Science & Technology

If they don't have a cardboard box, cats will settle for a square drawn on the floor

Nicholas Dodman
The Conversation
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 16:43 UTC

Twitter's been on fire with people amazed by cats that seem compelled to park themselves in squares of tape marked out on the floor. These felines appear powerless to resist the call of the #CatSquare.

This social media fascination is a variation on a question I heard over and over as a panelist on Animal Planet's "America's Cutest Pets" series. I was asked to watch video after video of cats climbing into cardboard boxes, suitcases, sinks, plastic storage bins, cupboards and even wide-necked flower vases.

"That's so cute ... but why do you think she does that?" was always the question. It was as if each climbing or squeezing incident had a completely different explanation.

It did not. It's just a fact of life that cats like to squeeze into small spaces where they feel much safer and more secure. Instead of being exposed to the clamor and possible danger of wide open spaces, cats prefer to huddle in smaller, more clearly delineated areas.

Bilingualism in children develops concurrently but independently

Milla Bengtsson
Reliawire
Sat, 22 Apr 2017 16:19 UTC

When children learn two languages from birth each language proceeds on its own independent course, at a rate that reflects the quality of the children's exposure to each language. This is the finding of a new study of Spanish-English bilingual children by researchers at Florida Atlantic University.

Additionally, the study finds that Spanish skills become vulnerable as children's English skills develop, but English is not vulnerable to being taken over by Spanish.

In their longitudinal study data, the researchers found evidence that as the children developed stronger skills in English, their rates of Spanish growth declined. Spanish skills did not cause English growth to slow, so it's not a matter of necessary trade-offs between two languages.

Lead author Erika Hoff, Ph.D., psychology professor in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, said:

"One well established fact about monolingual development is that the size of children's vocabularies and the grammatical complexity of their speech are strongly related. It turns out that this is true for each language in bilingual children. But vocabulary and grammar in one language are not related to vocabulary or grammar in the other language."

Flu viruses decimated by South Indian frog mucus

Beth Mole
Ars Technica
Wed, 19 Apr 2017 14:59 UTC

Hydrophylax bahuvistara

From the slimy backs of a South Indian frog comes a new way to blast influenza viruses.

A compound in the frog's mucus—long known to have germ-killing properties—can latch onto flu virus particles and cause them to burst apart, researchers report in Immunity. The peptide is a potent and precise killer, able to demolish a whole class of flu viruses while leaving other viruses and cells unharmed. But scientists don't know exactly how it pulls off the viral eviscerations. No other antiviral peptide of its ilk seems to work the same way.

The study authors, led by researchers at Emory University, note that the peptide appears uniquely nontoxic—something that can't be said of many other frog-based compounds. Thus, the peptide on its own holds promise of being a potential therapy someday. But simply figuring out how it works could move researchers closer to a vaccine or therapy that could take out all flus, ditching the need for yearly vaccinations for each season's flavor of flu.

With those annual waves of flu, the occasional pandemic, plus the rise of drug-resistant varieties of flu, "there is a pressing need to develop new antivirals" the authors write. They're hopeful that their new peptide may be just that.

New atmospheric phenomenon discovered by SWARM satellites

ESA International
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 19:40 UTC

© Dave Markel Photography
Thanks to scientists, citizen scientists, ground-based imagers and ESA’s magnetic field Swarm mission, this purple streak of light in the night sky has been discovered. Originally thought to be a ‘proton arc’, this strange feature has been called Steve.

Thanks to social media and the power of citizen scientists chasing the northern lights, a new feature was discovered recently. Nobody knew what this strange ribbon of purple light was, so ... it was called Steve.

ESA's Swarm magnetic field mission has now also met Steve and is helping to understand the nature of this new-found feature.

Speaking at the recent Swarm science meeting in Canada, Eric Donovan from the University of Calgary explained how this new finding couldn't have happened 20 years ago when he started to study the aurora.

While the shimmering, eerie, light display of auroras might be beautiful and captivating, they are also a visual reminder that Earth is connected electrically to the Sun. A better understanding of the aurora helps to understand more about the relationship between Earth's magnetic field and the charged atomic particles streaming from the Sun as the solar wind.

"In 1997 we had just one all-sky imager in North America to observe the aurora borealis from the ground," said Prof. Donovan.

Elon Musk's new startup aims to merge human brains with computers in order to engage in consensual telepathy

Rolfe Winkler
Wall Street Journal
Thu, 20 Apr 2017 19:18 UTC

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday confirmed plans for his newest company, called Neuralink Corp., revealing he will be the chief executive of a startup that aims to merge computers with brains so humans could one day engage in "consensual telepathy."

Speaking to writer Tim Urban on the explainer website Wait But Why, Mr. Musk confirmed a Wall Street Journal report last month that Neuralink aims to implant tiny brain electrodes that first would be used to fight brain conditions but later help humanity avoid subjugation at the hands of intelligent machines.

A Neuralink spokesman said Mr. Musk plans to serve as the chief executive, adding another CEO role to his already busy schedule running electric-car maker Tesla Inc. TSLA -0.99% and rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Mr. Musk couldn't be reached for comment through the spokesman.

