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Drivers are optimistic about 'on road' dynamic wireless charging that allows EV users to charge their batteries while driving -- but there are concerns.

Using a novel non-contact approach, a research team has successfully controlled the speed and efficiency of Forster resonance energy transfer between fluorescent molecules by varying the intensity of a laser beam.

Using a novel non-contact approach, a research team has successfully controlled the speed and efficiency of Forster resonance energy transfer between fluorescent molecules by varying the intensity of a laser beam.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the development of new materials. A prerequisite for AI in materials research is large-scale use and exchange of data on materials, which is facilitated by a broad international standard. A major international collaboration now presents an extended version of the OPTIMADE standard.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the development of new materials. A prerequisite for AI in materials research is large-scale use and exchange of data on materials, which is facilitated by a broad international standard. A major international collaboration now presents an extended version of the OPTIMADE standard.

A study of 17 commonly used synthetic 'forever chemicals' has shown that these toxic substances can readily be absorbed through human skin.

Researchers developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that could help electrical grids prevent power outages by automatically rerouting electricity in milliseconds. The approach is an early example of 'self-healing grid' technology, which uses AI to detect and repair problems such as outages autonomously and without human intervention when issues occur, such as storm-damaged power lines.

Researchers developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that could help electrical grids prevent power outages by automatically rerouting electricity in milliseconds. The approach is an early example of 'self-healing grid' technology, which uses AI to detect and repair problems such as outages autonomously and without human intervention when issues occur, such as storm-damaged power lines.

Astronomers uncovered that a well-known X-ray binary, whose exact nature has been a mystery to scientists until now, is actually a hidden ultraluminous X-ray source.

Researchers develop the first-ever device powered by blood to measure blood electrical conductivity.

Researchers develop the first-ever device powered by blood to measure blood electrical conductivity.

The history of how stars and galaxies came to be and evolved into the present day remains among the most challenging astrophysical questions to solve yet, but new research brings us closer to understanding it. New insights about young galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization have been revealed. Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of the galaxy Cosmic Gems arc (SPT0615-JD) have confirmed that the light of the galaxy was emitted 460 million years after the big bang. What makes this galaxy unique is that it is magnified through an effect called gravitational lensing, which has not been observed in other galaxies formed during that age.

Researchers have developed a way to create complex devices with multiple materials -- including plastics, metals and semiconductors -- all with a single machine. The research outlines a novel 3D printing and laser process to manufacture multi-material, multi-layered sensors, circuit boards and even textiles with electronic components.

People don't realise just how bad our antibiotic resistance problem is, says Jeanne Marrazzo, the top infectious disease specialist in the US

We are all too aware of the pollution on planet Earth. There are increased amounts of plastic and garbage on the world’s beaches and debris littering the oceans. Until now, it was thought that satellites weren’t capable of tracking marine debris but a supercomputer algorithm challenges that. 300,000 images were taken every three days at a resolution of 10 metres and were able to identify large concentrations of debris. 

Upper estimates of plastic in our oceans peak at around 200 million tons! Every day it is believed another 8 million pieces of plastic make their way into the marine environment. Now, a study led by a team at the Institut de Ciencies del Mar at the University of Cadiz believe it may be possible to study and track the surface debris in the oceans. Using supercomputers and advanced algorithms, the team have shown that satellites can indeed be used. 

Using data from the European Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, a total of 300,000 images of the Mediterranean Sea were analysed. The images were taken every 3 days at a resolution of 10 metres. Typically of course, there is not much debris in the sea which is that big but accumulations of debris have grown to that size. The aggregations are known as ‘windrows’ and have built up as ocean currents and winds bring debris together to form large structures. 

The output from the study reveals the most polluted areas of the Mediterranean and the main entry points from the mainland. It will help us to improve our understanding of the processes and mechanisms that transport debris across the ocean and even help us to perhaps predict movement. The results also show that the amount of debris in the Mediterranean covers around 95 square kilometres.

