Science & TechnologyS


Water

Chemists discover water microdroplets spontaneously produce hydrogen peroxide

Stanford University
Science Daily
Mon, 26 Aug 2019 09:58 UTC
water droplet
Water is everywhere on Earth, but maybe that just gives it more space to hide its secrets. Its latest surprise, Stanford researchers report Aug. 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that microscopic droplets of water spontaneously produce hydrogen peroxide.

The discovery could pave the way for greener ways to produce the molecule, a common bleaching agent and disinfectant, said Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a professor of chemistry in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.

"Water is one of the most commonly found materials, and it's been studied for years and years and you would think that there was nothing more to learn about this molecule. But here's yet another surprise," said Zare, who is also a member of Stanford Bio-X.

Comment: The mysteries of water abound: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Health & Wellness Show: Water: What Do We Really Know?

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Better Earth

Ancient die-off greater than the dinosaur extinction detected in rocks in Canada

Danielle Torrent Tucker, Stanford University
Phys.org
Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:00 UTC
Hudson Bay
© Malcolm HodgskissRocks from the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, Canada, from which doctoral candidate Malcolm Hodgskiss collected barite samples dating 2.02 to 1.87 billion years old.
Clues from Canadian rocks formed billions of year ago reveal a previously unknown loss of life even greater than that of the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when Earth lost nearly three-quarters of its plant and animal species.

Rather than prowling animals, this die-off involved miniscule microorganisms that shaped the Earth's atmosphere and ultimately paved the way for those larger animals to thrive.

"This shows that even when biology on Earth is comprised entirely of microbes, you can still have what could be considered an enormous die-off event that otherwise is not recorded in the fossil record," said Malcolm Hodgskiss, co-lead author of a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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

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Microscope 2

Salk scientists develop new genome-editing tool that could treat disorders caused by gene mutations


Salk News
Fri, 23 Aug 2019 00:00 UTC
Neuron targeted using SATI technology.
Neuron targeted using the SATI technology.
The ability to edit genes in living organisms offers the opportunity to treat a plethora of inherited diseases. However, many types of gene-editing tools are unable to target critical areas of DNA, and creating such a technology has been difficult as living tissue contains diverse types of cells.

Now, Salk Institute researchers have developed a new tool — dubbed SATI — to edit the mouse genome, enabling the team to target a broad range of mutations and cell types. The new genome-editing technology, described in Cell Research on August 23, 2019, could be expanded for use in a broad range of gene mutation conditions such as Huntington's disease and the rare premature aging syndrome, progeria.

"This study has shown that SATI is a powerful tool for genome editing," says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the paper. "It could prove instrumental in developing effective strategies for target-gene replacement of many different types of mutations, and opens the door for using genome-editing tools to possibly cure a broad range of genetic diseases."

Techniques that modify DNA — notably the CRISPR-Cas9 system — have generally been most effective in dividing cells, such as those in the skin or the gut, using the cells' normal DNA repair mechanisms. The Izpisua Belmonte lab previously showed that their CRISPR/Cas9-based gene-editing technology, called HITI (for homology-independent targeted integration), could target both dividing and non-dividing cells. Protein-coding regions function like recipes for making proteins, while areas called non-coding regions act as chefs deciding how much food to make. These non-coding regions make up the vast majority of DNA (~98%) and regulate many cellular functions including turning genes off and on, so could be a valuable target for future gene therapies.

Comment: Most of the genetic manipulation technology is taking place with little to no health and safety regulatory oversight - is the world ready for the unintended consequences? See:

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Dig

Kola borehole: World's deepest artificial hole dug by the Soviets in the 1970's

Charlotte Edwards
The Sun
Sun, 25 Aug 2019 11:09 UTC
kola borehole
© Rakot13/CC BY-SA 3.0The Kola Superdeep Borehole can still be visited today and is hidden underneath this rusty lid
EARTH'S deepest artificial hole stretches 40,000 feet below the surface - but it's only covered by a rusty metal lid.

