Scienceblogtwo

Geographers frequently go to the past for the answers to what environmental challenges our planet's warming globe will bring about in the future. The pyramids of Giza, one of the most famous man-made structures in the world, were made possible by the environment of ancient Egypt, according to a new study that was published on August 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors of the study discovered that people need the waterway to move tools and other supplies like stones and limestones to the Giza Plateau for pyramid construction on a now-dry arm of the Nile River known as the Khufu branch. Sheisha Hader, a physical geographer at the University of Aix-Marseille in France and the study's principal author, adds that the Nile was an essential resource for ancient Egypt's transportation, food, land for farming, and water supplies.                                      ...

Atoms that are essentially locked in an ordered framework make up solids. On the other hand, atoms in a liquid can freely move past and around one another. But consider atoms that are continually shifting magnetic messes and remain non-frozen, similar to those in a liquid. The result is a quantum spin liquid, a hitherto unheard-of quantum strangeness state of matter. Researchers have now achieved this state in the lab by carefully manipulating atoms. On December 2, the researchers published their findings in the journal Science. For years, scientists had debated several spin liquids ideas. The project's coordinator and one of the paper's authors, Harvard University physicist Giulia Semeghini, adds, "But we really got extremely interested in this when these theorists, here at Harvard, eventually established a mechanism to actually make the quantum spin liquids." The laws of quantum mechanics can twist atoms into a variety of exotica when applied under severe circumstan...

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers recently reported that they had developed a biofilm that could absorb evaporation energy and transform it into electricity. The wearable electronics industry may soon undergo a transformation thanks to this biofilm, which was just described in Nature Communications and could power everything from personal medical sensors to personal electronics. According to Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the paper's primary author, "This is a very intriguing technology." "It is truly green energy, and unlike other purportedly "green energy" sources, the entire process of producing it is green." This is due to the fact that a genetically modified strain of the bacteria Geobacter sulfurreducens naturally produces this biofilm, a thin sheet of bacterial cells roughly the thickness of a sheet of paper. Electr...

For millennia, people have been in awe of volcanoes' incredible power. Tourists descended upon Iceland earlier this month to witness lava flowing from a fissure eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula. After Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010, the so-called "country of fire and ice" experienced a massive surge in visitors. Despite what might seem to be a magnetic pull, volcanic explosions pose a serious threat to people. There is a widespread misunderstanding of the deadly threat that volcanoes offer to society and the entire planet Earth, according to a study published yesterday in Nature by the University of Birmingham and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. Despite the fact that a big eruption poses a greater risk than an asteroid hit, the authors Michael Cassidy and Laura Mani claim that this misperception has caused a general lack of interest in being ready for one. The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcano in Tonga experienced it...

A plateau of shallow ocean was left off Guinea's west coast as a result of the Jurassic Ocean's creation by the separation of Africa and South America. According to Uisdean Nicholson, a marine geologist at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland who researches the area to learn about the formation of the Atlantic, "all the layers are quite flat, almost like a layer cake." How to stream live From preparation to launch, the NASA Artemis mission Thus, in 2017, while Nicholson was reviewing seismic readings of the area made by oil and gas development vessels, a surprising feature—a 5-mile-wide dimple hidden deep in the cake—jumped out. The site is thought to be the crater from a meteor that was as wide as the Eiffel Tower was tall, according to a closer examination of the location led by Nicholson and published today in the journal Science Advances. It would have struck Earth within a million years of the Chicxulub meteor that wiped off the dinosaurs, if it is determined to be...

The numerous black hole mergers discovered by gravitational wave observatories show that black holes collide far more often than previously believed. Black holes can now merge swiftly, according to new study, if they are trapped in the accretion disk of a supermassive partner. Astrophysically speaking, it is not difficult to bring two black holes together. They either randomly come across one another in the depths of interstellar space, or they are born that way as the children of a binary star system. They can continue to circle each other indefinitely once in orbit. Astronomers were aware that binary orbiting black holes inevitably met their demise even before the gravitational waves from merging black holes were discovered. We are aware that practically every galaxy in the cosmos has a massive black hole at its heart and that enormous galaxies form as a result of several smaller galaxies joining together. However, most galaxies only have one massive black hole, which suggests that i...

People experience alertness and sleepiness in waves during the course of a day. In reality, a 24-hour regularity of their body temperature governs this experience to some extent. Bioengineers from The University of Texas at Austin have now created a novel mattress and pillow system that employs warmth and cooling to signal the body when it is time to sleep. Sleep is induced when the body temperature dips at night as part of the 24-hour cycle. Due to the stimulation of the new mattress, people may be able to fall asleep more easily and have higher-quality sleep. Shahab Haghayegh, a research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, who oversaw the creation of the mattress at UT Austin while pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, explained that they "facilitate the readiness to fall asleep by manipulating internal body temperature-sensitive sensors to briefly adjust the thermostat of the body so it thinks the temper...

