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Attention

Two of the biggest US earthquake faults might be linked

Alexandra Witze
Nature
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 13:14 UTC
San Andreas fault
© Underwood Archives/Getty
The earthquake that devastated San Francisco, California, in 1906 arose from the San Andreas fault — which might be linked to another major fault zone to the north.
A controversial study argues that at least eight times in the past 3,000 years, quakes made a one-two punch off the west coast of the United States. A quake hit the Cascadia fault off the coast of northern California, triggering a second quake on the San Andreas fault just to the south. In some cases, the delay between the quakes may have been decades long.

The study suggests that Cascadia, which scientists think is capable of unleashing a magnitude-9 earthquake at any time, could set off quakes on the northern San Andreas, which runs under the San Francisco Bay Area.

Several earthquake scientists told Nature that more work is needed to confirm the provocative idea. Researchers have long considered the two faults seismically separate.

Comment: See also:

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Cow Skull

Paleoartist sketches what modern animals would look like using techniques applied to dinosaurs to highlight flaws in approach

Milly Vincent
Daily Mail
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 12:41 UTC
swan dinosaur

A modern-day swan - imagined using its skeleton in a streamlined version of reality
Dinosaurs have always been illustrated as a bony lot, and is it any wonder when much of what palaeontologists have to base their reconstructions on are bones?

Palaeoartist C. M. Kosemen believes that there was more to the shapely dinosaurs than has been depicted, including larger layers of fat and areas of soft tissue.

He believes Hollywood is to blame for giving dinosaurs their skeletal 'monster' image.

In a series of sketches Mr Kosemen has set about making that point by re-imagining modern day animals from their skeletons.

Comment: It's an interesting critique, particularly when we consider that there are published papers highlighting the significant artistic license that goes into human facial reconstruction dating back to even the recent past.

It's possible that direct comparisons with modern day creatures may not be totally accurate, if environmental conditions were quite different when compared to the present era, but with numerous fossil discoveries of ancient creatures turning up all the time, showing the impressions of feathers, skin and even coloration, it's seems that we're getting closer to what they may have looked like:

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Butterfly

The many wonders of butterflies and how they evolve by design


Evolution News
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 04:42 UTC
butterfly
© Carleton University/Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Numata Longwing, a Heliconius butterfly
Butterflies, those universally loved flying works of art, offer many reasons to celebrate design in nature.
  • They showcase aesthetic beauty beyond the requirements of survival (see "Beauty, Darwin and Design," featuring Paul Nelson).
  • Their migrations show foresight over multiple generations.
  • The one-gram Monarch butterflies astonish biologists with their exceptional endurance to survive hardships while flying thousands of miles on paper-thin wings (see "2-Minute Wonder: A Monarch's Journey").
  • Their navigation systems exhibit stunning accuracy to arrive at locations they have never seen.
  • Their keen senses can find the right host plants from miles away; they can smell very faint pheromones for mating; and they can distinguish precise angles of sunlight for orientation and timing of migration.
  • Their wing scales, organized into "photonic crystals," give precision control of light waves to create iridescent colors.
  • Last, but not least, their metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to flying adult is, as Illustra Media showed in the film Metamorphosis, like turning a Model T into a helicopter inside a garage by breaking down and reassembling all the parts.

Comment: One particularly curious, and clever, wing pattern is that of the Macrocilix Maia moth - as detailed on Wikipaedia:
The moth features two symmetrical patterns resembling flies feeding on bird droppings. The moth has a pungent odor.[5]
Macrocilix Maia
© wiki
Macrocilix Maia
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Bulb

Accessing higher-energy light to fight cancer

Holly Ober
UC Riverside News
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 20:33 UTC
laser beam
Materials scientists at the University of California, Riverside and The University of Texas at Austin have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve photon up-conversion, the emission of light with energy higher than the one that excites the material, when using carefully designed structures containing silicon nanocrystals and specialized organic molecules.

The accomplishment, published in Nature Chemistry, brings scientists one step closer to developing minimally invasive photodynamic treatments for cancer. The advance could also hasten new technologies for solar-energy conversion, quantum information, and near-infrared driven photocatalysis.

High energy light, such as ultraviolet laser light, can form free radicals able to attack cancer tissue. Ultraviolet light, however, doesn't travel far enough into tissues to generate therapeutic radicals close to the tumor site. On the other hand, near-infrared light penetrates deeply but doesn't have enough energy to generate the radicals.
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Attention

Growing babies outside the womb

Neera Bhatia and Evie Kendal
The Conversation
Wed, 27 Nov 2019 17:05 UTC
Artificial Womb
© Flip Board
Researchers are developing artificial wombs as we speak. So we need to talk about the pros and cons before science fiction becomes reality.
The idea of growing babies outside the body has inspired novels and movies for decades.

Now, research groups around the world are exploring the possibility of artificial gestation. For instance, one group successfully grew a lamb in an artificial womb for four weeks. Australian researchers have also experimented with artificial gestation for lambs and sharks.

And in recent weeks, researchers in The Netherlands have received €2.9m ($4.66m) to develop a prototype for gestating premature babies.

So it's important to consider some of the ethical issues this technology might bring.

What is an artificial womb?

Growing a baby outside the womb is known as ectogenesis (or exogenesis). And we're already using a form of it. When premature infants are transferred to humidicribs to continue their development in a neonatal unit, that's partial ectogenesis.

But an artificial womb could extend the period a fetus could be gestated outside the body. Eventually, we might be able to do away with human wombs altogether.

This may sound far-fetched, but many scientists working in reproductive biotechnology believe that with the necessary scientific and legal support, full ectogenesis is a real possibility for the future.