Eastern Mediterranean Sea Area June 1993

Unfortunately the research does not help resolve the issue of pollution but it does help us understand the scale. The team propose future satellites should be equipped with detectors to monitor the debris. It would increase the ability to detect plastic in the open ocean by a factor of 20 and help to model the impact of marine pollution on first, tourism and the marine ecosystem. 

One element of the studies conclusion is that population density, geography and rainfall patterns play an important part in the accumulation of marine litter. Dry arid lands like deserts that play host to cities seem to contribute much less to marine litter while those that are much more temperate with higher rainfall seem to contribute more. 

It is also interesting to note that the majority of litter that originates from land masses seems to be confined to 15 kilometres form the coast and subsequently returns after a few days of months. The team conclude that satellite based monitoring is an essential element in our battle against litter in the ocean. The technology can also be used for the detection of other floating objects such as the loss of ships, oil spills and even search and rescue elements. 

Source : Satellites to monitor marine debris from space

The post Satellites are Going to Track Garbage Drifting Across the Oceans appeared first on Universe Today.

I’m tired of Bret Weinstein pushing conspiracy theories, and just as tired of him making proclamations about evolutionary biology that are misleading or flat wrong.  I’m especially peeved today because, in the video below, he claims that both Richard Dawkins and I have said that “evolution biology is settled” because I, at least, claimed that the big advances at the beginning of the field, involving people like Darwin, Fisher, Haldane, Sewall Wright, and Ernst Mayr, established the foundations of the field, and we don’t see such big advances any more.  Where are today’s Darwins? (This was a question posed to me by Dick Lewontin when I interviewed him some years ago.) And yes, I probably said that and do believe it. But that doesn’t mean that evolutionary biology is “settled”. It’s that our approach to understanding evolution in nature has been somewhat asymptotic, with a big leap at the beginning and then incremental progress since the 1940s.  Indeed, I think that advances such as the “modern synthesis” of the 1930s and 1940s, showing that Darwinian natural selection was compatible with modern genetics, was a huge synthesis that hasn’t been equaled. And, of course, science of any sort never reaches an asymptote, for that would be “complete understanding: the ultimate truth,” which is unattainable.

In the video below, Weinstein and Heying argue that Dawkins and I think that evolutionary biology is “settled,” and that our view impedes progress in the field, allows evolutionary biology to stagnate, and, most important, impedes people’s failure to take Intelligent Design theory seriously for raising serious problems with neo-Darwinism.  Further, he says that we’ve discouraged graduate students from entering the field and have not produced, as mentors, our “replacements.” He’s dead wrong here, at least for me: I’d put my graduate students (and their graduate students) up against anybody’s as having made substantial progress in evolutionary genetics.

Yes, we have nobody around today who’s made advances as big as those of Darwin or Fisher. But that doesn’t mean at all, as Weinstein and Heather Heying assert in the video below, that we think evolutionary biology is “settled.”  Far from it! First of all, neutral theory was a big step forward in evolutionary genetics, and that was introduced in 1968 and is still being developed.  We still don’t understand exactly why organisms reproduce sexually; we don’t understand how often speciation occurs without geographic isolation; we don’t understand what females, during sexual selection, are looking for when they choose a mate. I could list tons of other questions, but these are three that I’ve written about and are mentioned by Weinstein.

Weinstein and Heying’s claim in the video is that there are huge advances, on the scale of Darwin’s and Fisher’s, to be made, perhaps by people who are working in intelligent design. (Weinstein implies that he has a theory that may be on this scale as well.) To be sure, they note that the IDers like Stephen Meyer and his “high-quality colleagues”, are motivated by religion, but Weinstein sees them still asking important and serious questions that evolutionists haven’t answered, thus motivating evolutionists to better understand nature.  Nope. ID adocates have wasted the time of evolutionists in refuting IDer’s specious arguments. Why do they do this? To let the credulous public, much of which buys ID, know that science can answer those criticisms.  That’s why there were so many critiques of Michael Behe’s books by reputable scientists.

