Science & TechnologyS


Clock

Too fast for slo-mo: Hairy frogfish and trap-jaw ants' bites are incredibly quick


Uncommon Descent
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 17:05 UTC
hairy frogfish
© Dimpy Jacobs / Lembeh Resort
It takes roughly 1/6000 of a second.
The speed of a hairy frogfish's bite is the result of a vacuum in its mouth that can suck in its prey in just 1/6000th of a second. It's so fast that even slow-motion video struggles to capture it.

In 2006, researchers also noted a swift predatory ant:
Biologists clocked the speed at which the trap-jaw ant, Odontomachus bauri, closes its mandibles at 35 to 64 meters per second, or 78 to 145 miles per hour - an action they say is the fastest self-powered predatory strike in the animal kingdom. The average duration of a strike was a mere 0.13 milliseconds, or 2,300 times faster than the blink of an eye. "Trap-jaw ants have fastest recorded strike in animal kingdom" at UCal Berkeley
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Brain

How simulation neurons help us understand the minds of others

Karen Foster
Prevent Disease
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 12:02 UTC
brainwaves
Psychologists and philosophers have long suggested that simulation is the mechanism whereby humans understand the minds of others. However, the neural basis of this complex process had not been identified until a group of researchers identified a type of neuron that had not previously been described that actively and spontaneously learns from decision-making by other individuals and simulates their mental processes.

It was not known whether specific neurons contributed to advanced social knowledge, such as simulating the decisions of other individuals. The dysfunction of these simulation neurons might be involved in the restriction of social knowledge, one of the symptoms of autism and, through hyperactivity, may give an exaggerated version of others and play an important role in social anxiety, the authors speculate.

The study, published in Cell, one of the journals with the highest impact factor, is the result of research led by Wolfram Schultz, a scientist at the University of Cambridge (UK) involving Gustavo Deco, ICREA research professor with the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) and director of the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) at UPF.
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Fireball 5

Site of biggest ever meteorite collision in the UK discovered

University of Oxford
Phys.org
Mon, 10 Jun 2019 10:10 UTC
meteor cgi
© CC0 Public Domain
Evidence for the ancient, 1.2 billion years old, meteorite strike, was first discovered in 2008 near Ullapool, NW Scotland by scientists from Oxford and Aberdeen Universities. The thickness and extent of the debris deposit they found suggested the impact crater-made by a meteorite estimated at 1km wide-was close to the coast, but its precise location remained a mystery.

In a paper published today in Journal of the Geological Society, a team led by Dr. Ken Amor from the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University, show how they have identified the crater location 15-20km west of a remote part of the Scottish coastline. It is buried beneath both water and younger rocks in the Minch Basin.

Dr. Ken Amor said: 'The material excavated during a giant meteorite impact is rarely preserved on Earth, because it is rapidly eroded, so this is a really exciting discovery. It was purely by chance this one landed in an ancient rift valley where fresh sediment quickly covered the debris to preserve it.

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Fireball 5

Beta Taurid meteor shower may pack an unexpected punch

Scott Sutherland
The Weather Network
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 14:30 UTC
Meteor over Schliengen, Germany (stock)
© Stephanie Vetter (2018)
There is an annual meteor shower in June that hardly anyone has ever seen, but it may be responsible for one of the biggest modern asteroid impacts on record.

Starting on June 5 and running until July 18 of each year, Earth passes through a stream of meteoroids in space - bits of rock and ice left behind by a comet known as 2P/Encke as it travels around the Sun. As these bits of comet debris are swept up by the planet's atmosphere, they produce bright flashes of light across the sky. This is the Beta Taurid meteor shower, which reaches peak activity on June 28-29.

While Comet Encke is also responsible for the Southern and Northern Taurid meteor showers, which send streaks of light across the night skies in October and November, respectively, there's a catch to the June Beta Taurids.

Hardly anyone has seen a Beta Taurid meteor. Unlike most meteor showers, this one occurs during the day, because the meteoroids in this part of the stream are coming at Earth from the direction of the Sun.

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Solar Flares

Giant stellar eruption detected for the first time

Megan Watzke, Chandra X-ray Center
Phys.org
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 19:37 UTC
Stellar eruption
© NASA/GSFC/S. Wiessinger
A group of researchers has identified and characterized for the first time in a complete way a powerful eruption in the atmosphere of the active star HR 9024, marked by an intense flash of X-rays followed by the emission of a giant bubble of plasma, ie hot gas containing charged particles. This is the first time a coronal mass ejection, or CME, has been seen in a star other than our Sun. The corona is the outer atmosphere of a star.

The work, appearing in an article in the latest issue of the journal Nature Astronomy, used data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The results confirm that CMEs are produced in magnetically active stars and are relevant to stellar physics, and they also open the opportunity to systematically study such dramatic events in stars other than the Sun.

