Science & TechnologyS

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Carbon dating, the archaeological workhorse, is getting a major reboot

Nicola Jones
Nature
Tue, 19 May 2020 00:00 UTC
tree rings
© Philippe Clement/Arterra/Universal Images Group/GettyResearchers use data from tree rings, sediment layers and other samples to calibrate the process of carbon dating.
A long-anticipated recalibration of radiocarbon dating could shift the age of some prehistoric samples hundreds of years

Radiocarbon dating โ€” a key tool used for determining the age of prehistoric samples โ€” is about to get a major update. For the first time in seven years, the technique is due to be recalibrated using a slew of new data from around the world. The result could have implications for the estimated ages of many finds โ€” such as Siberia's oldest modern human fossils, which according to the latest calibrations are 1,000 years younger than previously thought.

The work combines thousands of data points from tree rings, lake and ocean sediments, corals and stalagmites, among other features, and extends the time frame for radiocarbon dating back to 55,000 years ago โ€” 5,000 years further than the last calibration update in 2013.

Archaeologists are downright giddy. "Maybe I've been in lockdown too long," tweeted Nicholas Sutton, an archaeologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, "but ... I'm really excited about it!"

Although the recalibration mostly results in subtle changes, even tiny tweaks can make a huge difference for archaeologists and paleo-ecologists aiming to pin events to a small window of time. A new calibration curve "is of key importance" for understanding prehistory, says Tom Higham, archaeological chronologist and director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, UK.
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Info

Egg-based coating extends shelf life of perishables


Rice University
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:47 UTC
Egg Coating
© Jeff FitlowEggs that would otherwise be wasted can be used as the base of an inexpensive coating to protect fruits and vegetables, according to Rice University researchers.
Houston - Eggs that would otherwise be wasted can be used as the base of an inexpensive coating to protect fruits and vegetables, according to Rice University researchers.

The Brown School of Engineering lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and colleagues have developed a micron-thick coating that solves problems both for the produce and its consumers, as well as for the environment.

When the coating was applied to produce by spraying or dipping, it showed a remarkable ability to resist rotting for an extended period comparable to standard coatings like wax but without some of the inherent problems.

The work by Rice undergraduate students Seohui (Sylvia) Jung and Yufei (Nancy) Cui is detailed in Advanced Materials.

The coating relies on eggs that never reach the market. As the United States produces more than 7 billion eggs a year and manufacturers reject 3% of them, the researchers estimate more than 200 million eggs end up in landfills.

Even before the impact of the new coronavirus, the world wasted a third of the food produced around the globe, the researchers wrote.
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Galaxy

Hydrogen ice? Unheard-of composition could explain 'Oumuamua's weirdness

Mike Wall
Space.com
Sat, 30 May 2020 19:13 UTC
Artist's illustration of 'Oumuamua
© M Kornmesser/ESO)Artist's illustration of 'Oumuamua, the first confirmed interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system.
The weirdness of our solar system's first known interstellar visitor stems from a very unusual composition, a new study suggests.

That visitor is 'Oumuamua, which zoomed through Earth's neighborhood in the fall of 2017 and is now streaking toward the dark depths of the outer solar system. The interloper puzzled researchers shortly after its detection, and the air of mystery surrounding the object hasn't dissipated.

'Oumuamua's oddness is multilayered. For starters, it seems to be cigar- or pancake-shaped, which is definitely not the norm for space rocks that astronomers are familiar with.

'Oumuamua also displayed non-gravitational acceleration, movement not caused by the tug of the sun or any other big cosmic object. Comets frequently display such movement as they heat up and begin spouting jets, but 'Oumuamua never sported a cometary tail or coma, as far as researchers could tell.

Finally, spotting 'Oumuamua in the first place is a bit strange, considering how huge space is and how incomplete our search for such bodies has been to date. The detection implies that the population of 'Oumuamua-like objects out there is enormous โ€” unless the visitor targeted our system somehow.
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Info

Discovery of ancient super-eruptions indicates the Yellowstone hotspot may be waning says new study


The Geological Society of America
Wed, 03 Jun 2020 18:52 UTC
Hotspot track
© Kelvin Case via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-3.0.Hotspot track.
Boulder, Colo., USA: Throughout Earth's long history, volcanic super-eruptions have been some of the most extreme events ever to affect our planet's rugged surface. Surprisingly, even though these explosions eject enormous volumes of material โ€” at least 1,000 times more than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens โ€” and have the potential to alter the planet's climate, relatively few have been documented in the geologic record.

