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Navigating and mapping rivers has long been a central component in human exploration. Whether it was Powell exploring the Colorado’s canyons or Pizarro using the Amazon to try to find El Dorado, rivers, and our exploration of them, have been extremely important. Now, scientists have mapped out an entirely new, unique river basin. This one happens to be on an entirely different planet, and dried up billions of years ago.

Three to four billion years ago, Mars did in fact have running rivers of water. Evidence for these rivers has shown up in satellite imagery and rover samples for almost as long as we have been exploring the red planet. Since Mars has little tectonics or erosion, that evidence has remained somewhat intact until the present day.

Recently, a team of scientists developed a tool to better examine those features. They managed to stitch together an 8-trillion pixel image of the entire Martian surface. Each pixel in this incredibly detailed image represents about a 5–6 square meter area. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t seem to available to the general public just year. Whether it is or not it is sure to prove useful for a variety of research projects regarding the environment of Mars. One of the first ones, which was recently published a paper in Geology was a map of the red planet’s river “ridges”.

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is collaborating with private industry on cutting-edge fusion research aimed at achieving commercial fusion energy. This work, enabled through a public-private DOE grant program, supports efforts to develop high-performance fusion grade plasmas. In one such project PPPL is working in coordination with MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a start-up spun out of MIT that is developing a tokamak fusion device called “SPARC.”

The goal of the project is to predict the leakage of fast “alpha” particles produced during the reactions in SPARC, given the size and potential misalignments of the superconducting magnets that confine the plasma. These particles can create a largely self-heated or “burning plasma” that fuels fusion reactions. Development of burning plasma is a major scientific goal for fusion energy research. However, leakage of alpha particles could slow or halt the production of fusion energy and damage the interior of the SPARC facility.

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Dr. Nicole Prause, PhD is an American neuroscientist researching human sexual behavior, addiction, and the physiology of sexual response. She is also the founder of Liberos LLC, an independent research institute and biotechnology company.

Dr. Prause obtained her doctorate in 2007 at Indiana University Bloomington, with joint supervision by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, with her areas of concentration being neuroscience and statistics. Her clinical internship, in neuro-psychological assessment and behavioral medicine, was with the VA Boston Healthcare System’s Psychology Internship Training Program. Her research fellowship was in couples’ treatment of alcoholism was at Harvard University.

Dr. Prause became a tenure track faculty member at Idaho State University at the age of 29. After three years there, she accepted a position as a Research Scientist at the Mind Research Network, a neuro-imaging facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In 2012, Dr. Prause was elected a full member of the International Academy of Sex Research and accepted a position as a Research Scientist on faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in the David Geffen School of Medicine. While there, she was promoted to Associate Research Scientist in 2014.

Continue reading “Dr Nicole Prause — Advancing Research In Sexual Psychophysiology, Sexual Biotechnology, And Sex-Tech” | >

“While myocarditis is a rare condition—affecting roughly 22 out of every 100000 people each year—it is nevertheless a recognized cause of death among professional athletes, even in the absence of previous heart trouble. A 2015 study found that among NCAA athletes who died of a sudden cardiac event, 10 percent experienced myocarditis, and a Myocarditis Foundation report found that the condition causes 75 deaths per year in athletes between the ages of 13 and 25. ESPN reports that COVID-19 has been linked with myocarditis at a higher frequency than other viruses have been, based on limited studies and anecdotal evidence. A recent study of 100 patients in Germany found that 60 percent suffered from myocarditis following their COVID-19 diagnoses, independent of pre-existing conditions. To assess the presence of myocarditis in college athletes that have recovered from COVID-19, the authors selected 26 students at Ohio State University, including men and women. None of the participants, who played football, soccer, lacrosse, basketball, or track, had previous heart conditions before being tested.”

Images of the players’ hearts showed signs of inflammation consistent with myocarditis, a rare but potentially fatal condition.

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AP Exclusive: The Chinese government is tightly controlling all COVID-19 research under orders from President Xi Jinping, internal documents obtained by The AP show. As a result, China’s search for the origins of the virus has been cloaked in secrecy. In a sign of how sensitive research has become, police stopped scientists and confiscated their samples at a mineshaft where the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus was found.

MOJIANG, China (AP) — Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus.

The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. Specialists in coronaviruses have been ordered not to speak to the press. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to roads and sites in late November.

Continue reading “China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins” | >

The Gaia space telescope has measured the acceleration of the Solar System when it orbits the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The Solar System motion relative to the stars agrees with the results by Finnish astronomers in the 19th century. Moreover, the observational data by Gaia improves satellite navigation.

Earlier this month, the European Space Agency (ESA) released observational data from the Gaia telescope (Gaia Early Data Release 3 or EDR3), in continuation to the DR1 and DR2 releases of the years 2016 and 2018. Gaia accrues accurate knowledge about, for example, the Milky Way stars, distant extragalactic quasars, and the asteroids of our Solar System.

Quasars are bright, star-like objects that allow for the determination of planet Earth’s orientation in space. With the help of their precise positions measured by Gaia, a new high-precision reference system can be constructed for defining the positions of stars, Solar System objects, and also satellites.

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