Russia's Kola Superdeep Borehole was created by the Soviets in the name of science so they could learn more about what's really under our feet and dig to depths unknown.

The project to drill into the Earth's surface began near Murmansk in the 1970s, when Soviet scientists wanted to learn more about the Earth's crust.

Over two decades, they managed dig more than 7.5 miles down into the Earth.

However, in 1992 they had to stop drilling because the temperature was around 180 degrees Celsius, which was far hotter than the scientists predicted it would be.

Comment: See also:

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Rocket

Top secret USAF spaceship breaks own record, mysterious 719-day mission


RT
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:10 UTC
X-37B spaceplane
© USAFX-37B spaceplane
The ultra-top-secret US Air Force X-37B spaceplane has broken the record for the longest time in space for a terrestrial aircraft, with an immense 717 days and counting.

Built by Boeing, the 29-feet long and 9.6-feet high craft has been shrouded in mystery and speculation since its first mission in 2010.

With a wingspan of nearly 15 feet, the craft is launched vertically into space while strapped to a rocket, but lands rather traditionally on a runway. The current record-breaking mission (OTV-5) was launched in September 2017 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Like each of its predecessor missions, it has broken the previously held records for time spent in orbit.

What initially began as a NASA investigation into developing cheaper reusable space shuttles is now an ultra-secretive US military project.

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Coffee

Sense of smell requires optimized, scalable network circuitry


Evolution News
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 17:31 UTC
smell cell
© Living Waters, via Illustra Media
The ability to detect and respond to molecules in the air — olfaction — is one of the most complex of our senses. It requires sorting, analyzing, and prioritizing a torrent of input data quickly. If you saw the animation "A Pacific Salmon's Sense of Smell" from Illustra Media's documentary Living Waters, you got a feel for the complexity of neural wiring and organs that process the inputs. Here, we look at new findings about what it takes to run an olfactory function.

What Is Known

At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, winners of a NIH award for innovative neuroscience research have been creating models of olfaction. At Medical Xpress they explain what is known about the sense of smell:
Generally, scientists know that odor particles first enter through the nasal cavity, where odorant receptors expressed by olfactory receptor neurons in the sensory tissue bind to them. The olfactory bulb, a structure located in the forebrain of mammals, then processes information sent up from the receptors. Afterwards, the bulb sends out this information to several higher processing brain areas, including the cerebral cortex. There, the olfactory output messages are further analyzed and broadcast across the brain before they're conveyed back to the bulb in a feedback loop. [Emphasis added.]
What Is Not Known

The same research team recently found that "it's probable that the entry-level of olfactory inputs and the further processed bulb outputs care about different aspects of smell." Previous models, they say, have not stood up to further testing. For instance, combining odorants should predict neural responses, but they often do not.
When it comes to smell, "we don't really know what the brain is looking for, and we don't know what physical or chemical features, if any, the brain extracts," Albeanu said.
Their latest paper in Current Biology, "Scaling Principles of Distributed Circuits," sounds more like a title about computer science than physiology, but it concerns primarily the problem of modeling olfaction as a signal-processing circuit. They found mathematical relationships between the incoming neural signals and the glomeruli that receive them, deducing that the ability to discriminate odors corresponds to the circuit size. The system grants scalability to the olfactory system across species: the more incoming neurons, the more glomeruli there are to process the inputs.
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Meteor

2 asteroids to scream past Earth Wednesday, including one discovered only last week


RT
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 12:59 UTC
asteroid approaching earth
© Illustration urikyo33/Pixabay
To conclude what has been a busy summer for NASA's Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), not one but two asteroids are set to scream by the Earth Wednesday, one of which was only spotted less than a week ago.

In news which may exacerbate concerns over our lack of planetary defenses, asteroid 2019 QS was first spotted on August 21. Measuring between 108 and 240ft (33 - 73 meters) in diameter and travelling at a speed of 49,709 mph, the space rock could do some serious damage if it smashed into our planet.

