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May 14, 2020

Microscopic feather features reveal fossil birds’ colors and explain why cassowaries shine

Posted by in category: education

Cassowaries are big flightless birds with blue heads and dinosaur-looking feet; they look like emus that time forgot, and they’re objectively terrifying. They’re also, along with their ostrich and kiwi cousins, part of the bird family that split off from chickens, ducks, and songbirds 100 million years ago. In songbirds and their relatives, scientists have found that the physical make-up of feathers produce iridescent colors, but they’d never seen that mechanism in the group that cassowaries are part of—until now. In a double-whammy of a paper in Science Advances, researchers have discovered both what gives cassowary feathers their glossy black shine and what the feathers of birds that lived 52 million years ago looked like.

“A lot of times we overlook these weird flightless birds. When we’re thinking about what early birds looked like, it’s important to study both of these two sister lineages that would have branched from a common ancestor 80 million or so years ago,” says Chad Eliason, a staff scientist at the Field Museum and the paper’s first author.

“Understanding basic attributes—like how colors are generated—is something we often take for granted in living animals. Surely, we think, we must know everything there is to know? But here, we started with simple curiosity. What makes cassowaries so shiny? Chad found an underlying mechanism behind this shine that was undescribed in birds. These kinds of observations are key to understanding how color evolves and also inform how we think about ,” says Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin and the paper’s senior author. Eliason began conducting research for this paper while working with Clarke at the University of Texas as part of a larger project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF EAR 1355292) to study how like cassowaries have evolved their characteristic features.

May 14, 2020

A possible explanation for the Earth’s North magnetic pole moving toward Russia

Posted by in category: mobile phones

A trio of researchers, two with the University of Leeds, the other the Technical University of Denmark, has developed a theory to explain why Earth’s north magnetic pole has been drifting from Canada to Russia. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Philip Livermore, Christopher Finlay and Matthew Bayliff describe their theory and what their models based on it showed.

The Earth’s north magnetic pole was first discovered by an explorer named James Clark Ross back in the 1830s. At that time, it was centered over the Nunavut territory in Canada. Since that time, scientists have kept track of its , which, until recently, was very slow. But then in the 1990s, it began to pick up speed, moving from Canada toward Siberia in Russia. The movement of the pole has garnered interest in the media because it forces changes to navigational systems and smartphones that use its location as a focal point. In this new effort, the researchers have come up with what they believe is an explanation for the movement of the pole and why it began moving faster.

The researchers suggest that there are two large lobes of negative magnetic flux at the boundary of the core and the mantle. They further suggest that changes in molten metal flow in the core result in changes in the magnetic flux in the lobes. The position of the pole is determined by the strength of the two lobes—when one gains strength, the other loses strength resulting in the pole moving in the stronger direction. The result is a constant tug-of-war between the two lobes. The current movement is therefore due to one of the lobes gaining the upper hand.

May 14, 2020

A new, highly sensitive chemical sensor uses protein nanowires

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, engineering, food, health, nanotechnology

Writing in the journal NanoResearch, a team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst reports this week that they have developed bioelectronic ammonia gas sensors that are among the most sensitive ever made.

The sensor uses electric-charge-conducting protein derived from the bacterium Geobacter to provide biomaterials for electrical devices. More than 30 years ago, senior author and microbiologist Derek Lovley discovered Geobacter in river mud. The microbes grow hair-like protein filaments that work as nanoscale “wires” to transfer charges for their nourishment and to communicate with other bacteria.

First author and doctoral student Alexander Smith, with his advisor Jun Yao and Lovley, say they designed this first sensor to measure ammonia because that gas is important to agriculture, the environment and biomedicine. For example, in humans, ammonia on the breath may signal disease, while in poultry farming, the gas must be closely monitored and controlled for bird health and comfort and to avoid feed imbalances and production losses.