Three questions that evolutionists have supposedly set aside and neglected are these: “What caused the Cambrian explosion?”, “Why are there gaps in the fossil record?” and “How can we get complex working proteins when their existence is so improbable?”

The answer to the first question is “We don’t know, but there are theories and some of them are being tested.”

The second question has a spate of possible answers (lack of sediment deposition, rapid evolution in relatively short evolutionary times, and so on). But one thing we know is that Gould’s explanation—the theory of punctuated equilibrium—is not likely to be the answer, as the theory doesn’t work. (People don’t often realize that punctuated equilibrium, as advanced by Gould and Eldredge, is more than just a jerky pattern in the fossil record: it’s also a theory about why the pattern is supposedly ubiquitous. The ubiquity of the pattern in fact is still being argued, but we know that it’s not ubiquitous.) But in the end, Gould’s explanation—the really novel and non-Darwinian part punctuated equilibrium—was simply wrong.

As for the third question, the claim that the origin of complex proteins is improbable is not one taken seriously by molecular evolutionists, simply because we have no indication that it really is a problem. The idea that it is a problem comes from specious claims of IDers that such proteins assemble themselves randomly rather than by selection, or that mutation is too unlikely to fuel the process (there are other fuels, of course, like gene duplication and insertions of DNA).

At 2:56, in the video below, Weinstein asserts that evolutionary biologists have simply left the Big Questions “on the table”, questions like “where did all the species come from?” and “why do females put males in so many species to challenges that then cause them to burden their male offspring with elaborate displays that are not helpful?”

Weinstein is apparently unaware that I wrote a comprehensive and scholarly book on speciation in 2004 and outlined a lot of unanswered questions, so no, Dr. Weinstein, I did NOT think that the question “wasn’t worthy of my time”. And yes, we do have considerably more understanding these days about how species form. That’s also described in the book.

He’s also apparently unaware that many biologists have been working on sexual selection, which is simply a hard problem to test in nature. And he doesn’t understand that elaborate displays by males are helpful: they help males get mates. Peacocks with more “eyes” in their tails, for example, get more offspring. Widowbirds whose tails are artificially elongated by gluing on extra feather get more mates, too.  Weinstein is ignorant about how sexual selection works, and how theories about it have been tested.

At any rate, I no longer take Weinstein seriously as a biologist, or even as an intellectual. He may have been a good teacher at Evergreen State, but he’s not on the rails when it comes to evolutionary biology (his last peer-reviewed paper was in 2005, and Researchgate lists 4 total publications). He’s also advanced specious theories about ivermectin being both a good preventive and cure for Covid, he’s suggested that AIDS was caused by party drugs and not a virus, and he’s suggested that the death of Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis was suspicious, perhaps because Mullis has criticized Anthony Fauci (did Fauci order a hit? LOL!).  Weinstein’s even wrapped his cameras in aluminum foil because he suspected some sinister forces were impeding his transmission. He gave his cameras tinfoil hats!

A tweet from Michael Shermer, aimed at Weinstein, about Kary Mullis’s death:

In his Substack column below, Jesse Singal shows other conspiracy theories/dubious theories that Weinstein and Heying have advanced (Weinstein is more vociferous than Heying, so I give him most of the opprobrium). Click to read:

Here you can see Weinstein going after Dawkins and me by misrepresenting our views. Yes, I do think that understanding of evolution has slowed down since Darwin and since the 1940s, since most of these “founders” seem to have gotten the major parts of the modern synthesis right—except for neutral theory, which was a huge advance. But I surely do not believe (nor do I think that Dawkins believes) that we have pretty much completed our understanding of evolution. But I’ll let Dawkins speak for himself.

