Science!

[Kodos]

Thought maybe we should have a CT & Jivin-like "Science!" thread. I'll start things off with a prehistoric 6-foot sea scorpion.

YaleNews | Meet Pentecopterus, a new predator from the prehistoric seas

[cartman]

Giant sea scorpion vs. Colossal squid would make for must see TV.

[Kodos]

YaleNews | From Yale, a new sunblock that doesn’t penetrate the skin

Bring on the nano-particle sunscreen!

[albionmoonlight]

New Derivation of Pi Links Quantum Physics and Pure Math | American Institute of Physics

[Fonzie]

I never knew the Earth and I had so much in common:

Dark Matter 'Hairs' May Surround Earth

[Thomkal]

Periodic Table geeks unite:

Periodic table's seventh row finally filled as four new elements are added | Science | The Guardian

[Solecismic]

Let the great race to start the eighth row begin. We cannot fall behind other intelligent life forms in other galaxies when it comes to the laboratory realization of particles that have the structural ability to remain intact for tiny fractions of a millisecond.

As part of FOF8/2016, I intend to show the statistical effects of Ununsolecismium on the passing game. This is a ninth-row element, and only exists within the theoretical confines of one of my spreadsheets.

[Antmeister]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

Let the great race to start the eighth row begin. We cannot fall behind other intelligent life forms in other galaxies when it comes to the laboratory realization of particles that have the structural ability to remain intact for tiny fractions of a millisecond.

As part of FOF8/2016, I intend to show the statistical effects of Ununsolecismium on the passing game. This is a ninth-row element, and only exists within the theoretical confines of one of my spreadsheets.

Dammit, I have been on Facebook too much. Was looking for the like button for the Solecismic post. So instead I will quote this and just type the requisite "LOL".

[Kodos]

YaleNews | Nanogel that delivers one-two punch to cancer heads to clinical trial

Nanogel!

[AnalBumCover]

$100-Million Plan Will Send Probes to the Nearest Star - Scientific American

Nanocrafts!

[AENeuman]

Brag: My student just won bay area regional science fair and is going on to both state and international finals (in Sweden).

From what I can understand he devised way to capture and hold pond water. Through the material and shape of dig out it can basically hold most of the rain/pond water indefinably. Very good timing in our water starved state.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by AnalBumCover

$100-Million Plan Will Send Probes to the Nearest Star - Scientific American

Nanocrafts!

Crazy that with $100 million, we might have the capability to send small probes to a very very close star in only 20 years, and it will only take a generation or so to get that technology.

And that actually is really really cool and cutting edge.

Shows just how advanced pretty much all space-centered science fiction really is. Space is HUGE. And getting anywhere takes FOREVER and is really hard.

[Kodos]

YaleNews | A better way to learn if alien planets have the right stuff

[Kodos]

YaleNews | Scientists discover a dark Milky Way

[cartman]

They must not have been looking very hard. I saw that a while back.

[Kodos]

It's so dense!

[albionmoonlight]

The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance - ScienceAlert

[Kodos]

That's awesome.

[Edward64]

Interesting article.

I knew about Neanderthals but had never heard of the Denisovans.

Our ancestors mated with the mystery 'Denisovan' people – twice | New Scientist

Our ancestors mated with another species of ancient hominins, the Denisovans, on at least two occasions. The discovery suggests that Denisovans were widely across Asia, and apparently co-existed happily with modern humans, to the point of having children with them in two different parts of the ancient world.

The Denisovans were unknown until 2010, when researchers described a fragment of a girl’s finger bone found in Denisova cave in Siberia. Soon afterwards, researchers sequenced its genome from the surviving DNA. The DNA did not belong to any known hominins, such as Neanderthals, so it had to be something new.

What’s more, around 5 per cent of the DNA of some Australasians – particularly people from Papua New Guinea – is Denisovan. Humans evidently mated with Denisovans 50,000 or more years ago.

But this posed a puzzle: why were the present-day descendants of Denisovans so far from the Denisovans’ Siberian home? The simplest explanation was that Denisovans lived throughout much of Asia, including South East Asia, not just Siberia.

Sharon Browning of the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues have now found evidence of a second instance of human-Denisovan interbreeding – on the Asian mainland.

[Edward64]

This is just too weird but pretty cool.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...hes-ncna886986

BUILDING A BRAIN
Why are researchers cultivating and studying these minibrains? The reason, they say, is that these small neural lumps may reveal why Neanderthals died out and Homo sapiens went on to conquer much of the planet.
:
To investigate, Muotri and his colleagues compared the genome of Neanderthals (previously extracted from fossil bones and sequenced by other researchers) with that of modern humans. Out of 200 candidate genes that showed significant differences between the two species, the researchers decided to focus on just one: a master gene expression regulator known as NOVA1.

