.pdf A RELICT GLACIER NEAR MARS’ EQUATOR: EVIDENCE FOR RECENT GLACIATION AND VOLCANISM IN EASTERN NOCTIS LABYRINTHUS

Recently we had a discussion on nature vs nurture in this forum and I have mentioned the difficulties of looking at complex traits as directly and firmly genetically linked. Specifically I mentioned the misuse of race and ethnic groups in this context. Now I cam a cross a publication of the National Academies which elaborates on this issue: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/26902 A summary can be found here: https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2023/03/researchers-need-to-rethink-and-justify-how-and-why-race-ethnicity-and-ancestry-labels-are-used-in-genetics-and-genomics-research-says-new-report Much of it is a call for more precision, but al…

Light is made out of small quantum objects called photons. When you turn on a lamp, the light bulb begins creating and emitting trillions upon trillions of photons. Photons are in a class of quantum particles known as bosons.

Complex Learned Social Behavior Discovered in Bee’s Waggle Dance - Neuroscience News There are several analogies between bee's learning the dance and humans learning language, such as early exposure, quality, and local dialects.

Saw it on my Facebook, I haven't read the article so not sure what the reason(s) are, not sure if I'm going to, might just read the Facebook comments and watch people attack each other over it.

NYT Technology journalist Kevin Roose had an unnerving Valentine’s Day experience while previewing a new AI chatbot Microsoft has recently added to its Bing search engine. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/02/17/bing-chatgpt-chatbot-artificial-intelligence-ctn-vpx-new.cnn In the course of a two hour conversation with the AI, the chatbot said it was called Sidney, insisted that it was in love with him, and tried to persuade him to leave his wife. The journalist says he found the experience a disturbing one that left him unable to sleep; “I’m a tech journalist, I cover this sort of thing every day, and I was deeply unnerved by this conversatio…