Science & TechnologyS


Microscope 1

Evolution: A strong delusion 1.2

Winston Smith
Escaping Mass Psychosis
Sun, 23 Oct 2022 17:30 UTC
black and white textured surface
In our first post in this first section of this series, we touched on the very complicated genome and the improbability that such a complicated information system could have just happened randomly.

In this post we will consider mutations, the supposed mechanism for evolution.

Mutations are the 'mistakes' that occur in the instruction manual we know as our DNA. Mutations are overwhelmingly negative for us, some of which cause debilitating pathologies and even aging itself is largely a result of accumulating mutations. Health policies generally (except for COVID policies) include aims to reduce mutations - mitigating the risk of cancers, degenerative diseases and all manner of other pathologies that result from the mutation of cells. Yet it is the mutation of cells that evolutionary theory holds up as the great mechanism that creates diversity for which selection of the fittest can be made.
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Moon

China moon mission samples overturn theories of lunar volcanism

Andrew Jones
Space.com
Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:46 UTC
moon landscape
© NASA/GSFC/Arizona State UniversityGeologically recent eruptions of basaltic lava made smooth, mounded patches on the floor of this shallow depression the team calls Sosigenes IMP (irregular mare patch). The oval feature is about 1,000 feet (300 meters) deep and measures roughly 2 miles wide by 4.5 miles long (3 by 7 kilometers). The sparse number of craters on the lava flows suggests the eruptions occurred only about 18 million years ago.
An analysis of lunar samples returned by China's Chang'e 5 moon mission has produced a new possible answer for volcanism late in the moon's history.

Lunar samples returned by the Apollo and Luna missions are all older than about 3 billion years, but samples returned by Chang'e 5 in late 2020 confirmed remote sensing analysis that rocks in the area were relatively young, at only 2 billion years old.

Scientists previously speculated that either a relatively high water content or the presence of radioactive, heat-producing elements in the lunar interior might have driven volcanism in a late stage of the moon's life in some areas, but new Chang'e-5 data published in Nature appears to have ruled out these hypotheses.
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Cloud Lightning

Plant leaves spark with electricity during thunderstorms — possibly altering our air quality in unpredictable ways

Harry Baker
Live Science
Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:29 UTC
lightning trees electrical discharge plants
© ShutterstockElectrical discharges given off by the leaves of plants during a thunderstorm can significantly alter the surrounding air quality
During thunderstorms, leaves from trees and other plants create mini electric discharges that can significantly alter the surrounding air quality. But researchers are unsure if this is beneficial or harmful.

When lightning flashes above, plants on the ground may respond in kind.

Scientists have long been aware that plants and trees can emit small, visible electric discharges from the tips of their leaves when the plants are trapped beneath the electrical fields generated by thunderstorms high overhead. These discharges, known as coronas, are sometimes visible as faint, blue sparks that glow around charged objects.

Now, new research suggests those plant-based sparks may be altering the surrounding air quality in ways never recognized before. But whether the impacts of these minishocks in the atmosphere are positive or negative remains unclear.
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Satellite

Iconic 'Pillars of Creation' captured in new JWST image


Daily Mail
Wed, 19 Oct 2022 17:47 UTC
JWST pillars of creation telescope
© NASAThese handout photos provided by NASA show the 'Pillars of Creation' that are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in theJames Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared-light view (R) compared to the Hubble telescope's 2014 wider view in visible light
The James Webb Space Telescope captured the iconic "Pillars of Creation," huge structures of gas and dust teeming with stars, NASA said Wednesday, and the image is as majestic as one could hope.

The twinkling of thousands of stars illuminates the telescope's first shot of the gigantic gold, copper and brown columns standing in the midst of the cosmos.

At the ends of several pillars are bright red, lava-like spots. "These are ejections from stars that are still forming," only a few hundred thousand years old, NASA said in a statement.
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Nuke

America's new nuclear power industry has a Russian problem

Sarah McFarlane
Reuters
Sat, 22 Oct 2022 01:58 UTC
Rosatomlogo
© Reuters/Anton VaganovLogo of Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 16, 2022.
U.S. firms developing a new generation of small nuclear power plants to help cut carbon emissions have a big problem: only one company sells the fuel they need, and it's Russian.

That's why the U.S. government is urgently looking to use some of its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium to help fuel the new advanced reactors and kick-start an industry it sees as crucial for countries to meet global net-zero emissions goals.

"Production of HALEU is a critical mission and all efforts to increase its production are being evaluated," a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said.

The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has renewed interest in nuclear power. Backers of smaller, next-generation reactors say they are more efficient, quicker to build, and could turbocharge the shift away from fossil fuels. But without a reliable source of the high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) the reactors need, developers worry they won't receive orders for their plants. And without orders, potential producers of the fuel are unlikely to get commercial supply chains up and running to replace the Russian uranium.

