A dinosaur from the Pseudopterygota group that inhabited the Panthalassa Ocean’s coast

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

US paleontologists have described a new genus and species of extinct crocodile relative based on a partially articulated skeleton found in the Middle Triassic Fossil Hill Formation of the Fabre Formation in Nevada, a pelagic region of the eastern Panthalasan Ocean rich in ammonites and giant ichthyosaurs.

Bengwigiwishingasucus Elemical Minis Pansarasan Sea coast. Image courtesy of Jorge Gonzalez.

Newly identified species Pseudobranchial reptiles It lived during the Middle Triassic period, between 247.2 million and 237 million years ago.

Named Bengwigiwishingasucus Elemical MinisThe animal probably reached a length of around 1.5-1.8 metres (5-6 feet).

It probably stayed fairly close to shore. Its limbs are well developed and well preserved, with no signs of aquatic life such as fins or changes in bone density.

“This intriguing new species provides evidence that pseudobranchs occupied coastal habitats worldwide during the Middle Triassic,” said Dr. Nate Smith, Gretchen Augustine Director and Curator of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

“The area containing the Fabre Formation, which captured fossil life from the Triassic Eastern Panthalassa Ocean, is known for the fossils of marine creatures such as ammonites, as well as marine reptiles such as giant ichthyosaurs. Cymbospondylus youngholm — Newly written Bengwigiwishingasucus Elemical Minis It was a bit of a shock.”

“Our first reaction was, ‘What is this?'” said Dr Nicole Klein, a paleontologist at the University of Bonn.

“We expected to find something like a marine reptile. We couldn’t understand how a land animal could be so far out in the ocean amongst ichthyosaurs and ammonites.”

“It wasn’t until I actually saw the almost perfectly prepared specimen that I was convinced it was indeed a land animal.”

Although pseudopterygian archosaurs have been unearthed from coastal fossil beds in the Tethys Ocean, this is the first to be found in the Panthalassa Ocean and along the coasts of the Western Hemisphere, revealing that close relatives of these crocodiles were present in coastal environments worldwide during the Middle Triassic.

Interestingly, these coastal species do not all belong to the same evolutionary group, suggesting that Pseudobranchia (and Archosaurs more broadly) were uniquely adapted to life along the coast.

“Essentially, it seems like a very different group of archosaurs came together in the Middle Triassic and decided to dip their toes in the water,” Dr Smith said.

“What’s interesting is that many of these ‘independent experiments’ don’t seem to have led to a wider spread of semi-aquatic groups.”

Archosaurs appeared in the Triassic Period and split into two groups, with two representative species surviving: birds, which were descendants of dinosaurs, and pseudo-crocodile archosaurs such as crocodiles (alligators, crocodiles, and gharials). Bengwigiwishingasucus Elemical Minis.

Today’s crocodiles are similar enough to mistake them for other reptiles, but ancient species of crocodiles differed greatly in size and lifestyle.

Evolutionary relationships Bengwigiwishingasucus Elemical Minis and its relatives suggest that pseudobranchs gained great diversity very rapidly after the end-Permian mass extinction, but the extent of this remains to be elucidated in the fossil record.

“The recent and growing number of discoveries of Middle Triassic pseudobranchs suggests that there was underappreciated morphological and ecological diversity and experimentation taking place early in the group’s history,” Dr Smith said.

“Much of the public interest in the Triassic has been focused on the origin of the dinosaurs, but it was the pseudobranchs at the beginning of the Mesozoic that were actually doing interesting things.”

Discovery Bengwigiwishingasucus Elemical Minis It has been reported paper In the journal Biology Letters.

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Nathan D. Smith others2024. A new pseudobranch discovered in Nevada’s Fabre Formation indicates that archosaurs inhabited coastal regions around the world during the Middle Triassic. violet 20(7); Source: http://www.doi.gov/doi/2020240136 Source: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0136

This article is based on a press release from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Source: www.sci.news

New Images of Arp 142 Captured by Webb Show Stunning Detail

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have captured new infrared images of two interacting galaxies. Alp 142.

This Webb image shows two interacting galaxies known as Arp 142. On the left is NGC 2937, nicknamed “The Egg” because of its appearance, and on the right is NGC 2936, nicknamed “The Penguin” because of its appearance. Image courtesy of NASA/ESA/CSA/Webb/STScI.

The interacting pair, Arp 142, is located about 326 million light-years away in the southern constellation Hydra.

This system is ARP Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies It was observed by astronomer Halton C. Earp in the 1960s.

It contains the star-forming spiral galaxy NGC 2936 and its elliptical companion galaxy NGC 2937 at the lower left, which bears a striking resemblance to a penguin guarding its eggs.

The “penguin” part of the pair, NGC 2936, was probably once a relatively ordinary-looking spiral galaxy – flat like a pancake, with smoothly symmetrical spiral arms.

Because of the abundance of newly formed, hot stars, its shape is twisted and distorted by the gravitational forces of nearby stars.

The twin “egg,” NGC 2937, is a collection of much older stars and, in contrast, is largely featureless.

The absence of glowing red dust features indicates that it long ago lost its reservoir of gas and dust from which new stars could form.

“The two asteroids first came close to each other between 25 million and 75 million years ago, triggering 'fireworks' – the formation of new stars – in the constellation of Penguin,” astronomer Webb said in a statement.

“In the most extreme cases, galaxy mergers could result in the formation of thousands of new stars every year for millions of years.”

“In the case of penguins, studies have found that they form around 100-200 stars per year. By comparison, in our own Milky Way galaxy (which is not interacting with a galaxy of a similar size), around six to seven new stars form per year.”

“This gravitational rocking also changed the penguins' appearance,” they noted.

“The spiral arms uncoiled, pulling gas and dust in different directions like confetti.”

“When galaxies interact, it's rare for individual stars to collide (the universe is huge), but the intermingling of galaxies disrupts the orbits of stars.”

“Currently, the centre of the Penguin's galaxy looks like an eye inside its head, and the galaxy has a prominent star trail in the shape of a beak, spine and fanned-out tail. A faint but noticeable dust ribbon stretches from the beak to the tail.”

“Although the Penguin Galaxy appears much larger than the Egg Galaxy, the two galaxies have roughly the same mass,” the astronomers said.

“This is one of the reasons why the tiny looking egg hasn't merged with the penguin yet.”

“Because the elliptical egg is filled with old stars and contains very little gas or dust, it doesn't emit its own 'streams' or tidal tails, and instead maintains its compact elliptical shape.”

“If you look closely, the Egg has four noticeable diffraction spikes – it's glowing because of a high concentration of stars from the galaxy.”

“Now, find the bright, edge-on galaxy in the upper right. It may look like it's crashing the party, but it’s not close by.”

Cataloging No. 1237172It lies nearly 100 million light-years from Earth. It is relatively young and not covered by dust, making it virtually invisible in Webb's mid-infrared images.”

Source: www.sci.news

Southern Europe saw the arrival of early humans approximately 1.3 million years ago.

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

a New Researchpublished in the journal Geoscience Reviewhelps resolve one of the longest-running debates in paleoanthropology: when did early humans arrive in Europe?

Ancient humans. Image courtesy of Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

“chronology Homo “Migration out of Africa has expanded substantially over the past 40 years,” said paleoanthropologist Luis Hibbert of the University of Barcelona and his colleagues.

“In 1982, Homo The Asian volcano has been paleomagnetically dated to 900,000 years ago in Java and 700,000 years ago in Italy, Europe.

“Forty years later, the early Homo Outside of Africa, the South Caucasus dates back 1.8 million years, China 1.7-2.1 million years ago, and Java 1.5-1.3 million years ago.

“In Europe, several sites are found to have layers of paleomagnetic polarity reversal several metres deep, indicating that they are more than 770,000 years old.”

In the study, the authors used magnetostratigraphic dating, a method that uses the state of the Earth's magnetic field at the time the sediments were deposited, to date five paleontological localities in the Orce region of Spain.

“The technique is a relative dating method based on the study of the planet's magnetic pole reversals due to the dynamics of the Earth's interior,” they explained.

“These changes have no particular periodicity, but they are recorded in minerals and it is possible to establish periods from various magnetic events.”

“What's unique about these sites is that they are layered and sit within a very long sedimentary layer, over 80 metres long,” Dr Zibert said.

“Typically these sites are found in caves or within very short geological sequences, so it's not possible to develop long paleomagnetic sequences where you can find the different magnetic reversals.”

Global distribution of humans before 1 million years ago (orange) with major dated sites showing potential dispersal routes. The diagram shows Oldowan sites over 2 million years ago in Africa and over 1 million years ago in Eurasia (black dots). White dots indicate the earliest Acheulean sites in Africa (over 1.5 million years ago) and Eurasia (1 million to 800,000 years ago). The oldest Oldowan and Acheulean tools have been found in East Africa, over 2.5 million years ago and over 1.7 million years ago, respectively. In Asia, the oldest Oldowan and Acheulean tools have been found in the Caucasus (7) at 1.8 million years ago and in the Levantine Corridor (9) at 1.2 million years ago, respectively. In Europe, the oldest Oldowan and associated humans have been found in Spain (1, 2) and are debated to be between 1.6 and 900,000 years ago. Images/Photos Courtesy of: Gibert others., doi: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2024.104855.

The oldest remains at the Orce site, which have no evidence of human activity, date to 1.6 million and 1.35 million years ago, according to the study.

The top three sites containing evidence of early humans are dated 1.32 million years ago (Venta Misena), 1.28 million years ago (Barranco Leon 5), and 1.23 million years ago (Fuente Nueva 3).

These chronologies suggest that the Strait of Gibraltar acted as a filter bridge for African species such as hominins. Theropithecus Oswaldand the early Pleistocene hippopotamus.

“This new dating adds to other evidence and supports European colonization through the Strait of Gibraltar rather than the alternative route back to the Mediterranean via Asia,” the scientists said.

“We also support the hypothesis that they arrived from Gibraltar, as no older evidence has been found elsewhere along the alternative route.”

“Our results show a dating gap between the earliest occupation of Asia, 1.8 million years ago, and the earliest occupation of Europe, 1.3 million years ago. This means that African humans arrived in southwestern Europe more than 500,000 years after they first left Africa around 2 million years ago.”

“These differences in human expansion can be explained by the fact that Europe is isolated from Asia and Africa by difficult-to-surmount biogeographical barriers both to the east (the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara) and to the west (the Strait of Gibraltar),” Dr. Zibert said.

“When humans arrived in Europe, they had the technology necessary to cross the maritime barrier, just as happened a million years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores.”

“In this sense, the Gibraltar route currently requires crossing a sea channel of up to 14 kilometres, although in the past this distance could have been shorter at certain times due to the tectonically active nature of the region and sea-level changes favourable for migration.”

“We found that African animals were migrating through Gibraltar both 6.2 million years ago and 5.5 million years ago, when the Strait of Gibraltar was very narrow.”

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Lewis Guibert othersMagnetic strata dating of Europe's oldest human remains. Geoscience ReviewPublished online July 2, 2024; doi: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2024.104855

Source: www.sci.news

Researchers find previously unknown species of prehistoric crocodile

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

New species of early crocodile named Asiatosuchus oenotoriensis was discovered by a team of paleontologists from Spain’s National University of Distance Learning and the University of Salamanca.

Skull Asiatosuchus oenotoriensis Type specimen from the Middle Eocene site of Casaseca de Campean, Spain. Image credit: Narváez others., doi: 10.1002/ar.25422.

The newly identified crocodile lived on Earth during the Middle Eocene Epoch, between 48 and 41 million years ago.

Prehistoric animals Asiatosuchus An extinct genus of crocodilian crocodiles that lived in Europe and Asia during the Paleogene (66 to 23 million years ago).

“During the Palaeogene, a variety of crocodilians with common snouts (i.e. non-elongated snouts) inhabited Europe. The Middle Eocene is particularly notable for its relative abundance and diversity, but also includes fossils from the Late Paleocene and possibly the Early Oligocene and Late Neogene,” said lead author Dr Ivan Narváez and his colleagues.

“Many of the Eocene crocodile fossils are from the Asiatosuchus-like complex.”

“Genus Asiatosuchus was Established The species was defined in 1940 by paleontologist Charles Mook. Asiatosuchus grangeli It is based on an incomplete lower jaw and several skull fragments from the Middle Eocene of the Irdin Mankha Formation in Mongolia.”

“After the definition Asiatosuchus grangeli Several other eupteran forms, generally represented as isolated or rare fossils, have been described from the Paleocene to Oligocene of Europe, Asia and North America and have recently been Asiatosuchus It’s a complex like that.”

Two fossils Asiatosuchus oenotoriensis A similarly sized specimen was discovered at the La Laguna archaeological site in Spain in the 1980s.

The specimen includes a nearly complete skull and a nearly complete left lower jaw.

“The La Laguna fossil site is located in the Tierra del Vino region of the province of Zamora, Spain, approximately 20 kilometres south of the city of Zamora and approximately one kilometre north of the village of Casaseca de Campean,” the paleontologists said.

“The area forms part of the western part of the Duero Basin (Ciudad Rodrigo Basin).”

“The Duero Basin is the largest continental Cenozoic basin on the Iberian Peninsula.”

According to the authors: Asiatosuchus oenotoriensis Increase knowledge of diversity and distribution of Asiatosuchus Crocodile-like complex.

“Asiatosuchus oenotoriensis “This adds valuable information to our knowledge of the systematics of the relatively diverse crocodile fauna of the Duero Basin in Spain,” the researchers said.

Team paper Published in Anatomy record.

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Ivan Narvaez others A new crocodilian superfamily from the Middle Eocene of Zamora (Duero Basin, Spain). Anatomy record Published online March 5, 2024; doi: 10.1002/ar.25422

Source: www.sci.news

There are caves on the moon that scientists believe could be used as shelters

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Caves on the moon have been identified by scientists not too far from where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed 55 years ago. They speculate that there could be hundreds more caves that could be suitable for future astronauts to inhabit.

