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An international team of researchers has successfully captured the internal structure of the longest-runout sediment flow ever recorded on Earth. Using seismic measurements, the researchers have for the first time been able to analyze in detail the internal structure of these tens to hundreds of kilometers long turbidity currents -- an oceanographic phenomenon that has been studied for almost a century, but never directly observed. The new insights into the dynamics of these powerful currents will help improve risk assessments for underwater infrastructure, such as submarine cables, and refine models of sediment and carbon transport in the ocean.

How does a tennis player like Carlos Alcaraz decide where to run to return Novak Djokovic's ball by just looking at the ball's initial position? These behaviours, so common in elite athletes, are difficult to explain with current computational models, which assume that the players must continuously follow the ball with their eyes. Now, researchers have developed a model that, by combining optical variables with environmental factors such as gravity, accurately predicts how a person will move to catch a moving object just from an initial glance. These results could have potential applications in fields such as robotics, sports training or even space exploration.

How does a tennis player like Carlos Alcaraz decide where to run to return Novak Djokovic's ball by just looking at the ball's initial position? These behaviours, so common in elite athletes, are difficult to explain with current computational models, which assume that the players must continuously follow the ball with their eyes. Now, researchers have developed a model that, by combining optical variables with environmental factors such as gravity, accurately predicts how a person will move to catch a moving object just from an initial glance. These results could have potential applications in fields such as robotics, sports training or even space exploration.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are known as forever chemicals because of their extreme persistence. These compounds have useful properties including durability and waterproofing, so they're commonly used in consumer products like food packaging and cosmetics, as well as industrial processes. But PFAS' potential negative impacts on human health are driving the search for potentially safer substitutes. Now, researchers propose alternatives for many applications.

Heteroepitaxial growth technology has made it possible to create larger diamond substrates, opening new opportunities for industrial-scale production of diamond quantum sensors. A research team has successfully fabricated large-area (111)-orientated diamond crystal substrates on heterogeneous (non-diamond) substrates, demonstrating the potential for industrialization of precise, noise-resistant current measurements for electric vehicle battery monitoring.

Grouting is a widely used construction technique that involves injecting stabilizing materials into soil to ensure structural stability, which is especially beneficial in earthquake-prone regions. Now, scientists have developed an innovative, carbon-neutral grout made from waste fluids of geothermal energy harvesting systems. Their new material shows a 50% increase in liquefaction resistance compared to conventional grouts, while also addressing environmental concerns associated with the construction industry.

Researchers detail advances in the measurement of quantum devices that will be needed to realize a topological quantum computer. In an announcement, the team describes the operation of a device that is a necessary building block for a topological quantum computer. The published results are an important milestone along the path to construction of quantum computers that are potentially more robust and powerful than existing technologies.

Researchers detail advances in the measurement of quantum devices that will be needed to realize a topological quantum computer. In an announcement, the team describes the operation of a device that is a necessary building block for a topological quantum computer. The published results are an important milestone along the path to construction of quantum computers that are potentially more robust and powerful than existing technologies.

Technology could lead to faster, more precise and more cost-effective alternatives to traditional diagnostic methods.

Discarded food scraps, stray branches, seashells and many other natural materials are key ingredients in a system that can pull drinkable water out of thin air developed by researchers.

Researchers have developed a battery that can convert nuclear energy into electricity via light emission, a study suggests.

Most AI diagnostic tools are black boxes, but the approach allows doctors and patients to understand how the computer reached a diagnosis.

Keeping work surfaces clean during meat processing is a challenge, and now researchers deliver key insights into a solution that could change the current practice altogether: Instead of working to prevent bacteria buildup, they created surfaces that stop bacteria from attaching in the first place. Using lasers to etch and alter the surface of the metal, the team was able to create micro- or nanoscale textures that make it difficult for microbial cells to attach to the surface. The technique, known as laser-induced surface texturing, also alters the metal's water-repellent properties.

Air travel produces around 2.5% of all global CO2 emissions, and despite decades of effort in developing alternative fuels or more efficient aircraft designs, that number hasn’t budged much. However, NASA, also the US’s Aeronautics administration, has kept plugging away at trying to build a more sustainable future for air travel. Recently, they supported another step in that direction by providing an Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant to Phillip Ansell of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to develop a hybrid hydrogen-based aircraft engine.

The grant focuses on developing the Hydrogen Hybrid Power for Aviation Sustainable Systems (Hy2PASS) engine, a hybrid engine that uses a fuel cell and a gas turbine to power an aircraft. Hybrid systems have been tried before, but Hy2PASS’s secret sauce is its use of air handling.

