Science & TechnologyS


Life Preserver

How human sperm really swim: New research challenges centuries-old assumption

University of Bristol
Phys.org
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC
sperm
© polymaths-lab.comThe sperm tail moves very rapidly in 3D, not from side-to-side in 2D as it was believed.
A breakthrough in fertility science by researchers from Bristol and Mexico has shattered the universally accepted view of how sperm 'swim'.

More than three hundred years after Antonie van Leeuwenhoek used one of the earliest microscopes to describe human sperm as having a "tail, which, when swimming, lashes with a snakelike movement, like eels in water", scientists have revealed this is an optical illusion.

Using state-of-the-art 3-D microscopy and mathematics, Dr. Hermes Gadelha from the University of Bristol, Dr. Gabriel Corkidi and Dr. Alberto Darszon from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, have pioneered the reconstruction of the true movement of the sperm tail in 3-D.

Comment: See also: Choosy eggs may pick sperm for their genes, defying Mendel's law

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Galaxy

Pluto's dark side spills its secrets - including hints of a hidden ocean

Shannon Hall
Nature
Wed, 29 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC
Pluto
© NASA/JHUAPL/SwRINASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured different faces of Pluto as it flew past the dwarf planet in 2015.
When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zipped past Pluto in 2015, it showed a world that was much more dynamic than anyone had imagined. The dwarf planet hosts icy nitrogen cliffs that resemble the rugged coast of Norway, and giant shards of methane ice that soar to the height of skyscrapers. Cracks deeper than the Grand Canyon scar the surface, while icy volcanoes rise taller than Mount Everest. In one part of the distant orb, the spacecraft's cameras captured a giant heart-shaped feature that caused a collective swoon among countless fans on Earth.

"I expected Pluto to be a scientific wonderland, but it did not have to be so beautiful," says Leslie Young, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and a deputy project scientist on the New Horizons mission.

Although scientists caught that first jaw-dropping glimpse nearly five years ago, they are still seeing images of the world for the first time.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Fire

The explosive secret hidden beneath 'boring' volcanoes


Trinity College Dublin
Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:00 UTC
Wolf volcano
© Gabriel Salazar, La Pinta Yacht Expedition.The 2015 eruption at Wolf volcano in the Galapagos Archipelago
An international team of volcanologists working on remote islands in the Galápagos Archipelago has found that volcanoes which reliably produce small basaltic lava eruptions hide chemically diverse magmas in their underground plumbing systems - including some with the potential to generate explosive activity.

Many volcanoes produce similar types of eruption over millions of years. For example, volcanoes in Iceland, Hawai'i and the Galápagos Islands consistently erupt lava flows - comprised of molten basaltic rock - which form long rivers of fire down their flanks.

Although these lava flows are potentially damaging to houses close to the volcano, they generally move at a walking pace and do not pose the same risk to life as larger explosive eruptions, like those at Vesuvius or Mt. St. Helens. This long-term consistency in a volcano's eruptive behaviour informs hazard planning by local authorities.

The research team, led by Dr Michael Stock from Trinity and comprising scientists from the US, UK and Ecuador, studied two Galápagos volcanoes, which have only erupted compositionally uniform basaltic lava flows at the Earth's surface for their entire lifetimes. By deciphering the compositions of microscopic crystals in the lavas, the team was able to reconstruct the chemical and physical characteristics of magmas stored underground beneath the volcanoes.

Comment: See also:

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Telescope

Forensic astronomy offers fresh look at Vermeer's 'View of Delft'

Alex Fox
Smithsonian Magazine
Tue, 28 Jul 2020 21:36 UTC
Vermeer view of delft painting
© Mauritshuis, The HagueNew research posits that Johannes Vermeer painted View of Delft in September 1659 or 1658.
Dutch Golden Age artist Johannes Vermeer is known for creating iconic works like Girl With a Pearl Earring. But it was his View of Delft that French novelist Marcel Proust deemed "the most beautiful painting in the world." Now, an astronomer has studied the 17th-century cityscape's depiction of light and shadow to pinpoint the moment that inspired the artist down to the hour, reports Daniel Boffey for the Guardian.

Art historians have long thought that View of Delft was painted in the late spring or early summer of 1660, but the details of Vermeer's life are so hazy that no one could be sure exactly when the masterwork came to fruition, according to Jennifer Ouellette of Ars Technica.

Donald Olson, an astronomer at Texas State University, and his colleagues used Google Earth and maps from the 17th and 19th centuries to identify landmarks in the painting. Then, they measured the distances and angles of its shadows and highlights. As the Guardian notes, the team even visited Delft firsthand to deduce the position of the sun — and thus the time of year — associated with a slice of light seen on the Nieuwe Kerk tower's belfry in Vermeer's skillful rendering.
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Evil Rays

Adapt 2030: Collapse the economy rebuild the world with a new power system


Adapt 2030
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 20:41 UTC
Tesla tower
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
Nothing goes to zero, if the present economy evaporates it will be replaced with free wireless power to achieve the elitist objectives. The playbook for fiat money collapse and narrative build of new technologies discovered that can now gave the world pollution-less free power. Banking starts over with even more control, problem, this technology has been around since the early 1900's with the inventions of Tesla and subsequent improvements over a century. The missing piece of world history about to be dusted off.