A team of researchers led by Italians reported on Monday that they have evidence of a large cavern accessible through the deepest hole on the moon’s surface. This cavern is situated in Mare Tranquility, just 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the Apollo 11 landing site.

The hole, like over 200 others found in that area, was created by the collapse of a lava tube.

The researchers examined radar measurements from NASA’s lunar rover and compared their findings to lava tubes on Earth. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Scientists state that the radar data has only uncovered the initial section of the underground chamber, which they estimate to be at least 130 feet (40 meters) wide and potentially even longer.

Leonardo Carrell and Lorenzo Bruzzone from the University of Trento expressed their excitement in an email saying, “The lunar caves have remained a mystery for more than 50 years, so it’s exciting to finally be able to prove their existence.”

Most of the holes on the moon seem to be situated in the ancient lava plains, and there might also be caves at the moon’s south pole, where NASA intends to send astronauts in 10 years. A crater in perpetual shadow there is believed to contain frozen water that could be used for drinking or as rocket fuel.

NASA’s Apollo program successfully landed 12 astronauts on the moon, starting with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

These findings suggest that the Moon could have numerous caves and lava tubes, providing natural shelter for astronauts and shielding them from cosmic rays, solar radiation, and micrometeorite impacts. Constructing habitats from scratch would be more time-consuming and challenging, even if cave walls need reinforcement to prevent collapse.

The rocks and other materials in these caves, unaffected by the harsh surface conditions for hundreds of millions of years, could also help scientists gain a better understanding of how the Moon evolved, especially in terms of its volcanic activity.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Seeing Shooting Stars: A Step-by-Step Guide

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

summary

The annual Perseid meteor shower has begun, reaching its peak on the night of August 12th.
It's typically one of the most dramatic meteor showers of the year, producing a high rate of shooting stars per hour.
The Perseid meteor shower occurs when dust particles and debris from a comet known as 109P/Swift-Tuttle burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

One of the best meteor showers of the year is underway, giving you a chance to see shooting stars in the summer night sky.

The annual Perseid meteor shower began on Sunday and will run through late August. This year's meteor shower will peak on the night of August 12 and into the early morning of August 13.

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most dramatic phenomena due to the high number of bright meteors that appear per hour. At the peak of the meteor shower, up to 100 meteors per hour can be seen from a dark location (weather permitting).

This is a popular event as meteor showers occur in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, allowing people to enjoy stargazing in warm weather.

Meteors are often called “shooting stars,” but the celestial phenomenon occurs when tiny pieces of debris from outer space burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

The Perseid meteor shower occurs when Earth passes through a cloud of dust particles and debris from a comet known as 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1862. The streaks of light are produced when pieces of debris impact the atmosphere and vaporize, leaving bright trails as they disintegrate.

The Perseid meteor shower gets its name from the fact that shooting stars appear to stream down from a certain point in the constellation Perseus. According to NASA:The constellation will rise in the northeast, but if conditions are right, meteors should be visible across the entire sky.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the best time to observe the Perseid meteor shower is from around midnight after the moon has set until dawn.

For the best viewing, observers should choose a dark, unobstructed location away from city lights and other light pollution.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Physicist working on project to construct a telescope larger than Earth

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

We live in the age of black hole photography. In 2019, the first photograph of a black hole was published. Naturally, it was difficult to capture. In fact, it required a telescope almost as large as the Earth. But for researchers like Alex Lupsaski of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, that wasn't enough. Lupsaski and his colleagues aim to capture a more detailed image, but to achieve that, they will need an even larger telescope.

The 2019 groundbreaking photo was taken by a network of radio observatories dotted around Earth, collectively known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Eight observatories worked together to produce an image as sharp as a single dish larger than anything we could actually build. Lupsaski is part of a team planning the launch of the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) telescope, which will extend this network 20,000 kilometers from Earth into space, effectively creating a receiver larger than Earth. This, he says, will give researchers the precision they need to measure a mysterious part of a black hole called the photon ring. In this case, the photon ring is produced by the supermassive black hole M87* in a nearby galaxy that appeared in the first photo.

LupsaskaAs deputy project scientist for the BHEX mission, he's a theorist specializing in the physics of extreme environments like the heart of a black hole. He tells us why this is our best hope of beating Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, and why an ambitious space mission is the key to finally unlocking that theory.

Source: www.newscientist.com

Possible Discovery of Lunar Cave Entrance Deep Hole on the Moon

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Proposed underground geometry of the Mare Tranquillitatis on the Moon

Wagner and Robinson

A network of caves may be hidden just beneath the Moon's surface, and researchers may have finally discovered an access point. These caves have long been predicted, but until now it has been difficult to prove their existence or find a way to directly explore them with future missions.

The Moon's surface is dotted with holes, or so-called skylights, which are openings in the ceilings of caves that are thought to have been formed by the collapse of ancient lava tubes – tunnels formed when lava flows beneath the solid crust. Leonardo Carrell Researchers from the University of Trento in Italy have discovered that the deepest part of these formations, the “The Pit of the Sea of TranquilityThese images were taken by NASA's Lunar Rover in 2010.

By comparing their simulations with lava tubes on Earth, the researchers found that the Mare Tranquillitatis hole appears to open into a large cavern buried at least 400 feet (130 meters) underground. The cave appears to be about 150 feet (45 meters) wide and at least 100 feet (30 meters) long, but could be much larger.

Caves like these could offer a unique window into the evolution of the Moon, says Carell. “Analyzing rocks from lunar caves, which have not been altered by the harsh lunar environment, could provide important insights into key scientific questions, such as the timeline and duration of volcanic activity on the Moon and the actual composition of the Moon's mantle,” Carell says.

The same stone ceiling that protects the cave rocks from the intense radiation experienced on the surface could also provide valuable shielding for future human explorers on the Moon. “Unlike the surface of the Moon, where temperatures change dramatically between day and night, [the caves] “It has a stable internal temperature, and it's also a natural shield against radiation and impacts,” Carrell says.

The idea of using natural caves like these as lunar base camps has long been popular, and future astronauts may one day call the Sea of Tranquility home.

topic:

Moon/
Space Exploration

Source: www.newscientist.com

Brain activity can be used by AI to determine a child’s gender

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Activity within brain networks appears to differ between boys and girls

People Images/Getty Images

Artificial intelligence can now distinguish the brain patterns of 9- to 10-year-old boys and girls according to their sex and even gender, but not everyone is convinced of the accuracy of the results.

The prevalence of pain, headaches, heart disease, and other illnesses Varies by genderHowever, little is known about neurological variation in this regard or among sexes, particularly among children.

You can learn more and Elvisha Damara Researchers at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York analyzed thousands of sets of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from more than 4,700 children, roughly equal in gender, all aged 9 to 10, who were participating in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Project.

Sex was defined based on “anatomical, physiological, genetic and hormonal structures at birth,” while gender was determined based on “an individual's attitudinal, emotional and behavioral characteristics.”

Parents weren't asked directly about their thoughts about their child's gender, but were assessed with a series of questions, such as how often their child imitates male or female characters on TV or in movies, whether they wanted to be a girl or a boy, whether they said they disliked their genitals, etc. All these questions were weighted equally and combined into a score.

A separate score was created from questions that asked the children themselves, such as whether they felt like a boy or a girl.

The researchers did not disclose the different genders the children identified as, or how many of the children had a gender that was different from their own gender. “We thought of gender as a continuum, not a binary,” Damala said. “We did not limit our analysis to gender categories, so we cannot comment on how many children had a gender that was different from their own gender.”

The researchers first looked at the relationship between brain networks and sex, and then looked at the relationship between these networks and sex for each assigned sex. They found that sex and gender differences were associated with distinct patterns of functional connectivity, a measure of communication between distant brain regions.

Gender was associated with connectivity between the visual cortex, which controls movement, and the limbic system, a group of deep brain structures involved in regulating emotion, behavior, motivation, and memory. These networks were “important in distinguishing participants based on their gender,” Damala said.

Gender-related networks were widespread throughout the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the brain that is also associated with memory, movement, sensation and problem solving), both when using gender scores constructed from responses to parental questions and when using separate scores constructed by asking questions of the children themselves.

“In assigned females, sex mapped to networks involved in attention, emotion processing, motor control, and higher-order thinking,” Damala says. “In assigned males, the same relationships existed, but there were additional networks involved in higher-order thinking and visual processing. Although there was some overlap between sex- and gender-related brain networks, they were very distinct from each other.”

Once the researchers trained an AI model on some of the MRI data, it was able to identify a child's gender based on brain connectivity patterns in other datasets. It could also predict gender, but this was much less accurate and was based solely on the gender reported by parents, not the child themselves.

A better understanding of how brain activity patterns differ by sex could help scientists learn more about conditions that affect boys and girls at different rates, such as ADHD, Damala said.

The findings could also have implications for how human brain research is conducted, she says: “This shows that sex and gender need to be considered separately in biomedical research. This applies to how data is collected, how it is analyzed, and how results are interpreted and communicated,” Damala says.

but Ragini Verma The University of Pennsylvania researcher says the study tells us little about the neurological basis of gender. Because of the study's large sample size, the team was likely only able to find signals of different brain activity patterns between the sexes, but “any variability in gender predictions is based on low precision,” she says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Hubble Space Telescope Captures Close-Up of NGC 5238

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Astronomers have released a beautiful photo of the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 5238 taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 5238, 14.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. The color image is composed of observations in the near-infrared and visible portions of the spectrum by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Two filters were used to sample different wavelengths. The colors are achieved by assigning a different hue to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image courtesy of NASA / ESA / Hubble / F. Annibali.

NGC 5238 It is located in the constellation Canes Venatici, about 14.5 million light years from Earth.

Also known as Mrk 1479 or UGC 8565, the galaxy resembles an outsized star cluster rather than a galaxy due to its unremarkable, blob-like appearance.

“NGC 5238 is theorized to have had a close encounter with another galaxy recently, within the last billion years,” Hubble astronomers said in a statement.

“The evidence for this is the tidal distortion of NGC 5238's shape, caused by the two galaxies interacting and tugging on each other.”

“Since there are no nearby galaxies that could have caused this disruption, it is hypothesized that the culprit is a small satellite galaxy that has been swallowed by NGC 5238.”

“By studying the stars of NGC 5238 closely, we may be able to find traces of an earlier galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope gives astronomers the perfect tool for this purpose.”

“Two telltale signs are groups of stars with properties that seem out of place compared to most other stars in the galaxy, indicating that they originally formed in another galaxy; or stars that appear to have formed suddenly, almost simultaneously, occurring during the merger of galaxies.”

“Despite their small size and inconspicuous appearance, dwarf galaxies like NGC 5238 are not uncommon in advancing our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution,” the astronomers said.

“One of the leading theories about the evolution of galaxies is that they formed hierarchically, 'bottom-up'. Star clusters and small galaxies first formed from gas and dark matter, which then gradually gathered together through gravity into clusters and superclusters, explaining the shape of the largest structures in the Universe today.”

“The merger of a dwarf irregular galaxy like NGC 5238 with an even smaller companion galaxy is exactly the type of event that could have initiated the process of galaxy formation in the early universe.”

“This means that this tiny galaxy could help test some of the most fundamental predictions in astrophysics.”

Source: www.sci.news

What caused the haziness on Saturn’s moon Titan?

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Ever wondered if any moons in the solar system have a dense atmosphere like Earth? Currently, scientists believe that Saturn’s moon Titan is the only one with such an atmosphere. Despite being 2.5 times smaller than Earth, Titan has an atmospheric pressure 1.5 times greater than Earth’s. Studies of Titan’s atmosphere from outside the solar system have shown that it consists of around 94% nitrogen, 6% methane, 0.1% hydrogen, and small amounts of complex organic molecules. The Huygens mission data provides more insight into this.

Initially, scientists thought that Titan’s haze formed through the breakdown and recombination of nitrogen and methane by sunlight. However, this explanation couldn’t account for the presence of complex organic molecules which require high temperatures to form. Recent research suggests that these molecules may have originated during a meteorite impact event in Titan’s atmosphere, particularly due to the proximity of Titan to Saturn’s E ring which disperses organic material from moons like Enceladus.

To test this new theory, researchers at Princeton University created a model to predict the formation of molecules during meteorite impacts in Titan’s atmosphere. By combining data from observations of Saturn’s rings and Titan’s atmospheric chemistry from the Huygens probe, they estimated the types of organic molecules that could result from these impacts. They found that only meteorites larger than 0.02 grams could trigger such events in Titan’s atmosphere, with material mostly originating from atolls surrounding the solar system.

The team also identified a hot zone known as the “Cylindrical shock wave” around the falling meteorite, reaching temperatures of 10,000 K. This wave could facilitate the synthesis of complex organic molecules at lower temperatures in the region surrounding the impact. Meteorites falling from Enceladus are suggested to contribute significantly to Titan’s organic-rich haze layer, particularly at altitudes where shock waves are most efficient in synthesizing organic molecules.

The researchers proposed that observations from future missions, such as Dragonfly, could further validate their models by studying the frequency of medium-sized meteorite impacts on Titan. These observations could provide more insights into the formation of Titan’s unique atmosphere and iconic haze layer.

Post View: 201

Source: sciworthy.com

Viruses with a significant impact on the microbiome and overall health

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Rats in John Cryan's lab were withdrawn and anxious, behaving in ways that mirrored those who had been bullied at work and suspected they might encounter the bully again.

Believe it or not, the good news is that they fed some of these rodents a slurry of microbes extracted from their own feces. This may sound unpleasant, but it had a surprisingly positive effect on their behavior. “That was surprising,” says Cryan, a neurobiologist at University College Cork in Ireland. “We found that the behavioral changes that were induced by stress were normalized, and they started to behave like normal animals.”

Even more surprising, the mental changes weren't brought about by changes to gut bacteria, but by modifying another key aspect of the microbiome whose importance is only now being recognized: viruses.

After all, our bodies are full of these viruses – trillions of stowaways that do no harm to our health, but instead play a key role in nurturing a beneficial microbiome and making us healthier. Recent studies have found that the influence of this “virome” can be found throughout the body, from the blood to the brain. The hope is that tweaking it might lead to new ways of treating a variety of ailments, from inflammatory bowel disease and obesity to anxiety.

