Science & TechnologyS


Brain

Brain studies aim to predict who is likely to commit murder

Bigad Shaban and Robert Campos
NBC Washington
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 14:06 UTC
Dr. Hannes Vogel
© NBC Bay Area"I was involved in the examination of Steven Paddock's brain, the mass murder from Las Vegas," said Dr. Hannes Vogel, a Neuropathologist at Stanford University. Vogel has studied thousand of brains over the past three decades.
An NBC Bay Area investigation details first-of-its-kind research that found detecting abnormalities in the brain may help identify who might be at risk of committing violent attacks in the future

Cutting-edge research is revealing new ways to potentially prevent violent acts, including mass shootings, years before the thought of violence ever crosses the minds of murderers.

A study of roughly 1,000 prisoners revealed across-the-board brain abnormalities in those who committed homicide, leading researchers to believe such behavior, if identified early enough, can be quashed with therapy and medication.

The findings come in the wake of several recent mass shootings across the country - seven dead in Odessa, Texas; 22 shot and killed at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; and three people, including two children, killed by an active shooter at the Gilroy Garlic festival.

Researchers have linked such violent behavior to abnormalities in the brain, and believe early detection may help identify who might be at risk of committing violent attacks in the future.
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Radar

Mysterious 'pocket' of underwater gas could contain millions of tons of natural gas or CO2

Brandon Specktor
Live Science
Fri, 27 Sep 2019 10:24 UTC
carbon dioxide
© Takeshi Tsuji, Kyushu UniversityIn this seismic velocity map, the long blue blob sitting within the green section represents a vast reservoir of greenhouse gases trapped below the seafloor.
The bottom of the sea can be a gassy place. Underwater volcanoes and vents spew carbon dioxide (CO2) near the crevices where tectonic plates rift apart. Hungry bacteria convert decomposing creatures of the deep into natural methane. And, new research from Japan reminds us, enormous, miles-wide reservoirs of greenhouse gases lurk in untouched pockets just below the seafloor.

In a study published Aug. 19 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a team of researchers discovered one such pocket at the bottom of the Okinawa Trough, a massive submarine basin sitting southwest of Japan where the Philippine Sea plate is slowly sinking below the Eurasian plate. Using seismic waves to map the trough's structure, the team found a huge gas pocket stretching at least 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) wide and potentially containing more than 100 million tons (90.7 million metric tons) of CO2, methane or some combination of the two.

Depending on its contents, this massive stash of seafloor gas could represent an untapped source of natural gas, or a ticking time bomb of greenhouse gas emissions just waiting to seep up to the surface, the researchers wrote.

Comment: It's just as well, then, that neither methane nor CO2 has any real effect on climate, and if this is a natural gas deposit it could be a boon for worldwide energy needs: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Flashlight

Climate theory casts a new light on the history of Chinese civilisation

Stephen Chen
South China Morning Post
Tue, 24 Sep 2019 01:30 UTC
Chinese ancient ruins
© AlamyGeologists compare plant and lake bed data to ancient written records to try to explain ups and downs in Chinese civilization.
Researchers say that when 500-year-long sun cycles brought warmth, communities flourished, but when the Earth cooled, ancient societies collapsed

Scientists say they have found evidence beneath a lake in northeastern China that ties climate change and 500-year sun cycles to ups and downs in the 8,000 years of Chinese civilisation.

According to the study by a team at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing published in the science journal Nature Communications this month, whenever the climate warmed, Chinese civilisation prospered and when it cooled, it declined.

While historians have used various social and economic factors to explain changes over the millennia, Dr Xu Deke, lead author of the paper, and his colleagues said that while people played their part, their study indicated that cycles in solar activity influenced human activity:
"We just point out there is a natural constraint on human efforts. We are in a much more capable position than our ancestors with the help of technology and machines in face of global cooling, but preparation must start now."
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Airplane Paper

Facebook reality creators unveil virtual social space for Oculus users


Yahoo! News
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 16:28 UTC
Facebook Oculus user
© AFP/Amy Osborne
Facebook said Wednesday it will launch a virtual social community where users of its Oculus headgear can "explore new places" and "create their own new experiences."

The Horizon virtual world set for a beta launch in 2020 represents a new initiative for the Oculus virtual reality unit of the leading social network.

Oculus users will be able to choose an avatar and interact with others in the virtual social community, Facebook said as it opened its Oculus Connect 6 conference.

"Our goal is to put people at the center of computing, not just with great hardware, but with amazing software experiences as well," Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook Horizon will be "a new social experience in VR where you can build your own worlds with easy-to-use tools (no coding skills required)," the company said.
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Moon

Mystery of the gargantuan crater on the dark side of the Moon

Brandon Specktor
Live Science
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 07:35 UTC
moon
© NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/University of ArizonaThe South Pole-Aitken basin (represented by the shades of blue at the center) stretches 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) across and is one of the solar system’s largest craters. The dashed circle indicates the spot where researchers found a weird material beneath the basin that contains metal.
Billions of years ago, something slammed into the dark side of the moon and carved out a very, very large hole. Stretching 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide and 8 miles (13 km) deep, the South Pole-Aitken basin, as the tremendous hole is known to Earthlings, is the oldest and deepest crater on the moon, and one of the largest craters in the entire solar system.

