Science & TechnologyS


Chalkboard

Care for some intellectual appetizers? Electric proteins, spidey sense, and more for 2020


Evolution News
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 18:47 UTC
sliders hamburgers
© Prayitno/Wikimedia
Welcome to the second day of the New Year! Like tasty sliders, these short news stories should get the juices flowing for big developments in 2020.

Electric Proteins

Dr. Stuart Lindsey at Arizona State University is an expert in single-molecule dynamics in biomolecules. Older methods of observing protein structure, such as X-ray crystallography, only gave single snapshots of the highly dynamic world, he says, where proteins rapidly change conformations and interact in complex ways. Electron transport has been well known in the cases of photosynthesis and metabolism. But a few years ago, his team was astonished to find that a run-of-the-mill protein conducted electricity. The protein was acting like a wire!

Further observations revealed that all proteins conduct electricity — even the ones that had "weren't designed to do this" —
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Red Flag

Search and rescue, or search and destroy? Pentagon wants to use swarms of AI-enabled drone 'bees' for 'rescue' missions


RT
Wed, 01 Jan 2020 06:22 UTC
swarm drone bees
Your local friendly autonomous swarm, as seen on Black Mirror Netflix
The Pentagon is combing the AI developer community to try to build a self-starting swarm of AI-enabled drones capable of recognizing and tracking a target - ostensibly for search and rescue, but potentially for search and destroy.

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) issued a request (RFI) late in December seeking the latest and greatest in AI and drone swarm tech - and looking for clever ideas on how to combine the two. The resulting smart-swarm, the agency said, should be self-directing, able to find and track humans ("and manmade objects," the RFI specifies) on its own, capable of streaming video of its activities, and willing to nudge its minders (who won't be minding it most of the time, since it's primarily AI-powered) when it has latched on to something interesting. The swarm will have to be able to move at least 50 knots (93 km/h), stay in the air for at least 2 hours, and cover 100 square nautical miles (343 square km).

The official purpose of the "smart swarm" is search and rescue, the RFI explains, while the JAIC program comprises four "mission initiatives" - "predictive maintenance, humanitarian aid and disaster relief, and cyberspace and robotic process automation."

So, where is number four? The RFI isn't telling, but we can speculate based on what JAIC is known to do. The AI-specialist department, which only debuted in 2018, ended up running Project Maven, the initiative to weaponize machine-learning and Big Data that was supposedly rejected by Google after employees got cold feet about helping the Pentagon kill people.

Comment: If The Pentagon is spearheading this development, humanitarian concerns are highly unlikely to be the motivating force:

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Info

Owning a dog as a child lowers the risk of schizophrenia

Mike McRae
Science Alert
Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:29 UTC
Child with Dog
© Leo Rivas/Unsplash
Schizophrenia is one of those disorders we still don't know the cause of, but it's likely to involve a complex mix of genes and environmental factors a person is exposed to in their childhood. According to new research, one such factor might have something to do with having pets.

A new study has found a relationship between dog ownership in our early years and a reduced likelihood of developing the neurological condition. Just how the two are linked isn't clear, but in context of research implicating a dysfunctional immune system, this tantalising conclusion demands a closer look.

"Serious psychiatric disorders have been associated with alterations in the immune system linked to environmental exposures in early life, says pediatrist Robert Yolken from Johns Hopkins Children's Centre, Maryland.

"Since household pets are often among the first things with which children have close contact, it was logical for us to explore the possibilities of a connection between the two."

Having a pet roam around the family home when a child is still crawling around through the dust and dander has long been considered a good way to build a healthy immunity.
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Fireball 2

Hungry, happy microbes 'dance' on meteor meal

Maddie Bender
Vice
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 17:22 UTC
Metallosphaera sedula meteors microbes
© Milojevic et al,SEM image showing Metallosphaera sedula cells colonizing the surface of the NWA 1172 particles.
Extremophiles are models for early life on Earth, and we just discovered that one in particular thrives on material from off-world.

Scientists have discovered that a single-celled organism, a descendant of some of the earliest living creatures on Earth, is able to colonize a meteorite, growing and synthesizing nutrients. Their experiment, published on Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, may give us a way to look for the signatures of past life on other planets.

"This process was very enigmatic and exciting, how the chemical energy of a stone fragment can be transformed into the biochemical energy of a living entity," said Tetyana Milojevic, the first author of the study. "To find an answer to understand this process, I think it's a great moment."
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Attention

2019 science: Absolutely no climate alarm

P Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Tue, 31 Dec 2019 22:25 UTC
No alarm on every aspect: stable polar ice, normal sea level rise, no consensus, growing snow cover, less tropical storms, tornadoes, shrinking deserts, global greening, predictions wrong, models flawed, climate driven by sun, ocean cycles, biodiversity, warmer 1000 years ago...etc...

Global Temperatures
© No Tricks Zone
2019 saw a great amount of new science emerge showing that there's nothing alarming or catastrophic about our climate.

