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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:48 | Votes:107

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the was-Yogi-a-water-bear? dept.

Tiny rare fossil found in 16 million-year-old amber is 'once-in-a-generation' find:

Hiding in plain sight, the third-ever tardigrade[*] fossil on record has been found suspended within a piece of 16-million-year-old Dominican amber.

The find includes a newly named species, Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus, as a relative of the modern living family of tardigrades known as Isohypsibioidea. It's the first tardigrade fossil from the Cenozoic, our current geological era that began 66 million years ago.

The study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

[*] Tardigrade:

Tardigrades (/ˈtɑːrdɪɡreɪd/), known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of eight-legged segmented micro-animals.

They have been found everywhere in Earth's biosphere, from mountaintops to the deep sea and mud volcanoes, and from tropical rainforests to the Antarctic. Tardigrades are among the most resilient animals known, with individual species able to survive extreme conditions—such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation—that would quickly kill most other known forms of life. Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space.

Also at Phys.org and C|Net.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly

The genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes:

Why do all the other animals have tails, but not me? [...] The loss of tails has long been thought to have played a key role in bipedalism in humans.

This curiosity-based question was addressed by using bioinformatics tools to look at differences between the genomes of humans (and the other apes, which all lack tails) and monkeys (which all have tails, like most other mammals).

Bo Xia, a Ph.D. candidate studying this problem in the labs of Jef Boeke and Itai Yanai, looked at sequence alignments of all genes known to be involved in tail development and discovered a movable piece of DNA called a retrotransposon inserted in the TBXT gene, which is a developmental regulator crucial for tail development. The reason it had not been spotted before was due its placement in noncoding (intron) DNA, where most people would not look for mutations.

Having a tail would likely make it difficult to sit down. What practical applications would there be if we did have a tail?

Journal Reference:
Bo Xia, Weimin Zhang, Aleksandra Wudzinska, et al. The genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes [$], bioRxiv (DOI: 10.1101/2021.09.14.460388)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:12PM   Printer-friendly

COVID-19: Without masks, two metres distancing is not enough:

To prevent the spread of COVID-19 indoors, the two metres physical distancing guideline is not enough without masks, according to researchers from Quebec, Illinois, and Texas. However, wearing a mask indoors can reduce the contamination range of airborne particles by about 67 percent.

“Mask mandates and good ventilation are critically important to curb the spread of more contagious strains of COVID-19, especially during the flu season and winter months as more people socialize indoors,” says Saad Akhtar, a former doctoral student under the supervision of Professor Agus Sasmito at McGill University.

While most public health guidelines recommend physical distancing of two metres for people from different households, the researchers say distancing alone is not enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In a study published in Building and Environment, the researchers found that when people are unmasked, more than 70 percent of airborne particles pass the two metres threshold within the 30 seconds. By contrast, less than 1 percent of particles cross the two-metre mark if masks are worn.

Coughing is one of the main sources of spread of airborne viruses from symptomatic individuals.

Journal Reference:
Jayaveera Muthusamy, Syed Haq, Saad Akhtar, et al. Implication of coughing dynamics on safe social distancing in an indoor environment—A numerical perspective Building and Environment (DOI: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.108280)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the hot-potato dept.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6652659/Teenager-jailed-buying-PlayStation-4-8-WEIGHING-paying-6lb-food.html

A French teenager has been jailed after buying a PlayStation 4 for under £8 by weighing it as if the games console was a huge bag of fruit.

The 19-year-old man, named in the French media as Adel, picked the device off the shelf and took it to the fruit section and weighed it.

He then put a sticker with the heavily reduced price tag on the expensive console and went to the checkout.

Adel paid £7.86 (€9) for the 6lb bag of 'fruit' at a self-checkout at a supermarket in Montbeliard, eastern France, last September.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:25AM   Printer-friendly

Simple method for converting carbon dioxide into useful compounds:

Researchers in Japan have found an energy-efficient way to convert the chief greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful chemicals. Using the method, CO2 is transformed into structures called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), suggesting a new and simpler route to dispose of the greenhouse gas to help tackle global warming.

The research was carried out by scientists at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), Kyoto University, and colleagues, and the results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“Taking the CO2 released from fossil fuel combustion and converting the gas into valuable chemicals and materials is a promising approach to protect the environment. But because CO2 is a very inert and stable molecule, it is difficult to get it to react using conventional conversion processes,” says Satoshi Horike, a chemist at iCeMS who led the study. “Our work demonstrates an easier approach that can be run at a much lower temperature and pressure. This should make reactions that use CO2 easier to produce and more popular.”