Now, in a study published in Geology, researchers have announced the discovery of two newly identified super-eruptions associated with the Yellowstone hotspot track, including what they believe was the volcanic province's largest and most cataclysmic event. The results indicate the hotspot, which today fuels the famous geysers, mudpots, and fumaroles in Yellowstone National Park, may be waning in intensity.

The team used a combination of techniques, including bulk chemistry, magnetic data, and radio-isotopic dates, to correlate volcanic deposits scattered across tens of thousands of square kilometers. "We discovered that deposits previously believed to belong to multiple, smaller eruptions were in fact colossal sheets of volcanic material from two previously unknown super-eruptions at about 9.0 and 8.7 million years ago," says Thomas Knott, a volcanologist at the University of Leicester and the paper's lead author.

"The younger of the two, the Grey's Landing super-eruption, is now the largest recorded event of the entire Snake-River-Yellowstone volcanic province," says Knott. Based on the most recent collations of super-eruption sizes, he adds, "It is one of the top five eruptions of all time."
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Alarm Clock

Coronavirus infections in England and Wales hit peak days before lockdown, study finds

Sarah Knapton
The Telegraph
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 17:36 UTC
empty street UK, deserted street UK, UK lockdown
© Dominic Lipinski/PAThe lockdown, introduced in March, left streets in Britain's towns and cities all but deserted
Coronavirus infections in England and Wales peaked several days before the lockdown came in, a new study suggests, indicating that the draconian restrictions were not responsible for the decline in deaths and cases.


Comment: This is very likely true in almost every country around the world.

It is also therefore true that the majority of unnecessary and excess death during March and April in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, the UK and the USA (to name the primary culprits) - which at this point likely total well over 100,000 mostly elderly vulnerable people - were the result of lockdowns recklessly and willfully imposed by governments.

It is also true therefore that these governments are guilty of the voluntary manslaughter of tens of thousands of their citizens.

If the appropriate heads do not roll in the respective governments for this, it will go down as one of the greatest travesties of justice of the last 100 years.


Modelling by Professor Simon Wood, of the school of mathematics at the University of Bristol, shows that the majority of people who died at the peak would have been infected roughly five days before the lockdown was introduced.

The finding is based on data which shows that the average death from coronavirus takes around 17.8 days from the onset of symptoms, while symptoms appear approximately 5.2 days after infection, making a total of 23 days.

Deaths in England and Wales peaked around April 8-9, which suggests the majority of people who died then had become infected roughly 23 days earlier, around March 18-19.
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Galaxy

Astronomers say ancient explosion at Milky Way's centre 'lit up' gases in satellite galaxies

Elizabeth Howell
Space.com
Fri, 05 Jun 2020 16:50 UTC
black hole Sagittarius A
© NASA/CXC/Stanford/I. Zhuravleva et al.A NASA image of Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy released in 2015
Our ancient ancestors would have seen it in the night sky.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is further probing the remnants of a massive space explosion visible from Earth 3.5 million years ago.

Embedded in the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) had unleashed a massive amount of energy. New research shows that the energy was so pervasive that it illuminated gas associated with two satellite galaxies of our own: the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).

"The flash was so powerful that it lit up the [gas] stream like a Christmas tree. It was a cataclysmic event," Andrew Fox, the principal investigator of the study and an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, said in a NASA statement.
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Beaker

Researchers create synthetic red blood cells that mimic natural ones, and have new abilities


PhysOrg
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 23:09 UTC
synthetic red blood cell
Artificial red blood cells, like the one shown here, could carry oxygen, therapeutic drugs and other cargo in the bloodstream. Scale bar, 2 ฮผm.
Scientists have tried to develop synthetic red blood cells that mimic the favorable properties of natural ones, such as flexibility, oxygen transport and long circulation times. But so far, most artificial red blood cells have had one or a few, but not all, key features of the natural versions. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have made synthetic red blood cells that have all of the cells' natural abilities, plus a few new ones.

