đœ Moon Map
Fyodor R.
Have you ever wondered what kind of rocks make up those bright and dark splotches on the moon? Well, the USGS has just released a new authoritative map to help explain the 4.5-billion-year-old history of our nearest neighbor in space.
In a paper published on Nature Communications in 20 April 2020 by (read the original paper), Tianda Fu et al. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst proposed a new kind of diffusive memristor based on the protein nanowires sourced from the bacterium named Geobacter sulfurreducens that can potentially resolve the problem. The artificial neurons built on such memristors can function on the level of biological voltages, and they express âtemporary integration feature that is similar to real neurons in our brainâ according to the authors.
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At the beginning of March, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced a series of executive orders he hoped would help slow the spread, and subsequently mitigate the health impact, of COVID-19. One of those orders told Golden State residents to shelter-in-place. This order, set for two weeks, has been extended until May. Gov. Newsom has subsequently told residents that the process through which these public health safety measures will be loosened up is going to be deliberate, and done by degrees.
A study out of UC Davis in California says there is one silver lining to the shelter-in-place orders, though. According to researchers, the California highway patrolâwho on average respond to more than 2,000 roadway âincidentsâ per dayâhave reported an enormous reduction in the daily rate of collisions. This means a lot less death and injury and a lot of public money saved.
UC Davis researchers found that the daily rate of collisions in California was cut in half after the order, and that cut closely matched the reduction in deaths and injuries connected to vehicular crashes. To this end, the study found that trauma centers reported a 40% reduction in people seen during this time, which includes pedestrians and cyclists involved in vehicular collisions. The savings to the public is estimated at about $40 million per day, adding up to around $1 billion in savings since the beginning of the shelter-in-place order.
The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has governments struggling with how to restart a global economy that has come to a grinding halt. Some short term needs have to be addressed as soon as possible â avoiding starvation, extending unemployment benefits, and arranging for emergency healthcare for those infected. But even as the world faces such daunting tasks, decisions made today will have enormous consequences for the future. While the emergency today is great, a much bigger emergency waits just around the corner as the Earth continues to overheat.
Governments in thrall to fossil fuel interests, such as the United States, see the virus as a chance to roll back advances in renewable energy. After all, the oil and gas industries provide for 10,000,000 jobs around the world. Surely those jobs must be protected, right?
University researchers have discovered that quantum communications are possible with submerged objects in turbulent water. The revelation means it might someday be possible for the National Command Authority to use quantum communications to securely communicate with underwater submarines, particularly those that make up part of the nuclear triad.
An international team of researchers has found that an ancient crocodile relative underwent body transitions as it evolved from a land to a sea creature before its ears changed to suit an underwater environment. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their in-depth study of thalattosuchia skulls and what they found.
Thalattosuchia was an ancient crocodile species that lived in the worldâs oceans over 150 million years ago. But before that, they were land-dwelling. Prior research has shown that they took to water in a much slower fashion than other creatures like whales, existing as semi-aquatic creatures for many years before becoming full-fledged sea creatures. Study of their fossilized remains has shown their front legs evolving to become fins, and their back legs evolving into a fluked tail. Their bodies grew slimmer and sleeker to so they could glide smoothly through the water. And once they became sea creatures, their internal organs changed to suit the new environment. One such organ was the inner ear. And it was this organ that was the focus of this new work.
To learn more about the evolution of thalattosuchiaâs ears, the researchers conducted CAT scans on over a dozen skull fossils. They focused most specifically on the inner ear structures used to maintain balance and equilibrium in land creatures.
Posted in satellites
SpaceX is targeting Wednesday, April 22 at 3:30 p.m. EDT, or 19:30 p.m. UTC, for its seventh launch of Starlink satellites. Falcon 9 will lift off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASAâs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A backup opportunity is available on Thursday, April 23 at 3:15 p.m. EDT, or 19:15 UTC.
Falcon 9âs first stage previously supported Crew Dragonâs first flight to the International Space Station, launch of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, and the fourth Starlink mission. Following stage separation, SpaceX will land Falcon 9âs first stage on the âOf Course I Still Love Youâ droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Falcon 9âs fairing previously supported the AMOS-17 mission.
The common view of heredity is that all information passed down from one generation to the next is stored in an organismâs DNA. But Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, disagrees.
In two new papers, Jose argues that DNA is just the ingredient list, not the set of instructions used to build and maintain a living organism. The instructions, he says, are much more complicated, and theyâre stored in the molecules that regulate a cellâs DNA and other functioning systems.
Jose outlined a new theoretical framework for heredity, which was developed through 20 years of research on genetics and epigenetics, in peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface and the journal BioEssays. Both papers were published on April 22, 2020.
Circa 2012 Now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations. Amazingly, the results from the structures theyâve tested show power output ranging from double to more than 20 times that of fixed flat panels with the same base area.
Innovative 3D designs from an MIT team can more than double the solar power generated from a given area.
When the researchers studied the patterns of aging-associated chemical tags called methyl groups, which serve as an indicator of a cellâs chronological age, they found that the treated cells appeared to be about 1Âœ to 3Âœ years younger on average than untreated cells from elderly people, with peaks of 3Âœ years (in skin cells) and 7Âœ years (in cells that line blood vessels).
The study found that inducing old human cells in a lab dish to briefly express these proteins rewinds many of the molecular hallmarks of aging and renders the treated cells nearly indistinguishable from their younger counterparts.
âWhen iPS cells are made from adult cells, they become both youthful and pluripotent,â says Vittorio Sebastiano, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University and senior author of the paper, published in Nature Communications.
âWeâve wondered for some time if it might be possible to simply rewind the aging clock without inducing pluripotency. Now weâve found that, by tightly controlling the duration of the exposure to these protein factors, we can promote rejuvenation in multiple human cell types.â
