Science & Technology

Russia, China will merge satellite tracking systems into one global navigation giant

RT
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 12:21 UTC

Moscow and Beijing will team up to create an integrated navigation system based on Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and the Chinese BeiDou. The system will cover most of Eurasia.

The countries will reportedly negotiate the merger in May at the International Conference on Advanced Technologies in Manufacturing and Materials Engineering in the Chinese city of Harbin, Izvestia daily reports.

The initiative to merge the two separate systems is the result of a proposal made by the Chinese authorities to the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos. It is intended to create a joint global navigation satellite system, covering the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which include China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan.

The new system will allow the partners to share data on the positions of navigation satellite groups, improve working efficiency in a real-time environment, and to exchange corrections, where necessary. At the same time, Russian GLONASS may significantly broaden its user base. "If the project is implemented, it will allow for an improvement in accuracy for both systems," said a Roscosmos spokesperson, as quoted by the media.

If successful, the project will divide the entire world into two zones of influence by two united systems GLONASS-BeiDou and GPS-Galileo, operated by the US and the European Union, according to Andrey Ionin, a member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics.

12-hour countdown to re-entry - Chinese space station to disintegrate, hit earth today

RT
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 15:17 UTC

An out-of-control Chinese space station is expected to hit Earth in the next 12 hours. However, experts tracking the decaying orbiter admit they still have no idea exactly where the debris will land.

Launched in 2011, the Tiangong-1 was China's first space station. Ostensibly a pilot mission for the Tiangong-2 space laboratory, the first of China's orbiters hosted two manned missions in 2012 and 2013. It has been slowly losing altitude since malfunctioning in 2016.

In November, experts from the European Space Agency (ESA) listed Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria and Greece among possible crash sites should any pieces of the craft fail to burn up in the atmosphere. But an update by the agency on April 1 committed to a much wider crash zone between 43ºN and 43ºS. The area includes the continents of Africa and Australia, as well as most of South America and the entire Indian subcontinent.

"With the latest available orbital data and space weather forecasts, the re-entry prediction window stabilized and shrunk further to a time running from the night of April 1 to the early morning of April 2 [UTC]," an ESA statement read.

Comment: See also: April 1 (no fooling!) Space station to plummet to Earth, fireballs expected

Revolutionary brain-mapping technique creates new blueprint for cortical connections

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Medical Press
Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

© Zador Lab, CSHL
The large, triangular-shaped central area identifies the primary visual cortex in the mouse. By barcoding 591 neurons in this region, the team used MAPseq to discover patterns of their projections to nearby higher visual cortical areas. Each of the latter is identified in this calibration image, which registers the brain's reaction to two different kinds of visual stimuli (registering in pink and green fluorescence).

Using a revolutionary new brain-mapping technology recently developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), an international team of scientists led by Professor Anthony Zador have made a discovery that will force neuroscientists to rethink how areas of the cortex communicate with one another.

The new technology, called MAPseq, allowed the scientists to determine that neurons in the primary visual cortex communicate with higher visual areas of the cortex much more broadly than previously believed, and according to specific patterns.

The wiring diagram of the cortex determines how information is processed across dozens of cortical areas. "If we don't know how information is combined even at the earliest stages, then we have essentially no shot of figuring out how the brain works." says Justus Kebschull, now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who was instrumental in developing MAPseq as a graduate student in Zador's lab.

Paper-like LCD - thin, flexible, tough and cheap

Phys Org
Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

Optoelectronic engineers in China and Hong Kong have manufactured a special type of liquid crystal display (LCD) that is paper-thin, flexible, light and tough. With this, a daily newspaper could be uploaded onto a flexible paperlike display that could be updated as fast as the news cycles. It sounds like something from the future, but scientists estimate it will be cheap to produce, perhaps only costing $5 for a 5-inch screen. The new optically rewritable LCD design was reported this week in Applied Physics Letters.

The team focused on two key innovations for achieving highly flexible designs. The first is the recent development of optically rewritable LCDs. Like conventional LCD displays, the display is structured like a sandwich, with a liquid crystal filling between two plates. Unlike conventional liquid crystals where electrical connections on the plates create the fields required to switch individual pixels from light to dark, optically rewritable LCDs coat the plates with special molecules that realign in the presence of polarized light and switch the pixels. This removes the need for traditional electrodes, reduces the structure's bulk and allows more choices in the type and thickness of plates. Consequently, optically rewritable LCDs are thinner than traditional LCDs, at less than half a millimeter thick, can be made from flexible plastic, and weigh only a few grams. "It's only a little thicker than paper," said Jiatong Sun, a co-author from Donghua University in China.

Scientists surprised by monkeys' altruistic behavior even when no one was looking

Melissa Healy
Orlando Sentinel
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 08:00 UTC

Marmoset monkeys exist on a branch of the evolutionary tree that is distinct from the one that led to humans. But these fellow primates consistently astonish researchers with social behavior that seems, well, pretty highly evolved.

Marmosets engage in rigorously polite patterns of communication and do not talk over or interrupt each other. Though territorial, they are so inquisitive that they will watch videos of marmosets they do not know and learn from them.

Marmosets' social organization and child-rearing practices could have been the model for the phrase, "it takes a village." A dominant male and female breed, and their babies are meticulously looked after by extended family members who then aren't free to breed themselves.