Microbiome Diversity

Over the past decade, there has been growing interest in the microbiome (all the tiny organisms that live on and in our bodies), but that interest has focused primarily on bacteria. Until recently, it was assumed that…

Source: www.newscientist.com

Las Vegas sizzles in the heat

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Las Vegas experienced its highest temperature on record on July 7, reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The city surpassed a 2005 record of four consecutive days with temperatures above 115 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, and then broke that record on Thursday, with Friday likely to follow suit. Extreme heat has been widespread across the Western U.S. this week, with around 42 million people under extreme heat warnings on Friday in the region, including the Rockies and southeast Texas. In at least six states, it is estimated that thirty-eight people have died from heatstroke.

“I’ve been a resident of southern Nevada in Las Vegas for 18 years, and this year has been exceptionally hot,” said Chrishell Hadsell, social services manager for Clark County, Nevada, encompassing Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson, and neighboring areas.

Hadsell is in charge of over 40 cooling centers currently in operation in Clark County, offering air-conditioned shelters in places like libraries, churches, and recreation centers for people to seek refuge during the hottest times of the day.

Record-breaking temperatures in Las Vegas are impacting people’s daily routines.

Henderson Fire Department Deputy Chief Scott Vivier mentioned that he and his wife now have to run errands and shop for groceries early in the morning to avoid the heat, as by 9:30 a.m., even being in the car can be intolerable.

“We’ve adapted to being active in the mornings and late evenings,” Vivier stated.

The extreme heat has led to multiple temporary closures at the Neon Museum near downtown Las Vegas this week.

“Due to the prolonged Extreme Heat Warning for the Las Vegas Valley, the Neon Museum will delay its opening until 8:30 p.m.,” officials announced on the museum’s website on Friday. The museum showcases some of Las Vegas’ most iconic and historic neon signs in its outdoor “curiosity yard.”

Despite the evening hours, visitors may still find it uncomfortable, as overnight temperatures this week have been in the 90s.

Similar extreme heat conditions prompted Henderson city officials to close the public pool early on both Thursday and Friday.

“Our inclement weather closure policy has been activated due to the extreme heat,” city officials noted in a Facebook post.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Some skeptics warn that EVs will strain the power grid, but they could actually help to solve the problem

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

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Electric cars scares some people of the dark: their batteries produce much less carbon dioxide but require more power to run, prompting ominous warnings that Britain and other wealthy countries could plunge their citizens into darkness if they ban new petrol and diesel sales.

In recent months, UK net-zero skeptic newspapers have warned that a shift to EVs “risks overwhelming the grid and causing catastrophic blackouts” if intermittent solar and wind don't provide the needed power. Another article argued that “we don't need an enemy force to plunge us all into darkness – just some electricity customers doing their normal thing on a normal winter's night.”

But many who work in the electric vehicle industry believe these fears may be unfounded, arguing that the transition to electric vehicles is an exciting, potentially lucrative opportunity to build a smarter, greener energy system.

In the UK, polluting coal-fired power plants have been largely replaced by wind farms and solar panels. These renewable energies do not emit carbon dioxide, but they suffer from intermittency problems and cannot provide enough power on cloudy days or at night when there is no wind. Add in the prospect that all new cars will be electric by 2035 and it is not an exaggerated question how the power grid will keep supply and demand in balance.

Shifting demand

The transition to electric vehicles will undoubtedly require more electricity generation as electric vehicles, rather than land-based fossil fuels, become the primary source of energy for transportation, but smart technology can be used to shift demand away from peak times, such as 5pm in winter, when demand for electricity risks outstripping supply.

This isn't just a pipe dream: home charger company MyEnergy calculates that if balancing services were enabled across all installed compatible chargers, it could “provide over 1GW of demand-shifting flexibility to the grid, more than 98% of the UK's major fossil fuel power stations.”

Octopus Energy, which has quickly grown to become the UK's largest electricity supplier, says its Go electricity tariff manages the charging of the batteries of 150,000 electric vehicles. Charging them all at once would require 1GW of power, but smart chargers hold off charging until off-peak hours at night, shifting demand away from peaks. Electricity is also cheaper during off-peak hours, with clear benefits for consumers: Octopus says its customers save an average of about £600 a year.

In the UK, polluting coal-fired power stations have largely been replaced by wind farms and solar panels, which suffer from “intermittency issues”. Photo: Martin Meissner/AP

One gigawatt is the equivalent of a medium-sized power station, enough to power 600,000 homes. Electric vehicles on UK roads are already on the rise in the UK. Peak electricity demand in winter is 61.1GWAccording to the National Grid, delaying charging for just a few hours can help reduce energy consumption.

Jack Fielder, chief strategy officer at MyEnergy, said: “If every EV charger could provide a grid balancing service and every driver took part in a grid balancing program, we could collectively eliminate periods of strain on the grid.”

It could also be useful when power supply exceeds demand, such as on warm, windy nights, said Chris Pateman-Jones, chief executive of charging company Connected Curve.

“Instead of wasting renewable energy, I see EVs as a giant sponge,” he says. For consumers, there will be little change: Connected Curve data shows that most cars are already charged by midnight, leaving them idle for hours before they're needed.

Powered by car battery

It's not just the timing of when electrons flow into car batteries that will help the National Grid Electricity Supply Operator (NGESO), the company responsible for balancing the U.K. power grid: It calls demand shifting a “low-regret action that will help reduce the impact on peak demand and reduce renewable curtailment,” but it also wants electrons to flow in the other direction.

Vehicle-to-grid technology is an attractive prospect: instead of building power plants, hydroelectric storage, or stationary battery fleets, the idea is to harness the energy stored in car batteries. Cars could become portable power packs, providing backup for homes in the event of a blackout, and even allowing drivers to earn money by selling power back to the grid.

NGESO is Annual estimate It predicts what the UK electricity system will look like in 2035 and 2050. It sees a growing role for cars feeding power back into the grid, and in the most optimistic scenario, capacity could reach 39GW (equivalent to one-tenth of the vastly expanded generating capacity).

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Source: www.theguardian.com

Study Shows Environmental Threat Posed by ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Lithium-Ion Batteries

Posted on July 14, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ used in lithium-ion batteries that are essential to the clean energy transition New research findings As the emerging industry expands, it will pose threats to the environment and human health.

The multifaceted, peer-reviewed study focused on a little-studied and unregulated subclass of PFAS called bis-FASIs, which are used in lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers have found alarming levels of chemicals in the environment near manufacturing plants and in remote locations around the world, found that they can be toxic to living organisms, and found that battery waste in landfills is a major source of contamination.

“The nation faces two important challenges — minimizing water pollution and increasing access to clean, sustainable energy — and both are worthwhile,” said Jennifer Gelfo, a researcher at Texas Tech University and co-author of the study.

“But there is a bit of a tug-of-war between the two, and this study highlights that there is now an opportunity to better incorporate environmental risk assessments as we expand our energy infrastructure,” she added.

PFAS are a group of about 16,000 man-made compounds that are most commonly used to make products that are resistant to water, stains, and heat. PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally and are known to accumulate in the human body. PFAS have been linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, a dramatic drop in sperm count, and a variety of other serious health problems.

As the transition unfolds, public health advocates have begun sounding the alarm about the need to find alternatives to toxic chemicals used in clean energy technologies like batteries and wind turbines.

The paper notes that few end-of-life standards exist for PFAS battery waste, and most ends up in municipal waste sites, where it can leach into waterways, accumulate locally or be transported long distances.

When historical leachate samples were examined for the presence of the chemical, no detections were found in samples taken before the mid-1990s, when the chemical was commercialized.

The study points out that while BisFASI can be reused, previous research has shown that only 5% of lithium batteries are recycled. Unless battery recycling is dramatically scaled up to keep up with demand, it is predicted that 8 million tonnes of battery waste will be generated by 2040.

“This shows we need to look more closely at this class of PFAS,” Guelfo said.

Little toxicity data exists on bis-FASI, so the study also looked at its effects on invertebrates and zebrafish. Effects were seen even at low levels of exposure, suggesting it may be as toxic as other PFAS compounds known to be dangerous.

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Researchers also took water, soil and air samples around a 3M plant in Minnesota and other large facilities known to make the chemical. Guelfo said the levels in the soil and water are of concern, and that detection of the chemical in the snow suggests it could easily travel through the air.

This could help explain why the chemicals have been found in China’s seawater and other remote locations not close to production plants.

The most commonly used definition of PFAS worldwide includes bis-FASIs, but one division of the EPA considers them to not belong to a chemical class, and therefore they are not included in the list of compounds monitored in U.S. waters. The EPA’s narrow definition of PFAS has been criticized by public health advocacy groups for excluding some chemicals at the urging of industry.

But the new study, combined with previous evidence, shows that bisFASI, like most other PFAS, is persistent, mobile and toxic, said co-author Lee Ferguson, a researcher at Duke University.

“This classification, coupled with the massive increase in clean energy storage that we’re seeing, should at the very least sound alarm bells,” he said.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Amazon Workers in UK Warehouses Vote for Union Recognition: A Groundbreaking Moment

Posted on July 14, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Located on a traffic island on the outskirts of Coventry, a small yet dynamic organizing team from the GMB union is challenging Amazon with homemade signs and orange bucket hats.

In a historic vote last week, over 3,000 Amazon workers were given the opportunity to participate in a vote that could potentially lead to the company recognizing a trade union in the U.K. for the first time. This is part of a series of battles worldwide over union recognition at the retail-to-cloud conglomerate founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, now valued at over $2 trillion.

If successful, the GMB victory would grant workers the right to negotiate with Amazon on matters such as wages, hours, and holidays, something the famously anti-union company opposes. GMB also believes that recognition would give them an advantage in addressing health and safety concerns within the expansive Coventry warehouse, known as BHX4.

The ongoing campaign at BHX4 sheds light on the barriers unions face, despite promises from the new Labour government to bolster trade union influence.

Results of the vote, held after a month-long process, are expected on Monday. Workers have received support from local Labour Party MP Taiwo Owateme, who commended their efforts.

Kate Gorton, GMB member, union To raise awareness about voting, snacks, drinks and gifts were distributed to employees at the end of each shift. Photo: Fabio De Paola/Observer

At the approach to BHX4, a dedicated GMB team welcomes workers as they arrive for the night shift amidst the sounds of dhol drummers creating a festive atmosphere.

These workers are encouraged to vote “Yes!” and many show support by honking or signaling approval from their vehicles. The campaign aims to bring positive change to the work environment at BHX4.

Meanwhile, GMB activists at another entrance offer refreshments and free hats to workers, urging them to vote in favor of recognition.

Despite some workers bypassing the activists, many engage in conversation, accept hats and drinks, and express their support for GMB.

The GMB’s current push for full authorization is their second attempt after withdrawing the initial application last year, citing Amazon’s strategic hiring practices to influence the outcome.

As the vote results await, GMB and other trade unions remain hopeful for meaningful changes under Labour’s New Deal for Workers, advocating for stronger collective bargaining and workers’ rights.

Amidst Amazon’s resistance to unions globally, the Coventry activists persevere, optimistic that they can achieve historic recognition. The company maintains that employees have the choice to join a union and emphasizes its commitment to direct engagement with employees.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Introducing the Billionaire’s Unconventional and Lavish Doomsday Bunker

Posted on July 14, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Have you ever considered what your doomsday plan would entail? If not, you’re not alone. While most people are more concerned with what’s for dinner tomorrow than surviving the apocalypse, billionaires have already thought ahead.

Instead of spending millions on extending their lifespans, reversing aging, or planning space trips, the ultra-rich are now investing in giant underground shelters to prepare for the end of the world. These luxurious bunkers offer comfortable living conditions below the surface, away from the chaos above.

While doomsday bunkers are not a new concept, recent trends show that billionaire bunkers are becoming increasingly extravagant. From zombie-proof fire moats to 10-car garages, these shelters cater to the highest levels of luxury. It seems fitting, considering they will likely be located underground.

But what exactly are the ultra-rich preparing for? And what do these apocalyptic shelters look like?

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What are they preparing for?

Once seen as odd and paranoid, those who invest in shelters now have valid concerns about the future. The rise of artificial intelligence, pandemics, and global warming has instilled fear in many, even among the wealthiest individuals.

According to Douglas Rushkoff, a billionaire and writer who focuses on doomsday scenarios, the ultra-rich are not driven by fear but by desire. They see isolation in space stations or underground shelters as a reward for their accomplishments. It’s about winning the game of life and building the best shelter, not merely preparing for worst-case scenarios.

What do these bunkers look like?

End-of-life shelters come in various sizes, luxury levels, and features. Some are as small as a single room, while others resemble small apartments with amenities like garages, gyms, and saunas. The top-tier bunkers designed for billionaires include added rooms, tanks, and other necessary items, driving up prices significantly.

For many wealthy individuals, owning an island with a grand mansion on the surface conceals a maze of rooms underground for emergency situations. These bunkers serve as highly secure vacation homes with additional features for survival.

Will we all soon have bunkers?

While shelters were once exclusive to the ultra-rich and paranoid, the trend is shifting. Newer firms offer shelter options for a broader demographic, making it more accessible to average individuals. Popular group bunkers reminiscent of games like Fallout are also on the rise, accommodating large groups at a fraction of the cost of individual bunkers.

Architect Dante Vicino describes these group bunkers as underground cruise ships, with private and communal spaces for residents to gather, eat, and relax together. While luxury shelters may offer comfort during doomsday scenarios, building connections with neighbors and forming a community may be a more realistic survival strategy.

About our experts

Douglas Rushkoff is a writer and documentarian who has researched billionaire behavior and attitudes regarding doomsday scenarios.

Dante Vicino is the project lead at Vivos, a doomsday shelter company specializing in affordable alternatives.

