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ElizabethGreene writes:

From Becky Ferreira at Vice:

Scientists believe they have identified the oldest fossils on Earth, dating back at least 3.75 billion years and possibly even 4.2 billion years, in rocks found at a remote location in northern Québec, Canada, according to a new study.

If the structures in these rocks are biological in origin, it would push the timeline of life on our planet back by 300 million years at a minimum, and could potentially show that the earliest known organisms are barely younger than Earth itself.

These presumed microbial fossils were originally collected by Dominic Papineau, an associate professor in geochemistry and astrobiology at University College London, during a 2008 expedition to Québec's Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt, a formation that contains some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Papineau and his colleagues reported their discovery in a 2017 paper published in Nature, which sparked a debate over whether the tubes and filaments preserved in the rocks were a result of biological or geological processes.

[...] In the wake of skepticism about the claims of their 2017 study, Papineau and his colleagues employed a host of new techniques to clarify the nature of the mysterious structures in the Canadian rock.

[...] "We don't have any DNA, of course, that survived these geological timescales, with the heat and pressure that the rock has suffered," Papineau said. "But what we can say, on the basis of morphology, is that these microfossils resemble those that are made by the modern microbacterium called Mariprofundus ferrooxydans."

Journal Reference:
Dominic Papineau, Zhenbing She, Matthew S. Dodd, et al., Metabolically diverse primordial microbial communities in Earth's oldest seafloor-hydrothermal jasper [open], Sci. Adv., 8, 15, 2022.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2296

Previously: Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth Found in 3.77-4.28 Billion Year Old Fossils

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Images of Zelenskyy show the physical toll that trauma and stress can have on the body:

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toured the devastation in Bucha this month — where bodies of civilians lay in the street and buildings were destroyed — his haunted face seemed to show the toll of Russia's war in Ukraine.

The 44-year-old's normally shaved face was bearded and lined, his forehead scrunched in distress and his eyes with heavy bags underneath.

They are the hallmark physical signs that can appear on anyone who is going through intense trauma and stress — particularly in wartime, according to Glenn Patrick Doyle, a psychologist who specializes in trauma.

[...] "The thing to understand about trauma and the body is that stress responses kind of hijack every otherwise 'normal' function of our body," he says. "The bodily processes that keep us focused and regulated on a normal day get kind of suspended for the duration of the stressor and replaced with processes designed to help us just get through the stressful experience."

[...] Much has been written about the way U.S. presidents seem to age while in office. Often, images from the time they entered office and those from their final days at the White House are compared. The presidents often display more lines, much more gray hair or heavier bags under the eyes than they did on their first days in the White House.

[...] When we experience physical or emotional stress, the human body produces cortisol, the primary stress hormone. It contributes to the physical changes of the body under long-term stress, Dr. Nicole Colgrove, a specialist in otolaryngology at Virginia Hospital Center, told NPR.

Cortisol accelerates the loss of elasticity in skin, leading to a sagging or sunken appearance, she says. It also contributes to hair turning gray or white under intense stress.

Just Say No To 666 writes:

Patrick Paumen causes a stir whenever he pays for something in a shop or restaurant. This is because the 37-year-old doesn't need to use a bank card or his mobile phone to pay. Instead, he simply places his left hand near the contactless card reader, and the payment goes through.

[...] He is able to pay using his hand because back in 2019 he had a contactless payment microchip injected under his skin.

[...] And when it comes to implantable payment chips, British-Polish firm, Walletmor, says that last year it became the first company to offer them for sale.

[...] The technology Walletmor uses is near-field communication or NFC, the contactless payment system in smartphones. Other payment implants are based on radio-frequency identification (RFID), which is the similar technology typically found in physical contactless debit and credit cards.

"Chip implants contain the same kind of technology that people use on a daily basis," he says, "From key fobs to unlock doors, public transit cards like the London Oyster card, or bank cards with contactless payment function.

"The reading distance is limited by the small antenna coil inside the implant. The implant needs to be within the electromagnetic field of a compatible RFID [or NFC] reader. Only when there is a magnetic coupling between the reader and the transponder can the implant can be read."

[...] Yet the issue with such chips, (and what causes concern), is whether in the future they become ever more advanced, and packed full of a person's private data. And, in turn, whether this information is secure, and if a person could indeed be tracked.

Financial technology expert Theodora Lau asks "How much are we willing to pay, for the sake of convenience?" she says. "Where do we draw the line when it comes to privacy and security? Who will be protecting the critical infrastructure, and the humans that are part of it?"

