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The production of more than 90 percent of all chemical products we use in our everyday lives relies on catalysts. Catalysts speed up chemical reactions, can reduce the energy required for these processes, and in some cases, reactions would not be possible at all without catalysts. Researchers developed a concept that increases the stability of noble-metal catalysts and requires less noble metal for their production.

To protect the Amazon and support the wellbeing of its people, its economy needs to shift from environmentally harmful production to a model built around the diversity of indigenous and rural communities, and standing forests.

Heat and pressure can deteriorate the properties of piezoelectric materials that make state-of-the-art ultrasound and sonar technologies possible -- and fixing that damage has historically required disassembling devices and exposing the materials to even higher temperatures. Now researchers have developed a technique to restore those properties at room temperature, making it easier to repair these devices -- and paving the way for new ultrasound technologies.

Can plasma be sufficiently heated inside a tokamak using only microwaves? New research suggests it can! Eliminating the central ohmic heating coil normally used in tokamaks will free up much-needed space for a more compact, efficient spherical tokamak.

Conventional clustering techniques often focus on basic features like crystal structure and elemental composition, neglecting target properties such as band gaps and dielectric constants. A new study introduced a machine learning-powered clustering model that incorporates both basic features and target properties, successfully grouping over 1,000 inorganic materials. This model provides insights into material relationships, potential applications, and identifies key factors to balance band gaps and dielectric constants, addressing their trade-off relationship.

Conventional clustering techniques often focus on basic features like crystal structure and elemental composition, neglecting target properties such as band gaps and dielectric constants. A new study introduced a machine learning-powered clustering model that incorporates both basic features and target properties, successfully grouping over 1,000 inorganic materials. This model provides insights into material relationships, potential applications, and identifies key factors to balance band gaps and dielectric constants, addressing their trade-off relationship.

A new study by seismologists reexamines earthquakes in the Permian Basin that occurred before 2017 against the real-time data collected from earthquakes taking place after 2020. Results confirm that the seismicity occurring from 2009-2017 was causally linked to the underground injection of wastewater that is a byproduct of oil and gas extraction.

A new material for flexible electronics could enable multilayered, recyclable electronic devices and help limit e-waste.

A new material for flexible electronics could enable multilayered, recyclable electronic devices and help limit e-waste.

That ‘Old Faithful’ of meteor showers the Perseids peak early next week.

Great ready for one of the surefire astronomical events of 2024, as the peak for the Perseid meteors arrives next week.

To be sure, the Perseids aren’t the most intense annual meteor shower of the year; in the first half of the 20th century, that title now goes to the December Geminids. What the Perseids do have going for them is timing: they typically arrive in early August, before the academic year starts and during prime camping season, which finds lots of folks out under warm summer skies.

Perseid Prospects for 2024

The Perseids are active across August, from July 14th to September 1st. In 2024, the shower is expected to display a broad peak, centered on the night of August 11-12th. Typically, we see a twin peak in activity from the shower, though we expect the 2024 peak to arrive around 3:00 Universal Time (UT) on the 12th. This puts the shower high in the sky for northern Europe at dawn. North America isn’t far behind.

Circumstances for the 2024 Perseids versus the Earth. Credit: Dave Dickinson

In 2024, the Moon will interfere somewhat, with a 44% illuminated waxing crescent phase setting around 11:30 PM local. During recent years, the Perseids have displayed a maximum rate of up to 150 per hour, coming off high perihelion rates of 500 per hour in the 1990s. In 2024, expect to see around 100 per hour.

The Perseids: A Backstory

The source of the Perseids is none other than periodic comet 109P Swift-Tuttle. On a 133 year orbit, the comet reaches perihelion again next century on July 12th, 2126. The approach radiant for the shower hails from the northern constellation of Perseus the Hero (near the star Eta Persei) hence the name. Though the comet was only discovered in the mid-19th century, knowledge of the shower stretches back to antiquity. The Perseids are known as the “Tears of Saint Lawrence,” after the Christian saint who was martyred on a hot grid-iron on August 10th, 258 AD. In Andalusian southern Spain, this name for the summer Perseids in still well-known.

A Perseid meteor burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, as seen from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA Observing Meteors

Observing the Perseids is as simple as laying back, aiming your working set of ‘Mk-1 eyeballs’ at the sky, and waiting. A good alternate method of ‘hearing’ meteors is to tune an old school radio to an unoccupied section of the FM dial, and listening for meteor ‘pings’.