Read more:

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Roblox: The Evolution of Advergames as a Marketing Tool for Companies

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

IBlocky World Chipotle Burrito BuilderIn Chipotle, players don the uniforms of the Tex-Mex restaurant chain and make burritos for virtual customers. Available toppings are taken from Chipotle’s real-world menu; shirts and caps feature the Chipotle logo. And when the game launched two years ago, the first 100,000 players earned “Burrito Bucks” to use in their burritos. Chipotle website.

after that Hyundai Mobility Adventure You can test drive models made by Korean manufacturers. Samsung Galaxy Station Here’s a mockup of the company’s latest smartphone designed to help travel to extraterrestrial worlds. Telefonica Town The challenge is to climb an assault course made from products featured in the telecommunications giant’s catalog. Vans World They just hand you a skateboard so you can do a few kickflips in a park plastered with shoe companies’ logos.

These are just a few of the corporate theme parks available. Robloxis one of the world’s most popular online video game platforms, with an average of 77 million players per day earlier this year, and is especially popular with children and younger players (58% of users self-reported as being under 16 years old). The end of last year), Roblox lets you explore fantastical virtual worlds, jumping over obstacles, finding hidden collectibles, and role-playing different tasks just like a kid would on the playground.

But the platform’s biggest selling point is its basic development tools, which allow anyone with little to no computer knowledge to create and share their own video games. Though this toolset is limited by design, it has attracted many people over the past few years, and not just aspiring game developers. This toolset has made Roblox a favorite playground for corporate advertisers, who use the development tools to create branded Roblox games to share with the game’s millions of players.

These advergames (advertisements presented in the form of video games) typically sprinkle corporate branding onto a set of game mechanics simple enough for Roblox’s younger player base. Broader suspicions Criticism that Roblox does not adequately protect children (which the company denies) has led to companies rushing to develop ad-supported games. Brands from Walmart to Wimbledon, McDonald’s to Gucci, Nike to the BBC have launched ad-supported games on the platform. Some have garnered hundreds of thousands of hits, others tens of millions. Seeking more brand involvement By promoting its large, young user base as a major attraction in a competitive advertising market.

An action shot from Vans World, where the company built a virtual skatepark in Roblox complete with footwear messaging. Photo: Vans / Roblox

“In the context of the attention economy, where consumers are exposed to hundreds, even thousands, of ads a day, capturing and maintaining attention is crucial,” says Yusuf Ochi, associate professor of marketing at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. “We are exposed to thousands of ads every day, many of which we don’t remember. Advagames circumvent these filters more effectively by integrating brand messaging into games.”

Öç’s own research has found that ads that utilize interactive features like touching, swiping, and tilting a phone screen can influence consumer preferences and purchase intent. Roblox allows brands to bring these interactive elements into a ready-made, engaging space.

“Roblox’s popularity with a younger demographic opens up new avenues for us to reach and engage the next generation of consumers in a sector where we’re already investing heavily,” said Robert Jan van Dormael, vice president of marketing for consumer audio at Samsung-owned Harman.

JBL, one of Harman’s hi-fi brands, released an official Roblox game in February, where players can collect audio snippets and arrange them into custom tracks, explore pastel-colored worlds and collect virtual currency to spend on cosmetic headphones and portable speakers, all accurately modeled after real-life JBL products. Since its release, it has attracted 1.4 million players, with average playtime over six minutes and engagement metrics orders of magnitude higher than other games. A few seconds A person typically spends an hour reading a social media post…

Source: www.theguardian.com

Top 5 Weather Apps to Help You Decide if You Need an Umbrella

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

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Weather apps were a staple of the first iPhone in 2007, and their popularity hasn’t waned since. Forecast accuracy and options may have improved dramatically, but forecast results often vary widely from app to app.

Most weather services start with roughly the same data, because weather agencies tend to use networks of instruments to record their observations and share them freely. But there are differences in how each agency analyzes and models the data to create forecasts, and the chaotic nature and complexity of the weather system means that small changes can create big fluctuations.

A good weather app might not be able to brighten up the currently lackluster British summer, but it can help you prepare for the drizzle and occasional sunshine. Here are our picks for the five best weather apps.

Most accurate: UK Met Office

Founded in 1854, the Met Office is one of the world’s oldest national weather services, and its app is the UK’s most popular. Its supercomputers analyze 215 billion weather observations every day, at a speed of 14 quadrillion calculations per second. The resulting models are then fine-tuned by meteorologists to create forecasts. The process seems to work well, as the app was named most accurate in the World Meteorological Organization’s Weather App Awards. In addition to hourly and daily forecasts, the app features long-range forecasts for up to a month, and maps showing rainfall and cloud cover for the past six hours and the next five days.

Best for simplicity: BBC Weather

The BBC Weather app used forecasts from the UK Met Office until 2018, but is now provided by DTN (formerly MeteoGroup). Its output is based on the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMRWF) model as well as their own in-house model. Simple and basic, the app features a 14-day hourly forecast including temperature, wind, humidity, and visibility. The BBC recently revealed that they choose the most pessimistic outlook when choosing a symbol to represent the day’s forecast, a good choice for those looking for a pleasant surprise.

On July 11th, unexpected heavy rain hit Warsaw, Poland. Photo: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

Best for extensive data: AccuWeather

US-based AccuWeather claims to have the most data in its forecasts, incorporating over 190 climate models, including those from the Meteorological Agency. The company’s app provides minute-by-minute forecasts and “feels like” temperatures that factor in sun intensity, wind, humidity, cloud cover, and elevation. It also offers a detailed air quality index and a range of other variables, including dew point temperature, indoor humidity, and cloud ceiling height. To use many features, such as hourly 10-day forecasts and longer-term 90-day forecasts, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid version.

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Best choice: FlowX

For weather enthusiasts, FlowX lets you compare forecasts from different weather agencies, including ECMRWF, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Canadian Meteorological Centre. Select a forecast and it will be displayed on a map that you can scroll through in time. Choose whether to see precipitation, cloud cover, temperature, and even wave height and surface ozone levels, allowing you to make your own informed decision about the chances of rain or shine.

Best for aesthetics: Yr

The lesser known Yr app is a joint venture between the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the latter of which was founded in 1866 and is almost as old as the Meteorological Office. It’s one of the easiest to use apps to scroll through a photorealistic sky to see what the sky will look like for the next 48 hours. It’s also perfect for off-grid adventures, as it provides accurate forecasts based on your coordinates, rather than searching for the weather in your nearest area like most apps do.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Brits’ fascination with weather apps: “I find it quite enchanting” | UK Weather

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

vinegarFrancesca Simon, author of the children’s book “Horrid Henry,” pulls out her phone and checks the weather multiple times a day — not just where she is, but where her friends and family live, where she went on holiday, and where she grew up.

“I love weather apps. I think they’re magical,” she says. She has about 10 locations logged, and her friends tease her about her “weather porn” habits. “If I don’t like what I see on one app, I check another one.”

This week, Simon She shared her weather app obsession with Queen Camilla As the two discuss a miserable summer day at a charity event.[Camilla] “She said everyone was making fun of her … so we were laughing at each other’s obsession,” Simon said.

It’s an obsession shared by millions: If you’re going on vacation, planning a summer barbecue, worrying about your yard, or suffering from hay fever, you probably check the app at least daily to see the latest weather forecast.

The app provides much more localized and detailed information in graphical form than traditional weather forecasts, including wind speeds and chance of precipitation.

This is a lucrative business. Most basic weather apps are free to use, but they make money from advertising, paid upgrades, and data monetization. According to Statista in 2022, global revenue for the weather market is Projected to reach $1.58 billionThe majority of its revenue comes from advertising.

be Last year’s YouGov pollIn 2015, apps were the primary source of weather information for Americans, used by 53% of people. One in five people said they check the app multiple times a day, and the older people they are, the more frequently they check it.

For people with specific weather needs, bespoke apps may be available. For example: the wind is strong Wind speed and direction are tracked and the Met Office has introduced UK-specific Coastal Forecasts (in partnership with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and Mountain Forecasts.

Most apps provide wind speed and direction, sunrise and sunset times, UV forecasts, pollen counts, air pollution index, etc. Some apps even provide users with extreme weather alerts.

The Met Office launched its weather forecast app in 2010 and released a major update in 2016. By 2023, it expects to have around 6.2 million users, most of them in the UK. Usage spikes during severe weather events, such as named storms or heatwaves.

Met Office spokesman Graham Mudge said the app was in “continuous development” and had become more refined since its launch.

The center offers “detailed information for the next 24 hours,” but the further out a user looks, the more general the forecast becomes. “We’re recognized as one of the best centers in the world for our accuracy,” Mudge says. “We’re very proud of that.”

As a government agency, the Met Office provides data to other forecasters, but three years after the BBC released its weather app in 2013, it switched to a private weather company, Meteor Group, now known as DTN.

DTN “pulls data from multiple sources, including satellite imagery, global ocean and continental datasets, and real-time observations from a network of more than 20,000 sensors,” said Renee Vandewege, the company’s general manager of weather and climate information. The data is “processed in a high-performance cloud environment using AI and machine learning.”

“DTN believes our forecasts are among the most reliable in the industry and globally leading,” Vandewege added.

The BBC acknowledged earlier this year that the symbols that summarise the day’s weather on its app (which has been downloaded more than 28 million times) could paint an overly gloomy outlook: “The symbol of the day reflects the weather conditions that are likely to have the greatest impact on people’s lives,” it said. A BBC spokesman told The Sunday Times:.

“This may focus on short periods of weather on a particular day and is designed to be read in the context of the bigger picture and hourly details that change depending on the latest data.”

The company works with the National Center for Atmospheric Science to monitor and evaluate the accuracy of its forecasts across all platforms, including its app.

UK weather has always been changeable, but meteorologists say the global climate crisis is making it even less predictable and more prone to extreme weather – which could lead to increased reliance – or, as Simon puts it, obsession – with weather apps.

In the UK, “weather patterns rarely stay in one place for more than a few days at a time compared to other parts of the world such as California, which makes forecasting even more difficult”, Mudge said.

“Located between the Atlantic Ocean and the European continent, with the tropics to the south and the Arctic Circle to the north, the UK has an almost unique relationship with the weather globally.”

Vandewege said: “Checking the weather app is a global phenomenon. The weather affects every aspect of our lives – from what we wear, what we do and, in many cases, what we eat, to the more severe weather impacts, such as risks to safety and business operations.”

As weather data becomes more accessible, it’s not just the next local downpour that drives app usage: “Users are increasingly interested in knowing what the weather is like in multiple locations, not just their own local area.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

Meta removes limitations on President Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram accounts

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Meta has lifted previous restrictions on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts as the 2024 presidential election approaches, the company announced on Friday.

After being banned for his online behavior during the January 6 riot, President Trump was allowed to return to the social network in 2023 with “guardrails” in place. But those guardrails have now been removed.

“In assessing the responsibility of permitting political expression, I believe the American people should be able to hear from presidential candidates with the same standards,” Mehta said in a blog post, alluding to Trump formally becoming the party’s nominee at the Republican National Convention scheduled for next week.

As a result, Mr. Trump’s account will no longer be subject to the harsh suspension, which he said was instituted in response to “extreme and extraordinary circumstances” and “was not necessary to apply.”

“All US presidential candidates are required to follow the same community standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including policies to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence,” the company said in a blog post.

Since returning to the meta social network, Trump has mainly used his account to share campaign information, attacks on Democratic candidate Biden and memes.

Critics of Trump and online safety advocates have expressed concern that his return could lead to an increase in misinformation and incitement to violence like that seen during the storming of the Capitol, which initially prompted the president’s travel ban.

The Biden campaign condemned Mehta’s decision in a statement on Friday, calling it a “greedy and reckless decision” that amounts to “a direct attack on our security and democracy.”

“Restoring his access would be like giving car keys to someone you know is going to drive his car into a crowd and off a cliff,” campaign spokesman Charles Kretschmer Luttwak said. “It’s like giving a megaphone to a real racist who is going to shout hatred and white supremacy from the rooftops and make it mainstream.”

In addition to the Meta platform, other major social media companies, including Twitter (now X), Snapchat and YouTube, have also banned Trump’s accounts due to his online activity surrounding the January 6 attack.

The former president was allowed to return to X last year following a decision by Elon Musk, who bought the company in 2022, but has yet to tweet.

Trump Came back It is set to appear on YouTube in March 2023. He remains banned from Snapchat.

Trump launched his own social network, Truth Social, in early 2022.

Source: www.theguardian.com

What lies on the other side of a black hole? (Speculation included)

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

One of the most astonishing scientific discoveries of the past decade is the abundance of black holes in the universe.

These black holes come in a range of sizes, from slightly larger than the Sun to billions of times more massive. They are detected through various methods, such as radio emissions from material falling into them, their impact on orbiting stars, gravitational waves from black hole mergers, and the unique distortions of light they create, like the “Einstein rings” seen in images of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Our universe is not flat but filled with holes like a sieve. The physical characteristics of black holes are accurately described by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Although Einstein’s theory aligns well with our current knowledge of black holes, it fails to address two crucial questions. First, what happens to matter once it crosses the event horizon of a black hole? Second, how does a black hole eventually disappear? Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that, over time, black holes shrink through a process called Hawking radiation, emitting high-temperature radiation until they become very small.

These unanswered questions are related to quantum aspects of space-time, specifically quantum gravity, for which we lack a comprehensive theory.

An attempt at an answer

Despite these challenges, there are evolving tentative theories that offer some insights into these mysteries. While these theories require further experimental support, they provide possible explanations for the fate of black holes.

One prominent theory in this realm is loop quantum gravity (LQG), a promising approach to understanding quantum space-time developed since the late 1980s. LQG proposes a novel scenario where black holes transition into white holes, where the interior evolves under quantum effects, causing a reversal of its collapse.

White holes, the hypothetical opposites of black holes, may hold the key to understanding the fate of evaporating black holes. These structures could potentially explain the enigmatic nature of dark matter, offering a compelling link between well-established principles of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Same idea but in reverse

While the direct detection of white holes remains challenging due to their weak gravitational interactions, technological advancements may enable future observations. If dark matter indeed comprises remnants of evaporating black holes in the form of white holes, this hypothesis could shed light on the elusive nature of dark matter.

