News Feeds

A study suggests that a computer-generated breathing coach could be as effective as sessions with a human trainer.

A study suggests that a computer-generated breathing coach could be as effective as sessions with a human trainer.

Muon spin rotation ( SR) spectroscopy is a powerful technique used to study the behavior of materials at the atomic level. In this study, researchers employed SR to examine phosphorus-containing 12-phosphatetraphene 1 molecule (muoniated radical). Their findings provide new insights into the radical's structure and behavior, advancing understanding of reactive species and radical behavior.

A nanotechnology-based drug delivery system developed to save patients from repeated surgeries has proved to have unexpectedly long-lasting benefits in lab tests -- a promising sign for its potential to help human patients.

Researchers developed a new optical system that uses holograms to encode information, creating a level of encryption that traditional methods cannot penetrate.

Researchers developed a new optical system that uses holograms to encode information, creating a level of encryption that traditional methods cannot penetrate.

Researchers have shown that plumes of wildfire smoke can carry contaminants hundreds of kilometers, leaving a toxic and lingering footprint which has the potential to be re-released into the environment.

Researchers verified the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect, i.e., the influence of chiral molecules on spin, using spintronic analytical techniques.

Researchers report that a more efficient and environmentally friendly form of refrigeration might be on the horizon. The new technology is based on thermogalvanic cells that produce a cooling effect by way of a reversible electrochemical reaction. Thermogalvanic refrigeration is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than other cooling methods because it requires a far lower energy input, and its scalability means that it could be used for various applications -- from wearable cooling devices to industrial-grade scenarios.

Zaps of static electricity might be a wintertime annoyance, but to certain scientists, they represent an untapped source of energy. Using a device called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy using triboelectric effect static. Many TENGs contain expensive, specially fabricated materials, but one team has instead used inexpensive store-bought tape, plastic and aluminum metal.

Researchers have developed a recyclable alternative to a durable class of plastics used for items like car tires, replacement hip joints and bowling balls.

Some US states may see the number of power cuts caused by hurricanes jump by 60 per cent by 2100 in a high-emissions scenario, affecting tens of millions each decade

People receiving talking therapy for mild to severe depression reported greater improvements to their symptoms when also taking creatine compared with those on a placebo

Today’s photos come from Phil Frymire, who sends us birds photographed in South Africa. Phil’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Moving on from my previous submissions of mammals, here is a selection of birds from an August trip to South Africa. Lilac-breasted rollers are unforgettable, but I am a bit fuzzy on some of the other identifications. I forgot some of them and had to look them up online. Hopefully readers can make corrections if any errors remain.

Red-crested korhaan (Lophotis ruficrista):

Magpie shrike (Urolestes melanoleucus)

A pair of African fish eagles (Haliaeetus vocifer):

White-backed vulture (Gyps africanus), waiting for lions to leave a giraffe kill:

This is a poor photo of a black-headed oriole (Oriolus larvatus). This bird is a beautiful bright yellow. This was the only one we saw and it was quite skittish:

African green pigeon (Treron calvus):

White-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides), perched on some elephant dung:

A gaggle of Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca):

Hooded vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus), waiting for lions to abandon a buffalo kill:

Crested barbet (Trachyphonus vaillantii):

Helmeted guinea fowl (Numisa meleagris):

This is a saddle-billed stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis). The first time I saw one I thought it must have an injury on its breast. No, the bare red spot is typical for the species:

Last, but certainly not least, my favorite bird seen on the trip, three lilac-breasted rollers (Coracias caudatus) [: This is my favorite African bird, too!]

Burn marks left on trees show that fires occurred frequently in North America from 1750 to 1880, but they tended to be less severe than modern fires and may have even been beneficial to forests

Everything, apparently, has a second life on TikTok. At least this keeps us skeptics busy – we have to redebunk everything we have debunked over the last century because it is popping up again on social media, confusing and misinforming another generation. This video is a great example – a short video discussing the “incorruptibility’ of St. Teresa of Avila. This is mainly a Catholic thing (but also the Eastern Orthodox Church) – the notion that the bodies of saints do not decompose, but remain in a pristine state after death, by divine intervention. This is considered a miracle, and for a time was a criterion for sainthood.

