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Electric eels leap to deliver painful, taser-like shock

Kenneth Catania
Scienmag
Mon, 18 Sep 2017 19:50 UTC
Electric eels
The electric eel has always been noted for its impressive ability to shock and subdue its prey. It's recently become clear that electric eels also use a clever trick to deliver an intense, Taser-like jolt to potential predators: they leap from the water to target threatening animals, humans included, above water. Now, a researcher reporting in Current Biology on September 14 has measured (and experienced) just how strong that jolt can be.

Those stunning leaps make for a more painful experience because they prevent the eels' electrical discharges from weakening as they dissipate through the water.

"We've known these animals give off a huge amount of electricity, and everybody thought that was really amazing," says Kenneth Catania of Vanderbilt University. "But they aren't just simple animals that go around shocking stuff. They've evolved to produce stronger and stronger electrical discharges, and in concert they've evolved these behaviors to more efficiently use them."
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Seismograph

Superfast lightwaves can be slowed to store data on a computer chip - study


RT
Mon, 18 Sep 2017 17:14 UTC
Lightwaves
© Mehau Kulyk / Getty Images
Scientists have converted light-based information into sound waves on a computer chip in a world first - paving the way for the development of more efficient computers.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have published details of their groundbreaking study in Nature.

"It is like the difference between thunder and lightning," said Dr Birgit Stiller, supervisor of the project at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS).

"The information in our chip in acoustic form travels at a velocity five orders of magnitude slower than in the optical domain," according to Stiller.

The delay allows for the data to be briefly stored and managed inside the chip for processing, retrieval and further transmission as light waves.
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Moon

Rare Moon 'occultation' is about to occur as it blocks view of three planets

Signe Dean
Science Alert
Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
full moon
© Voraorn Ratanakorn/Shutterstock.com
On September 18, the Moon will pass in front of three planets and one of the brightest stars in our night sky, all in less than 24 hours, marking a special lunar occultation.

An occultation might sound like some creepy ritual, but it's actually just the term astronomers use to denote that one celestial body is blocking out another one in the sky. And as far as lunar occultations go, this one's a rare sight.

The Moon will be passing in front of Venus, then the first-magnitude star Regulus, then Mars, and finally Mercury. As the Moon orbits our planet, it regularly travels in front of other objects in the sky, but it's rare to get a planetary alignment quite like this one.

The last time we had a lunar occultation of three planets within a 24-hour window was on 5 March 2008 (Mercury, Venus, and Neptune), and it won't be until 2036 when we get another one with three planets.
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Telescope

New look at dark energy: Research suggests accelerating expansion of the Universe may not be real, could be only an apparent effect


Phys.org
Wed, 13 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
cosmic light sources distribution
© Andrew Pontzen and Fabio Governato / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
This is a computer-simulated image depicting one possible scenario of how light sources are distributed in the cosmic web.
The accelerating expansion of the Universe may not be real, but could just be an apparent effect, according to new research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The new study-by a group at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand-finds the fit of Type Ia supernovae to a model universe with no dark energy to be very slightly better than the fit to the standard dark energy model.

Dark energy is usually assumed to form roughly 70% of the present material content of the Universe. However, this mysterious quantity is essentially a place-holder for unknown physics.

Current models of the Universe require this dark energy term to explain the observed acceleration in the rate at which the Universe is expanding. Scientists base this conclusion on measurements of the distances to supernova explosions in distant galaxies, which appear to be farther away than they should be if the Universe's expansion were not accelerating.
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People

Research crew emerges from their Mars-like habitat after 8 months

Caleb Jones
Phys Org
Fri, 15 Sep 2017 15:12 UTC
biosphere training

In this 2017 photo released by the University of Hawaii crew members of Mission V, walk up hill with a cart next to the university's facility Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) at the Mauna Loa volcano, Big Island.
After eight months of living in isolation on a remote Hawaii volcano, six NASA-backed research subjects will emerge from their Mars-like habitat on Sunday and return to civilization.

Their first order of business after subsisting on mostly freeze-dried and canned food: Feast on fresh-picked pineapple, papaya, mango, locally grown vegetables and a fluffy, homemade egg strata cooked by their project's lead scientist.

The crew of four men and two women were quarantined on a vast plain below the summit of the world's largest active volcano in January. All of their communications with the outside world were subjected to a 20-minute delay-the time it takes for signals to get from Mars to Earth.

They are part of a study designed to better understand the psychological effects that a long-term manned mission to space would have on astronauts. The data they gathered will help NASA better pick crews that have certain traits and a better chance of doing well during a two-to-three year Mars expedition.
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Syringe

All-in-one vaccine: New method claims to combine every childhood vaccine into one shot


Sputnik
Sun, 17 Sep 2017 11:56 UTC
All in one vaccine
US researchers are said to be close to being able to deliver every required vaccine in a single go, and kids and parents both will benefit.

A new medical technology is in development by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to combine every single nasty hypodermic-needle inoculation into one single shot, a move that will surely cause many families to breathe a sigh of relief, and could go a long way toward eradicating stubborn diseases globally.