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upstart writes:

Vivo announces its first folding phone:

Vivo has announced the X Fold, its first folding phone. The X Fold takes a similar approach to Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold series and its competitors, with a large 8.03-inch folding screen on the inside for tablet-style use and a more conventional phone-sized screen — in this case, 6.53 inches — on the outside.

[...] Beyond its folding capabilities, the Vivo X Fold sports recognizably flagship specs. It's powered by Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and has a 4,600mAh battery that can be charged at 50W wirelessly or at 66W using a cable. Both its screens support up to a 120Hz refresh rate and have ultrasonic fingerprint scanners built into them.

What are your thoughts on folding phones? Will the extra screen space be useful, are they an opportunity for planned obsolescence or will it just be another fad?

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upstart writes:

From CODA to Hawkeye, the surge of sign languages on screen is a sign of better things to come for the Deaf community:

When Troy Kotsur was awarded Best Supporting Actor at the recent Academy Awards, he dedicated his win to the Deaf community. CODA went on to win Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, making it a major step forward for the Academy's recognition of marginalized storytelling.

CODA, an acronym for Child Of Deaf Adults, follows the story of teenager Ruby Rossi. She dreams of being a singer, but is trapped by her Deaf family's dependence on her as their interpreter. Torn between her familial burdens and her longing to fit into hearing culture, Ruby struggles to convince her family to support her own goals.

[...] What makes CODA groundbreaking as a film for deaf people is not the narrative itself, but the accessibility. CODA is one of the first major features where the captions are "burned in" or hard-coded on every screen.

[...] Recently there have been more calls for open-captioned cinema sessions, where subtitles appear at the bottom of the big screen, but these are still few and far between. Hearing audiences are growing more accustomed to reading captions: as Bong Joon-Ho said of his own Best Picture winner Parasite: "Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."

Captions are perfectly normal outside the English-speaking world, where most cinemas will show Hollywood movies with captions. The booming popularity of streaming services has normalized captions on our TV screens, especially as we gain easy access to more international productions. Even the quality of transcription and translation has fallen under scrutiny, as we saw with the different caption track options in Squid Game.

No matter how well Deaf people are represented on the screen, a lack of captioning creates an unequal language barrier for deaf viewers. Until the films and shows themselves are accessible, storytelling continues to favor and center hearing people's experience.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dead Sunspot Explosion Spits Plasma Toward Earth:

The Sun just hurled debris from a dead sunspot toward Earth, and the superheated material is supposed to arrive at our planet on Thursday (don't worry—you won't feel it).

On Monday, an old and dying sunspot dubbed AR2987 exploded, sending a mass ejection of material from the Sun into space, Space Weather reported. That material may cause a geomagnetic storm when it reaches Earth.

[...] The CME¹ is expected to reach Earth on April 14, according to predictions made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The impact with Earth's atmosphere could trigger a G-2 geomagnetic storm. Storms are rated from G-1 to G-5, so a G-2 level storm is considered fairly moderate. The geomagnetic storm could potentially cause some minor disruptions to power grids or orbiting satellites, in addition to auroras that may be visible at lower latitudes than usual.

¹Coronal Mass Ejection

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Etsy is an American e-commerce company that allows small businesses or individuals to set up online storefronts, particularly those who make handmade or custom goods. They want to be the marketplace for "unique and creative goods." They claim to host 5.3 million sellers, but this week thousands of those sellers are closing their storefronts for a week to protest some recently imposed changes.

Earlier this year, Etsy's CEO Josh Silverman announced that starting April 11 the company would increase the 5% transaction fee for sellers to 6.5%. This was done to fund improvements in marketing, and seller tools, among other changes, Silverman said.

[...] In response, Etsy sellers banded together and launched a campaign, urging other artisans and their customers to abandon the site for one week in protest. Organizers said more than 5,000 shops pledged to participate this week.

[...] This isn't a strike in the legal or traditional term. So, there won't be any physical picket lines. The sellers aren't workers, Etsy isn't their employer, and they aren't covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

[...] Nicole Lewis, who runs her own Etsy shop, defended the company. She called on artists to raise prices and do other things to cut costs, not to attack the company.

"If this fee increase is making you nervous, your prices are not correct," she told NPR. "There are so many things that sellers can be doing behind the scenes on their end ... that can cut down these costs drastically."

There are other contentious issues. Sellers say they are seeing more and more reseller shops that steal their designs. Etsy also uses their products in advertisements without their knowledge and if a sale is made, they have to pay Etsy a cut. The company says that the new fee structure is necessary to raise the money to address all these complaints even though Etsy reported revenue of $717 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, which was $32 million more than analysts were expecting.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Professor theorises electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms could be similar to human language

Mathematical analysis of the electrical signals fungi seemingly send to one another has identified patterns that bear a striking structural similarity to human speech.