May 14, 2020

CRISPR plants: new non-GMO method to edit plants

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, genetics

An NC State researcher has developed a new way to get CRISPR/Cas9 into plant cells without inserting foreign DNA. This allows for precise genetic deletions or replacements, without inserting foreign DNA. Therefore, the end product is not a genetically modified organism, or GMO.

CRISPR/Cas9 is a tool that can be used to precisely cut and remove or replace a specific genetic sequence. The Cas9 serves as a pair of molecular scissors, guided to the specific genetic target by an easily swapped RNA guide. Basically, it seeks out a specific genetic sequence and, when it finds that sequence, cuts it out. Once the target DNA is snipped, it can be deleted or replaced.

The CRISPR/Cas9 system has tremendous potential for improving crops by changing their genetic code. That does not necessarily mean inserting foreign DNA, but the systems used to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 into a plant’s cells often do, which means the relevant crop is a GMOs undergo through a rigorous evaluation process and many consumers prefer non-GMO products.

May 14, 2020

New 3D printer makes multi-material robots

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, robotics/AI

This charming conical flask-carrying robot was created by a 3D printer capable of printing with multiple different materials, at a speed and level of detail that was previously impossible. And in the future it could have some, well, slightly more useful applications…

May 14, 2020

One thought on “Get Ready for the Next Game-Changer: The Gold-Backed Digital Yuan”

Posted by in category: economics

A new, radical paradigm shift is in progress. The U.S. economy may shrink as much as 40% in the first semester of 2020. China, already the world’s largest economy by PPP for a few years now, may soon become the world’s largest economy even in exchange rate terms.

by Pepe Escobar

Continue reading “One thought on ‘Get Ready for the Next Game-Changer: The Gold-Backed Digital Yuan’” »

May 14, 2020

What Our Post-Pandemic Future Looks Like

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, futurism

The coronavirus pandemic has forced economists, financiers, executives, and policymakers to jettison or dramatically revise their forecasts for 2020. But what will the future look like on the other side of the crisis? We asked a variety of leaders from around the world for their best guess on how our lives will be fundamentally changed.


Economists, investors, and CEOs on how the coronavirus has forever changed the world.

May 13, 2020

“Super steel” breakthrough makes for stronger and tougher alloy

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

It’s a frustrating fact that whenever you try to improve materials like steel, you end up introducing new weaknesses at the same time. It’s a balancing act between different properties. Now, engineers have developed a new type of “super steel” that defies this trade-off, staying strong while still resisting fractures.

For materials like steel, there are three main properties that need to be balanced – strength, toughness and ductility. The first two might sound like the same thing, but there’s an important difference. Strength describes how much of a load a material can take before it deforms or fails, measured in Pascals of pressure. Toughness, meanwhile, measures how much energy it takes to fracture a material.

For reference, glass has relatively high strength but low toughness, so it’s able to support quite a bit of weight but it doesn’t take much energy to break.

May 13, 2020

Canadian military to get new sniper rifles

Posted by in categories: government, military

The C20 will replace the C8 as the personal defence weapon for Canadian Forces sniper teams, confirmed Department of National Defence spokeswoman Andrée-Anne Poulin.

The government will also launch a competition sometime this month to buy 229 bolt action sniper rifles. That rifle, designated as the C21, will be used for long-range shooting and will come in two different calibres.

The Canadian Forces says the new C20, which will be in 7.62 calibre, will be more accurate and an improvement over the current C8 used by sniper teams.

May 13, 2020

Researchers create durable, washable textile coating that can repel viruses

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

Masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) are essential for protecting healthcare workers. However, the textiles and materials used in such items can absorb and carry viruses and bacteria, inadvertently spreading the disease the wearer sought to contain.

When the coronavirus spread amongst and left PPE in short supply, finding a way to provide better protection while allowing for the safe reuse of these items became paramount.

Research from the LAMP Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering may have a solution. The lab has created a textile coating that can not only repel liquids like blood and saliva but can also prevent viruses from adhering to the surface. The work was recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.