And of course the IDers love Weinstein and Heyer’s podcast, because they give so much credit to Intelligent Design in pinpointing the “neglected” Big Questions about evolution.It’s thus a pity that IDers, like Weinstein himself, hardly have any peer-reviewed papers in real scientific journals advancing their theories! Read below to see how much IDers love Weinstein.

 

Now I surely don’t think that Weinstein is stupid at all; he’s really quite smart. But I think that, in his desire to find a niche for himself, and garner a measure of public approbation, he’s deliberately embraced conspiracy theories, highly praised the gussied-up creationism of Intelligent Design, and, most annoying, almost willfully misunderstood evolutionary biology.

By representing data as folds in paper, the principles of origami can theoretically be used to compute anything imaginable

When the planet Mercury formed 4 billion years ago, conditions may have been just right to form a thick layer of diamonds below its surface

Astronauts are considered by many to be an elite bunch of people; healthy, fit and capable in many disciplines. Went they travel into space they can face health issues related to weightlessness from reduction in bone density to issues with their eyesight. These are people at the peak of physical fitness but what will happen to the rest of us when space tourism really kicks off. It is likely that anyone with underlying health issues could worsen in space. A new study suggests those with cardiovascular issues may suffer heart failure in space!

Space travel and automatic intelligence (AI) are two fabulously interesting topics. Combine them and you have a fascinating story. Dr Lex Van Loon from the Australian National University has been using AI and mathematical models to explore human physiology and the impact of space exploration. In a recent study he created digitally identical AI twins, one with an underlying heart condition. 

The interest driving the study is the advancement toward space tourism and the opening up of space to those less physically fit than astronauts. As space travel becomes more available to the mass population we will start to see a shift in demographic of space travellers to older, more wealthy individuals but they are more likely to have health issues. We will eventually see people with a whole multitude of conditions wanting to holiday in space, but what are the likely impacts. 

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst gets a workout on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). Credit: NASA

Microgravity causes a redistribution of fluids around the body and can cause conditions like ‘puffy face bird leg syndrome.’ The name aptly describes the effect, the face swells up and the legs thin. It results in an increase in venous pressure in the upper body, this is fine for healthy people but heart failure sufferers are at a much higher risk. Given that there are over 100 million people around the world that suffer heart failure it is essential this is explored. 

Looking at the wide spectrum of heard failure, conditions can be grouped into two categories; a weak hart that cannot pump effectively and a heart that cannot relax and fill properly. All possible conditions need to be studied with specific ways to treat and mitigate the risk during space travel. 

This is a study that is difficult to collect real data in space so we have to turn to computer modelling to simulate the effects. The team led by Dr Loon showed that a microgravity environment leads to an increase in cardiac output (the quantity of blood pumped by the heart in a given period of time.) This is not a problem for most people but with heart failure patients it is accompanied by a rise in pressure in the left atrial region of the heart, to dangerous levels. If left unchecked, it can lead to a condition where fluid accumulates in the lungs known as a pulmonary edema, making it difficult to breathe!

With the increase in corporate interest in space travel, space tourism is slowly becoming a reality. People can already pay for trips into space but as costs come down, the number of people heading out into space will increase. Eventually, trips into space will be as common as trips to other countries. It is imperative we understand the impact on our health and what we can do to make space as widely accessible as possible without putting our health at risk. 

Source : Heart failure in space: scientists calculate potential health threats facing future space tourists in microgravity

The post Will Space Tourists Be Getting Heart Attacks in Space? appeared first on Universe Today.

For those of you currently in western Massachusetts or eastern upstate New York, some news: I’ll be speaking about my book today, Monday, June 24th, 5:30 pm, in Lenox, MA. At this free event, held at the local institution known simply as “The Bookstore“, I’ll read from the text and discuss its central message. After that, I’ll answer questions from the audience and sign books.

In other news — for those of you waiting (im)patiently for the audiobook, I am glad to report that there is finally some forward movement on that front. I’m still not sure how long it will take for the audio version to become available, but progress should be steady and rapid from here.