The Japanese team targeted MOFs because they have a wide range of uses, including as biosensors and catalysts. Further, because MOFs are porous and can hold large amounts of gas, they show promise as storage devices for sustainable hydrogen fuel.

To run the reaction, the researchers bubbled CO2 at a temperature of 25°C and a pressure of 0.1 MPa through a solution with an organic molecule called piperazine, in what chemists call a “one pot” procedure. The MOF emerged quickly as a white microcrystalline powder that could be collected and dried. Analysis of its structure using X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy confirmed the conversion had taken place as planned.

Journal Reference:
Kentaro Kadota, You-lee Hong, Yusuke Nishiyama, et al. One-Pot, Room-Temperature Conversion of CO2 into Porous Metal–Organic Frameworks, Journal of the American Chemical Society (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c08227)

Also at Phys.org.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:40AM   Printer-friendly

NASA likely to move some astronauts off Starliner due to extended delays:

NASA will not make an official announcement for weeks or months, but two sources say the space agency is moving several astronauts from Boeing's Starliner spacecraft onto SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle for upcoming missions to the International Space Station.

The assignments are not final—they have yet to go through the formal approval process of the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, which includes all international partners—but sources say NASA's rookie astronauts who have not yet flown to space will move off the Boeing vehicle due to its ongoing delays.

The most likely scenario is that Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada, and Jeannette Epps will now fly on the SpaceX Crew-5 mission, targeted for launch no earlier than August 2022 on a Falcon 9 rocket. They are likely to be joined by an international partner astronaut, probably Japan's Koichi Wakata, for the mission.

These represent substantial changes for NASA and its astronauts. Mann has been assigned to the Crew Flight Test for Starliner since August 2018. This is the pivotal flight that will take place after Boeing's upcoming uncrewed test flight of Starliner, Orbital Flight Test-2, or OFT-2. At the time of Mann's assignment, Cassada was assigned to the first operational flight of Starliner, a regular rotation mission to the space station called "Starliner-1." Epps was added to the Starliner-1 mission a year ago.

A NASA spokesperson, Kyle Herring, declined to confirm any information about the new assignments.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the google-sees-every-thing-YOU-look-for dept.

Government Secretly Orders Google To Identify Anyone Who Searched A Sexual Assault Victim's Name, Address And Telephone Number:

The U.S. government is secretly ordering Google to provide data on anyone typing in certain search terms, an accidentally unsealed court document shows. There are fears such "keyword warrants" threaten to implicate innocent Web users in serious crimes and are more common than previously thought.

While Google deals with thousands of such orders every year, the keyword warrant is one of the more contentious. In many cases, the government will already have a specific Google account that they want information on and have proof it's linked to a crime. But search term orders are effectively fishing expeditions, hoping to ensnare possible suspects whose identities the government does not know. It's not dissimilar to so-called geofence warrants, where investigators ask Google to provide information on anyone within the location of a crime scene at a given time.

[...] "Trawling through Google's search history database enables police to identify people merely based on what they might have been thinking about, for whatever reason, at some point in the past. This is a virtual dragnet through the public's interests, beliefs, opinions, values and friendships, akin to mind reading powered by the Google time machine," said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "This never-before-possible technique threatens First Amendment interests and will inevitably sweep up innocent people, especially if the keyword terms are not unique and the time frame not precise. To make matters worse, police are currently doing this in secret, which insulates the practice from public debate and regulation."

You can read the orders on Google here, here and here. The Microsoft and Yahoo orders can be found here and here.

Google's Methods for Spying on Employees Revealed in Report'


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the more-than-a-spherical-cow dept.

Leave it to the French to try something different--a new prototype platform for electric cars from Citroen doesn't need to steer the wheels, because normal (cylindrical) wheels are replaced by spherical tires, made specially by Goodyear. https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/new-tires-news/goodyear-develops-bespoke-eagle-360-spherical-concept-tire-for-citroen.html

Goodyear introduced the Eagle 360 concept at the Geneva International Motor Show in 2016, with a second iteration, the Eagle 360 Urban concept, following in 2017. The latest iteration of the design features a high level of maneuverability (due to the tire’s spherical shape) and long-lasting attributes (thanks to a tread surface that is four times larger than a standard tire). The tire provides extended range due to a low-rolling-resistance rubber and consistent grip in all driving directions thanks to hexagonal siping.