The video features Carlos Eire, a Yale professor of history focusing on medieval religious history. You may notice that the video does not include any shots of the actual body of St. Teresa. I could not find any online. Her body is not on display like some incorruptibles, but has been exhumed in 1914 and again recently. So we only have the reports of the examiners. This is where much of the confusion is generated – the church defines incorruptible very differently than the believers who then misrepresent the actual evidence. Essentially, if the soft tissues are preserved in any way (so the corpse has not completely skeletonized) and remains somewhat flexible, that’s good enough.

The case of Teresa is typical – one of the recent examiners said, “There is no color, there is no skin color, because the skin is mummified, but you can see it, especially the middle of the face.” So the body is mummified and you can only partly make out the face. That is probably not what most believers imagine when the think of miraculous incorruptibility.

This is the same story over and over – first hand accounts of actual examiners describe a desiccated corpse, in some state of mummification. Whenever they are put on display, that is exactly what you see. Sometimes body parts (like feet or hands) are cut off and preserved separately as relics. Often a wax or metal mask is placed over the face because the appearance may be upsetting to some of the public. The wax masks can be made to look very lifelike, and some viewers may think they are looking at the actual corpse. But the narrative among believers is often very different.

It has also been found that there are many very natural factors that correlate with the state of the allegedly incorruptible bodies. A team of researchers from the University of Pisa explored the microenvironments of the tombs:

“They discovered that small differences in temperature, moisture, and construction techniques lead to some tombs producing naturally preserved bodies while others in the same church didn’t. Now you can debate God’s role in choosing which bodies went into which tombs before these differences were known, but I’m going to stick with the corpses. Once the incorrupt bodies were removed from these climates or if the climates changed, they deteriorated.”

The condition of the bodies seems to be an effect of the environment, not the saintliness of the person in life.

It is also not a secret – though not advertised by promoters of miraculous incorruptibility – that the bodies are often treated in order to preserve them. This goes beyond controlling the environment. Some corpses are treated with acid as a preservative, or oils or sealed with wax.

When you examine each case in detail, or the phenomenon as a whole, what you find is completely consistent with what naturally happens to bodies after death. Most decay completely to skeletons. However, in the right environment, some may be naturally mummified and may partly or completely not go through putrefaction. But if their environment is changed they may then proceed to full decay. And bodies are often treated to help preserve them. There is simply no need for anything miraculous to explain any of these cases.

There is also a good rule of thumb for any such miraculous or supernatural claim – if there were actually cases of supernatural preservation, we would all have seen it. This would be huge news, and you would not have to travel to some church in Italy to get a few of an encased corpse covered by a wax mask.

As a side note, and at the risk of sounding irreverent, I wonder if any maker of a zombie film considered having the corpse of an incorruptible animate. If done well, that could be a truly horrific scene.

The post Incorruptible Skepticism first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Sometimes, the best innovative ideas come from synthesizing two previous ones. We’ve reported before on the idea of having a balloon explore the atmosphere of Venus, and we closely watched the progress of the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) as part of the Perseverance rover on Mars. When you combine the two, you can solve many of the challenges facing balloon exploration of Venus’ upper atmosphere – the most habitable place in the solar system other than Earth. That is the plan for Dr. Michael Hecht, the principal investigator of the MOXIE system and professor at MIT, and his team for the Exploring Venus with Electrolysis (EVE) project, which recently received as NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I grant as part of the 2025 NIAC awards.

Current ideas for balloon missions to Venus face two challenges. First, the buoyant gas they must use to stay afloat leaks out over time, limiting the mission duration. Second, they must carry large amounts of batteries to ensure their electronics (and, in some ways, the gases) can endure Venus’s 50-hour night cycle. If the gases inside the balloon get too cold, they depressurize, decreasing the balloon’s altitude.

