Regulators need to stop blindly regulating “the Internet” and instead understand that every part of the Internet stack is different, and only one part is suffering from market failure.
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O, o.
The green onesie has a fluffy bean-bag chair attached at the rear so you can sit almost anywhere. It’s currently available on ThinkGeek for $89.99.
Water that never freezes
Posted in materials
O.o.
Can water reach minus 263 degrees Celsius without turning into ice? Yes it can, say researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, if it is confined in nanometre-scale lipid channels.
Making ice cubes is a simple process: you take a plastic ice-cube tray like you’d find in most households, fill it with water and put it in the freezer. Before long, the water crystallises and turns to ice.
If you were to analyse the structure of ice crystals, you’d see that the water molecules are arranged in regular 3-dimensional lattice structures. In water, by contrast, the molecules are unorganised, which is the reason that water flows.
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Transforming the microbial environment in the guts of children diagnosed with autism could significantly ease the severity of their condition’s signature traits, according to newly published research.
A study on the effects of a form of faecal transplant therapy in children on the autism spectrum found participants not only experienced fewer gut problems, but continued to show ongoing improvements in autism symptoms two years after the procedure.
Arizona State University researchers had already discovered a dose of healthy gut microflora caused characteristics associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to ease or vanish for at least a couple of months after treatment ended.
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The existing $7,500 tax credit for buyers of EVs phases out over 15 months once an automaker sells 200,000 electric cars. The tax credit for Tesla buyers was halved to $3,750 on Jan. 1; General Motor’s tax credit was likewise cut in half starting April 1.
The bill, dubbed the Driving America Forward Act, would grant each automaker a $7,000 tax credit for an additional 400,000 vehicles after it exhausts the first 200,000 vehicles eligible for tax credits. It would shorten the phase-out schedule to nine months. The credits are paid directly to consumers, who can write them off on their tax returns.
“At a time when climate change is having a real effect on Michigan, today’s legislation is something we can do now to reduce emissions and combat carbon pollution,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., one of the sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement. “Our bill will help create American jobs and cement Michigan’s status as an advanced manufacturing hub.”
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Scientists have taken a major step towards creating an aircraft of the future, one powered by an ion drive rather than using moving parts and fuel like conventional aircraft.
In a paper published today in Nature, a team led by Steven Barrett from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described how they created a so-called electroaerodynamic-powered plane, one that uses solid-state propulsion, meaning no propellers or jet engines with expendable fuel.
“The future of flight shouldn’t be things with propellers and turbines,” Barrett says in the video below. “[It] should be more like what you see in Star Trek, with a kind of blue glow and something that silently glides through the air.”
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Salmonella bacteria flip an electric switch as they hitch a ride inside immune cells, causing the cells to migrate out of the gut toward other parts of the body, according to a new study publishing on April 9 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Yaohui Sun and Alex Mogilner of New York University and colleagues. The discovery reveals a new mechanism underlying the toxicity of this common food-borne pathogen.
Salmonella are among the commonest, and deadliest, causes of food poisoning, causing over 400,000 deaths every year. Many of those deaths result when the bacteria escape the gut inside immune cells called macrophages. Macrophages are drawn to bacteria in the gut by a variety of signals, most prominently chemicals released from the site of infection. Once there, they engulf the bacteria as a regular part of their infection-fighting job. However, rather than remaining there, bacteria-laden macrophages often leave the site and enter the bloodstream, disseminating the bacteria and greatly increasing the gravity of the infection.
Tissues such as the gut often generate small electrical fields across their outer surfaces, and these electrical fields have been known to drive migration of cells, including macrophages. In the new study, the authors first showed that the lining of the mouse cecum (the equivalent of the human appendix) maintains a cross-membrane electrical field, and that Salmonella infection altered this field and contributed to the attraction of macrophages. Measurements of the polarity of the local charge indicated that the macrophages were attracted to the anode, or positively charged pole within the field. Once they engulfed bacteria, however, they became attracted to the cathode and reversed their migratory direction, moving away from the gut lining, toward vessels of the circulatory system. This switch was driven by a in the composition of certain charged surface proteins on the macrophages; the mechanism by which bacterial engulfment triggers this change is still under investigation.
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Archaeologists just pried another secret of our past from the clutches of the earth, welcoming a new human species to our growing family tree.
This discovery began with an ancient foot, or what was left of one. A foot bone, called the third metatarsal, was found in the Callao Cave on the Philippine island of Luzon back in 2007.
The oldest known Homo sapiens remains, found nearby on Palawan Island, were dated to 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. But this mysterious foot is older, dated to 67,000 years ago.
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