What happens when biology starts behaving less like fate and more like software?
Some of the most controversial ideas in longevity research sound unbelievable at first… until the data starts forcing better questions.
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Scientists predict winter weather months ahead using new method
Scientists have developed a new statistical model that predicts winter weather up to six months in advance by forecasting the behavior of the stratospheric polar vortex. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/…g-method-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/earth-and-the-environment/…g-method-2)
Can weather forecasts speed up predictions to help better prepare for inclement weather? This is what a recent study published in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres hopes to address as an international team of scientists from Florida State University and China investigated a new method for providing better predictions of winter weather forecasts. This study has the potential to help sci better understand winter weather patterns and provide more in-depth and accurate predictions, enabling communities to better prepare for worst case scenarios.
This study is a secondary study in a series for this team, who published a first study also in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres focusing on the yearly weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere stratospheric polar vortex (SPV). For this study, the researchers focused on developing a new method for predicting SPV weather patterns months in advance of the winter season.
Using a series of statistical models involving historical atmospheric data, the researchers ascertained to produce a statistical model capable of predicting winter weather patterns months in advance. In the end, the models demonstrated that forecasts could be made up to six months in advance.
How Earth recycles continents deep underground
Scientists have uncovered new evidence that Earth’s continents are continuously reworked deep beneath the surface, offering fresh insight into how continents have evolved over billions of years.
The study focuses on what happens after two continental plates collide to form major mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and the Alps. While geologists have long known that continental collisions build mountains and deform the crust, the new research shows that portions of continental crust can also be dragged deep into Earth during subduction before rising again and mixing with mantle rocks.
Common asthma drug helps fight hard-to-treat cancers, including aggressive breast cancers, early study finds
Scientists found that blocking a protein best known for its role in asthma enhances cancer immunotherapy in preclinical models.
Researchers measure giant light-conversion effect in chiral carbon nanotubes
A sheet of twisted carbon nanotubes has revealed a hidden talent scientists suspected for decades but had never managed to measure.
Researchers at Rice University have created large, highly ordered films of chiral carbon nanotubes (CNTs), hollow cylinders of carbon atoms with either a left-or a right-handed twist. Measurements showed the crystalline films can convert the color of light at a rate two to three orders of magnitude greater than conventional materials.
The findings, reported in a study published in ACS Nano, confirm a long-standing theoretical prediction and point toward a future in which ultrathin carbon nanotube films could help power faster optical communications, flexible photonic chips and light-based computing systems that today exist mostly as prototypes.
Scientists Discovered A Record Number Of New Species In The Ocean Depths
Among the newly discovered species is the ‘ghost shark’ chimaera, a distant relative of sharks and rays, found in the Coral Sea. Other notable finds include symbiotic worms on volcanic seamounts in Japan and a striking new species of shrimp in Marseille, France. These discoveries highlight the diversity and complexity of life beneath the ocean surface.
Dr. Michelle Taylor, Head of Science at Ocean Census, emphasized the importance of these discoveries, stating, “We are in a race against time to understand and protect ocean life.” The Ocean Census is not only about finding new species but also generating evidence to drive global science and policy.
The discoveries provide crucial data for international agreements like the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. As the Census continues, its global network and open-access platform, NOVA, will ensure that this critical data informs global decision-making.
To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
When security researchers want to understand what a modern processor is really doing with the kind of detail that determines whether attacks like Spectre and Meltdown are possible, they usually run their experiments on top of an operating system that was never built for the job. They open up macOS or Linux, patch the kernel by hand, and hope the modifications hold. The approach is unstable, hard to reproduce, and on Apple’s platforms, slated for deprecation.
A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) decided to build something different. Fractal, a new operating system kernel written from the ground up, treats the hardware itself as the object of study. Its first major use, a deep look at the branch predictors (CPU’s way of guessing what code to run next before it knows for certain), so it doesn’t have to waste time waiting to find out) inside Apple’s M1 processor, has already turned up findings that prior work missed, including the first evidence that a class of speculative attack known as “Phantom” affects Apple Silicon.
“We’re using hardware in ways it wasn’t designed for,” says Joseph Ravichandran, the MIT PhD student who led the project. “It’s not even obvious that this is a possible thing you could do with the hardware. But we found a way to pull all these different primitives off. It’s like a microscope. If you’ve got a hand magnifying glass, you can see a little bit. But if you had an electron microscope, now we’re really talking. That’s what Fractal is. The electron microscope of operating systems.”