Using a system akin to MOXIE would solve both of those problems. MOXIE famously created oxygen on Mars by splitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into carbon monoxide and oxygen by using a process called solid oxide electrolysis (SOE). Despite that project coming to an end, it showed the proof of concept that where there is carbon dioxide, we can make oxygen, even on other planets.

Technology has to be tough to last on Venus, as Fraser explains.

There is plenty of carbon dioxide in Venus’ upper atmosphere – in fact, that is primarily what the atmosphere there is composed of. Notably, both carbon monoxide and oxygen, the components the SOE process creates, are lighter than the carbon dioxide they’re created from. In other words, in Venus’ atmosphere, the outputs of the SOE process are buoyant.

But that’s not all – in an interview with Fraser, Dr. Hecht describes another advantage of using the SOE system. “When people ask me how MOXIE works, I always describe it as fuel cell running backwards” he said. But, during the Venusian night, “you could take some fraction, maybe 10% of the carbon monoxide and oxygen that you made during daytime and run it through the instrument backwards to get power a night.”

Not only would EVE get an unlimited amount of buoyant gases from the SOE process, but it would also essentially get unlimited electricity, even without sunlight and without the need for heavy batteries that would otherwise weigh it down. Other advantages include using carbon monoxide as a propellant for other powered aircraft for which the balloon could serve as a base station. Plenty of ideas come to mind when exploring the use cases of this platform.

There’s so much we don’t know about our sister planet – Fraser suggests we need to go back.

Doing this process on Venus has some added advantages as well. Given the thickness of the atmosphere, especially compared to Mars, the SOE system in Venus’ atmosphere would just need a fan rather than the miniaturized compressive pump used in the MOXIE system on Perseverance. Also, since Venus is much closer to the Sun, during the daytime, there will be abundant solar power to power the system, whereas on Mars, solar power is still an option, but the Perseverance rover ran off a radioisotope thermal generator instead.

Venus does have some unique challenges, though – there is also sulfuric acid, though not much of it, in the atmosphere. Dr. Hecht mentioned the need for a protective coating, like Teflon, on the components that would be exposed to the atmosphere. He didn’t seem worried about the mass increase either, mentioning, “How much mass is in your nonstick pan from the Teflon coating?”

However, a balancing act has to happen with the SOE process itself. Dr. Hecht mentions in his NIAC proposal the goal of a 75% conversion efficiency between CO2 and Oxygen/CO. If aiming for more than that – say 100% efficiency –  some of the CO created as part of the process is also electrolyzed, and the instrument becomes clogged with pure carbon (i.e., soot).

Fraser’s original interview with Dr. Hecht about the MOXIE system.

However, at the 75% efficiency range (which admittedly is about 3x more efficient than MOXIE was), the buoyancy of the oxygen and a combination of the leftover CO2 and CO is about equal, so you could split the two gas streams into separate chambers and have equal buoyancy, without tipping it one way or another.

Overall, this seems like an eminently practical solution to a problem with a long-standing idea in the future of Venus exploration. But why stop there? Dr. Hecht also mentioned that such a system would theoretically work on Titan and on other planets and moons with thick atmospheres. As EVE moves through the NIAC phases and the team starts detailed technical work on it, humanity will get closer to a technology that could revolutionize the exploration of our nearest planetary neighbor. 

Learn More:
NASA / Michael Hecht – Exploring Venus with Electrolysis (EVE)
UT – Perseverance Successfully Extracts Oxygen From the Martian Atmosphere. About 10 Minutes of Breathing Time for an Astronaut
UT – A Balloon Mission that Could Try to Confirm Life On Venus
UT – The Best Way to Learn About Venus Could Be With a Fleet of Balloons

Lead Image:
Artist concept highlighting the novel approach proposed by the 2025 NIAC awarded selection of Exploring Venus with Electrolysis (EVE)
Credit – NASA/Michael Hecht

The post A Balloon Mission That Could Explore Venus Indefinitely appeared first on Universe Today.

