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There’s a trigger warning on ZeFrank’s recent video: “True Facts is not appropriate for children, nor for adults who don’t act like children.” But in fact this 11+ minute video is perfectly appropriate for kids. (There’s a commercial from 3:15 to 4:22).

It’s about plants that disperse their seeds, spores, or pollen explosively, including liverworts, dogwoods, mosses, witch hazel, oats, and sundry others.

Not only do the explosions disperse the seeds (clearly an adaptive trait; you want your genes to be away from your plot, where they compete with you), but in some cases the explosion has evolved to give the dispersing seeds an orientation that makes them go further.  And some of the spores, as in horsetails, have little arms that curl with changes in humidity that allow them to “walk” along the ground! (Oat seeds can do the same thing, hopping with their “awns” and then twisting themselves into the ground.) As usual, the photography is amazing, so don’t miss this one. The extensive research is documented by a list of references at the end.

In this video ZeFrank doesn’t mention evolution or natural selection, but of course it’s implicit in these amazing and diverse adaptations for dispersal. I, for one, hardly knew anything about these features, and was delighted to see all these complicated results of natural selection, which of course is cleverer than you are.  Seeds that plant themselves by screwing themselves into the dirt!

h/t: Mary

A research team has bridged a knowledge gap in atomic-scale heat motion. This new understanding holds promise for enhancing materials to advance an emerging technology called solid-state cooling.

A research team has bridged a knowledge gap in atomic-scale heat motion. This new understanding holds promise for enhancing materials to advance an emerging technology called solid-state cooling.

The process that can convert pollution into benign by-products is called selective catalytic reduction, or SCR. Until now, it has been unclear how this reaction actually occurs, and contradictions have long existed between reaction models within the literature. Catalysis researchers used a technology called modulation excitation spectroscopy, or MES, to finally identify the correct pathway.

Researchers have come up with exciting and sophisticated new mapping technology enabling future generations to get involved in creating their own future built landscape. They say that planners are missing a real trick when it comes to encouraging and involving the public to help shape their own towns, cities and counties for the future. They also say that games platforms can be used to plan future cities and also help the public immerse themselves in these future worlds.

Researchers have come up with exciting and sophisticated new mapping technology enabling future generations to get involved in creating their own future built landscape. They say that planners are missing a real trick when it comes to encouraging and involving the public to help shape their own towns, cities and counties for the future. They also say that games platforms can be used to plan future cities and also help the public immerse themselves in these future worlds.

Researchers have developed nanorobots that kill cancer cells in mice. The robot's weapon is hidden in a nanostructure and is exposed only in the tumour microenvironment, sparing healthy cells.

Researchers have developed nanorobots that kill cancer cells in mice. The robot's weapon is hidden in a nanostructure and is exposed only in the tumour microenvironment, sparing healthy cells.

AI model finds the cancer clues at lightning speed. Researchers have developed an AI model that increases the potential for detecting cancer through sugar analyses. The AI model is faster and better at finding abnormalities than the current semi-manual method.

Melanin is a ubiquitous compound in nature, produced by many organisms. However, its potential as a biomass resource to produce value-added chemicals and materials remains relatively unexplored. In a recent study, researchers investigated the chemical decomposition of melanin derived from cuttlefish ink and showcased its application in the synthesis of biopolymer films and particles. Their efforts will hopefully pave the way to the adoption of melanin upcycling.

Wooden sticks found in an Australian cave appear to match the accounts of a 19th-century anthropologist, suggesting the GurnaiKurnai people practised the same ritual at the end of the last glacial period

This I didn’t expect, and it’s a decision by a 6-3 vote, with Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor dissenting. Trump is now apparently shielded from prosecution for official acts, but not private ones. That’s going to cause great confusion, but it’s also going to delay his trials, making it easier for him to win November’s election.

From the NYT; click the headlines to read (archived here, but the feed changes):

An excerpt as things unroll in real time:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution, a decision that will almost surely delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election past the coming election in November. The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.

