Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

Humans evolved to run on less water than other primates


Cosmos Magazine
Tue, 09 Mar 2021 10:09 UTC
water
© R_Tee / Getty Images
It's an age-old question in evolution: how did humans become the dominant primate, able to venture out from tropical rainforests to the savannah and then populate the entire world? In other words, what makes us unique?

Science offers many explanations, including our large brains, bipedal gait and ability to craft complex tools - but a new study suggests that we're also more efficient at conserving water.

For humans, water is life: our bodies are 60% water and we need to drink 2-3 litres per day to replenish what we lose through sweat, urination and even breathing. And yet, according to an international team of scientists, humans actually use about 30-50% less water per day than our closest primate cousins.

Comment: See also:

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Fireball 2

Meteorite from February fireball falls to ground in Winchcombe, England

Mike Wall
Space.com
Tue, 09 Mar 2021 21:23 UTC
A chunk of the meteorite that was recovered from Winchcombe in England
© The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, LondonA chunk of the meteorite that was recovered from Winchcombe in England on March 1, 2021 — the first meteorite found in the United Kingdom since 1991.
A piece of the space rock that lit up skies over England on Feb. 28 has been found.

The singed hunk of asteroid was discovered in the driveway of a house in Winchcombe, a small town in the county of Gloucestershire in southwestern England. The rock, which weighs nearly 10.6 ounces (300 grams), is the first meteorite found in the UK since 1991, experts said, and the first known carbonaceous chondrite ever discovered in the country.

Carbonaceous chondrites are especially pristine and primitive meteorites that generally contain lots of organic material, including complex molecules such as amino acids. Studying carbonaceous chondrites can shed light on the early solar system and how the building blocks of life found their way to Earth, researchers say.

Such study is already under way at the Natural History Museum in London, where the meteorite now resides.

"This is really exciting. There are about 65,000 known meteorites in the entire world, and of those only 51 of them are carbonaceous chondrites that have been seen to fall like this one," Sara Russell, a meteorite scientist at the museum, said in a statement.

"It is almost mind-blowingly amazing, because we are working on the asteroid sample-return space missions Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, and this material looks exactly like the material they are collecting," Russell said. "I am just speechless with excitement."

Comment: Blazing meteor fireball observed across UK - Update: Sonic boom reported

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Gear

Moderna's COVID Vaccine is an 'operating system' - is this Transhumanism?

John O'Sullivan
Principia Scientifc
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00 UTC
transhumanism
Documents obtained from Moderna reveal that the so-called vaccine being peddled by the company is actually an 'operating system'. This startling admission confirms what vaccine skeptics have claimed - that COVID is about control, not a virus.

It won't be lost on anyone who has done due diligence over this pandemic to see past the glib claims of paid-off politicians and compliant media that all is not as it seems.

To start, it is no coincidence that one of the key promoters of these new mRNA 'vaccines' is none other than Microsoft billionaire, Bill Gates. Bill gave a Ted Talk where he boasted vaccines can help cut global population by 15 percent.

Yes he said cut population. How does that work - by deactivating these vaccine-implanted operating systems in us?

Well, psychopathic Bill couldn't fix his Microsoft operating system to prevent endless computer viruses, so why should we trust him now that he is spearheading what is seen as a major step towards transhumanism. For those who care about what goes into their bodies, and those of their loved ones, see if you can detect something very sinister from what is being foisted upon a gullible public.
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Blue Planet

Heads up: Some sea slugs grow new bodies after decapitation

Seth Borenstein
AP News
Mon, 08 Mar 2021 22:08 UTC
sea slug
This undated photo provided by Sayaka Mitoh shows a Elysia cf. marginata sea slug after autotomy. According to a study released in the journal Current Biology on Monday, March 8, 2021, scientists have discovered that some Japanese sea slugs can grow whole new bodies if their heads are cut off, taking regeneration to the most extreme levels ever seen.
Scientists have discovered the ultimate case of regeneration: Some decapitated sea slugs can regrow hearts and whole new bodies.

This "wonder of nature," reported in a biology journal on Monday, could eventually help scientists better understand and tackle regeneration of human tissue.

Biology researcher Sayaka Mitoh said she loves studying Japanese sea slugs because they are small, cute and weird. They can even briefly photosynthesize like a plant drawing food from the sun.

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Rose

Microbes deep beneath seafloor survive on byproducts of radioactive process


The University of Rhode Island
Sun, 07 Mar 2021 11:34 UTC
sediment
© Justine SauvageMarine sediment samples used in the irradiation experiments.
A team of researchers from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography and their collaborators have revealed that the abundant microbes living in ancient sediment below the seafloor are sustained primarily by chemicals created by the natural irradiation of water molecules.

The team discovered that the creation of these chemicals is amplified significantly by minerals in marine sediment. In contrast to the conventional view that life in sediment is fueled by products of photosynthesis, an ecosystem fueled by irradiation of water begins just meters below the seafloor in much of the open ocean. This radiation-fueled world is one of Earth's volumetrically largest ecosystems.

The research was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

Comment: It's becoming clear that life of some kind or other exists just about everywhere:

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Galaxy

A Theory of Reality as more than the sum of its parts

Natalie Wolchover
Quanta Magazine
Thu, 01 Jun 2017 17:08 UTC
causual emergence quantum reality
© Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine
New math shows how, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, conscious beings and other macroscopic entities might have greater influence over the future than does the sum of their microscopic components.