Researchers from Santa Clara University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the University of Hong Kong have successfully used deep reinforcement learning to teach microrobots how to swim, representing a significant advancement in the field of microswimming. The creation of artificial microswimmers that can travel the globe in a manner akin to naturally occurring swimming microorganisms, including bacteria, has generated a great deal of attention. These microswimmers hold promise for a wide range of upcoming biomedical applications, including microsurgery and tailored medication administration. However, the majority of artificial microswimmers available today can only carry out a limited set of fixed locomotory gaits. The researchers reasoned that microswimmers may learn and adapt to changing environments using AI in their work, which was published in Communications Physics. Similar to how humans learning to swim need reinforcement learning and feedback to stay afloat and move in ...

By successfully creating creatures that can generate the sperm of several species, biologists have moved one step closer to creating animals that can reproduce solely through their DNA. And although it may be possible to revive extinct species or even reestablish endangered species populations, don't worry—Jurassic Park will probably remain a work of fiction. In infertile hybrid mice, rat sperm can be produced, according to recent study that was just published in Stem Cell Reports. Blastocyst complementation, the research authors' method of incorporating synthetic stem cells from one species into embryos of another species, offers the potential to save endangered species, albeit the method still needs to be refined. Creating at-risk species' eggs and sperm in a lab might be a new way to increase population size if they are unable to sustain healthy levels. Pluripotent stem cells, in particular, were utilised in the team's technique. All types of cells can be created fro...

The International Space Station (ISS), which has provided scientific research for more than two decades, is anticipated to say its last goodbye. We have been able to learn more about the Earth, the solar system, and other things thanks to the research hub. Researchers have carried out thousands of tests and studies, from tracking the birth of stars to comprehending the effects of space travel on the human body, during the more than 200 astronaut visits to the station. Nearly all of the main scientific disciplines have been impacted by and changed by this space laboratory. The scientific explorer Boaty McBoatface has been quite active. NASA revealed plans for the station's ultimate retirement in 2031 earlier this year, but it's doubtful that the 450-ton lab will be destroyed overnight. Most defunct satellites drift out of orbit when they cease to function, where they eventually burn up in the atmosphere. However, the majority of the ISS will descend towards Point Nemo, a far-flu...

Per Sederberg, a cognitive scientist at the University of Virginia, offers a fun experiment you can perform at home. Take out your smartphone and speak the word "octopus" as slowly as you can using a voice assistant, such the one for Google's search engine. It will be difficult for your gadget to repeat what you just stated. It can offer you a meaningless response or something resembling anything but still odd, like "toe pus." Gross! The fact is, according to Sederberg, that existing artificial intelligence is still a little deaf when it comes to receiving aural cues as humans and other animals do, despite all of the computer power devoted to the endeavor by tech giants like Google, Deep Mind, IBM, and Microsoft. For people who struggle with their speech, the results can be anything from amusing and somewhat aggravating to downright alienating. However, UVA joint research has made it feasible to transform current AI neural networks into technology that can actua...

For hundreds of years, wild horses have grazed freely over the island of Assateague off the coasts of Maryland and Virginia, but it is still unclear how they arrived there. In a recent investigation, it was discovered that the ancient DNA taken from a cow tooth from one of Spain's earliest Caribbean colonies in the 16th century really came from a horse. Old folktales that claim horses were marooned on Assateague when a Spanish galleon sank seem to be more true than not, according to DNA analysis. The past of a barrier island off the coastlines of Virginia and Maryland has been rewritten as a result of an abandoned Caribbean colony discovered centuries after it had been forgotten and a case of mistaken identification in the archaeological record. When Nicolas Delsol, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum of Natural History, set out to examine ancient DNA extracted from cow bones discovered at archaeological sites, these ostensibly unconnected strands came together. The gen...

We humans have always liked the sport of speculating about the end of mankind. We create religions based on our eschatological dreams, produce dystopian novels based on our anxieties, and even compose music that predicts the end of the world as we know it. So it's astonishing that potential global disasters are so understudied in the face of an intensifying global climate crisis, one that affects everything from human health to the sustainability of entire ecosystems and their resources. In a research recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is suggested that it is past time that we begin considering worst-case scenarios and develop a sound game plan for what will happen if — or rather, when — our existing way of life crumbles. "Every mass extinction event has been influenced by climate change. It has influenced history and helped bring down civilizations. Even the contemporary world appears to have found its climate niche "Luke Kemp, ...