"The technique we used is based on monitoring the velocity of plasmas during a stellar flare," said Costanza Argiroffi (University of Palermo in Italy and associate researcher at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy) who led the study. "This is because, in analogy with the solar environment, it is expected that, during a flare, the plasma confined in the coronal loop where the flare takes place moves first upward, and then downwards reaching the lower layers of the stellar atmosphere. Moreover, there is also expected to be an additional motion, always directed upwards, due to the CME associated with the flare."
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Telescope

International Astronomical Union concerned about satellite 'constellations' interfering with ground-based observations

Teo Blašković
The Watchers
Wed, 05 Jun 2019 16:23 UTC
satellite interference space observations
© IAU
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has expressed its concern about light pollution posed by an increasing number of satellite constellations in low-Earth orbits (LEO), manly SpaceX's Starlink constellation launched May 23, 2019 - next-generation satellite network capable of connecting the globe with reliable and affordable broadband internet services. The number of low Earth orbit satellites planned to launch in the next half-decade has the potential to fundamentally shift the nature of our experience of the night sky, IAU said.

"The International Astronomical Union, in general, embraces the principle of a dark and radio-quiet sky as not only essential to advancing our understanding of the Universe of which we are a part, but also as a resource for all humanity and for the protection of nocturnal wildlife," IAU said in a statement.

"We do not yet understand the impact of thousands of these visible satellites scattered across the night sky and despite their good intentions, these satellite constellations may threaten both."

Comment: SpaceX satellites could blight the night sky, warn astronomers

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Fireball

1 in 7000 Chance: Football field-sized asteroid could hit Earth this year

Chris Ciaccia
NY Post
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
Asteroid earth
© iStockphoto
An enormous asteroid with a diameter wider than a football field has a roughly one in 7,000 chance of hitting the Earth later this year. However, it's nothing to lose sleep over.

Known as asteroid 2006 QV89, the space rock, which has a diameter of 164 feet, could potentially hit the planet on Sept. 9, 2019, according to a list of the most concerning space objects compiled by the European Space Agency. The ESA has 2006 QV89 ranked fourth on its top ten list.

According to current modeling, it's likely that 2006 QV89, which is on the risk list but not the priority list, will pass Earth at a distance of more than 4.2 million miles. The ESA does note that the likelihood of its model being off is less than one-hundredth of one percent.

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Archaeology

Prehistoric relative of beech and oak trees is first of its kind found below the Equator

Catherine Zuckerman
National Geographic
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 16:44 UTC
patagonia fossil site
© Peter Wilf, Penn State UniversityRainforest once covered the plains of Patagonia where the fossils were found.
New fossils suggest the chinquapin, found today in parts of Asia, first took root in the Southern Hemisphere.

Millions of years ago, a volcano erupted in what's now the Patagonia region of southern Argentina, leaving behind a huge caldera. Water accumulated in the crater, and eventually it became a lake teeming with countless plants, insects, and other life-forms. Over time, these creatures fossilized deep within the lake's layers of mud and ash, creating a kind of geological jackpot for today's paleontologists.

Now, the ancient lake has yielded a particularly exciting treasure: fossils of a 52-million-year-old tree that is the first of its kind found in the Southern Hemisphere, suggesting the plant evolved there.
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Cloud Grey

Pollution from Roman-era stored in ice of Mont Blanc


Eureka Alert
Sat, 11 May 2019 19:14 UTC
Roman era pollution
© Preunkert et al./CNRSSimulations to assess the sensitivity of lead deposits in the Col du Dôme (yellow) to the geographical location of the emission. This map also indicates the location of major mines known to have existed in Roman antiquity. In the approximately 500-km region around the Alps, in blue, mines believed to have been active in the Republican period, and in red, those active later. Outside this radius, all other mines are indicated in red (all eras combined). Alpine ice is therefore representative of the high altitude atmosphere which receives emissions from France, Spain, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean Basin, and, to a lesser degree, Germany and England.
The deepest layers of carbon-14 dated ice found in the Col du Dôme of the Mont Blanc glacier in the French Alps provide a record of atmospheric conditions in the ancient Roman era. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, the study, led by an international team and coordinated by a CNRS scientist at the Institute for Geosciences and Environmental Research (IGE)(CNRS/IRD/UGA/Grenoble INP)*, reveals significant atmospheric pollution from heavy metals: the presence of lead and antimony (detected in ancient alpine ice for the first time here) is linked to mining activity and lead and silver production by the ancient Romans, well before the industrial age, in fact.

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Brain

DARPA developing tech that 'taps into human brain' with mind-controlling drones


Sputnik
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:45 UTC
brain technology
© AFP 2019 / JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT
Technology that will allow direct communication with the human brain is already causing numerous concerns regarding possible misuse, especially in terms of thought privacy and forced brainwashing.

The US military's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has initiated research aimed at creating a so-called brain-computer interface (BCI) that will allow two-way communication between a human soldier and, for example a swarm of drones or computer cyber defences.

In an interview with Express, Professor Jacob Robinson of Rice University, head of one of the six research teams funded by DARPA for that purpose, has revealed the technology will essentially allow people to "tap into the brain" without performing an invasive surgery to install an implant into it. Such an approach will permit a drastic reduction in the gap between making a decision and sending a corresponding command to a machine.
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