Science & TechnologyS


Microscope 2

Leading hospital 'superbugs' date back 450 million years ago, well before the age of dinosaurs


Phys.org
Thu, 11 May 2017 00:00 UTC
antibiotic-resistant microbes
© Mark WittonEarly life as it is believed to have looked 335 million years ago, well before the age of the dinosaurs. Ancestors of hospital pathogens are now believed to have lived in the guts of these ancient land animals
Leading hospital "superbugs," known as the enterococci, arose from an ancestor that dates back 450 million years—about the time when animals were first crawling onto land (and well before the age of dinosaurs), according to a new study led by researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, the Harvard-wide Program on Antibiotic Resistance and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Published online today in Cell, the study authors shed light on the evolutionary history of these pathogens, which evolved nearly indestructible properties and have become leading causes of modern antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals.

Antibiotic resistance is now a leading public health concern worldwide. Some microbes, often referred to as "superbugs," are resistant to virtually all antibiotics. This is of special concern in hospitals, where about 5 percent of hospitalized patients will fight infections that arise during their stay. As researchers around the world are urgently seeking solutions for this problem, insight into the origin and evolution of antibiotic resistance will help inform their search.

"By analyzing the genomes and behaviors of today's enterococci, we were able to rewind the clock back to their earliest existence and piece together a picture of how these organisms were shaped into what they are today" said co-corresponding author Ashlee M. Earl, Ph.D., group leader for the Bacterial Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "Understanding how the environment in which microbes live leads to new properties could help us to predict how microbes will adapt to the use of antibiotics, antimicrobial hand soaps, disinfectants and other products intended to control their spread."
Read More...
Cloud Precipitation

NASA analysis of Tropical Cyclone Donna's extreme rainfall


Phys.Org
Thu, 11 May 2017 19:46 UTC
Tropical Cyclone Donna rainfall by NASA
© NASA/JAXA, Hal PierceThis map of rainfall shows the estimated total rainfall generated by Tropical Cyclone Donna from May 2 through early May 10, 2017. Extreme rainfall accumulation estimates (purple) were greater than 624mm (24.6 inches). These extreme values were located along Donna's path through the northern islands of Vanuatu.
Tropical Cyclone Donna was one of the most powerful out-of-season tropical cyclones ever recorded in the southern hemisphere and generated extreme amounts of rainfall along its path. NASA analyzed and mapped rainfall totals generated by the storm.

On May 10, 2017 rapidly dissipating tropical Cyclone Donna moved to the southeast of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Up until that time, Donna spread heavy rainfall along its path from northern Vanuatu through the Loyalty Islands east of New Caledonia. Over 250 millimeters (~10 inches) of rainfall was reported in the islands of northern Vanuatu as Donna was moving through on May 5, 2017.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a rainfall analysis was constructed using data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG). GPM is the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite, which is co-managed by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

That data collected from the GPM core satellite in near-real time were utilized in IMERG's rainfall accumulation estimates for tropical cyclone Donna. The analysis covers tropical cyclone Donna for the period from May 2 through early May 10, 2017.

IMERG showed that tropical cyclone Donna produced some extremely high rainfall totals. It indicated that the most extreme rainfall accumulation estimates were greater than 62.4 millimeters (24.6 inches). Those extreme values were located along Donna's path through the northern islands of Vanuatu.


Comment: Tropical Cyclone Donna becomes Category 5 storm, worst May storm on record in South Pacific

Read More...
Cassiopaea

Proximity of supernovas may cause mass extinctions

Brendan M. Lynch
The University of Kansas
Thu, 11 May 2017 06:09 UTC
Supernova
© The University of Kansas
Lawrence — In 2016, researchers published "slam dunk" evidence, based on iron-60 isotopes in ancient seabed, that supernovae buffeted the Earth — one of them about 2.6 million years ago. University of Kansas researcher Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy, supported those findings in Nature with an associated letter, titled "Supernovae in the neighborhood."

Melott has followed up since those findings with an examination of the effects of the supernovae on Earth's biology. In new research to appear in Astrophysical Journal, the KU researcher and colleagues argue the estimated distance of the supernova thought to have occurred roughly 2.6 million years ago should be cut in half.