Please recognize that you are now influencing the national public health policy and understand that being in authority is a very different job than simply questioning authority

The post An Open Letter to Dr. Vinay Prasad first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The study of asteroid samples is a highly lucrative area of research and one of the best ways to determine how the Solar System came to be. Given that asteroids are leftover material from the formation of the Solar System, they are likely to contain vital clues about how several key processes took place. This includes how water, organic molecules, and the building blocks of life were distributed throughout the Solar System billions of years ago. For this reason, space agencies have attached a high importance to the retrieval of asteroid samples that are returned to Earth for analysis.

This includes NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. This spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid (101955) Bennu on December 3rd, 2018, returning 121.6 grams of material (the largest sample ever) to Earth by September 2023. A recent analysis by scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center revealed molecules key to life on Earth, including all five nitrogen bases – molecules required for building DNA and RNA. These findings support the theory that asteroids could have delivered the building blocks of life to Earth in the distant past.

The research was led by Daniel P. Glavin and Jason P. Dworkin, two senior scientists with the Solar System Exploration Division (SSED) at NASA Goddard. They were joined by multiple colleagues from the SSED, the Goddard Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology (CRESST), the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES) at the NASA Johnson Space Center, and multiple universities and institutes. Their findings were presented in papers that appeared in Nature and Nature Astronomy.

A poster depicting all the compounds discovered in the OSIRIS-REx sample. ©NASA

Their results represent the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples. Among the most compelling detections (reported in the Nature Astronomy paper) were 14 of the 20 amino acids life on Earth uses to make up protein cells. They also detected five nucleobases vital to DNA and RNA, which most complex lifeforms on Earth use to store and transmit genetic instructions, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins. As Associate Administrator Nicky Fox of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters explained in a NASA press release:

“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system. Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”

The teams also reported exceptionally high abundances of ammonia in the Bennu samples and formaldehyde. Ammonia is an important component in biology since it can react with formaldehyde to form complex molecules like amino acids. These building blocks have previously been detected in other rocky bodies, including meteorites retrieved on Earth. However, the way OSIRIS-REx found them in pristine condition on an asteroid supports the theory that objects that formed far from the Sun could have delivered the raw material for life throughout the Solar System. Said Glavin:

“The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment. That’s why some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, meticulous contamination-control measures, and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”

Illustration of the asteroid Bennu. Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Glavin and Dworkin’s team analyzed the Bennu samples for hints of compounds related to life on Earth. Meanwhile, Tim McCoy and Sara Russell, the curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and a cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London (respectively), looked for evidence of where these molecules formed. As they reported in the study appearing in Nature, they discovered hints that they came from an ancient prebiotic environment.

These included traces of 11 minerals ranging from calcite to halite and sylvite, compounds that form from salts dissolved in water that become solid crystals (brines) once the water dissolves. Evidence of similar brines have been detected on Ceres, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and other bodies in the Solar System. While scientists have also detected brines in meteorites that fell to Earth, they have never seen a complete set created by an evaporation process that could have lasted thousands of years or more. Moreover, some minerals found in Bennu have never been detected in other extraterrestrial samples.

Another analysis was carried out by members of the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team, including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Hokkaido University, Keio University, Kyushu University, and Tohoku University. Together, they analyzed a 17.75 mg sample using high-resolution mass spectrometry for organic molecules with a ring structure containing carbon and nitrogen (N-heterocycles). This revealed a concentration of N-heterocycles 5-10 times higher than that reported from the sample taken from Ryugu (~5 nmol/g) by the Hayabusa2 mission.

In addition to the five nitrogenous bases, their analysis showed evidence of the purines xanthine, hypoxanthine, and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3). “In previous research, uracil and nicotinic acid were detected in the samples from asteroid Ryugu, but the other four nucleobases were absent,” said team member Dr. Toshiki Koga of JAMSTEC. “The difference in abundance and complexity of N-heterocycles between Bennu and Ryugu could reflect the differences in the environment to which these asteroids have been exposed in space.”

A mosaic image of asteroid Bennu, composed of 12 PolyCam images collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 24 kilometers. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

While these findings have provided compelling evidence of where the building blocks of life on Earth came from, several unanswered questions remain. For starters, amino acids can be created in “mirror-image” versions, similar to how complex lifeforms have a left and right side – hands, feet, brains, lungs, heat chambers, etc. While life on Earth almost exclusively exhibits the left variety, the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both. This could mean amino acids started in equal mixtures on Earth billions of years ago but made a left turn along the way.

