Lifeboat Foundation

Uranus really is strange. Not only does it rotate on an axis that sits at a 98-degree angle to its orbital plane, but, unlike the other giant planets, it doesn’t appear to release more heat than it receives from the Sun. Its magnetic field, too, appears warped compared to the Earth’s. An impact could perhaps help explain some of these strange traits.

Scientists have been simulating giant impacts into Uranus since the early 1990s, according to the new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. This time around, researchers built a new simulation with the newest and best available data of the planet’s composition. This allowed them to model how a giant impactor, perhaps one to three times the mass of Earth, would have deposited “material and energy inside Uranus” and how much debris would be left over, from which moons could form.

“This study provides some great new insights into what might have happened all those billions of years ago, with material left over from the impact possibly even serving to trap some of that heat inside,” Leigh Fletcher, Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, told Gizmodo.

Continue reading “Did Something Massive Smash Into Uranus?” »

British researchers are zeroing in on genes they believe are responsible for early onset Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down syndrome.

WEDNESDAY, July 3, 2018 — British researchers are zeroing in on the genes that they believe are responsible for early onset Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down syndrome.

The two conditions have long been strongly linked.

Continue reading “Scientists find gene linking Down syndrome, early Alzheimer’s” »

After living through a car accident, I think this raises excellent awareness!

Exhibits at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City usually produce awe and wonder. A new interactive exhibit at LSC, however, gives the participant a grim and horrific look at the results of distracted driving. The AT&T 2018 It Can Wait Tour, a 3D virtual reality exhibit, will be at the science center from Friday, July 6 to through Tuesday, July 10, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day. The exhibit uses virtual reality technology to simulate the potentially deadly consequences of using a phone while driving. The exhibit also features a memorial wall, a wall of keys representing lives lost and a wall made to look like crushed car parts. The Liberty Science Center is located at 222 Jersey City Boulevard.

Following heart attacks, a handful of monkeys regained some of the pumping ability their hearts had lost after being given human embryonic stem cells, according to a study published Monday in Nature Biotechnology.

Scientists have tried for years to develop a stem cell treatment for heart disease caused by lack of blood flow, which contributed to more than 9.4 million deaths worldwide in 2016, according to the World Health Organization.

“We’re talking about the number one cause of death in the world [for humans],” said study author Dr. Charles Murry, director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington. “And at the moment all of our treatments are … dancing around the root problem, which is that you don’t have enough muscle cells.”

Continue reading “Human stem cells give monkey hearts a boost after heart attacks, study says” »

Contrary to what Silicon Valley portrays, you’ll need more than drive and intelligence to land a high-paying job in the tech world. You’ll need to be well versed in one of the most popular and fastest growing programming languages: Python.

SEE ALSO: Walmart’s new text service bypasses app, website to order stuff online

Python made its debut in 1990, and since then it’s been focused and refined by some of the brightest programmers in the industry. That’s resulted in its current status as a multi-faceted, yet beautifully simple language with a wide variety of applications, from interfacing with SQL databases to building websites.

There’s a halo of dark matter permeating every galaxy, and that means its particles pass through us, too.

Our Solar System is a pretty calm place these days, all things considered, but that wasn’t always the case. In the period when the planets were still forming, collisions between various large bodies were common, and they ultimately helped shape the system that we see today. New research shows that Uranus, a chilly, hostile planet with a number of peculiar features, was the victim of a devastating impact during those early years, and it might explain some of the planet’s strange personality.

Uranus moves much differently than the other planets in our Solar System, spinning on its side in comparison to the rest of the worlds in our neighborhood. Astronomers have often wondered just how this happened, but simulations performed by scientists at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology might have finally produced the answer.

Don’t Miss : I completely stopped using my AirPods until I found this $9 accessory.

Is your internet moving a little slower than usual? Are you seeing hints of devices you don’t recognize in Windows Explorer, or when you cast media to your TV? If you suspect a neighbor is stealing your Wi-Fi, here’s how to check (and boot them off).

“So someone’s watching Netflix on my internet,” you may say. “What’s the big deal?” Even if you have a little bandwidth to spare, you probably don’t want other people on your network, especially if it’s unsecured. If someone has access to your network, they have access to all the computers on that network, and that’s dangerous. They could access files you’re unknowingly sharing, they could infect you with malware, and in certain situations they could even steal your passwords and other personal information.

As a result, you should take care to make sure each device connected to your network is one you can trust. Thankfully, there are free tools that’ll help you see everyone on your Wi-Fi right now.