Thankfully, however, NASA boffins spotted the inbound asteroid in the nick of time and were able to calculate that it will pass us by harmlessly in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

2019 QS will be making its debut close Earth approach at a distance of roughly 5.48 times the distance to the moon.


Comment: In cosmic terms this isn't very far from Earth at all. How soon before something of this size (or larger) makes a direct hit given what we now know about the relationship between in-coming comets and the sun's dark companion Nemesis.


The second of Wednesday's close fly-by visitors, asteroid 2019 OU1 will pass by shortly afterwards. Measuring an estimated 560ft in diameter (roughly the size of the Washington Monument) it will shoot past at a distance of less than a million miles away and a speed of 29,000mph.
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Comet 2

Dr. Napier fingers fragmented comet in Younger Dryas and Bronze Age impacts


Cosmic Tusk
Wed, 21 Aug 2019 22:26 UTC
Comet 332P Fragmenting
© NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)This image, captured on January 27 2016 by the Hubble Space Telescope, is one of three showing Comet 332P fragmenting as it nears the sun.
Folks, I am sorry to have been so scarce in recent months. Among other excuses for the inexcusable, the auto-mailer for subscribers to the site went down, and I felt I needed to repair it before posting. Fixing it turned into a mess which led to my continued procrastination. Much has happened in recent months in our subject though, and I look forward to catching up and posting more, as the year closes out.

First up is a fabulous new paper from Tusk friend and Scottish astronomer William Napier. Bill is a member of the Comet Research Group and contributes his world class knowledge on the behavior of comets in support of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. In this contribution he further refines the culprit in our favorite cataclysm, a fragmenting comet. But keep in mind, as sometimes others have not, that the subject comet is fragmenting IN SPACE over thousands of years, not in the earth's atmosphere. See The Bos misdirecting the nature and context of the fragmentation events here and here, and the CRG response here.
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Laptop

Digital Immortality

David Evans Bailey
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 26 Aug 2019 18:50 UTC
Digital Immortality
© Shutterstock/CC BY-NDIf it were possible to download the neural networks of a human brain, could we preserve a computer simulation of that person?
Immortality has been a topic of discussion since the legend of the Holy Grail.

Some people have gone as far as cryogenic freezing after death in the hope that one day science will have advanced enough to resurrect them. Others believe the route to immortality lies in the digital realm.

The theory that humans can be digitised and live on within the digital confines of a computer-based existence has been the subject of debate. But until recently, no one had taken the idea much beyond research and discussion.

Last year, a consortium of unidentified individuals launched Virternity with the stated goal of a digital life for all. A world that would be owned not by any government but by the people.

This digital world, Virternity said, would remove the physical constraints upon us and the planet and usher in a completely new plane of existence. Then, without any warning, Virternity disappeared.
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Microscope 2

Wheels in nature: Making predictions against design

Ann Gauger
Evolution News
Mon, 26 Aug 2019 18:20 UTC
cells
© Discovery Institute
From back when I was a sophomore taking biochemistry, one particular event stands out in my memory, perhaps because it was such an odd thing. Our professor, I'll call him Dr. X, knew his material very well. Our classroom had nine blackboards stacked in groups of three. As he wrote on one, Professor X would flip a switch and blackboard A would advance upward, then B, then C, following some pattern that only he knew, until at the end of class, having dragged us all through metabolism, he would neatly draw an arrow connecting blackboard I's reaction with the one on the starting blackboard. He always left me staring at my notes in despair of connecting them.

But that's not what I remember about him the best. One day we were having a discussion about the marvelous things that were being found in biology. It was only a decade since the genetic code had been cracked, and the first DNA and the first protein had been sequenced. These were remarkable achievements. The development of the tools that made genetic engineering possible was happening there and then, at MIT at the time. I didn't really realize how momentous it all was.
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