NOVA1 is highly expressed during neurodevelopment and has been linked to neural conditions, such as autism and schizophrenia, Muotri said. The NOVA1 gene is remarkably similar in humans and Neanderthals — just a single base pair (or pair of DNA "letters") is different between the two.
:
The minibrains can't grow larger because they aren't vascularized, meaning they don't have a blood supply. Rather, the minibrain cells (there are up to 400,000 per brain) receive nutrients by diffusion.

"It is possible that in the future we could grow a bigger organoid," Muotri said. "We are working on this by creating bio-printed artificial blood vessels inside them."
:
Human lab-grown brains are generally round, but the Neanderoids were not. Instead, the Neanderthal minibrains had elongated tubular structures that gave them a popcorn-like shape, Muotri said.

Some of the Neanderoid cells also migrated faster from the source during development, which could explain the unusual popcorn formation, he noted. [3D Images: Exploring the Human Brain]

Moreover, Muotri added that the Neanderoids didn't have as many synaptic connections, or connections between neurons, and had altered neuronal networks. These features look similar to human minibrains grown from people with autism, he said. However, it's hard to say what this similarity means, if anything, he said.

[Edward64]

Uh, I don't know if this is for real. It's incredible. Pretty damn scary and pretty damn cool if it is.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/687559...nt-permafrost/

The ancient roundworms — frozen since the era of woolly mammoths — started wriggling again in petri dishes at an institute near Moscow.

The team, who worked with geoscientists from Princeton University in the US, succeeded in coaxing the frozen worms back to life.

Their landmark report said: “We have obtained the first data demonstrating the capability of multicellular organisms for long-term cryobiosis in permafrost deposits of the Arctic".

[Kodos]

Scientists find ally in fight against brain tumors: Ebola | YaleNews

He and the study’s first author, Xue Zhang, also of Yale, used a chimeric virus containing one of gene from the Ebola virus — a glycoprotein with a mucin-line domain (MLD). In wild-type Ebola virus, the MLD plays a role in hiding Ebola from the immune system. They injected this chimeric virus into the brains of mice with glioblastoma — and found that the MLD helped selectively target and kill deadly glioblastoma brain tumors.

[albionmoonlight]

Opinion: An astrophysicist ponders what space and time really mean in the COVID-19 era - The Globe and Mail

Apparently, there is some thought now that Space and Time are emergent properties of a more fundamental structure of the universe and not fundamental properties themselves.

[Kodos]

Max Planck, the originator of quantum theory, said this:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

[Kodos]

Yale researchers develop injection to treat skin cancer | YaleNews

This is pretty cool, provided it doesn't cause an I Am Legend scenario...

For the treatment, tumors are injected with polymer-based nanoparticles carrying a chemotherapy agent. Key to the treatment’s success is that the nanoparticles are bioadhesive — that is, they bind to the tumors and remain attached long enough to kill a significant number of the cancer cells.

“When you inject our nanoparticles into a tumor, it turns out that they’re retained within that tumor very well,” said co-author Mark Saltzman, the Goizueta Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, and professor of physiology. “They accumulate and bind to the tumor matrix, so one single injection lasts for a very long time — the particles stay there and slowly release the compounds. You need that to get rid of the lesion.”

[albionmoonlight]

This seems so good that I think there's gotta be something missing from the article. An Australian company has developed a battery that holds more charge, is cheaper to make, charges 60X faster, does not rely on rare earths, and is safer to operate than batteries currently on the market.

If this is true, it will be world changing. But "If" is doing a lot of work in the previous sentence.

Developer Of Aluminum-Ion Battery Claims It Charges 60 Times Faster Than Lithium-Ion, Offering EV Range Breakthrough

[Kodos]

That sure sounds promising, although Forbes needs to get better proofreaders.

I hear that progress is being made with cold fusion too.

[albionmoonlight]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...ponge-animals/

This isn't quite as cutting edge as some of the stuff here, but is still pretty cool. Probable fossils of animals millions of years older than any previously known.

I am low-key fascinated by paleontology in large part because trying to glean any information from such a scant record really shows the limits of human ingenuity.

So many of these stories end up being like "We found that these 300,000,000 year old rocks had slightly more iron in them than we expected, so [lots and lots of science later] we are pretty sure that fish developed eyes independently of land animals"

[Edward64]

I love the old thingys stuck in amber and/or extraction of DNA. A Jurassic Park would be great (only land based, no airborne or water based dinos).

