Science & Technology
The End is Nye - @BillNye the "Science Guy" loses his last shred of credibility - implosion imminent
First up, Bill led the march for science with Mike Mann recently....
...and then had a bizarre episode of his Netflix show that immediately followed. From Natural News:

Dr Xiaoping Ren and Professor Sergio Canavero, who believes a brain will be transplanted in the near future
Professor Sergio Canavero, Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, is aiming to carry out the first human head transplant within 10 months and then wants to begin trials on brain transplants.
If the procedures are successful, he believes that frozen brains could be thawed and inserted into a donor body.

Image showing features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on April 26.
The gap between the rings and the top of Saturn's atmosphere is about 2,400km (1,500 miles) wide. Cassini passed through the gap at speeds of about 123,000kph (77,000mph) on Wednesday as part of the craft's final exploratory mission dubbed the 'Grand finale.'
The craft used its dish-shaped antenna as a shield against oncoming particles while it travelled through the region as scientists feared that even small particles could have disabled the spacecraft. Using the dish in this way forced Cassini to lose contact with Earth.
The company, owned by Google, has been testing ways to use the dexterous machines in different settings. Until now, the robots have only really been used in military settings.
Called Spot, the four-legged version of Boston Dynamics' automaton can jump, run, climb stairs, get back up if it falls, and perform human tasks such as house work. It can also now deliver packages strapped to its back, the company said.

Biomedical ethicists say “malicious brain-hacking” and “hazardous uses of medical neurotechnology” could require a redefinition of the idea of mental integrity.
But, nearly 400 years later, technological advances in machines that can read our thoughts mean the privacy of our brain is under threat.
Now two biomedical ethicists are calling for the creation of new human rights laws to ensure people are protected, including "the right to cognitive liberty" and "the right to mental integrity".
Scientists have already developed devices capable of telling whether people are politically right-wing or left-wing. In one experiment, researchers were able to read people's minds to tell with 70 per cent accuracy whether they planned to add or subtract two numbers.
Facebook also recently revealed it had been secretly working on technology to read people's minds so they could type by just thinking.

Humpback wales make an epic migration between their mating and eating zones
Scientists found that baby humpbacks avoid the attention of predators while communicating with their mothers by using intimate grunts and squeaks.
The quiet noises enable the young to keep track of their parents during long and precarious migrations without being overheard by killer whales and sexually aggressive male humpbacks looking for an opportunity to mate.
Researchers collected their groundbreaking data by directly attaching microphones via suction caps to whales that were swimming near Australia.
Perhaps one of the most concerning aspects about CRISPR-Cas9 was the inability for scientists to turn off the gene altering sequence. The potential for wrong genes to be snipped away and the consequential introduction of rogue genetic changes in human or animal DNA into the gene pool was (and still is) rather terrifying. Now, however, scientists claim that they have found a way to hopefully mitigate this tremendous risk. In a new study, researchers say that they have found a tiny protein that can actually turn off Cas9 and prevent it from creating unwanted gene alterations. They say that the protein works on human cells — at least if they are in a petri dish.
Lambs born at the equivalent point of 23 weeks into the human gestation period have been kept alive in a transparent vessel, or 'biobag,' that serves as both a womb and incubator for periods of up to four weeks after their initial, premature birth.
The research was conducted by a team of doctors and scientists led by Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The team's findings were published in the journal Nature on Tuesday.
"If we can support growth and organ maturation for only a few weeks, we can dramatically improve outcomes for extremely premature babies," said Flake when speaking to the media.
The wax worm, the larvae of the common insect Galleria mellonella, or greater wax moth, is a scourge of beehives across Europe. In the wild, the worms live as parasites in bee colonies. Wax moths lay their eggs inside hives where the worms hatch and grow on beeswax - hence the name.
A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes.
Bertocchini, from the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria (CSIC), Spain, collaborated with colleagues Paolo Bombelli and Christopher Howe at the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry to conduct a timed experiment.

The stories genes tell about dog breeds often match the breeder’s historical lore.
"They show that by using genetics, you can really show what was going on as [breeders] were making these breeds," says Elinor Karlsson, a computational biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester who was not involved with the work.












Comment: See also: Hacking your brain: Experts warn of growing threat from monitoring and controlling neural signals