In his 1890 opus, The Principles of Psychology, William James invoked Romeo and Juliet to illustrate what makes conscious beings so different from the particles that make them up.

"Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they," James wrote. "But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings. ... Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly."

Erik Hoel, a 29-year-old theoretical neuroscientist and writer, quoted the passage in a recent essay in which he laid out his new mathematical explanation of how consciousness and agency arise. The existence of agents — beings with intentions and goal-oriented behavior — has long seemed profoundly at odds with the reductionist assumption that all behavior arises from mechanistic interactions between particles. Agency doesn't exist among the atoms, and so reductionism suggests agents don't exist at all: that Romeo's desires and psychological states are not the real causes of his actions, but merely approximate the unknowably complicated causes and effects between the atoms in his brain and surroundings.

Comment: On causality from another point of view: Free will is real

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NPC

'Total-surveillance shopping experience' with Amazon Fresh as new till-less grocery store opens in London

Leo Kelion
BBC
Sun, 07 Mar 2021 11:55 UTC
Amazon
© GettyAmazon tracks each customer as they move around the shop
Amazon has opened a till-less grocery store in London - its first "just walk out" shop outside the US.

Visitors to Amazon Fresh scan a smartphone app when entering and are automatically billed as they leave.

The store stocks hundreds of own-brand items as well as third-party products, and also serves as a place to collect and return goods bought online.

Campaigners have raised privacy concerns but one retail expert said the opening marked a "watershed moment".


Comment: Both?


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Cassiopaea

Unknown magnetospheric mechanisms in the polar aurora revealed

Nagoya University
Phys.org
Fri, 05 Mar 2021 12:00 UTC
Arase
© ERG science centerThe Arase satellite captured data about electrons accelerated from very high altitudes.
A critical ingredient for auroras exists much higher in space than previously thought, according to new research in the journal Scientific Reports. The dazzling light displays in the polar night skies require an electric accelerator to propel charged particles down through the atmosphere. Scientists at Nagoya University and colleagues in Japan, Taiwan and the U.S. have found that it exists beyond 30,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface — offering insight not just about Earth, but other planets as well.

The story of aurora formation begins with supersonic plasma propelled from the sun into space as high-speed, charged particles. When these charged particles get close to Earth, they are deflected and funneled in streams along the planet's magnetic field lines, eventually flowing towards the poles.


Comment: To the surprise of scientists it was recently discovered that energy from the solar wind favors the north.


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Blue Planet

Woolly mammoths lived alongside first humans in New England

Dartmouth College
Phys.org
Thu, 04 Mar 2021 19:02 UTC
mammoth
© Flying Puffin (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).Replica of a Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) in the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The display is from 1979, and the fur is muskox hair.
Woolly mammoths may have walked the landscape at the same time as the earliest humans in what is now New England, according to a Dartmouth study published in Boreas. Through the radiocarbon dating of a rib fragment from the Mount Holly mammoth from Mount Holly, Vt., the researchers learned that this mammoth existed approximately 12,800 years ago. This date may overlap with the arrival of the first humans in the Northeast, who are thought to have arrived around the same time.


Comment: There's good reason to believe that the Americas were populated much more widely and much earlier: America Before by Graham Hancock - Book review


"It has long been thought that megafauna and humans in New England did not overlap in time and space and that it was probably ultimately environmental change that led to the extinction of these animals in the region but our research provides some of the first evidence that they may have actually co-existed," explains co-author Nathaniel R. Kitchel, the Robert A. 1925 and Catherine L. McKennan Postdoctoral Fellow in anthropology at Dartmouth.


Comment: Indeed drastic changes in the environment appears to have had an impact on the world's megafauna, but the question is: what caused the drastic shifts in climate? Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes


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

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Star of David

SOTT Focus: Pfizer CEO Admits Israel's Exclusive Use of mRNA Vaccine Makes it 'World's Lab' as Covid-19 Mortality Rate Spikes

Gilad Atzmon
gilad.online
Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
rats pic
© unknown
If Israelis are confused by the fact that their government treats them like laboratory pets, if they wonder why their freedom to travel, to socialise or even earn a living have evaporated, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla produced a genuine answer yesterday. In an interview on NBC Bourla said:

"I believe Israel has become the world's lab right now because they are using only our vaccine at this state and they have vaccinated a very big part of their population, so we can study both economy and health indices."

I have no issue with medical experiments involving humans if the participants are fully aware of all possible circumstances and considerations involved in their consent. This didn't happen in Israel. By means of 'green passports,' the government practically threatens to penalise anyone reluctant to participate in a 'lab' experiment for a giant pharmaceutical company with a very problematic record.

The results of this Pfizer-Israeli experiment aren't necessarily encouraging. Though it may be possible, as some studies suggest, that most vaccinated people have at least short-term protection from Covid-19, no one can deny the astonishing fact that in just 8 weeks of mass vaccination the total number of Covid-19 deaths in the Jewish State almost doubled from the number accumulated in the prior ten months.

Comment: Atzmon offers an alarming and compelling statistical argument for refusing the jab. Buyer beware!

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