Lifeboat Foundation

Limestone spheroids, enigmatic lithic artifacts from the ancient past, have perplexed archaeologists for years. While they span from the Oldowan to the Middle Paleolithic, the purpose behind their creation remains a subject of intense debate.

Now, a study conducted by a team from the Computational Archaeology Laboratory of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in collaboration with researchers from Tel Hai College and Rovira i Virgili University seeks to shed light on these mysterious objects, offering insights into the intentions and skills of early hominins.

Spheroids are among the most enduring yet least understood archaeological artifacts, often considered as by-products of percussive tasks. However, the team’s research challenges this conventional wisdom. The central question at the heart of this study is whether these spheroids were unintentional by-products or intentionally crafted tools designed for specific purposes.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new type of material that could offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution to clean pollutants from water.

Dubbed an “engineered living material,” it is a 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer combined with bacteria that have been genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that transforms various organic pollutants into benign molecules. The bacteria were also engineered to self-destruct in the presence of a molecule called theophylline, which is often found in tea and chocolate. This offers a way to eliminate them after they have done their job.

Continue reading “3D-printed ‘living material’ could clean up contaminated water” »

By analyzing the data from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), astronomers from the Christ University in Bangalore, India, have serendipitously discovered a new ring galaxy, which received designation DES J024008.08–551047.5 and may belong to the rare class of polar ring galaxies. The finding was reported in a paper published August 29 on the pre-print server arXiv.

The so-called polar ring galaxies (PRGs) are systems composed of an S0-like galaxy and a polar ring, which remain separate for billions of years. In general, these outer polar rings, composed of gas and stars, are aligned roughly in a perpendicular orientation with respect to the major axis of the central host galaxy.

However, although more than 400 PRG candidates have been discovered to date, only dozens of them have been confirmed as real polar ring galaxies by follow-up spectroscopic observations.

Traveling to faraway places is a great way to seek out new experiences, but jet lag can be an unpleasant side effect. Adjusting to a new time zone is often accompanied by fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and a host of other problems that can turn an otherwise exciting adventure into a miserable trip.

Jet lag is caused by a difference between the circadian system —the body’s internal clock—and the surrounding environment. Around the turn of the century, scientists began to recognize that the body has multiple internal clocks, calibrated in different ways, and that jet lag-like symptoms can result when these clocks drift out of sync with each other. This can happen in several ways and grows more prevalent with age.

A team of scientists from Northwestern University and the Santa Fe Institute developed a theoretical model to study the interactions between multiple internal clocks under the effects of aging and disruptions like jet lag. The article, “A minimal model of peripheral clocks reveals differential circadian re-entrainment in aging,” appeared in the journal Chaos on Sept. 5, 2023.

As scientists get better at interpreting the language of the brain, they get closer to not just treating disease, but also enhancing our senses and our intellects. Should they go there?

Other questions to the experts in this canvassing invited their views on the hopeful things that will occur in the next decade and for examples of specific applications that might emerge. What will human-technology co-evolution look like by 2030? Participants in this canvassing expect the rate of change to fall in a range anywhere from incremental to extremely impactful. Generally, they expect AI to continue to be targeted toward efficiencies in workplaces and other activities, and they say it is likely to be embedded in most human endeavors.

The greatest share of participants in this canvassing said automated systems driven by artificial intelligence are already improving many dimensions of their work, play and home lives and they expect this to continue over the next decade. While they worry over the accompanying negatives of human-AI advances, they hope for broad changes for the better as networked, intelligent systems are revolutionizing everything, from the most pressing professional work to hundreds of the little “everyday” aspects of existence.

One respondent’s answer covered many of the improvements experts expect as machines sit alongside humans as their assistants and enhancers. An associate professor at a major university in Israel wrote, “In the coming 12 years AI will enable all sorts of professions to do their work more efficiently, especially those involving ‘saving life’: individualized medicine, policing, even warfare (where attacks will focus on disabling infrastructure and less in killing enemy combatants and civilians). In other professions, AI will enable greater individualization, e.g., education based on the needs and intellectual abilities of each pupil/student. Of course, there will be some downsides: greater unemployment in certain ‘rote’ jobs (e.g., transportation drivers, food service, robots and automation, etc.).”

An active supermassive black hole is one of the greatest wonders in the cosmos.

A dense, invisible object that can be billions of times the mass of our Sun is surrounded by a vast, churning disk and torus of material, blazing with light as it swirls down onto the black hole center. But how big do these structures grow?

Continue reading “For The First Time, The Roiling Mass Circling a Monster Black Hole Has Been Measured” »

Plus: Google DeepMind’s watermark.