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Apr 14, 2020

Scientists digitally reconstruct skulls of dinosaurs in fossilised eggs

Posted by in category: futurism

The fossilised skulls of dinosaur embryos that died within their eggs about 200m years ago, have been digitally reconstructed by scientists, shedding new light on the animals’ development, and how close they were to hatching.

The rare clutch of seven eggs, some of which contain embryos, was discovered in South Africa in 1976, with the developing young found to be a species of dinosaur called Massospondylus carinatus.

The plant-eaters were ancestors of sauropod dinosaurs like diplodocus and, as fully-grown adults, would have walked on two legs, measured about five metres from nose to tail, and had long necks with small heads.

Apr 14, 2020

Collisions reveal new evidence of ‘anyon’ quasiparticles’ existence

Posted by in category: particle physics

Sometimes, two dimensions are better than three.

In the three-dimensional world we live in, there are two classes of elementary particles: bosons and fermions. But in two dimensions, theoretical physicists predict, there’s another option: anyons. Now, scientists report new evidence that anyons exist and that they behave unlike any known particle. Using a tiny “collider,” researchers flung presumed anyons at one another to help confirm their identities, physicists report in the April 10 Science.

All known elementary particles can be classified either fermions or bosons. Electrons, for example, are fermions. Bosons include photons, which are particles of light, and the famed Higgs boson, which explains how particles get mass (SN: 7/4/12). The two classes behave differently: Fermions are loners and avoid one another, while bosons can clump together.

Apr 14, 2020

Apple, Google Bring Covid-19 Contact-Tracing to 3 Billion People

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, mobile phones

Apple Inc. and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population.

Apr 14, 2020

Automatic diagnosis of the 12-lead ECG using a deep neural network

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

The role of automatic electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis in clinical practice is limited by the accuracy of existing models. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are models composed of stacked transformations that learn tasks by examples. This technology has recently achieved striking success in a variety of task and there are great expectations on how it might improve clinical practice. Here we present a DNN model trained in a dataset with more than 2 million labeled exams analyzed by the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais and collected under the scope of the CODE (Clinical Outcomes in Digital Electrocardiology) study. The DNN outperform cardiology resident medical doctors in recognizing 6 types of abnormalities in 12-lead ECG recordings, with F1 scores above 80% and specificity over 99%. These results indicate ECG analysis based on DNNs, previously studied in a single-lead setup, generalizes well to 12-lead exams, taking the technology closer to the standard clinical practice.

Apr 14, 2020

Which state lockdowns in the U.S. have been extended?

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has spread across the U.S., a number of states have extended their lockdown orders in an effort to combat the spread of the virus.

As of April 8, every U.S. state has reported confirmed coronavirus cases but the stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies all came at different times. California was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order on March 19, while South Carolina was the most recent, issuing their statewide order on April 7. Some other states like Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota and Nebraska have yet to issue statewide stay-at-home orders.

Apr 14, 2020

Stunning archaeological find reveals London 3,000 years older than previously thought

Posted by in category: futurism

LONDON might be 3,000 years older than previously believed.

Apr 14, 2020

CDC director says the US will reopen with a ‘gradual process’ as Trump says he’ll ’shortly‘ decide when to open up states

Posted by in category: futurism

Just a few hours later, Trump tweeted it was his decision — not that of state governors — of when states should re-open.

Apr 14, 2020

SpaceX’s 1st-generation Dragon retires after final landing in San Pedro harbor

Posted by in category: space travel

The capsule was recovered from the waters by SpaceX crew.

Apr 14, 2020

New handle for controlling electromagnetic properties could enable spintronic computing

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, space

Materials scientists at Duke University have shown the first clear example that a material’s transition into a magnet can control instabilities in its crystalline structure that cause it to change from a conductor to an insulator.

If researchers can learn to control this unique connection between identified in hexagonal iron sulfide, it could enable new technologies such as spintronic computing. The results appear April 13 in the journal Nature Physics.

Commonly known as troilite, hexagonal iron sulfide can be found natively on Earth but is more abundant in meteorites, particularly those originating from the Moon and Mars. Rarely encountered in the Earth’s crust, most troilite on Earth is believed to have originated from space.

Apr 14, 2020

Smithsonian Scientists Discover Six New Coronaviruses in Bats in Myanmar

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The new viruses are not harmful to humans or closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.