Neuralink's goals are arguably bolder than Tesla's plans of mass-market electric vehicles or SpaceX's ambitions to send humans to Mars. As Mr. Musk describes it, Neuralink wants to develop brain interfaces that would effectively replace human language as we know it.

The past lives on: Scientists observed epigenetic memories being passed down for 14 generations

Signe Dean
Science Alert
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 19:09 UTC

The most important set of genetic instructions we all get comes from our DNA, passed down through generations. But the environment we live in can make genetic changes, too.

Researchers have now discovered that these kinds of environmental genetic changes can be passed down for a whopping 14 generations in an animal - the largest span ever observed in a creature, in this case being a dynasty of C. elegans nematodes (roundworms).

To study how long the environment can leave a mark on genetic expression, a team led by scientists from the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in Spain took genetically engineered nematode worms that carry a transgene for a fluorescent protein. When activated, this gene made the worms glow under ultraviolet light.

Then, they switched things up for the nematodes by changing the temperature of their containers. When the team kept nematodes at 20° Celsius (68° F), they measured low activity of the transgene - which meant the worms hardly glowed at all.

But by moving the worms to a warmer climate of 25° C (77° F), they suddenly lit up like little wormy Christmas trees, which meant the fluorescence gene had become much more active.

Researchers' proposal may triple complexity of genetic code

Evolution News
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 15:12 UTC

A codon is a triplet of three nucleotides in DNA. Genes are read in these triplet codons, each one standing for an amino acid or a "punctuation" mark as the gene gets translated (61 of the 64 possible triplets actually code for amino acids; the others work as "start" and "stop" codons). This much we've known since the 1960s. Now, however, two scientists from the University of Utah want to complicate matters further.

An article at Phys.org explains:

The so-called central dogma of molecular biology states the process for turning genetic information into proteins that cells can use. "DNA makes RNA," the dogma says, "and RNA makes protein." Each protein is made of a series of amino acids, and each amino acid is coded for by sets of "triplets," which are sets of three informational DNA units, in the genetic code.

University of Utah biologists now suggest that connecting amino acids to make proteins in ribosomes, the cell's protein factories, may in fact be influenced by sets of three triplets - a "triplet of triplets" that provide crucial context for the ribosome. [Emphasis added.]

It sounds like a wild idea, but it was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. What could be the impact of this "Case for the genetic code as a triplet of triplets"?

Earth from a billion miles away: Cassini captures amazing image

RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 15:07 UTC

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured an incredible final image of Earth from a billion miles away during its orbit of Saturn's rings.

The space probe was facing Earth's Southern Atlantic Ocean, some 870 million miles (1.4 billion km) away, when the image of it was captured on April 12, says NASA.

'Flying car' nails vertical take-off in stunning test run

RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 14:08 UTC

The concept of 'flying cars' was once restricted to the realm of science fiction. Now a German aeronautics firm has taken a big step towards making it a reality.

Lilium Aviation has successfully tested its all-electric vertical take-off-and-landing (VTOL) jet, stealing a march on rivals in the race to deliver the world's first 'flying car.'

Propelled by its 36 jet engines, the two-seater VTOL can reach a cruising speed of 300kph (186mph) and maintain that speed for an hour on a single charge.

Zapping Islamic State: US Army tests drone-killing laser weapon

RT
Thu, 20 Apr 2017 20:40 UTC

laser equiped US Stryker armored vehicle

Amid concerns about Islamic State's use of weaponized hobbyist drones, the US military is testing a laser weapon designed to take out the aerial menace, and small enough to be mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle.

The Mobile High Energy Laser (MEHEL) fires a 5-kilowatt beam that can either scramble the drone's circuits and sever its communications with ground control - a "soft kill" - or destroy it outright in a "hard kill," according to the military publication Stars and Stripes.

Vehicles equipped with the MEHEL took part in the 10-day Maneuver Fires Integration Experiment exercises at Fort Sill, Oklahoma last week. A total of 50 drones were shot down, some just a few seconds after being engaged, Army spokeswoman Monica Gutherie said.

Ehret an idiot beyond belief

smertzasmert

.. .. are wheel barrel sales are up too?

Jibrish

I doubt any pureblood would object to the "vaccinated" being masked, but if they (the "vaccinated") still feel unsafe then maybe their problem is...

HashAttack2

I said this would happen...now they are looking to mandate companies with less that 100 employees...shits getting real, people[Link]

Bezel Bub

it's all a lie ! :O

cracker

Science & Technology

If they don't have a cardboard box, cats will settle for a square drawn on the floor

Bilingualism in children develops concurrently but independently

Flu viruses decimated by South Indian frog mucus

New atmospheric phenomenon discovered by SWARM satellites

Elon Musk's new startup aims to merge human brains with computers in order to engage in consensual telepathy

The past lives on: Scientists observed epigenetic memories being passed down for 14 generations

Researchers' proposal may triple complexity of genetic code

Earth from a billion miles away: Cassini captures amazing image

'Flying car' nails vertical take-off in stunning test run

Zapping Islamic State: US Army tests drone-killing laser weapon

Latest News

Picture of the Day

Quote of the Day

Recent Comments

Quantum Quirk

Contact Us