"There's even more evidence of that supernova now," he said. "The timing estimates are still not exact, but the thing that changed to cause us to write this paper is the distance. We did this computation because other people did work that made a revised distance estimate, which cut the distance in half. But now, our distance estimate is more like 150 light years."

A supernova exploding at such a range probably wouldn't touch off mass extinctions on Earth, Melott said.

"People estimated the 'kill zone' for a supernova in a paper in 2003, and they came up with about 25 light years from Earth," he said. "Now we think maybe it's a bit greater than that. They left some effects out or didn't have good numbers, so now we think it may be a bit larger distance. We don't know precisely, and of course it wouldn't be a hard-cutoff distance. It would be a gradual change. But we think something more like 40 or 50 light years. So, an event at 150 light years should have some effects here but not set off a mass extinction."

In addition to its distance, interstellar conditions at the time of a supernova would influence its lethality to biology on Earth.
Read More...
Rose

Human sense of smell is more acute than most people think


Medical Express
Thu, 11 May 2017 00:00 UTC
sense of smell, woman smelling flowers
"We can detect and discriminate an extraordinary range of odors; we are more sensitive than rodents and dogs for some odors; we are capable of tracking odor trails; and our behavioral and affective states are influenced by our sense of smell"
When it comes to our sense of smell, we have been led to believe that animals win out over humans: No way can we compete with dogs and rodents, some of the best sniffers in the animal kingdom.

But guess what? It's a big myth. One that has survived for the last 150 years with no scientific proof, according to Rutgers University-New Brunswick neuroscientist John McGann, associate professor in the Department of Psychology, School of Arts and Sciences, in a paper published on May 12 in Science.

McGann, who has been studying the olfactory system, or sense of smell, for the past 14 years, spent part of the last year reviewing existing research, examining data and delving into the historical writings that helped create the long-held misconception that human sense of smell was inferior because of the size of the olfactory bulb.

"For so long people failed to stop and question this claim, even people who study the sense of smell for a living," says McGann, who studies how the brain understands sensory stimuli using information gleaned from prior experience.

"The fact is the sense of smell is just as good in humans as in other mammals, like rodents and dogs." Humans can discriminate maybe one trillion different odors, he says, which is far more, than the claim by "folk wisdom and poorly sourced introductory psychology textbooks," that insist humans could only detect about 10,000 different odors.
Read More...
Ice Cube

Scientists discover massive landforms under Antarctic ice sheet

BEC CREW
Science Alert
Wed, 10 May 2017 21:06 UTC
Antarctic sea ice
© Kondratuk Aleksei/Shutterstock.com
Scientists have discovered massive landforms lurking under Antarctica - some as tall as the Eiffel Tower - and they've been actively carving deep channels into the ice flow above.

These landforms, which are five times bigger than those left behind by former ice sheets in Scandinavia and North America, are now thought to be contributing to the thinning of the Antarctic ice shelves, and that could have big consequences for the region's stability.

Thanks to ancient ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere that have long since retreated, scientists knew that landforms can grow for many metres below the surface.
Read More...
Camcorder

Emotion reading: Technology that claims to spot criminals Before they act

Cara McGoogan
The Telegraph
Wed, 10 May 2017 12:37 UTC
security systems and cameras
NTechLabs has created emotion recognition software that could be added to CCTV cameras
Emotion reading technology could soon be used by police after a Russian firm created a tool that can identify people in a crowd and tell if they are angry, stressed or nervous.

The software, created by NTechLab, can monitor citizens for suspicious behaviour by tracking identity, age, gender and current emotional state. It could be used to pre-emptively stop criminals and potential terrorists.

"The recognition gives a new level of security in the street because in a couple of seconds you can identify terrorists or criminals or killers," said Alexander Kabakov, NTechLab chief executive.
Read More...
Info

Chinese professor defends criminal facial-recognition study after Google scoffing


RT
Thu, 11 May 2017 12:15 UTC
criminal facial recognition
© Cornell University Library / arxiv.org
A Chinese professor's study on revealing criminals based on their facial features has been lambasted by Google researchers, who described it as "deeply problematic, both ethically and scientifically."

