Science & Technology

Neanderthals and modern humans diverged at least 800,000 years ago

University College London
Popular Archeology
Wed, 15 May 2019 22:06 UTC

Neanderthals and modern humans diverged at least 800,000 years ago, substantially earlier than indicated by most DNA-based estimates, according to new research by a UCL academic.

The research, published in Science Advances, analyzed dental evolutionary rates across different hominin species, focusing on early Neanderthals. It shows that the teeth of hominins from Sima de los Huesos, Spain - ancestors of the Neanderthals - diverged from the modern human lineage earlier than previously assumed.

Sima de los Huesos is a cave site in the Atapuerca Mountains, Spain, where archaeologists have recovered fossils of almost 30 people. Previous studies date the site to around 430,000 years ago (Middle Pleistocene), making it one of the oldest and largest collections of human remains discovered to date.

Comment: See also:

Previously unknown "proto-hominin" species suggests ancestor of humans evolved in Europe not Africa

And check out SOTT radio's:

Renowned scientist, James Tour vilified for his blunt assessment of the dismal state of origin of life research

John G. West
Evolution News
Mon, 13 May 2019 23:19 UTC

James Tour speaking at the 2019 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, via Discovery Institute.

Renowned scientist James Tour at Rice University is facing the wrath of Internet trolls because of his candid evaluation of origin of life research in a recent public lecture in Dallas. For his frankness, Tour is being vilified by detractors as an attention-grabbing charlatan, an incompetent scientist, and even a "Liar for Jesus"!

Some further background might help you better appreciate the chutzpah of these claims. Dr. Tour is one of the world's top synthetic organic chemists. He has authored 680 scientific publications and holds more than 120 patents (here is a partial list). In 2014, Thomson Reuters named him one of "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds," and in 2018 Clarivate Analytics recognized him as one of the world's most highly cited researchers.

Tour is also fearless. He joined more than a thousand other scientists in signing the "Scientific Dissent from Darwinism." More recently, he has become a thorn in the side of the origin of life research community, offering blunt assessments of the current state of origin of life research.

Comment: See also:

New secret-spilling flaw affects almost every Intel chip since 2011

Zack Whittaker
TechCrunch
Tue, 14 May 2019 16:35 UTC

Security researchers have found a new class of vulnerabilities in Intel chips which, if exploited, can be used to steal sensitive information directly from the processor.,

The bugs are reminiscent of Meltdown and Spectre, which exploited a weakness in speculative execution, an important part of how modern processors work. Speculative execution helps processors predict to a certain degree what an application or operating system might need next and in the near-future, making the app run faster and more efficient. The processor will execute its predictions if they're needed, or discard them if they're not.

Both Meltdown and Spectre leaked sensitive data stored briefly in the processor, including secrets - such as passwords, secret keys and account tokens, and private messages.

Chinese researchers unveil LED-activated 'bioglue' that seals gushing wounds within seconds

RT
Wed, 15 May 2019 11:39 UTC

The new ‘bioglue’ is activated by UV light, which transforms the serum into a non-toxic hydrogel that can adhere to slippery, blood-stained surfaces while withstanding movement, like the beating of a heart.

Chinese researchers have unveiled a groundbreaking 'biological glue' which could be the breakthrough needed to stop patients with gushing open wounds from bleeding out, buying trauma surgeons vital time to save lives.

The new 'bioglue' is activated by UV light, which transforms the serum into a non-toxic hydrogel that can adhere to slippery, blood-stained surfaces while withstanding movement, like the beating of a heart.

"It is the first time that high-pressure bleeding of a beating heart with six-millimeter diameter cardiac penetration holes was rapidly stopped and the wounds were stably sealed by only using matrix gel within 20 [seconds] without suture," the authors state.

The researchers are so confident in their new bioglue that they believe the results speak for themselves, and quickly.

Warning: The following video is not for the squeamish or faint of heart.

Largest magnetic storm in two years may displace satellites from orbit & disrupt GPS

RT
Tue, 14 May 2019 17:41 UTC

The largest magnetic storm in two years, which hit Earth on Tuesday, is no joke, Russian scientists warned, saying that increased solar activity threatens electronics and people's health.

The phenomenon may divert spacecraft from their orbit and create problems for satellite communications and GPS navigation, the Laboratory of X-Ray Astronomy at the Lebedev Institute of the Russian Academy of Science said.

Radio interference and Aurora Borealis in unusual places will be the other side effect of the magnetic storm. The Northern Lights may be seen in the sky, starting from the latitudes of 60 degrees - where Russia's Saint Petersburg is located - and above.

Comment: As we enter a particularly deep solar minimum and Earth's protective magnetosphere weakens storms like these are bringing an increasing array of surprises:

Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

Interstellar habitats: Bezos unveils Blue Moon lunar lander with ambitious vision for space colonization

Cheyanne McDonald
Daily Mail
Tue, 14 May 2019 14:23 UTC

The habitats, reminiscent of the film Interstellar, could be built close enough to Earth to allow people to travel back and forth, and house ‘a million people or more each.’ And, according to Bezos, they’d have the ‘ideal climate’ at all times, ‘like Maui on its best day, all year long’

Last week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos finally lifted the veil on the lunar lander his aerospace company has been developing in secret for years, along with a plan to put humans back on the moon to stay.

And in the process, he also revealed an ambitious vision for space colonization.

Building off of a concept introduced decades ago by physicist Gerard O'Neill - who Bezos himself studied under during his time at Princeton, according to Fast Company - the Blue Origin founder outlined self-sustaining habitats that could hold entire cities, agricultural areas, and even national parks in space.

While such a future may still be a ways off, Bezos says it will be an 'easy choice' when faced with dwindling resources on Earth.