By reevaluating long-held assumptions about black holes and incorporating quantum gravity phenomena, we may uncover a more nuanced understanding of these cosmic phenomena. The evolving field of quantum gravity offers a fresh perspective on the dynamics of black holes and the potential existence of white holes as remnants of their evaporation.

Next steps

Exploring the implications of white holes and their possible role in dark matter formation requires further research and technological advancements. As we continue to refine our understanding of black holes and quantum gravity, we may unlock new insights into the fundamental nature of our universe.

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Miocene giraffe species possessed double sets of antlers

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Pakistani paleontologists have uncovered a new genus and species of a prehistoric relative of the giraffe from the Miocene period.

Reconstruction of an ancient giraffe. Image by Apokryltaros / CC BY 3.0.

Blamiscus Micro It lived in what is now northern Pakistan about 9 million years ago (Miocene epoch).

This prehistoric species Giraffeare a large family of ruminant, artiodactyla mammals that share a common ancestor with deer and bovids and that include modern-day giraffes and okapis.

Blamiscus Micro Probably two pairs Bone horn (horn-like protrusions) on its head.

“Blamiscus Micro “This giraffe probably possessed two pairs of antlers that differed in size, orientation and ornamentation from those of other early and middle Miocene giraffids and giraffiniformes,” Dr Maria Rios from the New University of Lisbon and her colleagues wrote in the paper.

Skull, teeth, and remains after the skull Blamiscus Micro The fossils were discovered at the Dok bun Amir Khatun (Chinji Formation) fossil site in Chakwal district, Punjab province, Pakistan. Additional fossils were identified from the Hasvard Siwaliks collection.

“Early Miocene giraffids are less diverse and abundant than their Late Miocene counterparts, with most of the evidence coming from the Chinji Formation of Pakistan,” the paleontologists write.

“Giraffidae remains have also been found in the Kalodir, Ropelot and Mol Olot Hills of the Losidok Formation of West Turkana, Kenya, on Rusinga Island in the Hiwegi Formation of Kenya, and at Gebel Zelten in Libya.”

“The genera known from the Early Miocene are Progirafa and Canthomerix” they added.

“By the Middle Miocene, several more species (e.g. Ginger-leaf lily, giraffe) Adaptive radiation then occurred, with several more giraffidae species occurring in the Chinji Formation of Pakistan, Fort Ternan in Kenya, and on the island of Chios in Greece, with many more species found in Africa and the Middle East.

Blamiscus Micro It coexisted simultaneously with other giraffes. Progirafa exigua, Ginger-leaf lily, giraffe, giraffeand other species yet to be named.

“Our specimen is the oldest record of a giraffe with true bony horns in the Indian subcontinent,” the researchers concluded.

their paper Published online in the journal Paleoniologia Electronica.

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Maria Rios others2024. New Kirin Blamiscus Micro A new genus and species (Ruminant, Giraffidae) discovered from the Miocene of northern Pakistan. Paleoniologia Electronica 27(2):a29; Source: 10.26879/1243

Source: www.sci.news

Here’s Why Your Risk of Death is Higher on Your Birthday

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

With the approach of a special day, we often find ourselves balancing the celebration of a new year’s wisdom and the apprehension of time passing by. However, the “birthday effect” adds an interesting twist to this traditional celebration.

The birthday effect is a statistical phenomenon, which unfortunately puts a damper on parties, indicating that people are more likely to pass away around their birthdays.

This somber discovery has been supported by various studies, such as the 2012 Swiss study, which revealed a 13.8 percent increase in the number of people aged 60 and above who died on their birthdays compared to other days.

Similarly, the 2015 Study from the United States showed a 6.7 percent higher risk of mortality on one’s birthday.

Various theories attempt to explain why this phenomenon occurs. Some suggest that excessive celebrations involving alcohol on birthdays can lead to risky behavior, accidents, and poor judgment. Others believe that for those battling terminal illnesses, birthdays serve as important milestones, giving them the strength to hold on until another year passes.

Birthdays can also trigger reflection, leading to feelings of sadness and depression known as “birthday blues.” Sadly, these emotions can increase the risk of suicide, as demonstrated by a Japanese study in 2016, which found a 50 percent higher risk of suicide on one’s birthday.

Another possibility is that errors in death registration records may inaccurately document some individuals’ birth and death dates as the same. However, these errors are unlikely to significantly impact the observed results.

The birthday effect remains a complex and not fully understood phenomenon, likely influenced by a combination of factors mentioned above and others. So, while blowing out the candles, perhaps hold off on that shot of tequila.

This article addresses the question from Alex Mercado in Manchester regarding the “birthday effect.”

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Finalists in the space photography contest: these stunning photos stun viewers

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Astronomy Photographer of the Year An annual photo contest showcasing all things space-relatedis back for the first time in 16 years^Number Run.

More than 3,500 photos were submitted for the award, and Karina Leterrier Baeza's photo was among the 30 finalists. Arctic DragonThis photo taken at Arctic Henge in Iceland shows the aurora borealis, the result of a geomagnetic storm caused by a coronal mass ejection, resembling a rearing dragon.

The final candidates are The cry of a dying star (Below), photo by Jan Sainty. The “star” in question is actually the remnant of a supernova explosion, when a star dies and explodes, releasing a tremendous amount of light and energy. This explosion occurred about 10,000 years ago.

Sainty combined clear skies and a long exposure in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to capture rarely seen details of this glowing remnant, called Cygnus Loop, named after the famous painting. scream Sainti said the painting symbolizes Edvard Munch's “The Scream,” but also the “scream” that reverberates through the universe after a star dies.

Below is a stunning photo of the sun's corona (the outermost layer of the atmosphere) over the Himalayan mountain ranges, taken by Geshuang Chen near the Tibetan city of Shigatse. Normally hidden by the brightness of the sun's surface, the corona can be glimpsed here because thin clouds are diffracting sunlight, producing a vibrant array of rainbow colors. Chen calls this image the “solar corona.” Himalayan Palette.

The winner of the competition, run by the Royal Observatory, will be announced on September 12th. The winning submission, along with the finalists' works, will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London from September 14th.

Source: www.newscientist.com

New understanding suggests LUCA, the last common ancestor of all life, emerged earlier than previously believed

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Illustration showing LUCA possibly being attacked by a virus

Scientific Graphic Design

The organisms that gave rise to all life on Earth evolved much earlier than previously thought – just a few hundred million years after Earth formed – and may have been more sophisticated than previous assessments had suggested.

The DNA of all living organisms today is E. coli There are many similarities in the evolution leading up to the blue whale, suggesting that we can trace our origins back to a universal common ancestor, LUCA, billions of years ago. While many efforts have been made to understand LUCA, studies taking a broader approach have revealed surprising results.

“What we're trying to do is bring together representatives from different disciplines to develop a comprehensive understanding of when LUCA existed and what its biological characteristics were,” he said. Philip Donahue At the University of Bristol, UK.

Genes that are currently present in all major lineages of life may have been passed down uninterrupted from LUCA, which could help us understand what genes our ancient ancestors had. By studying how these genes changed over time, we should be able to estimate when LUCA lived.

In reality, this is a lot more complicated than it sounds, as genes are lost, gained, and swapped between branches. Donohue says the team created a complex model that took this into account, to work out which genes were present in LUCA. “We've found a much more sophisticated organism than many have previously claimed,” he says.

The researchers estimate that 2,600 protein-coding genes come from LUCA, up from previous estimates of as few as 80. The team also concludes that LUCA lived around 4.2 billion years ago, much older than other estimates and surprisingly close to the formation of Earth 4.5 billion years ago. “This suggests that the evolution of life may have been simpler than previously claimed, because evolution happened so quickly,” Donohue says.

The earlier date is largely due to the team's improved methodology, but also because, unlike others, they don't assume that LUCA could have existed only after the Late Heavy Bombardment, when Earth was hit so hard by space debris that any new life that emerged could have been wiped out. Based on rocks returned from the Moon, the period has been put at 3.8 billion years ago, but there's a lot of uncertainty around that number, Donohue says.

Their reconstruction suggests that LUCA had genes that protected it from ultraviolet damage, which leads them to believe that it likely lived on the ocean's surface. Other genes suggest that LUCA fed on hydrogen, which is consistent with previous findings. The team speculates that LUCA may have been part of an ecosystem with other types of primitive cells that are now extinct. “I think it's extremely naive to think that LUCA existed on its own,” Donohue says.

“I think this is compelling from an evolutionary perspective.” Greg Fournier “LUCA is not the beginning of the story of life, but merely the state of the last common ancestor that we can trace back to using genomic data,” say researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The results also suggest that LUCA had a primitive version of the bacterial defense system known as CRISPR to fight viruses. “Even 4.2 billion years ago, our earliest ancestors were fighting viruses,” the team members say. Edmund Moodyalso at the University of Bristol.

Peering into the distant past is fraught with uncertainty, and Donohue is the first to admit that his team may have missed the mark. “We've almost certainly got it all wrong,” he says. “What we're trying to do is push the envelope and create the first attempt to synthesize all of the relevant evidence.”

“This won't be the last word,” he said, “and it won't be our last word on this subject, but we think it's a good start.”

Patrick Forter Researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, who coined the term LUCA, also believe that the organism did not live in isolation. “But the claim that LUCA lived before the Late Heavy Bombardment 3.9 billion years ago seems to me completely unrealistic,” says Forterre. “I'm convinced that their strategy for determining the age and gene content of LUCA has several flaws.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Three protagonists in The Last of Us: Ellie, Joel, and music by Gustavo Santaolalla

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The Last of Us is a story of tension: between love and loss, violence and intimacy, protection and destruction, life and death. It’s also a study in how fragile life can be and the terrible stubbornness of the will to survive. As a composer, Gustavo Santaolalla’s job was to navigate that tension and create a soundtrack, a reconciliation between the game’s conflicting themes. His mission was to compose music for a video game that was doing something different and really wanted to say something.

Santaolalla shared with me that as a child in rural Argentina, one of his tutors quit after only a few lessons, telling his parents, “I can’t teach you anything.” His career began in 1967, when he co-founded Arco Iris, a band that specialized in fusing Latin American folk and rock. After a brief stint leading a collective of Argentine musicians in Soluna, he went independent, releasing solo albums and beginning to compose for television shows, advertisements, and eventually films (most notably Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and The Motorcycle Diaries).

In 2006 and 2007, he won Academy Awards for his performances in Brokeback Mountain and Babel, respectively. Now a big name in Hollywood, he was headhunted by many TV and film directors and producers, as well as game developers, in the years that followed.

“After I won the Oscar, I was approached by a few companies to do music for video games,” Santaolalla recalls. “A European company approached me to do a Western video game. It was going to be a big project, financially, in terms of visibility and what it could represent, but it was all pretty similar. I wanted to do something that would connect emotionally with what I was doing in the game, something more than just gymnastics or shooting or fighting or surviving.”

Two sides to the story…The Last of Us. Photo: Sony

Santaolalla was approached by Naughty Dog around 2009, early in the game’s development, to work on The Last of Us. The story is about an orphaned girl named Ellie and a man named Joel who is grieving the loss of his daughter. Set against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, the two slowly open up and show each other their weaknesses. The closer the two protagonists get, the more they hurt each other, depicting a complicated hedgehog dilemma relationship.

It was perfect for Santa Olaya, who was able to bring his Argentinian-inspired soulfulness to a non-Western setting, imbuing the urban ruins of Boston, Massachusetts, with an Americana vibe that was dreamy and familiar, yet distinctly American. Even the way he plays his guitar, scraping and scratching the strings with the pads of his fingers, suits the instrument’s understated humanity.

The soundtrack’s greatest attraction is the captivating interplay between Santa Olaya’s signature instrument, the Bolivian guitar, the Ronroco, and the Fender VI, a six-string bass guitar from the ’60s that sounds an octave lower than a guitar and a bit different from a modern bass. Listen to any song on the soundtrack and you can hear the gentle conversation between the two instruments, quiet but constant, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing.

The bass, famously used on Beatles and Cream records, is Joel’s voice; and the more delicate but no less powerful Ronroco is Ellie’s voice. “This six-string bass is definitely the masculine side of this story,” Santaolalla tells me. “And Ronroco, the delicate side of the music, is Ellie’s side of the story. I didn’t think of it that way when I wrote the song, but listening to it again, it’s so clear to me.”

“And the banjo and electric guitar fill the middle, the central role between these two extremes. As the story unfolded in Part II and we started introducing more characters and complexities, the music needed a richer tone. We couldn’t just stick to the combination we used in the first game.”

Everything Santaolalla does is “instinctive,” he says. He spontaneously introduced the banjo to Abby’s theme in The Last of Us Part II, and it was a perfect fit. He wasn’t born a banjo player, so using the instrument in his score feels foreign to his ears, searching, reflective, pensive. “I got out of bed one day, picked up my banjo, and it just came out of me,” he laughs. “Some of the character themes are magical in the way they happen. They come out when I’m not really thinking about it. I pick up an instrument, and it’s like someone else is playing it.”

The 72-year-old has an intuitive feel for his scores and knows that as a listener, his emotional response comes both from “what I hear” and “from what I actually hear.” and “What you can’t hear” is one of the reasons why The Last of Us’ score stands out. Game music is full of extremes: soaring bombast, orchestral high notes, intensity. The Last of Us is quite different, more introspective and quiet, expressing as much through the absence of music as through melody. The HBO TV series he composed for follows the same principle.

“We love the space that silence creates” – Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey of The Last of Us TV series. Photo: HBO/AP

“I love using silence,” Santaolalla enthuses. “I love it. I love the space silence gives, because it gives resonance to the sounds you play around it.” Suddenly, he begins talking about parkour, a recent new interest of his, sparked by a group of British athletes. Stoller.

“I linked the jumps in parkour to the silence of music, and I think that’s really important,” he says. “Runners measure their jumps, they run, and they measure again before they jump, right? They measure their jumps, they decide how many steps they’re going to take before they put their feet on the ground and jump. It’s like choosing a note to play before you get quiet, before you jump. And you choose a note to play when you land, and with that note silence wins. You don’t fall. You’re in that space, in that moment of silence, and when you land it all makes sense.”