For decades, researchers have suspected that the gargantuan basin was created by a head-on collision with a very large, very fast meteor. Such an impact would have ripped the moon's crust apart and scattered chunks of lunar mantle across the crater's surface, providing a rare glimpse at what the moon is really made of. (Spoiler: It's not cheese.) That theory gained some credence earlier this year, when China's Yutu-2 rover, which settled into the bottom of the crater aboard the Chang'e 4 lander in January, discovered traces of minerals that seemed to originate from the moon's mantle.

Comment: See also:

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UFO

Examining aspects of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) from a scientific perspective: The Skinwalker Ranch

Keith Basterfield
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 01:49 UTC
skinwalker ranch
Skinwalker Ranch front gate
Background 1

AAWSAP 2010-2016

The16 December 2017 edition of the New York Times featured an article written by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, which revealed the fact that the US Department of Defense had spent $M22.5 on a program titled the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. One particular paragraph of the article caught my eye. There was mention of former Senator Harry Reid, and Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow.

"Mr Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr Bigelow. In 2007 Mr Reid said in the interview, Mr Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA -KB] had approached him wanting to visit Mr Bigelow's ranch in Utah, where he conducted research."

"Mr Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s."
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Comet 2

Two sightings in two years suggest there could be lots more interstellar comets

Richard A Lovett
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 23:16 UTC
Interstellar Comets
© VW PICS/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGESIt’s possible that other solar systems are flinging comets into interstellar space, and we might be able to see them in the next few years as technology improves.
For the second time in two years, astronomers have spotted an interstellar interloper heading into our Solar System.

The first, dubbed 'Oumuamua, was spotted on 19 October 2017.

This one, named 2I/Borisov, was discovered on 30 August 2019 by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov of Nauchnij, Crimea, using a home-built 65-centimeter telescope.

It was initially thought to be an ordinary comet, says Davide Farnocchia of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, Pasadena, California.

But a week of observations by amateur and professional astronomers revealed that it was on an orbit that must have originated outside the Solar System and is now in the process of slingshotting around the Sun before heading back into interstellar space. (The "2I" in its name means it is "interstellar object number 2.")

Already, it is proving to be quite different from its predecessor. To begin with, it's much larger. 'Oumuamua (now officially called 1I/'Oumuamua) was a cigar-shaped object, only 800 meters long. 2I/Borisov is probably several kilometers in diameter.
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Robot

By leaps and bounds a new twist on robotics: Atlas' agility in gymnastic routine


RT
Tue, 24 Sep 2019 15:19 UTC
Robotic gymnastic
© Boston Dynamics'Sticking the landing'
The Boston Dynamics humanoid robot Atlas has channeled his inner Simone Biles to put on a gymnastics display showcasing the machine's uncanny fluidity of movement. A new clip posted by its developers shows the robot running through its floor routine, including a handstand, some impressive rolls, and a 360-degree mid-air twist.

The team wrote that the robot uses all of its 'body' to run through the movements and that new techniques were used to "streamline" the processes.

"First, an optimization algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each maneuver into dynamically-feasible reference motions," they explain. "Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one maneuver to the next."

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Comet 2

Comet 67P surprises scientists with 'bright outbursts', collapsing cliffs and rolling boulders during Rosetta mission

Evan Gough
Universe Today
Fri, 20 Sep 2019 12:00 UTC
comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
© Rosetta/NASABouncing boulder on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
It seems that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is not the stoic, unchanging Solar System traveller that it might seem to be. Scientists working through the vast warehouse of images from the Rosetta spacecraft have discovered there's lots going on on 67P. Among the activity are collapsing cliffs and bouncing boulders.

Rosetta spent almost two years at 67P, ending its mission with a hard landing on the comet's surface. During the spacecraft's journey and its two years at the comet, it captured almost 100,000 images. About 3/4 of them are from OSIRIS (Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System) and the rest are from the NAVCAM. (You can enjoy archives of its images here.)

These images are all being analyzed by scientists, and part of that analysis involves images from during and after perihelion. Perihelion is when an object is closest to the Sun, and scientists expect to see the most changes on the comet during that time. By comparing perihelion images with those following perihelion, they hope to gain a better understanding of how the comet evolves.

Comment: In Did Earth 'Steal' Martian Water? Pierre Lescaudron provides insight into why these events on Comet 67P occurred, particularly as it approached the Sun:
Interplanetary Electric Discharge

The Electric Universe theory, as described in our book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection, shows how celestial bodies (planets, stars, moons, comets, etc) are electrically charged. In addition, such bodies are surrounded by a sort of "insulation bubble" (Double Layer).

When two astronomical bodies, like two planets, get close enough, an electric discharge forms from the most negative planet to the most positive one, in order to re-balance the electric charge of the two planets. Electric discharges between celestial bodies have been observed several times.
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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No Entry

Gene-editing unintentionally adds bovine DNA, goat DNA, and bacterial DNA, mouse researchers find

Jonathan Latham
Independent Science News
Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:01 UTC
gene editing
The gene-editing of DNA inside living cells is considered by many to be the preeminent technological breakthrough of the new millennium. Researchers in medicine and agriculture have rapidly adopted it as a technique for discovering cell and organism functions. But its commercial prospects are much more complicated.

Gene-editing has many potential uses. These include altering cells to treat human disease, altering crops and livestock for breeding and agriculture. Furthermore, in a move that has been widely criticised, Chinese researcher He Jiankui claims to have edited human babies to resist HIV by altering a gene called CCR5.

For most commercial applications gene-editing's appeal is simplicity and precision: it alters genomes at precise sites and without inserting foreign DNA. This why, in popular articles, gene-editing is often referred to as 'tweaking'.
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