Lifeboat Foundation

New technology from Stanford scientists finds long-hidden quakes, and possible clues about how earthquakes evolve.

Tiny movements in Earth’s outermost layer may provide a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the physics and warning signs of big quakes. New algorithms that work a little like human vision are now detecting these long-hidden microquakes in the growing mountain of seismic data.

Measures of Earth’s vibrations zigged and zagged across Mostafa Mousavi’s screen one morning in Memphis, Tenn. As part of his PhD studies in geophysics, he sat scanning earthquake signals recorded the night before, verifying that decades-old algorithms had detected true earthquakes rather than tremors generated by ordinary things like crashing waves, passing trucks or stomping football fans.

A team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) inGermany, Givskud Zoo–Zootopia in Denmark and the University of Milan in Italy succeeded in producing the very first African lionin-vitroembryos after the vitrification of immature oocytes. For this specific method of cryopreservation, oocytes are collected directly after an animal is castrated or deceased and immediately frozen at-196°C in liquid nitrogen. This technique allows the storage of oocytes of valuable animals for an unlimited time, so that they can be used to produce offspring with the help of assisted reproduction techniques. The aim is to further improve and apply these methods to save highly endangered species such as the Asiatic lion from extinction. The current research on African lions as a model species is an important step in this direction. The results are reported in the scientific journal Cryobiology.

Lion oocytes are presumed to be very sensitive to chilling due to their high lipid content, resulting in poor revival following slow cooling. Vitrification can circumvent this problem, as the cells are frozen at ultra-fast speeds in solutions with a very high concentration of cryoprotective agents. This method prevents the formation of ice crystals in the cells, which could destroy them, and enables them to remain intact for an unlimited time to allow their use later on.

For the present research, the scientists collected oocytes from four African lionesses from Givskud Zoo—Zootopia after the animals had been euthanised for the purpose of population management. Half of the oocytes (60) were vitrified instantly. After six days of storage in liquid nitrogen, the vitrified oocytes were thawed and subjected toin-vitromaturation in an incubator at 39°C for a total of 32–34 hours. The other half (59) were used as control group and directly subjected toin-vitromaturation without a step of vitrification. Mature oocytes of both groups were then fertilized with frozen-thawed sperm from African lion males. “We could demonstrate a high proportion of surviving and matured oocytes in the group of vitrified oocytes. Almost 50% of them had matured, a proportion similar to that in the control group,” says Jennifer Zahmel, scientist at the Department of Reproduction Biology at the Leibniz-IZW.

Circa 2018 o.o!

We are not living in the first universe. There were other universes, in other eons, before ours, a group of physicists has said. Like ours, these universes were full of black holes. And we can detect traces of those long-dead black holes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the radioactive remnant of our universe’s violent birth.

At least, that’s the somewhat eccentric view of the group of theorists, including the prominent Oxford University mathematical physicist Roger Penrose (also an important Stephen Hawking collaborator). Penrose and his acolytes argue for a modified version of the Big Bang.

Continue reading “Physicists Spotted the Ghosts of Black Holes from Another Universe” »

Spiral galaxies are one of the most commonly known types of galaxy. Most people think of them as large round disks, and know that our Milky Way is counted among their number. What most people don’t realize is that many spiral galaxies have a type of warping effect that, when you look at them edge on, can make it seem like they are forming a wave. Now scientists, led by Xinlun Chen at the University of Virginia, have studied millions of stars in the Milky Way and begun to develop a picture of a “wave” passing through our own galaxy.

Since humans are not currently able to view the Milky Way in an edge-on orientation, they must resort to more brute force methods to develop models about the what, if any, wave our galaxy has. Luckily, scientists now have the tools to do so, in the form of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and ESA’s Gaia satellite.

The method the team used was to try to identify and track the motions of as many stars as possible. To do this, they used the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) spectrograph, which is part of the SDSS. This preliminary data allowed them to look at both the chemical compositions as well as the motions of hundreds of thousands of stars. While this motion data was helpful in starting to form the picture of the Milky Way’s wave, it was not sufficient to complete it.

The classic gets an electric upgrade.

Giant squids can grow as long as 43 feet and dwell in the deep sea. Sightings are very rare, but in 2012, a diver swam right next to one in Japan.

MONTREAL — A team of researchers from the Montreal Heart Institute believe they have found an effective weapon against COVID-19: colchicine, an oral tablet already known and used for other diseases.

For Dr. Jean-Claude Tardif, who led the study, this is a “major scientific discovery,” he said. Colchicine is the first “effective oral drug to treat out-of-hospital patients.”

“To be able to offer this, from Quebec, and for the planet, we are very happy,” said Tardif.

Intelligent Design

DNA is already known to be an ideal storage medium. Why not use cells to do the hard work?

Alibaba is one of the best places around to find the coolest and sometimes weirdest electric vehicles in the world. As part of a new series known as Awesomely weird Alibaba electric vehicle of the week, we’re taking a look at some of our favorites.

This week’s feature is a small-yet-mighty electric pickup truck designed for utility and off-road usage, though it may even be street legal as an NEV in the US.

If the proportions look at bit odd on this electric pickup truck, that’s because they are.