Previous research has suggested that fungi conduct electrical impulses through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae – similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans.

Prof Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England’s unconventional computing laboratory in Bristol used tiny microelectrodes to investigate patterns of electrical spikes transmitted through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae generated by four species of fungi. He noted that the pulses changed depending upon the surface the fungi are in contact with. He found that the spikes often clustered into trains of activity, resembling vocabularies of up to 50 words, and that the distribution of these “fungal word lengths” closely matched those of human languages.

[...] The most likely reasons for these waves of electrical activity are to maintain the fungi’s integrity – analogous to wolves howling to maintain the integrity of the pack – or to report newly discovered sources of attractants and repellants to other parts of their mycelia, Adamtzky suggested.

“There is also another option – they are saying nothing,” he said. “Propagating mycelium tips are electrically charged, and, therefore, when the charged tips pass in a pair of differential electrodes, a spike in the potential difference is recorded.”

Whatever these “spiking events” represent, they do not appear to be random, he added.

In discussing these results, Dan Bebber, an associate professor of biosciences at the University of Exeter, and a member of the British Mycological Society’s fungal biology research committee said, “Though interesting, the interpretation as language seems somewhat overenthusiastic, and would require far more research and testing of critical hypotheses before we see ‘Fungus’ on Google Translate.”

Journal Reference:
Andrew Adamatzky, Language of fungi derived from their electrical spiking activity [open], R. Soc. Open Sci. 9: 211926.
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211926

Original Submission

hubie writes:

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.

The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.

The behemoth comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. But not to worry. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won't be until the year 2031.

The previous record holder is comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to be 60 miles across. It was discovered in 2002 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project.

"This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system," said David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and co-author of the new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We've always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. Now we confirm it is."

The comet has an orbital period of about three million years and has been falling towards the Sun for the last million. This observation gives valuable insight into the size distribution of comets in the Oort Cloud and hence its total mass, estimates for which vary widely.

Also see the NASA press release video.

Journal Reference:
Man-To Hui (許文韜), et. al.,Hubble Space Telescope Detection of the Nucleus of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (DOI: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac626a)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

China is planning its first satellite mission to search the Milky Way for exoplanets orbiting stars just like the Sun. The mission goal is to find the first Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star just like the Sun. Such a planet, called an Earth 2.0, would have the right conditions for liquid water and have the potential to harbor life. Although more than 5000 exoplanets were found with NASA's Kepler telescope before it ran out of fuel in 2018, none fit the definition of an Earth 2.0.

Exoplanets are found by looking for stellar brightnesses to dim as a planet passes in front. An Earth 2.0 candidate would have an orbital period of about a year and would thus pass in front of its star once a year. You want about three passes to get a decent determination of the oribit, so you need to be observing the same stars for more than three years. The Kepler mission suffered a failure early in its mission that prevented staring at the same spot for long periods of time, so it wasn't possible to determine precise orbits for the explanets it discovered. This new mission will search the same patch of sky with more telescopes gather more data to allow orbits to be calculated.

With Earth 2.0, astronomers could have another four years of data that, when combined with Kepler's observations, could help to confirm which exoplanets are truly Earth-like. "I am very excited about the prospect of returning to the Kepler field," says Christiansen, who hopes to study Earth 2.0's data if they are made available.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Senate bill that has Big Tech scared:

If you want to know how worried an industry is about a piece of pending legislation, a decent metric is how apocalyptic its predictions are about what the bill would do. By that standard, Big Tech is deeply troubled by the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.

The infelicitously named bill is designed to prevent dominant online platforms—like Apple and Facebook and, especially, Google and Amazon—from giving themselves an advantage over other businesses that must go through them to reach customers. As one of two antitrust bills voted out of committee by a strong bipartisan vote (the other would regulate app stores), it may be this Congress' best, even only, shot to stop the biggest tech companies from abusing their gatekeeper status.

But according to the tech giants and their lobbyists and front groups, the bill, which was introduced by Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, respectively the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, would be a disaster for the American consumer. In an ongoing publicity push against it, they have claimed that it would ruin Google search results, bar Apple from offering useful features on iPhones, force Facebook to stop moderating content, and even outlaw Amazon Prime. It's all pretty alarming. Is any of it true?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Huge Impact May Be Why The Moon's Near And Far Sides Differ So Much:

When spacecraft first journeyed around the Moon, something unexpected was revealed: the far side has almost none of the lava flows we call seas or maria, which dominate what we can see from Earth.