This interview, the master class he taught, and Game Music Festival I spent a fair bit of time with Santaolalla at his concert at London’s Southbank Centre. The way his brain works, and the way he connects concepts to practice, is inspiring. When he performed “Ando Rodando,” a song from his 1982 album, Santa OlayaThe show is now dedicated to Joel for its “gritty, rock” nature, and the room was met with stunned silence. That Santaolalla was able to find traces of The Last of Us characters deep within his previous work and bring them into his performance demonstrates his deep understanding and love for Naughty Dog’s work.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Study reveals last common ancestor lived 4.2 billion years ago

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) is a hypothetical common ancestor of all modern cellular life, from single-celled organisms such as bacteria to giant sequoia trees and even to us humans. Our understanding of LUCA therefore has implications for our understanding of the early evolution of life on Earth.

Probabilistic inference of metabolic networks for modern organisms present in LUCA. Image courtesy of Moody others., doi: 10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1.

LUCA is a node on the tree of life from which the basic prokaryotic domains (Archaea and Bacteria) branch off.

Modern life evolved from LUCA from a variety of different sources: the same amino acids used to build proteins in all cellular organisms, a shared energy currency (ATP), the presence of cellular machinery such as ribosomes involved in creating proteins from information stored in DNA, and even the fact that all cellular organisms use DNA itself as a way to store information.

In the new study, University of Bristol scientist Edmund Moody and his colleagues compared all the genes in the genomes of modern species and counted the mutations that had occurred in the sequences over time since a common ancestor called LUCA.

The time when some species split off is known from the fossil record, and the team used a genetic equivalent of a familiar equation used in physics to calculate speed to determine when LUCA existed, arriving at 4.2 billion years ago – just 400 million years after Earth and the solar system formed.

“The evolutionary history of genes is complicated by the exchange of genes between lineages,” Dr Moody said.

“Reconciling the evolutionary history of genes with species lineages requires the use of complex evolutionary models.”

“We didn't expect LUCA to be so old, within just a few hundred million years of Earth's formation,” said Dr Sandra Alvarez-Carretero, also from the University of Bristol.

“But our findings are consistent with modern views of the habitability of early Earth.”

The study authors also traced the lineage of life back to LUCA and modeled the physiological traits of modern species to elucidate LUCA's biology.

“One of the real advantages here is that we applied the gene tree and species tree reconciliation approach to a highly diverse dataset representing the major domains of life: Archaea and Bacteria,” said Dr Tom Williams from the University of Bristol.

“This allows us to make statements with some confidence about how LUCA lived and to assess that level of confidence.”

“Our study shows that LUCA was a complex organism not too different from modern prokaryotes, but what's really interesting is that LUCA clearly had an early immune system, indicating that by 4.2 billion years ago our ancestors were in an arms race with viruses,” said Professor Davide Pisani, from the University of Bristol.

“LUCA clearly used and transformed its environment, but it is unlikely to have lived alone,” said researcher Dr Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter.

“That waste would then serve as food for other microorganisms, such as methanogens, helping to create a recycling ecosystem.”

“The insights and methods provided by this study will also inform future studies looking in more detail at the subsequent evolution of prokaryotes in the context of Earth's history, including the less-studied archaea and their methanogens,” said Professor Anja Spang, researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Marine Research.

“Our study brings together data and methods from multiple disciplines, revealing insights into the early Earth and life that could not be achieved by any single discipline alone,” said Professor Philip Donoghue, from the University of Bristol.

“It also shows how quickly ecosystems were established on the early Earth.”

“This suggests that life may thrive in an Earth-like biosphere somewhere in the universe.”

This study paper Published in the journal today Natural Ecology and Evolution.

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ERR Moody othersThe nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system. Nat Ecol EvolPublished online July 12, 2024, doi: 10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1

This article is a version of a press release provided by the University of Bristol.

Source: www.sci.news

Astronauts are able to drink their own urine thanks to water-recycling space suits

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Part of the urine collection system

Luka Bielski

Astronauts on spacewalks may soon be able to drink their own urine, thanks to a water filtration and recycling system that could be ready in time for NASA's upcoming manned missions to the moon.

Urine and sweat wastewater is already recycled on the International Space Station, but the bulky equipment required to do so doesn't fit in a space suit. NASA's current solution is the Maximum Absorbency Garment, which, despite its technical name, is essentially just an adult diaper for collecting urine and feces. At the end of the spacewalk, these diapers are sent to the ISS's waste system and eventually burned in Earth's atmosphere, a frustrating waste of resources.

Chris Mason A researcher from Cornell University in New York says that current solutions are sufficient for spacewalks, which often last only a few hours, but that increased activity in space will require better solutions. He and his colleagues have developed a shoebox-sized, 8-kilogram device that can recycle urine collected through a unisex external catheter through a two-stage osmotic membrane filter with 87 percent efficiency.

The purified water is ready to drink and can be piped to a bag inside the spacesuit, which has the added benefit of providing a steady supply of drinking water. Current NASA spacesuits only provide a little less than a liter of drinking water, which is often not enough for long spacewalks. The remaining 13 percent of the water cannot be extracted and remains in the filter.

“I thought this had already been done, but it hasn't,” Mason said. “People who push the boundaries of humanity often trade discomfort for the opportunity to explore entirely new areas of science and medicine.”

The filtration technology is the same one already used on the ISS; however, unlike ISS wastewater, urine does not contain soap or chemicals, so it is easier to extract water from it, the team says. Extracting water from feces is not yet “fully solved,” but this is not as big a constraint, since astronauts often insist on just holding in their bowels during spacewalks, Mason says.

While many of NASA's current spacesuits have worked so far, change is needed because future astronauts will likely be more diverse in body shapes and sizes than their predecessors, he said. “The democratization of space brings new opportunities, but it also creates new challenges that we must address.”

Currently, the device is a prototype that is only being tested in a lab, but human trials involving collecting urine, recycling it, and drinking the water are expected to begin by November.

The researchers say the device could be incorporated into new versions of spacesuits planned for NASA's upcoming Artemis missions to the moon. NASA has contracted the private company Axiom Space to build the new suits, but the company declined to answer questions. New ScientistWhen asked how the spacecraft would deal with human waste, NASA declined to comment.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Study finds ancient genome structure preserved in 52,000-year-old mammoth skin

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Scientists from Baylor College of Medicine and other institutions have announced the discovery of ancient chromosome subfossils in a female mammoth fossil.Mammutus primigeniusThe mammoth, a species of mammoth known as the pygmy mammoth, died 52,000 years ago in what is now Siberia. The fossil preserves the structure of its ancient chromosomes down to the nanometer (billionth of a meter) scale. Researchers hypothesize that the cold of Siberia naturally freeze-dried the mammoth's skin, causing a glass transition that preserved the fossil.

Sandoval Velasco othersAssembled the genome and 3D chromosome structure of a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth. Image courtesy of Sandoval Velasco. others., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.06.002.

“This is a new type of fossil, one whose scale far exceeds that of individual ancient DNA fragments, with sequences a million times larger,” said Dr. Erez Lieberman Aiden, director of the Center for Genome Architecture at Baylor College of Medicine.

“This is also the first time that an ancient sample has been karyotyped.”

Knowing the three-dimensional structure of a genome gives us a lot of additional information beyond its sequence, but most ancient DNA specimens are made up of very small, jumbled up pieces of DNA.

Building on their work mapping the 3D structure of the human genome, Dr Aiden and his colleagues reasoned that the same strategy could be used to assemble ancient genomes, provided suitable ancient DNA samples were found.

The researchers tested dozens of samples over a five-year period, eventually locating an unusually well-preserved woolly mammoth that was unearthed in September 2018 near Belaya Gora, in the Sakha Republic in northeastern Siberia.

“We believe that the freeze-drying occurred naturally shortly after death, and the nuclear structures in the dried samples can remain viable for an incredibly long period of time,” said Dr. Olga Dudchenko of the Center for Genome Structure at Baylor College of Medicine.

To reconstruct the mammoth's genome structure, the authors extracted DNA from skin samples taken from behind the mammoth's ears.

They are, High C This allows them to detect which parts of DNA are in spatial proximity and likely to interact in their natural state within the nucleus.

“Imagine having a puzzle with 3 billion pieces, but not having the final puzzle picture at hand,” said Professor Marc-Marty-Renom, a structural genomicist at the National Center for Genome Analysis and Genomic Regulation.

“Hi-C allows me to get a rough idea of what the picture looks like before I start putting the puzzle pieces together.”

They then combined the physical information from the Hi-C analysis with DNA sequences to identify interacting DNA sections and produced a neat map of the mammoth genome using the modern elephant genome as a template.

The analysis revealed that mammoths had 28 chromosomes, the same number as modern Asian and African elephants.

Remarkably, the fossilized mammoth chromosomes retained a great deal of physical integrity and detail, including the nanoscale loops that contact transcription factors with the genes they control.

By examining the compartmentalization of genes within the nucleus, the scientists were able to identify active and inactive genes in the mammoth skin cells, a proxy for epigenetics and transcriptomics.

Compared with skin cells from the mammoth's closest relative, the Asian elephant, the mammoth's skin cells showed different gene activation patterns, including genes that may be related to fur and cold tolerance.

“For the first time we have mammoth tissue where we can roughly tell which genes are on and which are off,” said Professor Martti Renom.

“This is a surprising new type of data, the first time we've measured cell-specific genetic activity of genes in ancient DNA samples.”

Team result Published in today's journal cell.

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Marcela Sandoval Velasco others2024. A 52,000-year-old mammoth skin sample contains 3D genome structure. cell 187(14):3541-3562; doi:10.1016/j.cell.2024.06.002

Source: www.sci.news

Is it true that tachyons exist as particles?

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Tachyon They are hypothetical particles that always travel faster than light. Until recently, they were commonly thought to be entities that did not fit into the special theory of relativity. New paper In the journal Physics Review DThese faster-than-light particles “are not only not excluded by the theory, but also allow us to better understand its causal structure.”

Tachyon AI impression.

“Movement at speeds faster than the speed of light is one of the most controversial problems in physics,” Professor Andrzej Dragan Researchers from the University of Warsaw and the National University of Singapore and their colleagues.

“Tachyons, hypothetical particles capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, are the awesome geniuses of modern physics.”

“Until recently, they were widely thought to be creations that did not fit into the special theory of relativity.”

“There are currently at least three known reasons why tachyons do not exist in quantum mechanics,” the researchers added.

“First, the ground state of the tachyon field must be unstable, which means that such faster-than-light particles would form avalanches.”

“Second, a change in the inertial observer must lead to a change in the number of particles observed in his reference system, but the presence of, say, seven particles cannot depend on who is looking at it.”

“The third reason is that faster-than-light particles can have negative energies.”

“Previous difficulties with tachyons have a common root,” the physicists said.

“It turns out that the boundary conditions that determine the course of physical processes include not only the initial state of a system but also its final state.”

“Simply put, to calculate the probability of a quantum process involving tachyons, we need to know not only the past initial state but also the future final state.”

“Once this fact was incorporated into the theory, all of the aforementioned difficulties disappeared completely and the tachyon theory became mathematically consistent.”

“It's a bit like internet advertising – one simple trick can solve the problem,” Prof Dragan said.

“The idea that the future influences the present, rather than the present determining the future, is not new in physics.”

“But until now this kind of view has at best been an unorthodox interpretation of certain quantum phenomena, and now we are forced to this conclusion by the theory itself.”

“We had to expand the state space to make room for tachyons.”

“We also predict that expanding the boundary conditions has consequences: a new kind of quantum entanglement appears in the theory, one that mixes the past and the future, that doesn't exist in classical particle theory.”

The team's paper also raises the question of whether tachyons described in this way are purely a mathematical possibility, or whether such particles might one day be observed.

“Tachyons are not merely a possibility but are in fact an essential component of the spontaneous destruction processes responsible for the formation of matter,” the authors say.

“This hypothesis implies that the Higgs field excitations, before the spontaneous symmetry breaking, could travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.”

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Jerzy Paczos others2024. Covariant quantum field theory of tachyons. Physics Revision D 110(1):015006; doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.110.015006

This article is a version of a press release provided by the University of Warsaw.

Source: www.sci.news

AI in Africa: Transforming Pregnancy Scans and Bringing Joy by Showing Baby’s Movement

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

MaPregnant women have become familiar with their first look at the baby through a blurry, black-and-white ultrasound scan that they share with loved ones. However, in many parts of the world, this is still considered a luxury. AI is now being utilized to create technology that can provide this essential pregnancy milestone to those who truly need it: a health check-up on their baby.

A pilot project in Uganda is utilizing AI software in ultrasound imaging not just to scan the fetus but also to encourage women to seek medical services early on in their pregnancy, aiming to reduce stillbirths and complications.

In low- and middle-income countries, the availability of trained experts and equipment to conduct these scans is mainly limited to urban hospitals, making the journey from rural areas long and costly for women.

Dr. Daniel Lukakamwa, an obstetrician-gynaecologist at Kawempe National Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, who is involved in the development of the AI software, underscores the importance of early pregnancy examinations in saving lives.

“Pregnant women are increasingly interested in undergoing ultrasound scans,” Lukakamwa stated. “There’s a high willingness to participate in the study without any hesitations. It seems that we are getting overwhelmed.”

Lukakamwa emphasized the significance of tackling delayed births within obstetric care. He added, “The early stages of pregnancy are critical because any abnormalities or subsequent complications can lead to stillbirth.”

A software called ScanNav FetalCheck Software based on AI has been developed by Intelligent Ultrasound. It enables precise dating of a pregnancy without the need for a specialized ultrasound technician to assess the fetus’s progress inside the uterus.

This technology allows for accurate pregnancy dating without the need for a specialized ultrasound technician. Photo: @GEHealthcare

One of several AI programs for pregnancy assessment is currently undergoing testing, with promising early results reported by developers.

The technology enables midwives or nurses to perform the scan by simply placing an ultrasound probe on a woman’s abdomen, with the program providing the necessary data. It can also be used with a portable device for in-home care.