The habitats, reminiscent of the film Interstellar, could be built close enough to Earth to allow people to travel back and forth, and house 'a million people or more each.' And, according to Bezos, they'd have the 'ideal climate' at all times, 'like Maui on its best day, all year long.'

Comment: Bezos isn't alone in planning to stake claims to lunar territory:

Algorithm similar to those used by Netflix and Spotify to recommend content allegedly predicts lethal heart attacks with 90% accuracy

John Pinkstone
Daily Mail
Mon, 13 May 2019 10:34 UTC

LogitBoost which was programmed to use 85 variables to calculate risks to a person's health who was complaining of chest pain. Patients had a coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) scan (pictured, stock scan) which gathered 58 of the data points

Algorithms similar to those employed by Netflix and Spotify to customise services are now better than human doctors at spotting who will die or have a heart attack.

Machine learning was used to train LogitBoost, which its developers say can predict death or heart attacks with 90 per cent accuracy.

It was programmed to use 85 variables to calculate the risk to the health of the 950 patients that it was fed scans and data from.

Patients complaining of chest pain were subjected to a host of scans and tests before being treated by traditional methods.

Their data was later used to train the algorithm.

It 'learned' the risks and, during the six-year follow-up, had a 90 per cent success rate at predicting 24 heart attacks and 49 deaths from any cause.

Comment: While this appears to be another useful tool for medical diagnosis, the downside of such technology is that humans may come to rely solely on its prognostications and may fail to notice contradicting information.

WhatsApp discloses vulnerability that allowed Israeli spyware to be installed on iPhones

Chance Miller
9to5Mac
Mon, 13 May 2019 16:29 UTC

A report from The Financial Times this afternoon details a vulnerability in WhatsApp that allowed attackers to inject Israeli spyware onto phones. The malicious code was developed by Israeli company NSO Group and transmitted by calling users via WhatsApp on iOS and Android.

The malicious code could be transmitted even if a user did not answer the WhatsApp call, the report explains. In many cases, the call would disappear from call logs, so it's possible that users could have been targeted and not even realize it.

Many details about the vulnerability remain unclear, but the report suggests that the loophole was open for several weeks. In a statement, WhatsApp said:

"This attack has all the hallmarks of a private company known to work with governments to deliver spyware that reportedly takes over the functions of mobile phone operating systems," the company said. "We have briefed a number of human rights organizations to share the information we can, and to work with them to notify civil society."

The moon is quaking as it shrinks

University of Maryland
Phys.org
Tue, 14 May 2019 09:36 UTC

© LROC NAC frame M190844037LR; NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Smithsonian
This prominent thrust fault is one of thousands discovered on the moon by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). These faults resemble small stair-shaped cliffs, or scarps, when seen from the lunar surface. The scarps form when one section of the moon's crust (left-pointing arrows) is pushed up over an adjacent section (right-pointing arrows) as the moon's interior cools and shrinks. New research suggests that these faults may still be active today.

A 2010 analysis of imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) found that the moon shriveled like a raisin as its interior cooled, leaving behind thousands of cliffs called thrust faults on the moon's surface.

A new analysis suggests that the moon may still be shrinking today and actively producing moonquakes along these thrust faults. A team of researchers including Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland, designed a new algorithm to re-analyze seismic data from instruments placed by NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s and '70s. Their analysis provided more accurate epicenter location data for 28 moonquakes recorded from 1969 to 1977.

The team then superimposed this location data onto the LRO imagery of the thrust faults. Based on the quakes' proximity to the thrust faults, the researchers found that at least eight of the quakes likely resulted from true tectonic activity-the movement of crustal plates-along the thrust faults, rather than from asteroid impacts or rumblings deep within the moon's interior.

Comment: For more on the similarities and connections within our solar system, check out:

Russian scientists succeed in making gold "flat"

Sputnik
Mon, 13 May 2019 22:00 UTC

There were earlier quite a few attempts to devise "flat" chemical structures from metals, but the structure of gold, for instance, was far too solid to do this. However, Russian physicists' latest efforts appear to have yielded fruit after they discovered that molybdenum sulphites would be more active with regard to the precious metal's atoms.

Russian scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have arrived at the conclusion that gold can be rendered as any bidimensional structure by means of attaching its atoms to a special base made of a sulphur or molybdenum compound, with the finding, written about in the journal Advanced Material Interfaces, expected to be used in the creation of cutting-edge transparent electronic devices.

"We are expecting the sphere of quasi-bidimensional materials to make huge leaps forward. In the not so distant past, they were not available even to scientists. Yet, today, one can indeed talk about huge prospects of the technology that we have proposed that can be used to develop flexible and transparent electronics. We'd love to see it roll off the assembly lines in the near future, and we are working on it", noted Alexey Arsenin, the director of the Institute's Centre for Photonics and Bidimensional Materials.

Comment: See also:

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Science & Technology

Neanderthals and modern humans diverged at least 800,000 years ago

Renowned scientist, James Tour vilified for his blunt assessment of the dismal state of origin of life research

New secret-spilling flaw affects almost every Intel chip since 2011

Chinese researchers unveil LED-activated 'bioglue' that seals gushing wounds within seconds

Largest magnetic storm in two years may displace satellites from orbit & disrupt GPS

Interstellar habitats: Bezos unveils Blue Moon lunar lander with ambitious vision for space colonization

Algorithm similar to those used by Netflix and Spotify to recommend content allegedly predicts lethal heart attacks with 90% accuracy

WhatsApp discloses vulnerability that allowed Israeli spyware to be installed on iPhones

The moon is quaking as it shrinks

Russian scientists succeed in making gold "flat"

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