This is not unlike theories regarding matter and antimatter in the early Universe and how “normal” matter came to be predominant. In any case, these findings are a key piece in the ongoing study of how and where life may have emerged in the Solar System. “OSIRIS-REx has been a highly successful mission,” said Dworkin. “Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life. Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question.”

Further Reading: NASA, Hokkaido University, Nature Astronomy

The post The Building Blocks for Life Found in Asteroid Bennu Samples appeared first on Universe Today.

Though it’s a cold, dead planet, Mars still has its own natural beauty about it. This image shows us something we’ll never see on Earth.

Mars has only a thin, tenuous atmosphere, and most of it (95%) is carbon dioxide. When Martian winter arrives, CO2 freezes and forms a thick coating on the ground in the polar regions. It lies there dormant for months.

As Spring approaches, temperatures gradually warm. Sunlight passes through the translucent frozen layer of CO2, warming the ground beneath it.

The warming ground sublimates frozen CO2 into vapour that accumulates under the solid CO2. Eventually, the gas escapes through weak spots in the ice. It can erupt into geysers that spread darker material out onto the frozen surface.

Artist’s impression of geysers at the Martian south polar icecap as southern spring begins. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University/Ron Miller

The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of these geysers on Mars in October 2018. It has also captured other images of Martian CO2 geysers.

This HiRISE image shows different dark shapes and bright spots on sand dunes in Mars’ north pole region. The bright spots are where frozen CO2 sublimated into gas and erupted, spreading darker material on the surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Some of Mars’ CO2 geysers erupt and create dark spots as large as 1 km across. They are fueled by considerable power and can erupt at speeds up to 160 km/h.

Sometimes the eruptions create dark regions under the ice which look like spiders.

This NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image, acquired on May 13, 2018, during winter at the South Pole of Mars, shows a carbon dioxide ice cap covering the region and as the sun returns in the spring, “Mars spiders” begin to emerge from the landscape. Image Credit: NASA

Scientists are calling these features araneiform terrain or spider terrain. They are found in clusters that give the surface a wrinkled appearance. NASA scientists recreated these patterns in lab tests to understand the processes behind their formation. “The spiders are strange, beautiful geologic features in their own right,” said Lauren McKeown of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The process that explains how the CO2 cycle creates these features is called the Keiffer model. Hugh Keiffer was with the US Geological Survey when he and his colleagues published a paper explaining the model in 2006 in Nature titled “CO2 jets formed by sublimation beneath translucent slab ice in Mars’ seasonal south polar ice cap.”

“We propose that the seasonal ice cap forms an impermeable, translucent slab of CO2 ice that sublimates from the base, building up high-pressure gas beneath the slab. This gas levitates the ice, which eventually ruptures, producing high-velocity CO2 vents that erupt sand-sized grains in jets to form the spots and erode the channels,” Keiffer and his co-authors wrote in their paper.

This simple illustration shows what happens when Spring comes and frozen CO2 is warmed by solar insolation. As the CO2 sublimates into gas, pressure builds, and it erupts through weaknesses in the seasonal cap, carrying dust with it that creates dark spots on the surface. Image Credit: By BatteryIncluded – Own work by uploader: I scanned, cropped and resized the original image from a paper by Sylvain Piqueux. JGR, VOL. 108, no. E8, 5084, doi:10.1029/2002JE002007, 2003, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7736765

Maybe humans are biased, but there’s nothing as beautiful and splendorous as Earth. Generations of poets have acclaimed its beauty to the point where it borders on the spiritual. However, when it comes to CO2 geysers and the natural patterns they create, Mars has something that Earth doesn’t.

“These processes are unlike any observed on Earth,” the authors of the 2006 paper stated.

Source: Geyser Season on Mars

The post These Bizarre Features on Mars are Caused by Carbon Dioxide Geysers appeared first on Universe Today.