[albionmoonlight]

https://www.inverse.com/science/we-touched-the-sun

Kind of neat when you think about how many ancient people looked at the sun and thought about what it would even mean to go there.

[Kodos]

‘Gazillions’ of viruses, called phages, are our hope when antibiotics fail, Yale biologist says

Phages may be our salvation when it comes to antibiotic resistant superbugs.

According to a study in the Lancet medical journal this month, there were 1.27 million deaths worldwide caused by antibacterial-resistant infections in 2019. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 2.8 million such infections occur in the United States each year, with 35,000 people dying from them.

“The antibiotic-resistance crisis, the looming pandemic, is already here,” Turner said. “It’s just not so acute that it plays on the news much and that you hear about it enough and the problem is, once it turns the corner, which it will, to cause this high degree of mortality, then it will get more press but now is the time to figure out the alternatives like phage therapy.”

[NobodyHere]

Paralyzed man gets brain implant, immediately asks for 'beer'

[Kodos]

A new path for treating brain cancer, with a Yale-developed compound | YaleNews

Yale researchers have developed a new class of molecules that target some of the deadliest brain cancers while sparing healthy tissue along the way.

[Edward64]

I've read up and watched YT videos on Entanglement & Super Positioning. I have to "accept" because of experiments/observations but not sure I really still believe.

And still want to know the "how/why does this work".

Congrats to the Nobel winners!

[Edward64]

Think it was Brian advocating for one world (paraphrased). Don't know when it'll happen politically, but it'll happen physically in 300 million years.

(Can't seem to post the picture but look midway through article for pic of "Amasia").

https://www.popularmechanics.com/sci...upercontinent/

Scientists say the Pacific Ocean, the world’s oldest ocean, is shrinking about one inch per year. In a mere 200 to 300 million years, they claim, North America will collide with Asia, gifting us the new supercontinent of “Amasia.”

[albionmoonlight]

The electrical language of fungi

[Edward64]

One of these days, we'll wake up with MSM telling us the final days are here because a minuscule blackhole has gotten out of control and is slowly eating up the earth.

Scientists create 'baby' wormhole as sci-fi moves closer to fact | CNN

Researchers announced on Wednesday that they forged two minuscule simulated black holes – those extraordinarily dense celestial objects with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape – in a quantum computer and transmitted a message between them through what amounted to a tunnel in space-time.

It was a “baby wormhole,” according to Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu, a co-author of the research published in the journal Nature. But scientists are a long way from being able to send people or other living beings through such a portal, she said.

The researchers said no rupture of space and time was created in physical space in the experiment, though a traversable wormhole appeared to have emerged based on quantum information teleported using quantum codes on the quantum processor.

[Edward64]

And now we know why. Pretty cool but makes me wonder how come we didn't know this long ago ...

Why colds and flu viruses are more common in winter | CNN

Yet germs are present year-round — just think back to your last summer cold. So why do people get more colds, flu and now Covid-19 when it’s chilly outside?

In what researchers are calling a scientific breakthrough, scientists behind a new study may have found the biological reason we get more respiratory illnesses in winter. It turns out the cold air itself damages the immune response occurring in the nose.

“This is the first time that we have a biologic, molecular explanation regarding one factor of our innate immune response that appears to be limited by colder temperatures,” said rhinologist Dr. Zara Patel, a professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine in California. She was not involved in the new study.

In fact, reducing the temperature inside the nose by as little as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) kills nearly 50% of the billions of virus and bacteria-fighting cells in the nostrils, according to the study published Tuesday in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

[sterlingice]

They do caution in that story that it's an in vitro study - so, lab-based, and not real world results. Those bolded numbers are more like running a simulation and probably quite a bit off from what the real world is like. But they do think they've come across something mechanistically, which could be a big deal. Let's see if it can be reproduced in vivo and see what real results look like.

SI

[albionmoonlight]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-breakthrough/

On the one hand, this is on the front page of the (digital) Washington Post.

On the other hand, if you read the article, cold fusion is still at least 10 years away--which is how long away it has been for the last 50 years and counting.

So I have no idea how excited to get about this.

[sterlingice]

If it's only 10 years away, we've gotten 20 years closer in about 50 years. It seems to me that it's always been 30 years away. So maybe in another 30 years, it'll be 5 years away.

(And then Exxon Mobil can buy it up to "study it" and it will never see the light of day)

SI

[Kodos]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/s...smid=share-url

NY Times also reporting a breakthrough.

Scientists at a federal nuclear weapons facility have made a potentially significant advance in fusion research that could lead to a source of bountiful energy in the future, according to a government official.