A significant aim of the trial at Kawempe Hospital is to develop a tool that can predict which pregnancies are at the highest risk of stillbirth, while also aiding in engaging with women at an early stage.

Radiologist Jones Biira mentioned, “Mothers who have given birth are referring us to take part in studies. They talk to the mothers and more and more are joining the research programme. They really like it and they trust our findings.”

The primary concern facing the staff is “probably the power outages,” she noted.

For Sarah Kyolaba, 30, from Kikoni village, the technology has given her more control over her second pregnancy.

“You can see how the baby is moving and how the organs are developing,” she says. “When you do a scan, you can see everything. It’s good to see that the baby is thriving and moving.”

She discovered during her first pregnancy that her baby was too large and would require a Caesarean section shortly before delivery, catching her off-guard. “They told me I had to have a Caesarean section, but I wasn’t prepared for that,” she disclosed.

AI is involved in the largest study ever to evaluate the use of aspirin in preventing pre-eclampsia. Clinical trials are ongoing in Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa to compare the impact of two different aspirin doses on women at high risk of pre-eclampsia.

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Accurate gestational age is critical for this trial because the risk of pre-eclampsia changes as pregnancy progresses, and early administration of aspirin depends on knowing the exact gestational age.

Dr. Angela Koech, an obstetrician in rural Kenya and a research scientist at the Aga Khan University in Nairobi, emphasized the importance of knowing the precise number of weeks pregnant.

Dr. Alice Papageorgiou, co-founder of Intelligent Ultrasound, believes that AI can enable hospitals in disadvantaged countries to “develop the same capacity as higher-income countries.” Photo: Intelligent Ultrasound

“One of the biggest challenges I face is when a mother develops complications, typically in the later stages of pregnancy, and I have to make decisions,” Koech explained, highlighting the role of leading research leading to the AI ultrasound program.

“For instance, if a woman presents with pregnancy-induced hypertension or preeclampsia in the third trimester, I may have to decide on the timing of delivery based on the baby’s survival odds. The decision varies significantly based on whether the woman is 30, 32, 34, 36, or 38 weeks along.”

Koech emphasized the risks of delivering extremely premature babies in rural facilities lacking neonatal care units. She said, “When a mother gives her last period as pregnancy age but you’re uncertain, the decision becomes very challenging and unreliable.”

Many individuals in rural Kenya delay seeking medical assistance until late in pregnancy, with some considering it inappropriate to announce a pregnancy early, while the expenses and long travel time to antenatal clinics present further challenges.

Dr. Alice Papageorgiou, co-founder of Intelligent Ultrasound and director of clinical research at the Oxford Institute of Maternal, Child and Perinatal Health, acknowledges concerns that the technology could be viewed as providing subpar services to women in lower-income countries.

“Ideally, we should focus on building capacity in these environments by providing the right equipment, training, and resources similar to high-income countries. However, the reality is that this hasn’t been accomplished in recent decades. So, as an interim solution – one that may only be temporary – I believe it is a good solution,” she concluded.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Research shows that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had 200,000 years of interaction

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

A recent study indicates that multiple instances of gene flow occurring between 250,000 and 200,000 years ago impacted the genomes and biology of both modern humans and Neanderthals, who are believed to share 2.5 to 3.7 percent of human ancestry.

Li othersIt provides insight into the history of modern-human Neanderthal admixture, shows that gene flow has significantly influenced patterns of genomic variation in modern and Neanderthals, and suggests that taking into account human-derived sequences in Neanderthals allows for more precise inferences about admixture and its consequences in both Neanderthals and modern humans. Image courtesy of the Neanderthal Museum.

“For the first time, geneticists have identified multiple instances of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals,” stated Professor Li Ming from Southeast University.

“It is now evident that throughout most of human history, there was interaction between modern humans and Neanderthals,” added Professor Joshua Akey from Princeton University.

“Our direct ancestors, hominins, diverged from the Neanderthal lineage approximately 600,000 years ago and acquired modern physical characteristics around 250,000 years ago.”

“Subsequently, modern humans continued to engage with Neanderthals for around 200,000 years until the extinction of Neanderthals.”

The researchers utilized the genomes of 2,000 modern humans, three Neanderthals, and one Denisovan to track gene flow between human populations over the past 250,000 years.

They employed a genetic tool called IBDmix, developed several years ago, which utilizes machine learning techniques for sequencing genomes.

Previously, scientists relied on comparing the human genome to reference populations of modern individuals with minimal or no Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA.

The study authors discovered traces of Neanderthal DNA even in populations residing thousands of miles south of Neanderthal caves, suggesting that the DNA might have been transmitted southward by travelers or their descendants.

Using IBDmix, they identified a first contact wave around 200,000-250,000 years ago, a second contact wave around 100,000-120,000 years ago, and a peak contact wave around 50,000-60,000 years ago, deviating from previous genetic data.

“Most genetic data indicates that modern humans originated in Africa 250,000 years ago, persisted there for another 200,000 years, and only around 50,000 years ago dispersed from Africa to populate other regions as humans,” said Prof Akey.

“Our model suggests that there wasn’t a prolonged period of stasis, but soon after the emergence of modern humans, we migrated out of Africa and eventually returned.”

“To me, the narrative revolves around dispersal, highlighting that modern humans have been more mobile than previously assumed, encountering Neanderthals and Denisovans,” added Prof Akey.

This portrayal of migrating humans aligns with archaeological and paleoanthropological evidence indicating cultural and tool exchanges among human populations.

A crucial insight was to search for modern human DNA in the Neanderthal genome, rather than vice versa.

“While much genetic research in the past decade focused on how interbreeding with Neanderthals influenced the evolution and phenotype of modern humans, these questions also hold importance and interest in the opposite direction,” noted Professor Akey.

They realized that the descendants of the initial interbreeding event between Neanderthals and modern humans likely stayed with the Neanderthals and thus left no genetic trace in modern humans.

“By incorporating Neanderthal elements into genetic studies, we can analyze these early migrations in a new light,” Prof Akey mentioned.

The final revelation was that the Neanderthal population was smaller than previously estimated.

Traditional genetic modeling used diversity as an indicator of population size: greater genetic diversity implied a larger population.

However, using IBDmix, the team showed that most diversity came from DNA sequences originating from a larger modern human population, leading to a reduction in the effective Neanderthal population from around 3,400 breeding individuals to approximately 2,400.

Collectively, these new findings provide insights into the disappearance of Neanderthals from the record roughly 30,000 years ago.

“I prefer not to use the term ‘extinction’ because I believe Neanderthals were mostly assimilated,” mentioned Prof Akey.

It is theorized that the Neanderthal population gradually dwindled, with the last survivors merging into modern human communities.

“The assimilation model was first proposed in 1989 by anthropologist Fred Smith from Illinois State University, and our results offer compelling genetic evidence supporting Fred’s hypothesis,” Prof Akey stated.

“Neanderthals likely faced prolonged near-extinction.”

“Our estimates suggest that even a slight decrease of 10 to 20 percent in the population size would have a significant impact on an already vulnerable population,” Prof Akey added.

“Modern humans can be likened to waves gradually eroding the shoreline, eventually overwhelming Neanderthals demographically and integrating them into the modern human population.”

Read the full research findings published in the journal Science.

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Li-Ming Lee others2024. Recurrent gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans over the past 200,000 years. Science 385(6705); doi:10.1126/science.adi1768

Source: www.sci.news

New study suggests Ancient Mars was cold and had moderate levels of water

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

In a new study, planetary scientists have found strong similarities between the soil of Gale Crater on Mars and that of the cold, sub-Arctic climate of Newfoundland, Canada.

X-ray amorphous material comprises 15-73% by weight of the sedimentary rocks and eolian deposits in Gale Crater. This material is siliceous and high in iron and low in aluminum. The presence of volatiles is consistent with the presence of early weathering products. To better understand the impact of this material on past water conditions on Mars, Feldman and others used bulk and selective dissolution techniques, X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy to investigate the formation and lifetime of X-ray amorphous material in terrestrial iron-rich soils of different ages and environmental conditions. Image courtesy of M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Scientists often use soil to portray environmental history, as the minerals it contains can tell the story of a landscape's evolution over time.

Understanding more about how these materials formed could help answer long-standing questions about the Red Planet's historical conditions.

The soil and rocks in Gale Crater are a record of a climate that existed 3 to 4 billion years ago, when Mars was relatively water-rich, coinciding with the time when life first emerged on Earth.

“Gale Crater is an ancient lake bed and clearly water was present, but what were the environmental conditions like when the water was there?” said Dr Anthony Feldman, a soil scientist and geomorphologist at the Desert Institute.

“We'll never find a direct analogue on the Martian surface because conditions on Mars and Earth are so different, but we can look at trends under Earth conditions and apply them to problems on Mars.”

NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2011 and has found large amounts of soil material known as X-ray amorphous material.

These components of soil lack the typical repeating atomic structure that characterizes minerals and therefore cannot be easily characterized using traditional techniques such as X-ray diffraction.

For example, when a crystalline material like diamond is hit with X-rays, the rays scatter at characteristic angles based on the mineral's internal structure.

However, X-ray amorphous materials do not produce these characteristic fingerprints.

This X-ray diffraction method was used by the Curiosity rover to demonstrate that soil and rock samples tested in Gale Crater consisted of 15-73% X-ray amorphous material.

“Think of X-ray amorphous material as being like jelly, which is a soup of different elements and chemicals that slide around one another,” Dr. Feldman said.

Curiosity also conducted chemical analysis of soil and rock samples and found that the amorphous material was rich in iron and silica and deficient in aluminum.

Beyond limited chemical information, scientists don't yet understand what this amorphous material is or what its presence means about Mars' historical environment.

Uncovering more information about how these enigmatic materials formed and persist on Earth could help answer long-standing questions about the Red Planet.

Dr. Feldman and his colleagues visited three locations in their search for similar X-ray amorphous material: the Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, the Klamath Mountains in Northern California, and western Nevada.

All three sites contain serpentinite soils that the researchers predicted would be chemically similar to the X-ray amorphous material in Gale Crater, meaning it would be rich in iron and silicon but poor in aluminum.

The three locations also recorded ranges of rainfall, snowfall and temperatures, which could help provide insight into the types of environmental conditions that produce amorphous material and promote its preservation.

At each site, the team examined the soil using X-ray diffraction analysis and transmission electron microscopy, allowing them to see the soil material at a more detailed level.

The subarctic climate of Newfoundland produced materials chemically similar to those found at Gale Crater, but lacked the crystalline structure, whereas soils produced in warmer climates such as California and Nevada did not produce the crystalline structure.

“This tells us that you need water there to form these materials,” Dr. Feldman said.

“But to preserve the amorphous material in the soil, the average annual temperature needs to be cold, close to freezing.”

Amorphous materials are often considered to be relatively unstable, meaning that at the atomic level, the atoms have not yet organized into a final crystalline form.

“Something is happening in the rates, or kinetics, of the reactions that slows them down so that these materials are preserved over geological timescales,” Dr Feldman said.

“What we're suggesting is that very cold conditions, close to freezing, are the specific kinetic limiting factors that allow these materials to form and be preserved.”

“This research improves our understanding of the Martian climate.”

“The results suggest that the abundance of this material in Gale Crater is consistent with subarctic conditions similar to those found in Iceland, for example.”

Team work Published in a journal Communication Earth and the Environment.

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A.D. Feldman othersIn 2024, iron-rich X-ray amorphous material will record Mars' past climate and the persistence of water. Community Global Environment 5, 364; doi: 10.1038/s43247-024-01495-4

This article is based on a press release from the Desert Research Institute.

Source: www.sci.news

Insights into the Future of Humanity from the 2024 United Nations World Population Prospects Report

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

“Demographic composition has changed significantly in recent years,” Li Junhua, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said in a news release.

The report predicts that the world’s population will continue to grow over the coming decades, from 8.2 billion in 2024 to a peak of nearly 10.3 billion in the next 50 to 60 years. But population won’t keep growing forever: By 2100, the world’s population is expected to return to 10.2 billion, 6% lower than UN experts predicted a decade ago.

The United Nations’ last population assessment, released in 2022, suggested humanity could reach 10.4 billion people by the late 2000s, but falling birth rates in some of the world’s largest countries, including China, are one of the reasons why the population peak will come sooner than expected.

More than half of countries have fertility rates below 2.1 children per woman, or the “replacement rate,” the number of children each woman needs to have to avoid population decline.

An additional 48 countries, including Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey and Iran, are also expected to see their populations peak over the next 30 years.

India’s population is 1.4 India’s population is expected to surpass China’s in 2022, surpassing 2 billion and becoming the world’s most populous country. India’s population is also expected to continue growing until the middle of this century, according to the report.

However, China’s population continues to decline.

“China has experienced a rapid and significant decline in births in recent years,” said Patrick Garland, head of the Population Estimates and Projections Division at the United Nations Population Division.

“The changes China has undergone in the past generation are among the fastest in the world,” Garland said.

Without immigration, the United States would also face a population decline. It is one of about 50 countries projected to continue experiencing population growth due to increased immigration. The U.S. population is projected to grow from 345 million in 2024 to 421 million by the end of the century.

People pass through a crowded street in Kampala, Uganda. Since 2013, Uganda’s population has grown by 13 million people, or nearly 40 percent, second only to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Badru Katumba/AFP via Getty Images

A growing country is likely to exacerbate problems related to consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and other drivers of global warming. A growing population also means more people are exposed to climate risks such as droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather events that are intensified by global warming.

“Just because a challenge might emerge 60 years from now doesn’t mean it’s pointless to talk about it now,” said Dean Spears, an associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Decades from now, people will be talking about these new demographic changes with the same level of academic and societal concern that we are talking about today about climate change,” Spears said.

Countries where population growth is expected to continue through to 2054 include India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria. In parts of Africa, including Angola, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger and Somalia, populations are expected to double dramatically between 2024 and 2054, according to the United Nations.