Some 2019 scientific findings

Need to make a presentation showing there is no climate alarm? The following findings we reported on in 2019 will put many concerns to rest.

Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers ignored by media

What follows are some selected top science-based posts we published here at NoTricksZone in 2019. These new findings show there is absolutely no climate alarm.

Hundreds of new peer-reviewed papers, charts, findings, etc - which the IPCC, activists and media ignore and even conceal. No wonder they've gotten so shrill.
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Fireball 3

What's up? Both US and Russia have developed plans to deal with incoming asteroids

Michael Snyder
TMIN
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Asteroid/Earth
© Unknown
When the Russians take decisive action, it is usually for a reason. As you will see below, the Russians have suddenly decided that now is the time to create an organization that will be tasked with detecting, tracking and potentially destroying incoming asteroids. Are they doing this now because they have finally decided that this is a good idea, or has something gotten their attention? Of course they are not likely to publicly admit if they have come to the conclusion that a gigantic space rock is heading directly toward us. Just like the U.S. government, the Russian government is very interested in maintaining social order, and so they would probably delay telling the public about a potential asteroid impact for as long as possible.

In life, what people do is far more important than what they say, and the new center that the Russians have just created will not just be watching giant space rocks. According to Futurism, this new organization will be in charge of making sure "they don't collide with Earth."
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Arrow Up

A machine figured out Rubik's Cube all by itself


MIT Technology Review
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Competition
© Getty ImagesRubik's Cube Championship
Unlike chess moves, changes to a Rubik's Cube are hard to evaluate, which is why deep-learning machines haven't been able to solve the puzzle on their own. Until now.

Yet another bastion of human skill and intelligence has fallen to the onslaught of the machines. A new kind of deep-learning machine has taught itself to solve a Rubik's Cube without any human assistance.

The milestone is significant because the new approach tackles an important problem in computer science — how to solve complex problems when help is minimal.

First some background. The Rubik's Cube is a three-dimensional puzzle developed in 1974 by the Hungarian inventor Erno Rubik, the object being to align all squares of the same color on the same face of the cube. It became an international best-selling toy and sold over 350 million units.
deepcube diagram
© unknown
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Jet4

The hidden military use of 5G technology

Manlio Dinucci
Waking Times
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
5G Technology
At the London Summit, the 29 member countries of NATO agreed to "guarantee the security of our communications, including 5G". Why is this fifth generation of mobile data transmission so important for NATO?

While the earlier technologies were perfected to create ever more advanced smartphones, 5G is designed not only to improve their performance, but mainly to link digital systems which need enormous quantities of data in order to work automatically. The most important 5G applications will not be intended for civil use, but for the military domain.

The possibilities offered by this new technology are explained by the Defense Applications of 5G Network Technology, published by the Defense Science Board, a federal committee which provides scientific advice for the Pentagon -

Comment: See also:

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Nebula

First chip-to-chip quantum teleportation achieved could lead to breakthroughs in super computing


University of Bristol
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
Quantum
The development of technologies which can process information based on the laws of quantum physics are predicted to have profound impacts on modern society.

For example, quantum computers may hold the key to solving problems that are too complex for today's most powerful supercomputers, and a quantum internet could ultimately protect the worlds information from malicious attacks.

However, these technologies all rely on 'quantum information', which is typically encoded in single quantum particles that are extremely difficult to control and measure.

Scientists from the University of Bristol, in collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), have successfully developed chip-scale devices that are able to harness the applications of quantum physics by generating and manipulating single particles of light within programmable nano-scale circuits.

Comment: See also:

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Microscope 1

10 things we learned about human beings in 2019

Yasemin Saplakoglu
LiveScience
Sun, 29 Dec 2019 12:23 UTC
human
Humans are incredible living machines, with legs strong enough to run marathons and brains smart enough to know that invisible dark matter exists. Our bodies make sure we hear the correct frequencies, send the right immune cells to a paper cut and know when to stop drinking water. But there's still much to untangle about our human bodies, so all the time, we are discovering new organs and new secrets about how all of our nooks and crannies keep us going. This past year, new discoveries revealed an invisible network of immune cells, a "Jell-O" violin in our ears and how the oldest people in this world survived to such extreme ages.

"Jell-O" hearing

hearing
© MIT Micromechanics Group
Humans might hear so well because of a tiny "Jell-O" violin that sits inside the ears. The thin, blob of tissue, otherwise known as the tectorial membrane, is made up of 97% water. This tissue helps to bring sound waves from the ear to nerve receptors, which then translate that vibration into an electrical signal the brain can read. New research conducted on mice has found that this ear Jell-O helps the cochlea — a cavity in the inner ear that contains these nerve receptors — separate high frequencies from low frequencies. It does so by changing its stiffness, based on water flow that runs through its tiny pores, similar to what happens when you tune a violin or guitar. [Read more about the 'Jell-O' Violin]
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