Science Marches Onnnnnn
Quite a whopper of a claim -- human actions rivaling the asteroid strike that waylaid the dinosaurs. The "Humans as Gods" belief is a nice carryover from the global change wars that raged for decades. ... The upshot is that scientists are speculating based on very incomplete data and records. This is what passes for modern doomsday science. But gloomy scientists have an ace up their sleeve. They're citing Haiti as a prime example of humans' ability to devastate the animal kingdom. ... Never mind that Haiti is a grossly dysfunctional, poverty-wrenched society occupying a portion of a small Caribbean island. And never mind that frog species on Haiti's side of the island are dying off in no small measure due to a fungus brought by African frogs. Haiti, suggest biologists, is the world's future. Hubris, thy name is modern science
Robert Ettinger, who died on July 23 aged 92, was the intellectual father of the cryonics movement, whose members have themselves frozen at death pending scientific resurrection. ... Robert Ettinger will be shipped back to Michigan to join his two wives and his mother in cold storage. He is survived by a son and a daughter from his first marriage, both of whom are active immortalists.
Figures seen by the Daily Mail show that 155 'admixed' embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act. This legalised the creation of a variety of hybrids, including an animal egg fertilised by a human sperm; 'cybrids', in which a human nucleus is implanted into an animal cell; and 'chimeras', in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos.
Chinese scientists have genetically modified dairy cows to produce human breast milk, and hope to be selling it in supermarkets within three years.
Scientists hope robotic suits to be tested at a Bochum University clinic will enable paraplegics to regain the ability to walk, according to a Friday news report. Daily Die Welt reported that the technology could also prove controversial because of the unnatural strength it affords anyone wearing such a suit.... Yoshiyuki Sankai, the CEO of Cyberdyne, said multiple requests to use the suit for non-medical purposes have been turned down. Several military agencies, for example, have inquired about the suits, apparently attracted by the unnatural strength they afford the person wearing it. All military requests have been rejected though, according to Sankai, because the technology is ultimately intended to benefit people, not hurt them.... [Yeah, like we can put the toothpaste back in the tube.]
Physicists will announce Wednesday that data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature.... The discovery is believed to relate to mass and how objects obtain it.... the particles behave differently than the Higgs-boson, which would be decaying into heavy quarks, or particles. The new discovery "is decaying in normal quarks...." "Nobody knows what this is.... If it is real, it would be the most significant discovery in physics in half a century."
Scientists are growing human hearts in laboratories... believe the artificial organs could start beating within weeks... created by removing muscle cells from donor organs... taken from dead bodies.... then injected stem cells which multiplied and grew around the structure, eventually turning into healthy heart cells....
Scientists today claimed one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy -- development of the first practical artificial leaf. Speaking here at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, they described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card that mimics the process, called photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy.
Japanese researchers cultivated small pieces of tissue from the testes of baby mice on a gel bathed in nutrients. After several weeks they collected viable sperm from the tissue.
That reputable scientist, Ann Coulter, recently wrote a genuinely irresponsible and dishonest column on radiation hormesis. She claims we shouldn't worry about the damaged Japanese reactors because they'll make the locals healthier! With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that...
The first life form created entirely with man-made DNA opens the door to manufacturing new drugs and fuels, while raising the possibility that mail-order germs may one-day be available for bioterrorists.
Researchers recently showed that dry granular materials such as sands, seeds and grains have properties similar to liquid, forming water-like droplets when poured from a given source. The finding could be important to a wide range of industries that use "fluidized" dry particles for oil refining, plastics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production.
a new analog to DNA that assembles and disassembles itself without the need for enzymes. Because the new system comprises components that might reasonably be expected in a primordial world, the new chemical system could answer questions about how life could emerge.
element 112... zinc and lead nuclei merge in a nuclear fusion to form the nucleus of the new element...
The four, stamped sheet metal or molded plastic sections are each light enough to be carried by two workers. They'll fit up tight staircases and through narrow doors, allowing retrofitting in existing structures. All the appliances, pipes, and wires are built-in, limiting on-site construction to mere hook-up.
A ferrofluid (from the Latin ferrum, meaning iron) is a liquid which becomes strongly polarised in the presence of a magnetic field.
Mice carrying a "humanized version" of a gene believed to influence speech and language may not actually talk, but they nonetheless do have a lot to say about our evolutionary past, according to a new report.
the power to burn as hot as a star... could deliver breakthroughs in safe fusion power...
Problem: When you project a round surface (such as the surface of the Earth) onto a flat map, there is a great deal of distortion. Fuller partially solved this by converting the globe to an icosahedron
Problem: Quality housing is too expensive for the average person. Answer: The Dymaxion House!
the world's smallest incandescent lamp ... to explore the boundary between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics
can traveling at warp speed ever become a reality? ... theorize that by manipulating the space-time dimensions around the spaceship with a massive amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could push the ship faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 11-dimension would create dark energy. ... [Any day now...]
possible to make type of dike that acts as an invisibility cloak that hides off-shore platforms from water waves. The principle is analogous to the optical invisibility cloaks that are currently a hot area of physics research. Tsunami invisibility cloaks wouldn't make structures disappear from sight, but they could manipulate ocean waves in ways that makes off-shore platforms, and possibly even coastlines and small islands, effectively invisible to tsunamis.
a "carpet cloak" from nanostructured silicon that conceals the presence of objects placed under it from optical detection. While the carpet itself can still be seen, the bulge of the object underneath it disappears from view. Shining a beam of light on the bulge shows a reflection identical to that of a beam reflected from a flat surface, meaning the object itself has essentially been rendered invisible.
The asteroid impact and dinosaur extinction, say the authors, may not have been simultaneous, instead occurring 300,000 years apart. That's an eyeblink in geologic time, but it's a relevant eyeblink all the same — one that occurred at just the right moment in ancient history to send the extinction theory entirely awry. ... "Not a single species went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub impact." ...
Famed mathematician Stephen Hawking was rushed to a hospital Monday and was seriously ill.... has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks...
new microscopy technique to watch the growth of individual neurons in the microscopic roundworm.... They asked, "How long should a worm's neurons be?" And the worms fired back, "Long enough to reach their targets..." Rather than growing like the branches of a tree — extending outward — certain neurons work backward from their destination, dropping anchor and stretching their dendrites behind them as they crawl away.
There's nothing like a good scratch, but how does it take away the itchiness?... In people, a variety of stimuli, including chemicals like histamine, prompt sensory neurons to fire, sending a signal via the spinothalamic tract (STT) to the brain, prompting an itchy feeling.... scratching the skin caused the frequency of the firing to drop in some of the neurons, indicating that these are the ones targeted by scratching....
Certain exotic atomic nuclei contain particles that shear off from the central core and create a cloud, which surrounds the central core like a 'heiligenschein' or halo.
Hardy's Paradox, the axiom that we cannot make inferences about past events that haven't been directly observed while also acknowledging that the very act of observation affects the reality we seek to unearth, poses a conundrum that quantum physicists have sought to overcome for decades. How do you observe quantum mechanics, atomic and sub-atomic systems that are so small-scale they cannot be described in classical terms, when the act of looking at them changes them permanently? ... research group explains how they used a measurement technique that has an almost imperceptible impact on the experiment which allows the researchers to compile objectively provable results at sub-atomic scales.
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