Mr. Trump contended that he was entitled to absolute immunity from the charges, relying on a broad understanding of the separation of powers and a 1982 Supreme Court precedent that recognized such immunity in civil cases for actions taken by presidents within the “outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities. Lower courts rejected Mr. Trump’s claim, but the Supreme Court’s ruling may delay the case enough that Mr. Trump would be able to make it go away entirely if he prevails in November.

Here’s what to know:

• The ruling: The justices said that Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution for official acts taken during his presidency but that there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct. The case returns to the lower court, which will decide whether the actions Mr. Trump took were in an official or private capacity.

• The charges: The former president faces three charges of conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding, all related to his efforts to cling to the presidency after his 2020 loss. He was indicted last August by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in one of two federal criminal cases against him; the other relates to the F.B.I. raid on his private club, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022 that recovered missing government documents.

• The trial timing: The prospects for a trial in the 2020 election interference case before the election seem increasingly remote. If Mr. Trump prevails at the polls, he could order the Justice Department to drop the charges. The bottom-line effect of the court’s ruling appears to be that the trial judge in Washington, Tanya S. Chutkan, is going to have to hold an evidentiary hearing on many, if not most, of the allegations in the special counsel’s indictment of Mr. Trump. The fact-finding process the court has ordered could take a while not only to conduct, but also to prepare for.

• Lower courts ruled against Trump: Judge Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington denied Mr. Trump’s immunity request in December. “Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” she wrote. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed in February.

Apparently the January 6 case will go back to an appellate court for further consideration, and that means that a lot of time will pass (way past the election) before this case is decided.

Click to read the ruling as a pdf that you can download:

We are well and truly screwed: the President can commit as many crimes as he wants so long as they are “official acts”, and he has nothing to lose by doing that. And if he gets elected in November, a prospect that seems increasingly likely, he could simply order the Justice Department to drop the whole case against him.

If you’re a lawyer or legal eagle, weigh in below.

Taiwan’s first ever minister of digital affairs has transformed politics, using online platforms and AI to give power to the country’s citizens – with lessons for us all

Robotic companions are a mainstay of sci-fi series everywhere. From R2D2 to Johnny 5, these characters typically have a supporting role in the story and are helpful to their human companions. But what if they were integral to the humans in the story? So much so that they couldn’t live without their robotic compatriots? That’s the idea behind Biobot, which was given a NIAC grant in 2018 – why not use a robotic companion to carry supporting equipment on human extravehicular activities (EVAs) on other planets?

If you watch the footage from the Apollo missions, you can see how awkward it is for the astronauts to bend over to pick things up. Also, these extraordinarily naturally fit and gifted people seem to fall over an awful lot, given how coordinated they are on Earth. That’s probably because a 61 kg pack on their back is helping to keep them alive.

Each moonwalker had to carry a life support system on their suit to maintain conditions inside the suit that allowed them to breathe and not cook to death. This portable life support system (PLSS) weighed almost as much as the astronauts. It dramatically changed their center of gravity from its typical interalized location to somewhere behind their shoulder blades. That limited the astronaut’s mobility and, even with the light lunar gravity, limited the time they could participate in an EVA before becoming exhausted.

Alternatively, in microgravity, EVAs have taken place using umbilical cords and a larger life support system inside the space station or shuttle. This has proven successful, but managing the umbilical cords requires a significant amount of overhead—typically, another astronaut manages it for the person doing the EVA. Given the importance of productively utilizing all of an astronaut’s time, it would be better not to require that helping hand.

Dr. David Akin of the University of Maryland’s Department of Aerospace Engineering considered all that, and his solution is Biobot. The final design is a small rover capable of following an astronaut around on an EVA and attaching to their suit via an umbilical cord that the rover manages. As part of the NIAC grant Dr. Akin received, he and his team looked at potential design trade-offs as well a developed a working prototype of the system.