Comment: See also:

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Snowflake

Role of volcanoes in Younger Dryas global cooling revealed in Texas cave sediment

Baylor University
Phys.org
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 20:53 UTC
cave younger dryas
© Michael Waters, Texas A&M UniversityArchaeologic excavations at Hall's Cave exposed sediments for geochemical analysis that span from circa 20,000 to 6,000 years.
Texas researchers from the University of Houston, Baylor University and Texas A&M University have discovered evidence for why the earth cooled dramatically 13,000 years ago, dropping temperatures by about 3 degrees Centigrade.

The evidence is buried in a Central Texas cave, where horizons of sediment have preserved unique geochemical signatures from ancient volcanic eruptions — signatures previously mistaken for extraterrestrial impacts, researchers say.

The resolution to this case of mistaken identity recently was reported in the journal Science Advances.

Comment: There we have it, there was clearly more going on than just volcanoes; and to find out what events converged to bring about global cooling back then, check out Pierre Lescaudron's article Volcanoes, Earthquakes And The 3,600 Year Comet Cycle.

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Blue Planet

Kelp found off Scotland dates back 16,000 years to last ice age


BBC
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 09:31 UTC
kelp
© PA MediaResearchers hope the discovery could help show how marine plant life survives extreme changes in climate
Scientists have discovered kelp off the coast of Scotland, Ireland and France that has survived since the last ice age, around 16,000 years ago.

Experts from Heriot-Watt University's Orkney campus analysed the genetic composition of oarweed from 14 areas across the northern Atlantic ocean.

The team found three distinct genetic clusters.

It is hoped the discovery could help show how marine plant life survives extreme changes in climate.

Comment: See also:

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Frog

Five new biology papers show cracks in Darwin's foundation


Evolution News
Thu, 30 Jul 2020 19:45 UTC
sunflowers
© Igor Stevanovic/Alamy
Since the Scopes Trial of 1925 and the Darwin Centennial of 1959, neo-Darwinism has used intimidation and groupthink to maintain its status of "accepted truth" beyond need of further evidence. Critical papers have appeared, but usually outside the leading biology journals. Indeed, merely expressing doubts about Darwin has been a career-limiting move for many (see Free Science). Look at these recent papers, though, and see if it appears to be getting safer to question the explanatory omnipotence of random mutations and natural selection.

How Powerful Is Natural Selection, Really? How powerful is natural selection if it can stall out? This team ran mutation experiments on E. coli's translation machinery and found that "cellular modules may not be fully optimized by natural selection despite the availability of adaptive mutations." Darwin's mechanism is not omnipotent. Natural selection, being blind, can stop improving one module and skip to another, leaving the first module below optimum. The authors are not quitting their subscription to natural selection, but they are losing faith in its ability to explain molecular machines by a simple mechanism.
Overall, our results highlight the fact that it is impossible to fully understand the evolution of a cellular module in isolation from the genome where it is encoded and the population-level processes that govern evolution. The ability of natural selection to improve any one module depends on the population size, the rate of recombination, the supply, and the fitness effects of all beneficial mutations in the genome and on how these quantities change as populations adapt. Further theoretical work and empirical measurements integrated across multiple levels of biological organization are required for us to understand adaptive evolution of modular biological systems. [Emphasis added.]
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Butterfly

Stunning 'space butterfly' captured by telescope

ESO
Phys.org
Thu, 30 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
Space butterfly
© ESO"Space Butterfly"
Resembling a butterfly with its symmetrical structure, beautiful colors, and intricate patterns, this striking bubble of gas — known as NGC 2899 — appears to float and flutter across the sky in this new picture from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). This object has never before been imaged in such striking detail, with even the faint outer edges of the planetary nebula glowing over the background stars.

NGC 2899's vast swathes of gas extend up to a maximum of two light-years from its center, glowing brightly in front of the stars of the Milky Way as the gas reaches temperatures upwards of ten thousand degrees. The high temperatures are due to the large amount of radiation from the nebula's parent star, which causes the hydrogen gas in the nebula to glow in a reddish halo around the oxygen gas, in blue.

This object, located between 3000 and 6500 light-years away in the Southern constellation of Vela (The Sails), has two central stars, which are believed to give it its nearly symmetric appearance. After one star reached the end of its life and cast off its outer layers, the other star now interferes with the flow of gas, forming the two-lobed shape seen here. Only about 10-20% of planetary nebulae display this type of bipolar shape.

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Sun

'Fool's gold' may help bring in the sun's energy in new generation solar cells


PhysOrg
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 15:32 UTC
pyrite fools gold lab crystal
© University of MinnesotaAn example of a crystal of iron sulfide grown in the University of Minnesota lab to extremely high purity using a method called chemical vapor transport. Note the "goldish" sheen, which is characteristic of pyrite, or fool's gold.
In a breakthrough new study, scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota have electrically transformed the abundant and low-cost non-magnetic material iron sulfide, also known as "fool's gold" or pyrite, into a magnetic material.

This is the first time scientists have ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.

The research is published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
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