Two key factors come into play for a successful meteor watching expedition: watching at the correct time, under as dark a sky as possible. Don’t be afraid to start watching a few evenings prior this coming weekend. For the U.S. southeast, there’s always a good chance that Hurricane Debby could sweep out skies in its wake.

Looking to the northeast at 10PM local. Credit: Stellarium

For northern hemisphere observers, the radiant rises around 10 PM local. It will be high in the sky to the northeast around local midnight. This means that you’ll start seeing meteors from the Perseids in the late evening after sunset. Rates will really pick up after midnight, as you turn forward into the stream. You’re seeing ancient streams of cometary dust laid down by Swift-Tuttle, intersecting the 12,750 kilometer-wide tunnel carved out by the Earth. The Perseids have a respectable incoming relative velocity of 59 kilometers per second.

Though it may not seem it, even the largest, most brilliant Perseid meteors are the result of pea-sized grains. These are burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere about 80 to 120 kilometers overhead. Keep a pair of binoculars handy, to examine any lingering persistent smoke trains.

2023 Perseids over Yuzhno-Morskoy, Russia. Credit: Filipp Romanov ‘Hearing’ Meteors

Also, keep an ear out for any hissing audible meteors. This bizarre phenomenon was long thought to be a myth, or at most, a psychological phenomenon. There’s now good evidence that meteors do transmit a corresponding radio emission that can be ‘heard’ near the observer. This effect is known as electrophonic sound. Powerful auroras are thought to produce a similar effect.

Imaging the Perseids or any meteor shower is as simple as aiming a tripod mounted DSLR camera at a section of the sky and taking long exposure shots. Use as wide a field of view aperture lens as you can. Then, take a series of test shots to get the ISO/f-stop/exposure time correct for current conditions. An intervalometer is an invaluable tool for this, as you can simply program it to take a series of exposures, then turn it loose while you sit back and enjoy the show.

Finally, don’t forget to report what you see. When it comes to meteor showers, astronomers need all the data they can get. Simply count how many meteors you see in a given span of time, and report it to the International Meteor Organization (IMO).

Don’t miss a chance to get out under warm summer skies this coming week, and catch the 2024 Perseid meteors.

The post 2024 Perseids Light Up the August Sky appeared first on Universe Today.

From artificial retinas to ageing mice, here are five of the most promising results from research performed on the ISS – and what they might mean for humans on Earth and in space

An arm bone from an ancient human that lived 700,000 years ago on the island of Flores is the smallest ever found from an adult hominin, adding a new piece to the puzzle of Homo floresiensis

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

To transport our planet across the universe, we would need to bring the whole solar system to sustain life on Earth – on this episode of Dead Planets Society, our hosts contemplate how to shepherd all that baggage on this scenic journey

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An exquisitely camouflaged lizard has a desiccated landscape of sand and stones “painted” on its back. Its skin can be read as a description of an ancient desert, a world in which its ancestors survived. Such descriptions are more than skin deep, however. They penetrate the very warp and woof of the entire animal.

In this groundbreaking exploration of the power of Darwinian evolution and what it can reveal about the past, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behavior, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book—an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. In the future, a zoologist presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to decode its ancestral history, to read its unique “book of the dead.” Such readings are already uncovering the remarkable ways animals overcome obstacles, adapt to their environments, and, again and again, develop remarkably similar ways of solving life’s problems.

From the author of The Selfish Gene comes a revolutionary, richly illustrated book that unlocks the door to a past more vivid, nuanced, and fascinating than anything we have seen.

Richard Dawkins was the inaugural Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His numerous books include the best-selling The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and The Blind Watchmaker. He also wrote The Magic of Reality, The Ancestor’s Tale, Unweaving the Rainbow, Climbing Mount Improbable, and The Extended Phenotype. He lives in Oxford, UK. His new book is The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie, which is beautifully illustrated on nearly every page by Jana Lenzová. Jana Lenzová is a translator and illustrator and is acclaimed for her work on Dawkins’s book Flights of Fancy, about the evolution of flight. She lives in Oxford, UK.