Comment:

Scientists predict that babies will be grown in artificial wombs within ten years

Ectogenesis: Artificial wombs could soon be a reality

Welcome to the Matrix - Artificial wombs successfully pass 1st test, human trials could begin within 3yrs

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Beaker

'Deliberate falsehood': Scientists shred Chinese CRISPR babies experiment after leak of unpublished research


RT
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:43 UTC
crispr babies
© Reuters / Julia Symmes Cobb
A controversial genetic experiment to make Chinese twins resistant to HIV is causing renewed outrage after the release of the original research, with scientists charging that it failed to meet its goals and ignored basic ethics.

The MIT Technology Review published portions of two previously unseen research papers on Tuesday, principally authored by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui, who last year attempted to use CRISPR DNA editing technology to immunize twins - Lulu and Nana - against HIV.

While He's bold claims about what the experiment accomplished have come under scrutiny before, a wave of new criticism has followed the publication, which was passed to MIT by an unnamed source. Chief among the complaints is that He's experiment didn't achieve its main goal: producing a mutation in the CCR5 gene that would create resistance to HIV.

Comment: See also:

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Info

Certain brain regions smaller among women using birth control pills

Chloe Williams
Live Science
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 12:47 UTC
A brain region called the hypothalamus is smaller among women who use birth control pills, compared with non-users, a new study finds.
Brain MRI Images
© M. Lipton et al., Radiological Society of North America
Brain MRI images showing the hypothalamus, in red. A new study finds that this brain region is smaller in women who use birth control pills, compared with women not taking the pill.
Birth control pills may slightly alter the structure of women's brains, according to a new study.

The study found that women taking the pill, or oral contraceptives, had a smaller hypothalamus than women not taking the pill. The hypothalamus is a pea-size structure deep inside the brain that helps regulate involuntary functions, such as appetite, body temperature and emotions. It also serves as a link between the nervous system and endocrine system, a network of glands that produce hormones.

About 150 million women use oral contraceptives worldwide, according to a 2019 report from the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Despite their widespread use, research looking at how oral contraceptives affect the brain is sparse. "It's a pretty understudied area," said Dr. Michael Lipton, professor of radiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, who led the recent research.
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HAL9000

France's armed forces minister: How Artificial Intelligence figures into operational superiority

Florence Parly
Defense News
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Florence Parly
Robot vs. human: This is the new battle in vogue. Ask Col. Gene Lee, a former fighter pilot and U.S. Air Force pilot trainer, defeated in 2016 by artificial intelligence in an air combat simulation. This specific AI program, even deprived of certain controls, is able to react 250 times faster than a human being. It is one story among many others of how AI technologies play and will play a leading role in operational superiority over the next decades.

I personally choose not to oppose the human to the robot. There is no discussion of replacing human intelligence by artificial intelligence, but it will be essential in increasing our capabilities manyfold. AI is not a goal, per se; it must contribute to better-informed and faster decision-making for the benefit of our soldiers.

AI means unprecedented intelligence capabilities. Crossing thousands of satellite images with data provided by the dark web in order to extract interesting links: This is what big-data analysis will make possible. AI also means better protection for our troops. To evacuate wounded personnel from the battlefield, to clear an itinerary or a mined terrain — as many perilous tasks that we will soon be able to delegate to robots. Lastly, AI means a stronger cyber defense. Cyber soldiers will be capable of countering at very high speed the increasingly stealthy, numerous and automated attacks that are threatening our systems and our economies.

Comment: Never say never, dear minister. The pandora's box of AI and related technologies will take a life of the their own in coming years thanks to the short-sightedness of scientists and researchers who are unable to predict where all this is going.

See also:

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Car Black

Study shows electric cars become practically useless in cold weather

Michelle Williams
Anonymous News
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:01 UTC
electric car winter
© shutterstock
According to recent studies, cold temperatures significantly reduce the performance of electric cars, especially when it comes to battery life.

One study by AAA suggested that cold temperatures can reduce the range of the batteries in most electric cars by over 40 percent. It was also noted that the performance can be even worse when the interior heaters are used.

However, even electric car owners who live in hot regions are not safe, because high temperatures can also reduce battery range, although to a far lesser degree.

Comment: It definitely seems like these electric cars don't have the kinks worked out of them yet, if they ever will. As usual, when decisions are made based on lies (the anthropogenic global warming hoax, for example) the outcome seems to never be the solution dreamed of. Base your decisions on ideology and reap the consequences.

See also:

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Info

Researchers successfully create artificial neurons that behave like real ones

Ian Connellan
Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 03 Dec 2019 19:09 UTC
Artificial Neuron
© UNIVERSITY OF BATH
An artificial neuron in its protective casing.
The authors of a bio-engineering study just published in the journal Nature Communications exhibit the kind of calm rationality that makes one believe.

They point out that while a range of neuromorphic silicon devices replicating biological nerve functions have been proposed, a number of problems have hampered the up-to-now theoretical attempts to develop them.

Devices proposed include silicon neurons, synapses and brain inspired networks, but their designs, say the authors, were not meant to copy the behaviour of biological cells, but to search for the organising principles of biology that can be applied to practical devices.

However, an increasing focus on implantable bioelectronics to treat chronic disease is changing this paradigm, they say, and "instilling new urgency in the need for low-power analogue solid-state devices that accurately mimic biocircuits".

The joint British/Swiss/New Zealand team's paper describes a way of making silicon chips that are much smaller than a fingertip but reproduce the electrical behaviour of biological neurons.

The approach, they say, could lead to the development of bionic chips to repair biological circuits in the nervous system when functions are damaged or lost to disease.
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