Red blood cells (RBCs) take up oxygen from the lungs and deliver it to the body's tissues. These disk-shaped cells contain millions of molecules of hemoglobin โ€” an iron-containing protein that binds oxygen. RBCs are highly flexible, which allows them to squeeze through tiny capillaries and then bounce back to their former shape. The cells also contain proteins on their surface that allow them to circulate through blood vessels for a long time without being gobbled up by immune cells. Wei Zhu, C. Jeffrey Brinker and colleagues wanted to make artificial RBCs that had similar properties to natural ones, but that could also perform new jobs such as therapeutic drug delivery, magnetic targeting and toxin detection.
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Info

Terrestrial gamma-ray flash and ionospheric ultraviolet emissions powered by lightning


SciTechDaily
Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:54 UTC
Lightning Above Clouds
© Birkeland Centre for Space Science, Daniel Schmelling/Mount VisualArtistโ€™s impression of multi-wavelength emission above a thunderstorm based on data from ASIM. The high electric field associated with lightning (light blue) generates a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (magenta). The resulting electromagnetic pulse causes an elve, or expanding ring of ultraviolet emission (red and white).
You have likely seen lightning flash from a storm cloud to strike the ground. Such bolts represent only a small part of the overall phenomenon of lightning, though. The most powerful activity occurs high above the surface, in Earth's upper atmosphere.

Up there, lightning creates brief bursts of gamma rays that are the most high-energy naturally produced phenomena on the planet. Researchers recently measured these high-energy terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, or TGFs, using instruments on the International Space Station. The work helps reveal the mechanism behind the creation of the bright flashes we call lightning.

The instruments are part of the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), an Earth observation facility on the outside of the space station used to study severe thunderstorms and their role in Earth's atmosphere and climate. ASIM recorded other types of upper-atmospheric lightning known as transient luminous events (TLEs) in addition to TGFs. ASIM's high-speed instruments helped researchers to determine the sequence of events that produces TGFs, as reported in a paper recently published in the journal Science.

"With ASIM, we see how the atmosphere and clouds bubble like a pot of stew on the stove," says Torsten Neubert of the National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark and lead author on the paper. "Convection brings humidity, dust and other particles into the upper atmosphere where they affect Earth's radiation balance. Lightning is a measure of convection and can be relatively simple to put into weather and climate models."
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Beaker

Tiny human livers grown in lab have been successfully transplanted into rats

Peter Dockrill
Science Alert
Wed, 03 Jun 2020 17:44 UTC
lab grown liver
© UPMCMini liver made from human skin cells.
Scientists have successfully transplanted functional miniature livers into rats, after growing the bioengineered organs in the lab from reprogrammed human skin cells.

The experiment, which gave the animals working liver organs, could lay the groundwork for future treatments to address terminal liver failure - a disease that claims the lives of over 40,000 people in the US every year.

While there's still a lot of work to be done before the technique can directly aid human patients, the researchers say their proof of concept may help underpin a future alternative to liver transplants, which are often incredibly expensive procedures to perform, in addition to being strictly limited by donor supply.
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Bullseye

Study: Children play little role in spreading coronavirus

Toby Sterling
Reuters
Wed, 03 Jun 2020 18:15 UTC
coronavirus, children
© Getty Images / Coscaron
A study by the Netherlands' National Institute for Health (RIVM) published on Wednesday concluded that children under the age of 12 play little role in transmitting the new coronavirus.

The study in the country's leading medical journal Nederlands Tijdschrift Voor Geneeskunde followed the progress of the disease in 54 families, including 227 people in all.

Studies in other countries have previously found that children are less often infected by the virus and, once infected, less often become seriously ill.

"Yes, children can become infected, but transmission takes place primarily between adults of similar age, and from adults to children," the study said in its conclusion.

Comment: Will school systems pay attention to news like this and stop their inhuman restrictions being placed on children? It's doubtful at this stage as hysteria has replaced even any semblance of reason.

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