Shermer and Dawkins discuss:

• History as a science: archaeology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, geology, cosmology, human history, genetic book of the dead
• Genetic Book of the Dead or Phenotypic Book of the Dead?
• Is this a bookend with The Selfish Gene?
• Horned lizard of the Mojave desert
• QR codes, genetic codes, computer codes…information as a proxy for past environments
• Sir D’Arcy Thompson: ‘Everything is the way it is because it got that way.’ Dawkins: “The genome of every individual is a sample of the gene pool of the species. The gene pool got to be the way it is over many generations, partly through random drift, but more pertinently through a process of non-random sculpture. The sculptor is natural selection, carving and whittling the gene pool until it – and the bodies that are its outward and visible manifestation – are the way they are.”
• The species as averaging computer: The genetic book of the dead is a written description of the world of no particular ancestral individual more than another. It is a description of the environments that sculpted the whole gene pool.
• Our human palimpsest has ‘quadruped’ boldly written in a firm hand, then over-written all too superficially with the tracery of a new description – biped.
• Intermediate stages of evolution revealed by palimpsests: “Galápagos marine iguanas are proficient swimmers, but they can manage a surprising turn of speed on land too, when fleeing snakes. All these animals show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to becoming dedicated mariners like whales, dugongs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs.”
• Double doubling back: land and sea tortoises
• Apply this to fossil species of tortoises to determine where they lived, to “read” the ancestral environment
• “Constraints on perfection” older scripts of the palimpsest restrain newer scripts (legacy of history): “buried deep in embryology and deep in history” = “buried deep under layers of younger scripts in the palimpsest”
• Vertebrate retina installed back to front
• Wasteful detour of the laryngeal nerve
• Blind spot in the retina
• Panda’s thumb
• Vertebrate skeleton: spinal column, skull and tail at the two ends, column of serially segmented vertebrae, four limbs consisting of a single long bone (humerus or femur), two parallel bones (radius/ulna), cluster of smaller bones (digits), usually 5
• Pseudogenes/junk genes: the genetic palimpsest (computer disc analogy)
• Reverse engineering
• Adaptationism
• Good enough vs. optimal (satisficing), QWERTY
• Transitional fossils
• Constraints on Perfection
• Common problems, common solutions: evolutionary convergence
• Matt Ridley’s How Innovation Works and implications for how evolution works
• What it’s like to be a bat
• False colors in astronomical photographs and fMRI brain scans
• The Middle World of our evolutionary past and constraints on cognition.

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by Greg Mayer

Once Jerry is well-ensconced in South Africa, I’m sure he’ll have plenty of wildlife photos for us, including some warthogs. In the meantime here’s some wildlife I observed in Toledo, Ohio.

In Late June, I attended the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and there was an optional field trip to the Toledo Zoo, which included a visit to a prairie restoration on the banks of the Maumee River near the Zoo grounds.

Matt Cross, Director of Vertebrate Conservation at the Toledo Zoo, directs visiting herpetologists onto the prairie. The “tent” in the background is a device for sampling invertebrates.

Toledo is at the far eastern edge of the “Prairie Peninsula“, where there were only a few scattered stands of prairie at he time of settlement, so this is less a restoration than a creation.The particular patch we went to is on formerly developed land, so many plants were brought in when this patch was established in 2013. This looks like a Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta); note the bristly, lanceolate leaves, and 10-13 rays in the flowers pictured.

Rudbeckia hirta, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024.

Although we tend to think of cactus as Southwestern, they occur in Midwestern prairies (and even further east on sandy soils) as well.

Eastern Prickly Pear, Opuntia humifusa, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024.

The Zoo uses cover boards, a commonly used technique, to sample small vertebrates and arthropods.

Cover boards in a small (ca. 2/3 acre) restored prairie in Toledo, Ohio.

And under the cover boards were Northern Brown Snakes (Storeria dekayi).

Storeria dekayi, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024. Storeria dekayi, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024.

Lots of them! I think the one on the left is a gravid female.

Storeria dekayi, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024.

And, they acted appropriately, engaging in volmerolfaction, sampling the air for chemicals with the tongue, to be sensed by the Jacobson’s organ in the roof of the mouth.