For almost 60 years, astronomers have sought to explain the discrepancy with many different theories. A new model proposes the answer lies in the Moon's largest and deepest impact crater.

The lunar seas are the result of immense lava flows that erupted recently enough they have not been completely covered in craters. The puzzle is why there were so many more such eruptions on one hemisphere than the other.

A new study in the journal Science Advances proposes that the formation of the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin triggered a heat plume in the lunar interior that produced the imbalance. The SPA is among the Solar System's largest impact basins, with a metal structure beneath that may be the asteroid that formed it. The SPA is not as well known as smaller lunar craters, both because it's on the far side, and its immense age (4.3 billion years) means subsequent impacts have partially obscured it.

[...] For much of the time since the absence of seas on the far side was discovered, attempts to explain the difference centered on the relationship of the two hemispheres to Earth. Examples include efforts to explain how Earth's gravitational field could have produced greater activity on the lunar near side, or the planet's bulk blocked incoming asteroids, reducing cratering.

However, if the study authors are right, it's all a coincidence, a consequence of where the impact that caused the SPA happened to take place.

Journal Reference:
Matt J. Jones, et. al., A South Pole–Aitken impact origin of the lunar compositional asymmetry, (DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm8475)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Eric Weinstein is well known for captivating and thought-provoking opinions in theoretical physics and has commented on Bitcoin maximalism.

In one statement in 2021, Weinstein referred to Bitcoiners as "the logical saviors of physics," outlining his conversation focusing on the physics behind the protocol.

The conversation painted a not-so-evident framing of centralization that inevitably leads to Bitcoin changing the world.

Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital and host of "The Portal" podcast, took the main stage at Bitcoin 2022 to discuss fixing the monetary systems of humanity. Weinstein was joined by Abraham (Avi) Loeb, an Israel-American theoretical physicist and professor of science at Harvard University.

Weinstein has been known to have interesting views when it comes to Bitcoin. One Twitter thread from 2021 got particularly interesting when Weinstein was asked to become a Bitcoiner by another user, to which he replied, "No. Your job is to liberate physics. Mine, to liberate you."

Weinstein continued to write, "I would however come to any credible meeting about freeing Satoshi's genius from the loss of anonymity to the ledger that is the blockchain."

That comment reads as adversarial, yet in the same tweet, Weinstein stated, "Bitcoiners are the logical saviors of physics." This takes us to his conversation with Loeb at Bitcoin 2022, the aforementioned "credible meeting" at which they discussed not only the possibility of Bitcoin's success, but the need for it to save us all.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/eric-weinstein-and-avi-loeb-breaking-physics-and-changing-the-world

Original Submission

upstart writes:

World's first LED lights developed from rice husks:

Milling rice to separate the grain from the husks produces about 100 million tons of rice husk waste globally each year. Scientists searching for a scalable method to fabricate quantum dots have developed a way to recycle rice husks to create the first silicon quantum dot (QD) LED light. Their new method transforms agricultural waste into state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes in a low-cost, environmentally friendly way.

[...] "Since typical QDs often involve toxic material, such as cadmium, lead, or other heavy metals, environmental concerns have been frequently deliberated when using nanomaterials. Our proposed process and fabrication method for QDs minimizes these concerns," said Ken-ichi Saitow, lead study author and a professor of chemistry at Hiroshima University.

[...] Aware of the environmental concerns surrounding the current quantum dots, the researchers set out to find a new method for fabricating quantum dots that has a positive environmental impact. Waste rice husks, it turns out, are an excellent source of high-purity silica (SiO2) and value-added Si powder.

upstart writes:

Chipotle Sets To Debut Chip-Making Robots To Mitigate Labor Shortage:

Chipotle Mexican Grill is experimenting with a new tortilla chip robot that would help it offset labor shortages amid the Great Resignation.

Miso Robotics CEO Michael Bell told Fox News' Neil Cavuto Friday that his company partnered with Chipotle to develop a chip-making robot as the fast-food company struggles with the current labor shortage. He said, "automation is the solution."

[...] So far, tests at Chipotle's innovation lab in Irvine, California, have gone great. The robot, named "Chippy," is set to debut at an undisclosed location in southern California.

Chippy has proven itself to follow Chipotle's tortilla chip recipe accurately.

[...] This is just another example of how the labor shortage is ushering in investment in automation by major corporations to displace low-skill/low-wage human workers. At this rate, by the end of this decade, one would suspect many fast-food restaurants would have some to all of their kitchens automated, a move to drive down costs.

Original Submission