But a growing population on Earth does not necessarily mean that climate change will occur faster. Most of the world’s fastest growing regions are also countries that have historically contributed the least to global warming. These regions are also typically disproportionately affected by climate change.

The report notes that life expectancy has recovered after the impact of the pandemic. Global life expectancy will be 73.2 years in 2023, up from the pandemic low of 70.9 years in 2021 and higher than the pre-pandemic level of 72.4 years five years ago. Global life expectancy is projected to reach 81.7 years in 2100.

As life expectancy increases and birth rates fall, the world’s population is ageing. Projections show that by 2080, people aged 65 and over will outnumber children under 18. By 2023, there will be almost three times as many children as people aged 65 and over.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

‘Unthinkable and unprecedented’: Tower falls after nuts are taken off

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Nut deficiency

What happens when you remove most of the nuts from the bolts on three of the four sides of a tall electricity pylon? New data answers that question.

News Hub report Police said a tower collapsed in Glorito, North Island, New Zealand on June 24 after a “maintenance worker” removed some nuts from the bolts connecting the tower to its base plate.

News footage shows TransPower CEO Alison Andrew reading aloud what is likely a carefully worded statement: “In our view, the specifications and procedures for this type of work were not followed. All of the nuts securing the tower to the base plate at all three legs had been removed, causing the tower to lift off the base plate and fall. It is unprecedented and inconceivable that so many nuts would have been removed at one time.”

The outcome of the Glolitt nut removal could have been predicted by applying textbook engineering principles, but apparently it was not.

Hold on to your hat

The phrase “Hats are hard to get in Ireland” was featured in a magazine article. Clinical and Experimental Dermatology – This does not refer to all hats, but to some hats, especially sun hats.

Marion Leahy and her colleagues at Galway University Hospital have used the phrase title A 2022 study into risky head conditions in men, particularly older men, in the West of Ireland.

They note that Irish men are demographically at higher risk of melanoma and traditionally wear hats to protect themselves, but that “most hats available to the Irish male population are [do] “Does not provide adequate light protection.”

When properly chosen and worn, a hat can protect your head from the sun's relentless assault. In 1992, B. L. Diffie and J. Cheeseman penned a hymn in praise of a good sun hat and the evils of a bad sun hat: British Journal of DermatologyDiffie and Cheeseman's paper “Hats to protect against sunburn” is (or should be) famous for its main photo, so to cap off your viewing, try to find a copy online.

This portrait of scientific equipment runs counter to the typical image of rows of test tubes that has been implanted in children's minds for decades. The painting depicts six artificial heads at an angle, without plastic bodies or hair. They are outdoors, mounted at intervals along a 8-foot-long pole. Five of the six are wearing hats; the third head is bare. Each head is adorned with small squares of sunlight-degrading polysulfone film affixed with Blu-Tack to its forehead, nose, cheeks, chin and neck.

A second, less avant-garde photograph shows “28 hats worn in the study,” with seven hats or hat-like objects arranged in four rows. The styles range from a green plastic visor without a crown, an “airline pilot's peaked cap,” a “checked deerstalker,” and a “Russian fur hat.”

Diffie and Cheeseman would have us believe that much of this is dermatological insanity, manifesting itself under the hot sun.

Space superpowers

Bruce Stubbert reminds Feedback's ever-growing collection of little superpowers that talent alone doesn't guarantee success.

“I wanted to contribute to the discussion about psychic abilities in space,” he says. “My psychic sense of north is super impaired in the Northern Hemisphere, and I constantly find myself driving or walking in the opposite direction to what I intend to go.”

“Obviously the position of the sun plays a big role for these superpowers. Before you decide on a direction you have to stop and think: 'Here the sun is in the south'. I was once at a conference dinner in the US and talking to an American participant about this issue. He asked: 'Does the sun still rise in the east?' Incidentally, he was also incredulous that it was winter in Australia while we were enduring the scorching heat in Boston.”

The Limits of Goddam

Bapu Deokar and his colleagues explain the basics of water management at Goddam in their paper. Asian Journal of Environmental and Ecological Sciences“Estimation of water used for washing vehicles in Shrigonda town, India“When the dam's water level drops suddenly, local car washes explain their response by pumping more groundwater, which results in a drop in the groundwater table and a groundwater shortage,” the study warns.

Feedback learned the basics about Goud Dam by digging up a copy of a 1997 study called “Volcanic Vents in the Goud Dam Area,” a study that should be endearing given its title. Pune University JournalGoddam has been identified as being located “near Chinchini in the Poona district of India.”

recently, International Journal of Advanced Applied ResearchHanumant Dattatray Shinde of Shri Padmamani Jain College of Arts and Commerce said that in one year, “up to 1.56 TMC [thousand million cubic metres]” of water evaporates from the God Dam. Regardless of how you describe it, the “God Dam” or simply the “dam,” this structure lets a lot of water flow.

Marc Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founder of the journal Annals of Improbable Research. He previously worked on unusual uses of computers. His website is Impossible.

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You can submit articles for Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week's and past Feedback can be found on our website.

Source: www.newscientist.com

Freeze-dried jerky with remarkably well-preserved mammoth DNA.

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

39,000-year-old mammoth leg

Love Darren/Stockholm University

The woolly mammoth, which died 52,000 years ago, has been so well preserved that it’s now possible to sequence its entire genome and reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of its chromosomes. This information provides unprecedented details about how the animal’s genes moved throughout its life. This incredible feat was made possible because the animal’s remains were naturally freeze-dried, preserving its DNA in a glass-like state.

Scientists discovered the remains of a mammoth preserved in permafrost in a Siberian cave in 2018. The mammoth’s tissue was dry, but “not as dry as commercial beef jerky,” the researchers said. Olga Dudchenko “It was, in fact, hairy,” says a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Wanting to find out what genetic information they could find, Dudchenko and his colleagues took a sample of flesh from behind the mammoth’s ear and sequenced its DNA.

“Until now, scientists have only been able to find small parts of the mammoth’s genome because DNA molecules begin to degrade when an animal dies, but to the researchers’ surprise, the animal’s chromosomes were completely preserved. “This was quite a surprise, as it doesn’t match anything we’ve analyzed so far from 52,000 years ago,” the researchers say. Juan Antonio Rodriguez Members of a research team from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

They also found that mammoths had 28 pairs of chromosomes, the same number as their closest living relative, the Asian elephant. The three-dimensional structure of the chromosomes was also preserved, which helps distinguish active from inactive genes. For example, the genes responsible for hair growth in mammoths were more active than in elephants, allowing the researchers to determine why they have such thick fur.

Identifying whether mammoth or elephant genes are more active could aid in so-called de-extinction efforts, he said. Hendrik Poyner “To get as close as possible to a real mammoth, [genetic] “The skeleton of a mammoth is different from that of an Asian elephant,” he says. Understanding which genes to tweak, such as the one that produces lots of hair, could help create a more realistic-looking and sounding animal that, while not a bona fide mammoth, more closely resembles the ancient pachyderm.

But how did this DNA remain intact for more than 50,000 years? The researchers attribute it to the cave’s ideal conditions, which cooled and dried the animal. “The sample lost much of its moisture during the cold, dry Siberian winter,” says Dudchenko. She adds that a similar drying process occurs during the production of foods such as prosciutto.

To test their theory, the researchers put fresh and freeze-dried beef liver through a series of rigorous tests. After three days at room temperature, the fresh beef’s DNA had fragmented; but the freeze-dried version still retained its nanometer-scale chromosome structure after a year. “At that point, we wondered, rather than time killing it, what is killing it?” Dudchenko says.

So the team tried to destroy the DNA of the mammoth jerky replica by shooting it with a shotgun, running it over with a car, and having a former professional baseball player throw a fastball at it. Each time, the dried beef liver crumbled into pieces, but its microscopic structure remained intact, preserving the DNA inside. “We found that this method worked, and that it survived,” Rodriguez says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

The melting sea ice in the Canadian Arctic is now a hindrance, not a help, to shipping.

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Broken sea ice in Lancaster Sound, part of the Northwest Passage

Allison Cook

Shipping companies had hoped that melting sea ice would open up shorter shipping routes through the Canadian Arctic, but thicker ice moving in from further north may dash those hopes.

“North [of the Northwest Passage] “No new routes are expected to open anytime soon.” Allison Cook At the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

For over a century, sailors have navigated the icy waters of the Canadian Arctic along the Northwest Passage, a dangerous but efficient sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As climate change melts the sea ice, the southern part of the passage is less dangerous, and since 1990, voyages through the Northwest Passage have quadrupled.

The North Strait is expected to be an even shorter route, but it is ice-bound for longer periods than the South Strait, and so fewer ships use it. But because the entire route was almost ice-free in the summer of 2007, and the climate has continued to warm since then, many believe the North Strait route will soon become regularly navigable. This possibility has spurred ideas of a boom in Northern Sea Routes.

Cook and his colleagues assessed whether this vision was working using ice charts provided by the Canadian government to ship captains between 2007 and 2021. For each leg of the Northwest Passage, they calculated the number of weeks per year when ice was light enough for moderately ice-hardened ships to navigate safely.

Map showing the route of the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Islands

Allison Cook

The detailed images of the ice reveal that rather than the passage opening, the safe passage window shortened at several “choke points” along the route, particularly along the northern route. For example, the passage window in the eastern Beaufort Sea shortened from 27 weeks to 13 weeks. The passage window in McClure Strait shortened from 6.5 weeks per year to just two weeks. In other areas, passage windows increased by a few weeks or remained unchanged, but the passage window that determines the overall passage window is determined by the shortest passage window, Cook said.

Researchers believe the shortened season is primarily due to an increase in thicker sea ice flowing in from an area known as the “last ice field” north of Greenland, which is expected to become the last remaining bastion of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean as the climate warms. “Climate change is making the sea ice a little less intense and a little more mobile,” Cook says.

The findings are consistent with expectations that ice will remain in the Canadian Arctic the longest, he said. Amanda Lynch The bigger geopolitical and economic question now is how the melting ice will affect shipping on the Russian side of the Arctic, said Robert G. Schneider, a researcher at Brown University in Rhode Island who was not involved in the study.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Using lasers to transform electrons into mass and charge coils.

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

A special laser (red) can bend electrons (blue) into a spiral shape

Dr. Yiqi Fan (University of Konstanz)

With the help of a laser, the electrons were transformed into spiral waves of mass and charge.

“Chirality, or handedness, is an intriguing and still partially mysterious feature of our universe.” Peter Baum Researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany have discovered that chiral objects, like coils or L-shaped blocks, can be either left- or right-handed, but non-chiral objects, like circles or lines, cannot. Many molecules and materials are inherently chiral, and their function changes depending on whether they are right- or left-handed. But Baum and his colleagues have devised a way to impart chirality to something very small and fundamental: a single electron.

Because electrons are quantum objects, they exhibit both particle-like and wave-like behavior, depending on the experiment. In this experiment, the researchers exploited the wave nature of electrons. First, they create a very fast pulse of electrons and pass it through a thin ceramic membrane. There, the particles encounter a special laser beam. The beam is shaped like a light vortex and, as a result, carries a similarly shaped electromagnetic field. This electromagnetic field affects the wave function, or wave properties, of each electron that passes through it.

Finally, the researchers detected these manipulated electrons and calculated the “expectation values” of each of their masses and charges — that is, the places in space where both properties are most likely to be measured in non-zero quantities. These regions of space formed the shape of a three-dimensional coil, with clearly marked left- or right-handed winding.

Ben McMorran The University of Oregon researchers have previously experimented with making coils of chiral electrons, and they say their new work “represents a very advanced advancement in the state of the art of shaping electrons.” They have demonstrated precise control over the spiraling electrons, which they say will be crucial for using the particles in applications such as imaging and controlling existing materials.

Baum and his colleagues have already found that shining a left-handed coil of electrons at right-handed gold nanostructures results in different ricochet patterns than shining it on left-handed structures, opening up the possibility of using such coils to selectively affect chiral moieties in chemical compounds or electronic devices.

Having created these strange electrons in the lab, Baum says he's now interested in whether they could arise independently in nature: “We're starting to explore these possibilities.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Sanitary napkins with blood-thinning properties could prevent leaks

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Igor Mitreski

Current sanitary napkins can cause leaks

Vittoria/Alamy

Sanitary products that turn blood into a gel-like solid substance rather than absorbing it appear to reduce the risk of leakage.

Brian Hsu Researchers at Virginia Tech and their colleagues wanted to find a way to reduce the leakage that often occurs with traditional sanitary napkins and cups.

The team tested different types of biopolymers — naturally occurring chain-like molecules — in pig blood to find one that would thicken it. They used pig blood because it is more readily available than human menstrual blood and has similar properties, Xu said.

When a type of biopolymer called alginate was mixed with glycerol, a type of alcohol, and exposed to blood, it formed a gel-like substance. “If you just take alginate powder and add blood, it doesn't absorb much,” Su says. “It becomes like cocoa powder in unstirred milk, with a dry center. By adding glycerol to the alginate, we've increased its blood absorption capacity.”

To test the combination, the researchers placed 8 milliliters of blood into an artificial vagina to mimic a period, then let the blood flow onto a standard sanitary napkin that had had its absorbent material removed and replaced with gauze coated with a mixture of alginate and glycerol. After an hour, the napkin had collected more blood than vaginal bleeding from a standard, unmodified napkin.

In another part of the experiment, five subjects removed a blood-filled menstrual cup from the artificial vagina without knowing whether the cup was covered in the glycerol-alginate mixture. In the former case, blood rarely spilled, whereas in the latter case, blood always spilled.

Alginates are found naturally in algae and are sometimes used as wound dressings. “Alginates are good at forming intermolecular cross-links using calcium, and blood contains calcium,” says Su. “We think these polymers first absorb the blood, and as they dissolve they start to form cross-links, eventually gelling the blood.”

Renske van Ronkhuizen Researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands say adding the mixture to sanitary products could help reduce women's anxiety about bleeding during their period.

“The innovative products improve menstrual comfort and convenience, helping women to manage their periods without disrupting their daily lives,” she said.

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Source: www.newscientist.com