Storeria dekayi, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024

A member of the Zoo staff turned a board in front of me, revealing a nice one. I instinctively grabbed it, quickly handing it to her because I wasn’t sure if handling by us visitors was allowed, but we were, in fact allowed to be herpetologists! Northern Browns are common in Illinois prairies I have visited, and persist in urban and suburban habitats in New York, so it’s not surprising to see them here in Toledo.

There were also invertebrates under the boards,

An ant nest; note the winged individuals. Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024

and birds above the boards. A Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) soars overhead.

Cathartes aura, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024

A young Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) perches in a tree on the banks of the Maumee.

Haliaeetus leucocephalus, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024

And a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) was striding around Clark Island, an island being terraformed and enlarged in the Maumee.

Ardea herodias, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024

While walking back to the Zoo proper, we also got to see a Five-lined Skink (Eumeces fasciatus) on a boundary fence at the Zoo.

Eumeces fasciatus, Toledo, Ohio, 27 June 2024.

This was an especial treat for me, because, although I am a lizard specialist, I grew up in the Northeast and have lived for many years in the Midwest, and lizards are not especially diverse or abundant in either region, so it was nice seeing a live, wild lizard!

The claim that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US has never been close to true.

The question of whether or not red dwarf stars can support habitable planets has been subject to debate for decades. With the explosion in exoplanet discoveries in the past two decades, the debate has become all the more significant. For starters, M-type (red dwarf) stars are the most common in the Universe, accounting for 75% of the stars in our galaxy. Additionally, exoplanet surveys indicate that red dwarfs are particularly good at forming Earth-like rocky planets that orbit within their circumsolar habitable zones (CHZs).

Unfortunately, a considerable body of research has shown that planets orbiting red dwarf suns would be subject to lots of flare activity – including some so powerful they’re known as “superflares.” In a recent study led by the University of Hawai’i, a team of astrophysicists revealed that red dwarf stars can produce stellar flares with significantly more far-ultraviolet radiation than previously expected. Their findings could have drastic implications for exoplanet studies and the search for extraterrestrial life on nearby rocky planets.

The study was led by Vera L Berger, a Churchill Scholar and graduate student researcher currently at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, formerly with the University of Hawai‘i’s Institute for Astronomy (UHIfA). She was joined by colleagues from UHIfA, the Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (CCAP) at Ohio State University, and the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA). Their findings appeared in a paper titled “Stellar flares are far-ultraviolet luminous,” which was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Artist’s impression of Kepler-1649 c orbiting its host star, a red dwarf. Credit: NASA’s Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

In recent years, the debate regarding red dwarf habitability has focused on two major areas: tidal locking and flare activity. The former arises from the fact that rocky planets orbiting a red dwarf star’s CMZ are close enough that their rotation is perfectly timed with their orbit, meaning that one side is constantly facing toward the star. This also means that the sun-facing side would be subject to powerful solar flares, which are very with cooler, low-mass M-type stars. In the past, research has shown that a planet subjected to this powerful flare activity would likely be stripped of its atmosphere.

However, other research has indicated that planets with a magnetic field and a sufficiently dense atmosphere could still support life. Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that red dwarfs emit their most powerful flares (aka. “superflares”) from their poles, thus sparing the planets that orbit them. For their study, Berger and her team used archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) – a UV space telescope decommissioned in 2013. Using new computational techniques, the team searched this data for evidence of flares from 300,000 nearby stars.

Overall, they detected 182 flares from 158 stars within about 326 light-years (100 parsecs) of the Sun in the near-ultraviolet (NUV) and far-ultraviolet (FUV) wavelengths. These results challenge existing models of stellar flares and exoplanet habitability, which predict that flares will produce more NUV than FUV radiation. However, their observations showed that the distribution of FUV radiation was three times more energetic (on average) and up to twelve times what current models predict. As Bergin explained in a recent UH press release:

“Few stars have been thought to generate enough UV radiation through flares to impact planet habitability. Our findings show that many more stars may have this capability… Our work puts a spotlight on the need for further exploration into the effects of stellar flares on exoplanetary environments. Using space telescopes to obtain UV spectra of stars will be crucial for better understanding the origins of this emission.”

Artist’s illustration of Proxima Centauri b. ESO/M. Kornmesser

On Earth, ultraviolet radiation has been vital to the development of life as we know it. Whereas near-UV (UV-A, 400 nm to 300 nm) plays an essential role in the formation of Vitamin D by the skin, prolonged exposure can lead to sunburn, increased risk of melanoma, and cataracts. Middle wavelength UV (UV-B, 300 to 200 nm) can cause damage at the molecular level, affecting deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the very building blocks of life. Thanks to Earth’s magnetic field and dense atmosphere, very little UV light below 290 nm reaches the surface.