The advance is expected to be announced Tuesday by the Department of Energy, which said a “major scientific breakthrough” was made at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, and White House and other Energy Department officials are expected to be in attendance. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the scientific advance involves the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, which uses giant lasers to create conditions that briefly mimic the explosions of nuclear weapons.

The government official, who spoke anonymously to discuss results that are not yet public, said that the fusion experiment at NIF achieved what is known as ignition, where the fusion energy generated equals the laser energy that started the reaction. Ignition is also called energy gain of one.

Such a development would improve the ability of the United States to maintain its nuclear weapons without nuclear testing and could set the stage for future progress that could one day lead to the use of laser fusion as an energy source.

[Edward64]

I was reading this and was disappointed when I found out it was only 3M vs 2.6M years (is 300K years really that significant) and it was in Kenya vs Ethiopia (they share borders, com'on was this click bait) ...

But then it talked about different humanoid (?) species. And that was cool

No pics of the bones though

A 3 Million-Year-Old Discovery May Rewrite the History of Intelligent Life on Earth

For years, researchers have believed that human ancestors in Ethiopia were the first beings to use crude stone tools, about 2.6 million years ago.

But a recently-published study introduces new findings that suggest tool-making occurred over 300,000 years prior, in a completely different location, and by a species that isn't even an ancestor to modern humans.

The paper in Science—which was co-authored by researchers spanning various institutions—describes a site in Nyayanga, Kenya that dates to 3.032 to 2.581 million years ago. Archeologists have been excavating the site since 2015 and discovered 330 artifacts (including tools), 1776 bones, and two hominin molars—but not belonging to any direct human ancestors.

Most incredibly, the paper also chronicles the team’s discovery of Paranthropus molars. The Paranthropus genus is not an ancestor to modern Homo sapiens, but rather a kind of evolutionary cousin. The molars are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains ever found.

[Edward64]

Well, what are vegetarians going to eat now?

This is freaky.

Stressed plants ‘cry’ — and some animals can probably hear them.

Plants do not suffer in silence. Instead, when thirsty or stressed, plants make “airborne sounds,” according to a study published today in Cell1.

Plants that need water or have recently had their stems cut produce up to roughly 35 sounds per hour, the authors found. But well-hydrated and uncut plants are much quieter, making only about one sound per hour.

To eavesdrop on plants, Lilach Hadany at Tel-Aviv University in Israel and her colleagues placed tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) plants in small boxes kitted out with microphones. The microphones picked up any noises made by the plants, even if the researchers couldn't hear them. The noises were particularly obvious for plants that were stressed by a lack of water or recent cutting. If the sounds are pitched down and sped up, “it is a bit like popcorn — very short clicks”, Hadany says. “It is not singing.”

Plants do not have vocal cords or lungs. Hadany says the current theory for how plants make noises centers on their xylem, the tubes that transport water and nutrients from their roots to their stems and leaves.

Previously, Hadany’s team has also studied whether plants can ‘hear’ sounds, and found that beach evening-primoses (Oenothera drummondii) release sweeter nectar when exposed to the sound of a flying bee.

[NobodyHere]

The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution, Study Suggests

Does this mean we're on the verge of seeing mutant X-Dogs?

[Kodos]

Has the CRISPR Revolution Arrived Yet? | Yale Insights

Interesting interview on CRISPR drugs. Hint: It's probably just for the ultra-rich.

[Kodos]

It's a Science double shot!

A Supersonic ‘Invisible Monster’ Black Hole Is On The Loose, Say Scientists

[Edward64]

The article doesn't answer the big question ... which direction is that sucker headed and/or how far away is it.

[Edward64]

Great news for Alzheimer sufferers and/or have the genes. One of my fears is this insidious disease.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/03/alzh...ogression.html

The Alzheimer’s treatment donanemab, which is made by Eli Lilly, significantly slowed progression of the mind-robbing disease, according to clinical trial data released Wednesday by the company.

The article has a lot more stats but basically 35-40+% efficacy based on different measures.

“These are the strongest phase 3 data for an Alzheimer’s treatment to date. This further underscores the inflection point we are at for the Alzheimer’s field,” said Maria Carrillo, the Alzheimer’s Association chief scientific officer, in a statement.

[Kodos]

That sounds promising. My Mom died of Alzheimer's, so that disease is of particular concern to me. I get nervous whenever my memory fails me or I blank on somebody's name. I'm doing what I can to prevent further memory loss by staying fit and eating right. I don't fear death so much as I fear a long, lingering, painful death that makes me and my loved ones suffer at length.