A new study further burnishes the marmoset's reputation for admirable community values. Researchers report that these caregivers share their food more generously with little ones in private than when they're surrounded by the watchful eyes of other community members.

Notebaert Nature Museum hatches rare Comet Moth

WTTW
Tue, 13 Mar 2018 16:52 UTC

© Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
A rare comet moth, also known as a Madagascan moon moth, emerged from its cocoon last week at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

A brightly colored moth rarely seen in the U.S. (and bigger than a human hand) emerged from its cocoon Friday at Chicago's Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum - but you better get there fast if you want to see it.

The comet moth, also known as a Madagascan moon moth, arrived at the museum in mid-December and spent nearly three months in its cocoon before hatching last week. It is currently on display in the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven but will only be there for a few more days.

"Adult butterflies and moths don't typically have a very long life span," said Doug Taron, the museum's chief curator, adding that comet moths live for about one week. "It's a little shorter than average for not only this species but also [compared to] its close relatives."

Scientists create world's first 3-D thermal image of volcano using drone technology

Phys.org
Thu, 29 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC

Scientists from the University of Aberdeen have created the world's first 3-D thermal image of an active volcano.

The spectacular image of Stromboli in Italy was made using high-precision cameras mounted to an aerial drone.

It was created by a team of geoscientists from the Universities of Aberdeen and Oslo who are using drone technology to develop a technique that can detect subtle changes in the behaviour of the volcano, providing more accurate information on the likelihood of an eruption.

Powerful 18th century New England earthquake recorded in pond mud

Carolyn Gramling
Science News
Tue, 27 Mar 2018 16:34 UTC

© K. Monecke
Researchers retrieve a sediment core from the bottom of Sluice Pond in eastern Massachusetts. The sediments contain evidence of an 18th century earthquake.

The layers of a sediment core show a change around the time of the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake

The history of New England's most damaging earthquake is written in the mud beneath a Massachusetts pond. Researchers identified the first sedimentary evidence of the Cape Ann earthquake, which in 1755 shook the East Coast from Nova Scotia to South Carolina. The quake, estimated to have been at least magnitude 5.9, took no lives but damaged hundreds of buildings.

Within a mud core retrieved from the bottom of Sluice Pond in Lynn, Mass., a light brown layer of sediment stands out amid darker layers of organic-rich sediment, the researchers report March 27 in Seismological Research Letters. The 2-centimeter-thick layer contains tiny fossils usually found near the shore, as well as types of pollen different from those found in the rest of the core. Using previous studies of the pond's deposition rates, geologist Katrin Monecke of Wellesley College in Massachusetts and her colleagues determined the layer dates to between 1740 and 1810.

Newly discovered channels in human body could be previously-unknown organ that helps explain spread of cancer

Jessica Hamzelou
New Scientist
Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:59 UTC

Fluid-filled channels may cushion our organs

A newly discovered network of fluid-filled channels in the human body may be a previously-unknown organ, and it seems to help transport cancer cells around the body.

This discovery was made by chance, from routine endoscopies - a procedure that involves inserting a thin camera into a person's gastrointestinal tract. Newer approaches enable doctors to use this procedure to get a microscopic look at the tissue inside a person's gut at the same time, with some surprising results.

One team had expected to find that the bile duct is surrounded by a hard, dense wall of tissue. But instead, they saw weird, unexplained patterns. They took their findings to Neil Theise, a pathologist at New York University School of Medicine.

Kaspersky Lab registers a large number of cyberattacks targeting Russian media websites

Sputnik
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 15:56 UTC

Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab has registered a large number of cyberattacks using Buhtrap malware that have targeted the websites of major Russian media outlets, the company said Friday.

"Kaspersky Lab has been registering massive attempts to infect the users entering some Russian media websites with Buhtrap banking trojan. As of now there have been hundreds of attempts registered. The attacks target mainly Russia, single attempts have been registered in Ukraine and Kazakhstan," the statement read.

Comment:

A Fox News host (Lisa Booth) asking some of the right questions (nothing new if you're not new to the ranks of SOTTypes though). Her spiel begins...

Animanarchy

I've got a LOT of rope. Just let me know.

DeliciousTears

Brand new JP Sears video. Spiritual People Then vs Now: [Link]

Animanarchy

Well, if anyone would know a 'rigger', it's Obomber. The democratic party is filled with riggers, as the last 'election' amply demonstrated.......

Winston Smith

Government, aided by mainstream media: lie upon lie upon lie....

ReRan

Science & Technology

Russia, China will merge satellite tracking systems into one global navigation giant

12-hour countdown to re-entry - Chinese space station to disintegrate, hit earth today

Revolutionary brain-mapping technique creates new blueprint for cortical connections

Paper-like LCD - thin, flexible, tough and cheap

Scientists surprised by monkeys' altruistic behavior even when no one was looking

Notebaert Nature Museum hatches rare Comet Moth

Scientists create world's first 3-D thermal image of volcano using drone technology

Powerful 18th century New England earthquake recorded in pond mud

Newly discovered channels in human body could be previously-unknown organ that helps explain spread of cancer

Kaspersky Lab registers a large number of cyberattacks targeting Russian media websites

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