As described in the journal Science, the technology - a method of storing all those necessary vaccines in microcapsules that release within the body at specific times - has worked successfully in mice, according to a report by the BBC.

Comment: One can only assume how potentially devastating this new all-in-one vaccine will be considering in the documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe, they showed what happened when they combined measles, mumps and rubella into one vaccine and how Autism rates skyrocketed. See also:

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Brain

Research finds the bilingual brain calculates differently depending on the language used


Scienmag
Sat, 16 Sep 2017 16:24 UTC
Bilingual brain
People can intuitively recognize small numbers up to four; however, when calculating they depend on the assistance of language. In this respect, the fascinating research question ensues: how do multilingual people solve arithmetical tasks presented to them in different languages of which they have a very good command? The question will gain in importance in the future, as an increasingly globalized job market and accelerated migration will mean that ever more people seek work and study outside of the linguistic area of their home countries.

This question was investigated by a research team led by Dr Amandine Van Rinsveld and Professor Dr Christine Schiltz from the Cognitive Science and Assessment Institute (COSA) at the University of Luxembourg. For the purpose of the study, the researchers recruited subjects with Luxembourgish as their mother tongue, who successfully completed their schooling in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and continued their academic studies in francophone universities in Belgium. Thus, the study subjects mastered both the German and French languages perfectly. As Luxembourger students, they took maths classes in primary schools in German and then in secondary schools in French.

Comment: See also:
Are bilingual's brains wired differently?
Bilingual Babies' Vocabulary Linked to Early Brain Differentiation

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Microscope 1

Study suggests starve cancer of energy with natural molecule


RT
Sat, 16 Sep 2017 12:16 UTC
Warburg effect
© Mike Segar / Reuters
The researchers said they want to try the same process with similar molecules.
Cancer's energy source can be thwarted by a naturally-occurring molecule which stops affected cells from consuming sugar, according to a new study.

Koningic acid (KA) was found to disrupt the metabolism of cancerous cells.

Published in Cell Metabolism the team from Duke Cancer Institute in North Carolina first set out to study the 'Warburg effect,' a known but little understood process in which cancer cells modify their metabolism to consume glucose for energy production.
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Bizarro Earth

Mysterious 'earthquake lights' explained after Mexico's huge quake?

Mika McKinnon
New Scientist
Wed, 13 Sep 2017 18:02 UTC
Mexico earthquake lights
© IMPACTO El Diario/YouTube
What makes skies over quakes glow?
After an 8.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mexico on 7 September, videos of fuzzy green smears in the night sky went viral online.

Earthquake lights are a phenomenon so unusual that they border on myth. The first known reports of them are from 89 BC, with spotty descriptions over the centuries.

Recently, they've been seen during foreshocks and the main earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009, and as flashes of blue lightning over Wellington, New Zealand, in 2016.


Comment: Strange glowing in the sky during New Zealand's earthquake possibly 'earthquake lightning'


"These phenomena are well-documented because of so many security cameras running day and night now," says Friedemann Freund at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Comment: Videos of the mysterious lights in the sky following the 8.1 magnitude earthquake (the strongest for a century) which struck Mexico last week have been shared widely across social media. On the same day, images taken by the GOES-16 satellite showed countless lightning storms crackling within Hurricane Irma as the monster storm churned its way towards Florida. Last week also saw the sun unleash a monster X9.3 solar flare, the strongest in a decade & the 4th X-class within a week.


In the chapter, Earth 'opening up', in Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection, Pierre Lescaudron discusses various factors pertaining to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, including the Earth's minute slowdown exerting mechanical stress on the crust and electromagnetism.
Precursors that indicate alerts of this potential rise also include increases in: low frequency electromagnetic emission, magnetic field anomalies, earthquake lights from ridges and mountain tops, temperature anomalies over wide areas and changes in plasma density of the ionosphere


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Info

Creating radio-induced auroras with HAARP

Ned Rozell
Juneau Empire
Fri, 15 Sep 2017 18:49 UTC
HAARP
© Juneau Empire
People travel north from all over for a chance to see the aurora. Soon, Chris Fallen will make his own.

Sometime around the darkness of the Sept. 19 new moon, the space physicist will travel to an antenna field off the Copper River. There, he will pulse transmitters on and off to create radio-induced aurora, also known as airglow. The UAF researcher will use the HAARP facility to attempt to do from below what the sun does from above to create a display of aurora.

"Energetic electrons ionize and excite gases in the upper atmosphere," he said. "They release photons when they de-excite again. Here, we're doing the process from below with HF radio waves."

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a group of high-frequency radio transmitters powered by four diesel tugboat generators and one from a locomotive. Using an extensive field of antennae, the transmitters send a focused beam of radio-wave energy into the aurora zone. There, that energy can stimulate a speck of the electrical Sun-Earth connection about 100 miles above our heads. UAF's Geophysical Institute, where Fallen works, took over operation of HAARP in 2015.
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