"We understand the need for urgent action to incentivize the establishment of a sustainable, market-driven supply of HALEU," the DOE spokesperson said.
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Control Panel

Saudi Arabia begins construction of dystopian The Line 'city' project, new drone footage reveals

Shankhyaneel Sarkar
News 18
Fri, 21 Oct 2022 10:34 UTC
the line saudi arabia
© AFPMany architectural experts are now questioning the sustainability and liveability of the NEOM City Project being built in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has begun construction of The Line mega project at Neom, drone footage revealed by Saudi Arabia-based OT Sky drone company showed.

In the video, the excavators were seen digging wide trenches in the desert. Situated in the West Asian country's north-west Tabuk province, is a 170-kilometre-long, 500-metre-tall city which aims to house nine million people and also boasts a mirrored wall.

This is however one among the series of projects which make the $500 billion Neom project. The project wants to build a futuristic city with spaces for work, play and living powered by AI and where everything will be accessible 'within a five-minute walk and an efficient public transport network will offer an end-to-end journey in just 20 minutes.'

Comment:



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Microscope 2

COVID-19 virus has a telltale 'fingerprint' that makes it highly likely to have come from a lab, study finds

Will Jones
The Daily Sceptic
Fri, 21 Oct 2022 19:43 UTC
spike protein covid
The COVID-19 coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has a telltale "fingerprint" that means it is highly likely to have been made in a lab, new research has found.

Mathematical biologist Dr. Alex Washburne and colleagues Valentin Brutte and Antonius VanDongen have published their research in a preprint that found "a high likelihood that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated as an infectious clone assembled in vitro".

They explain that this evidence, which they term an "endonuclease fingerprint", is independent of the evidence relating to the Furin Cleavage Site, which others have suggested is a 'smoking gun' for a lab origin.

Dr. Washburne stresses that he is not alleging malign intent or even gain-of-function work in this paper. He writes: "We find no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 being a bioweapon (on the contrary, this looks like an accident) or any gain of function work. We find evidence suggesting SARS-CoV-2 may have been synthesised in the lab with known methods, probably for normal pre-Covid research purposes."

Professor Francois Balloux has given the study his imprimatur on Twitter, writing: "This is an important piece of work. To me, it looks solid both conceptually and methodologically. I was given advance warning and was able to replicate the key findings. To the best of my knowledge, I confirm the reported patterns are genuine."
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Battery

Electric vehicle's a money pit? It costs $20,000 to replace batteries

Pat Foran
CTV News
Thu, 20 Oct 2022 19:18 UTC
Electric Cars
More trouble than they are worth?
Some electric car owners, especially those with earlier models, have been shocked to find out how much it costs to replace their batteries.

"I don't understand why they make the battery so expensive when you have to change it," Scarborough resident Phyllis Lau said, who owns a 2018 KIA Soul all-electric vehicle.

Lau's electric SUV came with a warranty for the battery that covers 160,000 km, or eight years, whichever comes first.

The family said this year their vehicle clocked in more than 170,000 kilometres, which put them outside the warranty period when the battery failed.

Comment: See also:

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Archaeology

Meet the first Neanderthal family


PhysOrg
Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:28 UTC
neanderthal family
© Tom BjorklundA Neandertal father and his daughter.
The first Neanderthal draft genome was published in 2010. Since then, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have sequenced a further 18 genomes from 14 different archaeological sites throughout Eurasia. While these genomes have provided insights into the broader strokes of Neanderthal history, we still know little of individual Neanderthal communities.

To explore the social structure of Neanderthals, the researchers turned their attention to southern Siberia, a region that has previously been very fruitful for ancient DNA research — including the discovery of Denisovan hominin remains at the famous Denisova Cave. From work done at that site, we know that Neanderthals and Denisovans were present in this region over hundreds of thousands of years, and that Neanderthals and Denisovans have interacted with each other — as the finding of a child with a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother has shown.
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Info

How can digital data stored as DNA be manipulated?


CNRS France
Wed, 19 Oct 2022 19:26 UTC
  • Data can be encoded as DNA but are difficult to process thereafter.
  • A new method enables operations to be performed on DNA-encoded data directly, without having to first translate them into their electronic equivalent.
DNA Strand
© New Scientist
DNA can be used to reliably store a vast amount of digital data. However, retrieval or manipulation of specific data encoded in these molecules has hitherto been difficult. Now, researchers from the CNRS and the University of Tokyo have pioneered the application of a new method that harnesses enzymes, offering initial clues as to how these technical obstacles may be overcome. Their findings are reported in Nature, the 20 October 2022.

Nature has indisputably invented the best solution for storing a massive amount of data: DNA. This understanding has inspired the use of DNA for the storage of digital data, converting binary (0 or 1) numbers into one of the four different DNA "letters" (A, T, C, or G).

But how does one find a specific datum in the library of information stored as DNA? And how can calculations with DNA-encoded data be performed directly, without first converting them back into electronic data? These are the questions that teams from the LIMMS (CNRS / University of Tokyo) and Gulliver (CNRS / ESPCI) research laboratories have sought to answer. They are testing a new approach using enzymes and applying the solutions of artificial neurons and neural networks for direct operations on DNA data.
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