Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 923

What can earthquake rupture zones teach us about earthquakes and how to predict them? This is what a five-year, $2.3 million grant awarded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Frontier Research in Earth Sciences grant hopes to address as an international team of researchers have been tasked with analyzing samples obtained from the earthquake rupture zone at the Turkey-Syria border responsible for the devastating back-to-back earthquakes on February 6, 2023, that killed more than 50,000 people and registered 7.8-magnitude and 7.6-magnitude, respectively. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the geologic processes responsible for large-scale earthquakes and the steps we can take to mitigate damage and loss of life.

“This NSF-funded project will help us overcome limitations of previous, generalized characterizations of earthquake critical zones with more in-depth geologic data, seismic imaging studies, deformation experiments and modeling,” said Dr. Alexis Ault, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Utah State University (USU), and the lead principal investigator on the project. “Combining expertise from varied engineering and geoscience disciplines, we aim to emerge with a more complete and accurate picture of earthquake critical zones in these settings.”

For the study, the researchers collected geologic samples from the Çardak-Yesilyurt Fault system that was responsible for the devastating 2023 quakes to better understand how pressure builds within the earthquake critical zone, or the region of the Earth’s crust that’s just beneath the surface. Additionally, they will compare these findings to samples obtained from the southern San Andreas fault in California from another grant to help build their data cache, as well. This research builds off a 2023 NSF-funded research trip to the region approximately six months after the devastating quakes occurred.

Read more | >

In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the AuthaGraph, updates a centuries-old method of turning the globe into a flat surface by first converting it to a cylinder. Winner of Japan’s Good Design Grand Award, it serves as both a brilliant design solution and an update to our outmoded conceptions of world geography.

But as some readers have pointed out, the AuthaGraph also seems to draw quite heavily on an earlier map made by one of the most visionary of theorists and designers, Buckminster Fuller, who in 1943 applied his Dymaxion trademark to the map you see above, which will likely remind you of his most recognizable invention, the Geodesic Dome, “house of the future.”

Whether Narukawa has acknowledged Fuller as an inspiration I cannot say. In any case, 73 years before the AuthaGraph, the Dymaxion Map achieved a similar feat, with similar motivations. As the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) points out, “The Fuller Projection Map is [or was] the only flat map of the entire surface of the Earth which reveals our planet as one island in the ocean, without any visually obvious distortion of the relative shapes and sizes of the land areas, and without splitting any continents.”

Read more | >

A recent study reveals new insights into aurorae across Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, highlighting the role of magnetic fields and solar winds in shaping these phenomena, with significant implications for space weather forecasting and planetary exploration.

The breathtaking aurorae, commonly known as the Northern and Southern Lights, have captivated human imagination for centuries. From May 10th to 12th, 2024, the most powerful aurora event in 21 years showcased the extraordinary beauty of these celestial light displays.

Recently, space physicists from the Department of Earth Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), including Professor Binzheng Zhang, Professor Zhonghua Yao, and Dr Junjie Chen, along with their international collaborators, have published a paper in Nature Astronomy that explores the fundamental laws governing the diverse aurorae observed across planets, such as Earth, Jupiter and Saturn. This work provides new insights into the interactions between planetary magnetic fields and solar wind, updating the textbook picture of giant planetary magnetospheres. Their findings can improve space weather forecasting, guide future planetary exploration, and inspire further comparative studies of magnetospheric environments.

Read more | >

Jupiter and Mars are about to get up close and personal to one another.

Look up to the sky early Wednesday morning and you’ll see what astronomers call a planetary conjunction. This is what is projected to happen when the bright giant gas planet gets a visit from the rocky red planet and the two celestial bodies appear to be close to one another, according to NASA.

“They’ll appear just a third of a degree apart, which is less than the width of the full Moon,” the U.S. space agency said in a skywatching roundup published July 31.

Read more | >

Aging is the major risk factor for the development of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia. Therefore, drugs that slow the aging process may help extend both lifespan and healthspan (the length of time that people are healthy).

In a study published online on February 29 in Medical Research Archives, Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers evaluated U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs for their anti-aging potential. In ranking those drugs, they gave equal weight to preclinical studies (i.e., effect on rodent lifespan and healthspan) and clinical studies (i.e., reduced mortality from diseases the drugs were not intended to treat). The four therapeutics judged most promising for targeting aging were SGLT2 inhibitors, metformin, bisphosphonates, and GLP-1 receptor agonists. Since these drugs have been approved for safety and used extensively, the researchers recommend they be evaluated for their anti-aging potential in large-scale clinical trials.

The study’s corresponding author was Nir Barzilai, M.D., director of Einstein’s Institute for Aging Research, professor of medicine and of genetics and the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research at Einstein, and a member of the National Cancer Institute–designated Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center. The lead author was Michael Leone, a medical student at Einstein.

Read more | >