In hybrid aircraft systems, there’s typically a fuel cell and a gas turbine. The fuel cell takes hydrogen as an input and creates electrical energy as output. In a typical hybrid system, this electrical energy would power a compressor, whose output was directly coupled to turning the turbine. However, in Hy2PASS, the compressor itself is decoupled from the turbine, though it still supplies oxygen to it. It then also supplies oxygen to the fuel cell’s cathode, allowing for its continued operation.

AI generated video on the Hy2PASS system.

This method has a few advantages, but the most significant one is the dramatic increase in efficiency it allows. The waste heat created at that mechanical connection is eliminated by uncoupling the compressor directly from the turbine. Also, it allows the compressor to be run at different pressures, allowing an algorithm to optimize its speed while ignoring the necessary speed of the turbine.

Additionally, the emissions from the entire system are essentially just water. So, this hybrid system effectively eliminates the emissions created by this kind of hybrid engine altogether. So, in theory, at least, this type of propulsion system would be the holy grail that NASA and the rest of the aviation industry have been seeking for years.

There’s still a long way to go to make this system a reality. The Phase I NIAC grant will focus on proving the system’s concept. Importantly, it will also require an understanding of another aircraft system and “mission trajectory optimization” to minimize the energy requirements of any future use case for the system. That sounds like there would be some limitations for how the system might be used in practice, though fleshing that out as part of Phase I seems a reasonable use case.

Interview with Dr. Ansell, the PI on the Hy2PASS project.

If the project is successful, and given Dr. Ansell’s track record of consistently meeting NASA design objectives, that seems a good bet. It is possible that someday soon, a hydrogen-powered aircraft could be in the air again. And this time, it will be a key player in eliminating emissions from one of the most important industries in the world.

Learn More:
NASA – Hydrogen Hybrid Power for Aviation Sustainable Systems (Hy2PASS)
UT – Multimode Propulsion Could Revolutionize How We Launch Things to Space
UT – Reaction Engines Goes Into Bankruptcy, Taking the Hypersonic SABRE Engine With it
UT – NASA is Working on Electric Airplanes

Lead Image:
Artist’s concept of the Hy2PASS engine
Credit – NASA / Phillip Ansell

The post A Hybrid Hydrogen Drive Train Could Eliminate Aircraft Emissions appeared first on Universe Today.

The frozen remains of animals like mammoths, wolves and cave lions offer the most detailed picture yet of the last glacial period

Jon Lovett is identified by Wikipedia as

. . . .  an American podcaster, comedian, journalist, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. All three formerly worked together as White House staffers during the Obama administration. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter, he worked for both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate.

And of course you know who Bill Maher is.  In the ten-minute talk argument below, Lovett and Maher discuss issues of kids with gender dysphoria, including these questions:

a.) Can schools hide a child’s desire to transition sex roles from the parents?

b.) Are there social influences that can promote children to want to change gender roles beyond “feeling like you’re in the wrong body.”

c.) Can the government be allowed to ban “gender-affirming care”?

d) Are children dying (presumably by suicide) because they aren’t allowed to transition?

Lovett actually comes off worse here, mainly because he’s spouting Biden-era dogma about sex and making statements that are scientifically dubious. However, I have to call out Maher near the beginning when he says “Obviously sex is more complicated than just two sexes.”  Yes, sex is complicated, but there are just two sexes. This is the mistake I discussed the other day.

Maher also conflates gender dysphoria with sexual attraction. But in the main, Maher makes some good points, and above all emphasizes that these are questions to be debated, not quashed by “progressives” who slander everyone trying to discuss them as “transphob” or “bigots”.

Maher calls the social conditioning of gender-dysphoric kids “entrapment”, which he defines as “suggesting that people do something that they are not going to do,” or “Putting an idea in someone’s head that wouldn’t be there otherwise.” (In this case, the idea is that the child/adolescent is trapped in the wrong body.)

Lovett, in contrast denies the prevalence of social influence on transitioning, while Maher takes Abigail Shrier’s view that many (but not all) children who decide they are in the wrong body are pushed to transition by peers, doctors, and teachers.  As he says, premature transitioning is medically dangerous and perhaps superfluous, not to mention an issue that can hurt Democrats who support it out of virtue signaling. Maher: “To take that risk at that age, before you know shit about anything. . . ”

Lovett makes the familiar but incorrect argument that without gender-affirming care, many kids would die.  He draws an analogy with cardiology, in which heart surgeons sometimes screw up during surgery and their patients die. But that’s a bogus argument because heart surgeons operate (and patients consent) if the consequences of not having surgery are dire. The difference is that we have enough experience to know the risks and benefits of heart surgery.