However, as the team indicates in their study, exposure to Far-UV (200 nm to 10 nm) produced by stellar flares could severely impact planetary habitability, from eroding a planet’s atmosphere to threatening the formation of RNA building blocks. “A change of three is the same as the difference in UV in the summer from Anchorage, Alaska to Honolulu, where unprotected skin can get a sunburn in less than 10 minutes,” said co-author Benjamin J. Shappee from the University of Hawai’i.

While the exact cause of these stronger FUV emissions is unclear, the team believes that flare radiation could be concentrated at specific wavelengths, possibly due to elements like carbon and nitrogen in the star’s composition. They emphasize that more data is needed to determine the source of these emissions and to gain a better understanding of red dwarf UV luminosity. These findings could indicate that most stars in our galaxy cannot support life (as we know it), which could have drastic implications for astrobiology and might even be a possible answer to Fermi’s Paradox!

Further Reading: University of Hawai’i, MNRAS

The post Habitable Planet’s Orbiting Red Dwarf Suns Could at Risk from Far-Ultraviolet Radiation appeared first on Universe Today.

Mention the name Starlink among the astronomy community and you will often be greeted with a shudder. There are now thousands of Starlink satellites orbiting Earth providing internet connectivity to every corner of the Earth. Many believe they are making astronomy difficult but now, SpaceX is launching another service; ‘direct-to-cell’ technology that will allow mobile phones to use satellites to send text messages as early as this year. Voice and data services are likely to follow on quickly next year. With smaller antennae at a lower altitude what is their impact on astronomy?

The SpaceX Starlink satellite project provides high speed broadband to ever corner of the globe (I know globes don’t have corners but it’s a saying that I didn’t write, I’m just using it…. reluctantly.) Thousands of small satellites are now in low Earth orbit to achieve that aim. It’s great news to those that live in remote parts of Earth and it has massive benefits to communications and support applications like disaster relief, medicine and remote learning. To astronomers attempting to study the faintest light from distant objects across the cosmos the satellites are problematic, having a negative impact on many observations. 

This diagram and artist illustration demonstrates how sunlight reflects off a Starlink version 1.5 satellite. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX have gone to great lengths to minimise the impact from their satellites but now they are launching more to service direct messaging from mobile phones, via satellite. With even more satellites in orbit, at a lower orbit too, concerns are mounting of their impact on astronomical observations. The new satellites will have a mean magnitude of 4.62, this is 4.9 times brighter than other Starlink Mini spacecraft! Currently there are only 6 ‘direct-to-cell’ satellites in orbit but the plan is for over 7,000 to join them.

Four researchers; Anthony Mallama, Richard E. Cole, Scott Harrington and J. Respler from the International Astronomical Union have studied the new suite of satellites to see what impact they may have on future observations. In their paper they describe just how they analysed the visibility and how they estimated the brightness of the new mini satellites.

The analysis process began with electronic and visual observations of the 6 test satellites. The electronic observations were taken using the MMT9 (Mini-MegaTORTORA) system at the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Russia. It is made up of 9 x 71mm diameter lenses and 2160 x 2560 CMOS detectors. The brightness observations were recorded along with the satellite distance and phase angle of which both would impact brightness. 

The visual observations techniques is similar to that which is familiar to variable star observers. Brightness estimates are made using nearby reference stars whose brightness is known. They then characterise them before reassessing the impact on the new DTC satellites and the existing internet satellites. 

Despite having arrived at an estimate of brightness 4.9 times brighter than the existing satellites, they are unable to conclude how the different attitudes and operations will impact their brightness. Taking into account their expected operations the brightness is more likely to be just 2.6 times brighter than the existing. They will however, spend far more of their time in Earth’s shadow so will be less visible.  

Source : Brightness Characterization for Starlink Direct-to-Cell Satellites

The post Starlink Direct-to-Cell Satellites are Coming. What Will Be Their Impact on Astronomy? appeared first on Universe Today.

Countries are starting to take steps to cut human sources of methane emissions, but climate change is increasing emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from wetlands