Shanghai Jiao Tong University computer science Professor Wu Xiaolin said that the Google scientists read something into the research that simply isn't there and started their "name-calling," the South China Morning Post reported.

"Their charge of scientific racism was groundless," Wu added, saying that his work was taken out of context and that he was just eager to share his findings with the public.
Read More...
Satellite

GOES-16 weather satellite captures lightning activity across U.S.

Mike Augustyniak
CBS Minnesota / WCCO
Thu, 04 May 2017 13:30 UTC
GOES satellite
On November 19, 2016 a new generation of NOAA's geostationary operational environmental satellites (GOES) blasted into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. I was on Cape Canaveral, just a few miles from Launch Complex 41, to witness the graceful ascension of the first in a series of four satellites that will allow us to monitor three times more weather information with four times the resolution and five times faster. That kind of quantum leap forward is the result of 40 years of technological development (the current fleet of GOES satellites largely use 1970s technology), and new types of instrumentation.

The satellite known as GOES-16 (it was called GOES-R until reaching orbit and coming online in December 2016) is currently undergoing a long period of intense testing and calibration to insure the data it beams back is accurate. This is done through a choreographed series of earth-based, airborne, and satellite measurements, which are all compared for accuracy.

The mission of this so-called "Field Campaign" is to ensure that GOES-16's two main instruments - the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) - are "seeing" things clearly from an orbit 22,500 miles above the earth. To do this a NASA ER-2 airplane takes measurements from high above several locations, while GOES-R takes identical observations over the same area at the same time. The data were compared against each other, as well as reference data sets obtained from ground and other satellites, until scientists were convinced of GOES-16's accuracy.

Phase one of the Field Campaign was deemed complete on April 11, 2017 when the satellite's primary instrument, the ABI, was deemed on the mark. Phase two of the Field Campaign is underway through May 18, 2017, and is testing one of the most exciting new instruments on-board GOES-16: the Geostationary Lightning Mapper.

Read More...
Alarm Clock

Mathematics does not rule out 2 dimensions of time

Philip Perry
Big Think
Tue, 09 May 2017 01:16 UTC
A giant clock.
© Getty ImagesA giant clock.
You can't really enter into "another dimension" as science fiction would have you believe. Instead, dimensions are how we experience the world. But some aspects actually suggest to one expert, not one but two dimensions of time. If it were true, the theory could actually heal the most glaring rift in physics—between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

That's according to Itzhak Bars of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. The normal three dimensions including up-down, left-right, forward-back, and space-time. In Bars's theory, time isn't linear, but a 2D plane in curvature interwoven throughout these dimensions and more.

Dr. Bars has been crafting "two time physics" for over a decade now. It all started when he began questioning the role time plays in relation to gravity and other forces. Though the idea of more dimensions sounds bizarre, more and more physicists are considering the idea, because it could allow for the coveted unified theory of physics or "theory of everything" to take shape. This would bring together all the fundamental forces of the universe into one clean, mathematical equation.

Two-dimensions of time would make time travel possible. Instead of being linear, at some point time loops back on itself. In this way, you could travel back or forward in time. It also raises the specter of the "grandfather paradox." This is killing your maternal grandfather, accidentally, before your mother is born, negating your own birth.

So if there are all these extra dimensions, how come we don't experience them? In two time theory, they're so infinitesimally small, we can't see them. In this view, we move through these tiny, balled up dimensions all of the time, but never notice them.
Read More...
Moon

See the Full 'Flower Moon' rise tonight

Jesse Espak
Space
Wed, 10 May 2017 20:39 UTC
flower moon or milk moon
© Space
With the nights getting warmer, skywatchers will have a fine show tonight (May 10) from the May full moon, known as the Full Flower or Milk Moon.

The moon will appear in the constellation Libra, rising at 7:49 p.m. on May 10 for observers in New York City. The moon's exact moment of fullness will occur at 5:42 p.m. EDT (2142 GMT) as calculated by timeanddate.com, so most East Coast residents won't be able to see that exact moment — but the moon will still appear full in the sky over the course of the night. In New York City, the moon sets at 6:28 a.m. the morning of May 11. (These times will vary a bit as one moves farther south or north).
Read More...