But this is not the case for gender dysphoria. Withholding hormones and surgery from kids who are dysphoric does not as often touted, leead to depression and death. (“Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?, some say.)  Yet studies show that about 80% of gender-dysphoric children who are not driven to take hormones and surgery resolve as gay (no medical dangers there!) or even cis.  That is a strong argument against the kind of “gender-affirming care” that puts dysphoric kids on a one-way escalator leading first to puberty blockers and then to hormone treatment and/or surgery.

Maher also seems to know more about the recent science than does Lovett, mentioning the ten-year Olson-Kennedy study showing that puberty blockers, touted by ideologues like Lovett as essential to saving lives, do not in fact improve the well being of gender-dysphoric childrene. From the NYT:

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

Although we the American taxpayers funded this study through the NIH, the results have not yet been released. Why? Because they don’t support the dogma that puberty blockers save lives. Also from the NYT:

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

This is shameful. To suppress important data because they “might fuel political attacks” or go against “progressive” ideology is totally unethical.  Maher knows about that study, as do many of us; but apparently Lovett either does not or deliberately ignores it.

Maher also makes the point that insistence on possibly harmful medical intervention without knowing its long-term effects is a stand that can—and probably has—harmed Democrats. (Yes, some Republicans take this stand because they really don’t want trans people around, but you can take that stand for the right reasons, too.)

Maher’s point, with which I agree completely, is that you don’t go ahead with possibly harmful medical treatment until you know what the harms actually are. 

Without further ado, here is the debate, which is mildly acrimonious:

Grey squirrels can actually come in black morphs, which are doing well in one US city because they're less likely to become roadkill

Varda, a US firm planning to manufacture pharmaceuticals in low Earth orbit, is expecting its second test capsule to return to Earth this week

We have two contributors today, each with a few photos. Once again I’ll ask readers to send in their wildlife photos, as, save for Robert Lang’s Brazil pictures, we’re at an end.  Readers’ captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Our first trio is from Sharon Diehl in Colorado:

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)  Pair atop Transform Tower #199, Wally Toevs Pond, Walden Wildlife Habitat, Boulder, Colorado. I have photographed this mated pair for years at Walden Wildlife Habitat, where they hang out atop the transform towers that overlook Wally Toevs Pond. They aren’t always successful breeders, but they keep at it, together year after year. Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)  hunting at my backyard bird feeders–where, alas, it caught a bird–at least it was a Starling. I know the raptors have to eat, too: Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) on the Hornbeam tree I believe, waiting for the flicker to leave the suet feeder–my backyard, Boulder, Colorado:

. . . and more eagles from Mark Shifman

Obviously I’m not a biologist and these are backyard bird photos. This series is a bald eagle on the Cumberland River.

Researchers study enigmatic asteroid Kamo’oalewa, as China’s first asteroid sample return mission moves toward launch.

China is about to get in to the asteroid sample return game. The CNSA (China National Space Administration) has recently announced that its Tianwen-2 mission has arrived at the Xichang Space Center. The mission will launch this May, on a Long March 3B rocket with the agency’s first solar system exploration mission of the year.

The mission was originally named ZhengHe, after a 15th century explorer. Tianwen-2 is a follow-on to China’s Tianwen-1, the nation’s first successful Mars orbiter-lander mission. Set to launch this coming May, Tianwen-2 will perform an ambitious first: not only will it explore asteroid 469219 Kamo’oalewa, but it will head onward to Comet 311P/PanSTARRS, in a first-ever asteroid-comet exploration mission for the agency.

A Tantalizing Worldlet

Certainly, asteroid Kamo’oalewa is an intriguing space rock. An Apollo Group Near Earth Asteroid, Kamo’oalewa is a rare quasi-satellite of the Earth. Discovered on the night of April 27th, 2016 from the Haleakala Observatory, the asteroid received the provisional designation 2016 HO3. The formal name means ‘oscillating fragment’ in the Hawaiian language. The asteroid currently fluctuates from being a quasi-satellite and horseshoe orbit between the Sun-Earth L1-L2 and L4-L5 Lagrange points, respectively. One day—perhaps a 100 million of years or so in the future—Kamo’oalewa may ultimately strike the Earth or the Moon.