Link includes pics of the car/platform and the tire tread. Are you ready to drive on big black soccer balls? I want mine multi-colored like beach balls.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly

Russians beat Tom Cruise as first to film a movie in space, despite docking drama

The International Space Station is now a film set, and it served as the stage for a little extra drama Tuesday morning.

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actor Yulia Peresild and film producer Klim Shipenko traveled to the International Space Station on Tuesday. Peresild and Shipenko will be filming segments for the movie "Challenge" -- the first feature film shot in space. The movie will tell the story of a surgeon who has to operate on a sick cosmonaut in space because his medical condition prevents him from returning to Earth to be treated.

The three space travelers blasted off on board a Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:55 a.m. ET on Tuesday. The speedy Soyuz delivered them to the space station around 8:22 a.m. ET, despite unexpected communications issues that led to Shkaplerov taking manual control of the spacecraft to complete docking with the space station. This added about 10 minutes to the expected docking time.

The Challenge (2022 film).

Also at BBC.

Related: Filming an Action Movie on the Space Station?


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @07:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the sea-monkey dept.

Seahorses are terrible swimmers but great predators:

Seahorses are fish that possess unique properties such as male pregnancy, square tail vertebrae, and, of course, a unique eating system. For most of the day, seahorses are anchored with their tail to seaweeds or corals with their head tilted downward, close to their body. However, when they detect prey passing over them, they lift their head at incredible speed and catch it. According to Prof. Holzman, while preying, seahorses turn their body into a kind of spring: Using their back muscles, they stretch an elastic tendon, and use their neck bones as a "trigger," just like a crossbow. The result is faster than even the fastest muscle contraction found anywhere in the animal world.

However, until now, it was not clear how the spring-loaded mechanism enabled seahorses to eat. Just [ask] anyone who tries to remove a fly from a cup of tea knows, water is a viscous medium and the fish needs to open its mouth to create a flow that draws the prey in. But how do seahorses coordinate snagging in prey with their head movement?

[...] [The] researchers [...] [photographed] their attack at a speed of 4,000 images per second, and using a laser system for imaging water flows. This measurement showed that the 'crossbow' system serves two purposes: facilitating head movement and generating high velocity suction currents—10 times faster than those of similar-sized fish.

Journal Reference:
Avidan, Corrine, Holzman, Roi. Elastic energy storage in seahorses leads to a unique suction flow dynamics compared with other actinopterygians [open], Journal of Experimental Biology (DOI: 10.1242/jeb.236430)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @04:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the thanks-for-your-service dept.

Francis Collins to step down as NIH director

National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins plans to announce his resignation on Tuesday after nearly three decades at the agency, including 12 years at the helm, three sources tell POLITICO.

The 71-year-old physician-geneticist led the agency under three consecutive presidents — making him the first presidentially appointed NIH director to serve in more than one administration and the longest-serving NIH director.

His departure had been in the works for some time, one person familiar said. Officials from NIH, the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Previously: NIH Won't Fund Human Germline Modification
Francis Collins Retains Position as Director of the National Institutes of Health
The Era of Biomedical Research on Chimpanzees in the United States is Effectively Over
2017: Gene Therapy's Milestone Year


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @01:55PM   Printer-friendly

Android 12 Now Available From The Android Open-Source Project

The Android 12 sources have been pushed out to AOSP in officially releasing this newest version of Android. Android 12 features a new user-interface with redesigned widgets and other graphical enhancements, more efficient system performance, more responsive notifications, faster machine learning performance, various privacy enhancements, AVIF image support, a variety of new developer APIs, and many other enhancements throughout the mobile stack.

Android Developers Blog and Ars Technica.

Also at Wccftech.

See also: Android 12 review: it's mostly about the looks


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the was-it-named-"James"? dept.

Researchers measure the breakup of a single chemical bond:

Using advanced microscopy techniques at Princeton University, researchers have recorded the breaking of a single chemical bond between a carbon atom and an iron atom on different molecules.

The team used a high-resolution atomic force microscope (AFM) operating in a controlled environment at Princeton's Imaging and Analysis Center. The AFM probe, whose tip ends in a single copper atom, was moved gradually closer to the iron-carbon bond until it was ruptured. The researchers measured the mechanical forces applied at the moment of breakage, which was visible in an image captured by the microscope. A team from Princeton University, the University of Texas-Austin and ExxonMobil reported the results in a paper published Sept. 24 in Nature Communications.

"It's an incredible image — being able to actually see a single small molecule on a surface with another one bonded to it is amazing," said coauthor Craig Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and director of the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM).

"The fact that we could characterize that particular bond, both by pulling on it and pushing on it, allows us to understand a lot more about the nature of these kinds of bonds — their strength, how they interact — and this has all sorts of implications, particularly for catalysis, where you have a molecule on a surface and then something interacts with it and causes it to break apart," said Arnold.

Nan Yao, a principal investigator of the study and the director of Princeton's Imaging and Analysis Center, noted that the experiments also revealed insights into how bond breaking affects a catalyst's interactions with the surface on which it's adsorbed. Improving the design of chemical catalysts has relevance for biochemistry, materials science and energy technologies, added Yao, who is also a professor of the practice and senior research scholar in PRISM.

Journal Reference:
Nan Yao, Pengcheng Chen, Dingxin Fan, Nem, et al. The Chemical Structure of a Molecule Resolved by Atomic Force Microscopy, Science (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1176210)

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @08:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the Yes! dept.

When blood pressure needs more control, what’s better: An additional drug or more of the same? Study in veterans shows importance of personalizing the approach to intensifying treatment in sustainable ways:

In a look back at data from nearly 179,000 veterans over age 65 who received treatment over two years at VA hospitals nationwide, researchers find that patients have a better chance of sticking to their medication regimen if their doctor maximizes the dosage of one of the drugs they're already taking. They also found that both strategies decrease blood pressure, but adding a new medication has a very slim advantage over increasing the dose of an existing medication, despite some of the patients being unable to stay on the new medication.

In the end, the researchers say, the new findings could add to discussions between physicians and patients whose blood pressure remains elevated despite starting medication treatment.

The findings [...] focus on patients whose initial systolic blood pressure was above 130 mm Hg.

By looking back at VA and Medicare data, the researchers were able to see patterns in treatment and blood pressure readings over time, in a kind of natural experiment. All the patients were taking at least one blood pressure medication at less than the maximum dose and had a treatment intensification at the start of the study period, indicating that their physicians thought they needed more intense treatment.

Because intensification of blood pressure treatment can come with risks -- whether a drug interaction if a new drug is added, or an electrolyte imbalance with high doses, or fainting and falling if a person's pressure gets too low -- such decisions must be carefully made.

Journal Reference:
Carole E. Aubert, Jeremy B. Sussman, Timothy P. Hofer, et al. Adding a New Medication Versus Maximizing Dose to Intensify Hypertension Treatment in Older Adults, Annals of Internal Medicine (DOI: 10.7326/M21-1456)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 05 2021, @05:34AM   Printer-friendly

One in 10 People Frequently Experience Abdominal Pain When They Eat Meals:

Around 11% of the global population (13% of women and 9% of men) frequently experience abdominal pain when they eat meals, according to a survey on over 50,000 people. The research is being presented for the first time today at UEG Week Virtual 2021.[1]

Pain associated with eating appears to be most common in young people aged 18 to 28, with 15% affected, the research found.

Those who experienced frequent abdominal meal-related pain were also more likely to suffer from bloating, a swollen tummy, feeling too full after eating or feeling full up too quickly, constipation and diarrhoea. The same group also had more severe psychological distress and somatic symptoms (that were not gastrointestinal).

A total of 36% of the people with frequent meal-related pain reported suffered from anxiety compared with 25% in the occasional symptoms group and 18 % in those who never experienced meal-related pain. Those with frequent attacks also reported higher rates of depression (35%) compared to 24% in the occasional symptom group and 17% in the group that never had meal-related pain.

Based on the Rome Foundation Global Epidemiology study, the findings were a result of surveying 54,127 people across 26 countries online.

[...] Esther Colomier, study author and a joint PhD researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, explained, “The take home message from this study is that people who experience meal-related abdominal pain more frequently experience other gastrointestinal symptoms and more regularly fulfil criteria for disorders of the gut brain interactions (DGBIs, formerly known as functional gut disorders), including common conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bloating and abdominal distension.”

“They also have a higher burden of psychological and somatic symptoms, such as back pain or shortness of breath, which are associated with major distress and functioning problems. These symptoms cause distress and disruption in daily life”, she added.

Journal Reference:
Ami D. Sperber, Shrikant I. Bangdiwala, Douglas A. Drossman, et al. Worldwide Prevalence and Burden of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders, Results of Rome Foundation Global Study - PubMed, Gastroenterology (DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2020.04.014)


Original Submission