A reddish object, Kamo’oalewa is either an S- or L-type asteroid, about 40 to 100-meters in size. The asteroid also bears a striking spectral resemblance to Apollo 14 and Luna 24 soil returns, suggesting it may in fact be ejecta from the impact that formed the Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon. The farside crater is thought to be about 4 million years old.

Giordano Bruno crater on the lunar farside. Credit: NASA/LRO Following Asteroid Kamo’alewa

A recent study out of the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Objects Coordination Centre (NEOCC) entitled Astrometry, Orbit Determination and Thermal Inertia of the Tianwen-2 Target Asteroid (469219) Kamo’oalewa is looking to better understand the tiny world ahead of the mission’s arrival. Specifically, the study looks to refine the orbit of the asteroid, and understand how the Yarkovsky and YORP (Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack) effects act on the orbit and rotation of the asteroid over time. The Yarovsky Effect is the result of how sunlight alters the path of small asteroids over time, as they absorb solar energy and re-emit it as heat. YORP is a similar phenomena, but includes the scattering of sunlight due to the shape and surface structure of the asteroid. Kamo’oalewa is a fast rotator, spinning on its axis once every 27 minutes. This will add to the challenge of grabbing a sample.

“We observed Kamo’oalewa and precisely measured its position in the sky,” lead researcher on the study Marco Fenucci (ESA/ESRIN/NEO Coordination Centre) told Universe Today. “Thanks to these new measurements, we were able to determine the Yarkovsky effect with a signal-to-noise ratio of 14, and the overall accuracy of the orbit was improved.”

Our best view yet of asteroid Kamo’oalewa. Credit: ESA/NEOCC/Loiano Astronomical Station

The study used current observations from the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain and Loiano Astronomical Station based in Italy, as well as pre-discovery observations found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) from 2004. These were especially challenging for the team to incorporate, as SDSS used a unique drift scan method to complete images. Also, an NEO asteroid like Kamo’oalewa has a relatively fast proper motion against the starry background. These two factors presented a challenge to pinning the asteroid’s time and location down in earlier images.

An Enigmatic World

“Thanks to the accurate measurement of the Yarkovsky effect on Kamo’oalewa, we were able to estimate the surface thermal inertia,” says Fenucci. “Our best estimate indicates that the thermal inertia is smaller than that of Bennu and Ryugu (the target for JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission). A low value of thermal inertia is usually due to the presence of regolith on the surface of the asteroid. The presence of regolith was not expected on such fast rotators.”

Certainly, the tiny world is worthy of further scrutiny. Any information will be handy leading up the Tianwen-2’s arrival. Like NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, which sampled asteroid 101955 Bennu in 2020, Tianwen-2 will use a touch-and-go sample technique, in addition to an anchor-and-attach method to acquire its samples of asteroid Kamo’oalewa.

“Kamo’oalewa will be the smallest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, and also the one with the shortest rotation period,” says Fenucci. “In terms of composition, the spectrum is similar to that of S-type asteroids, for example, Itokawa or Eros.” The reddish aspect of the asteroid in the visible-to-near infrared part of the spectrum, however, remains a mystery. “This is a typical feature of lunar regolith,” says Fenucci. “However, this particular feature can also be caused by space weathering. The Tianwen-2 mission should give an answer to the question of the origin of Kamo’oalewa.”

Tianwen-2 Mission Timeline

Currently rendezvous with the asteroid is set for 2026, with a departure in 2027. The CNSA team hopes to nab about 100 grams of Kamo’oalewa, about the mass of medium-sized apple. After that, the mission will dispatch its return capsule on Earth flyby in late 2027. Then, it will head onward to explore periodic comet 311/P PanSTARRS. The mission will reach the comet in 2034.

The Tianwen-2 spacecraft to carry out a sample-return targeting near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamo?oalewa has arrived at Xichang spaceport. Launch date not revealed, but expected around May. english.news.cn/20250220/d95…

[image or embed]

— Andrew Jones (@andrewjonesspace.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 6:08 AM

China has certainly taken a prudent, incremental path to space exploration. CNSA’s Chang’e program has returned samples of the lunar near and far side. Tianwen-1 was successful at Mars, scoring a combination orbiter, lander and rover on the Red Planet, all in one mission. China also has long term plans to combine these proven techniques in a Mars sample return mission of their own. This could launch as early as 2028.

It will be exciting to see asteroid Kamo’oalewa up close, as Tianwen-2 attempts to unravel the origin story for this elusive world.

The post China’s Tianwen-2 Is About to Launch. Here’s What We Know About Its Target Kamo’oalewa appeared first on Universe Today.