First, let’s discuss some advantages. Biobot removes the heavy weight from the astronaut’s back, freeing them from carrying it around and moving their center of gravity back to a more familiar place. It can also allow PLSS designers to add components that would otherwise be considered unsuitable for fitting into a backpack itself, such as radiative cooling systems.

Some UMD students testing an early prototype.
Credit – Akin et al.

It can also serve as a platform for holding collected samples or tools necessary for the mission. It can even let the astronaut ride on it in a pinch as a last resort in emergencies. Since it is mobile, the umbilical cord that would typically tie the astronaut to a base station is no longer an issue, and since it is designed to traverse any terrain an astronaut can, it should be capable of keeping up with them.

From some of the pictures in the NIAC final report, it appears the engineers working on the project had fun developing the system. They successfully showed a proof-of-concept of the basic functionality of what they expected the Biobot to do. They also plan to continue developing it, including a test phase at NASA’s “Rockyard” planetary surface simulator. 

However, no additional NASA funding has been forthcoming. Though the paper mentions volunteer student support, it seems the Biobot idea is on hold for now. But someday, astronauts exploring the lunar or Martian surface might have a robotic companion with them that can provide both comic relief and life-giving support.

Learn More:
Akin et al. – BioBot: Investigating an Alternative Paradigm for Planetary EVA
UT – SpaceX Shows Off Its New Extravehicular Activity Suit
UT – Lunar Astronauts Will Need Easy Walking Trails Around the Moon’s South Pole
UT – Astronauts Could Rely on Algae as the Perfect Life Support Partner

Lead Image:
Artist’s depiction of BioBot
Credit – Akin et al.

The post Robotic Rover Could Support Astronauts on Moonwalks appeared first on Universe Today.

More than 1300 square kilometres of cropland worldwide was covered by solar panels in 2018, an area that could be producing 4 quadrillion calories per year

The Matrix star Keanu Reeves’s debut sci-fi novel is out this month, written in collaboration with old hand China Miéville, and we also have new books from Adam Roberts and Aliette de Bodard

Paranormal phenomena tend to wax and wane in the public interest. Typically a generation will become fascinated with a topic, but eventually the novelty will wear thin and interest will fade. But the flame will be kept alive by the hardcore believers. Wait long enough, and interest will come around again. We are seeing this today with UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects, now technically terms UAPs or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena).

Not surprisingly the BBC wants to get in on this UFO action, and they are doing that with their Paranormal series, which they are promoting on their news outlet. They clearly are trying to remain respectable, and not completely abandon their journalistic integrity, but they predictably fall for all the usual fallacies that skeptics have explained many times over decades.

They focus on an incident in Wales in 1977 at the Broad Haven elementary school. This is often referred to as the Roswell of Wales. There were reports that day of something strange going on, including a silver humanoid walking around town, and possible UFO sightings. Some of the students thought they saw something in a field near the school’s playground, and many students then went out to take a look. What UFO believers point to as “compelling” evidence that they saw an actual space craft is that the students, under questioning by the school staff, all drew similar images of what they saw – a pretty typical flying saucer. The BBC captions a picture of some of these drawings: “The children reportedly drew near identical images of the UFO, which captured widespread media attention.”

This is where subjectivity comes in to bias reporting. What the BBC calls “near identical images” I would consider vaguely similar images. This is where scientific and critical thinking comes in. Scientists often have to address the question of whether or no similar phenomena have a common origin. Do two species with a similar feature derive that feature from a common ancestor? Are the pyramids of the Americas and the pyramids of Egypt related? The standard method for determining a common origin amount to the details – do the phenomena share details that would defy coincidence? With the pyramids the answer is clearly no – they look superficially similar, but not in details.

Look at the UFO drawings. They are all variations on a common flying saucer theme, but do not match in any significant details. Perhaps most importantly, there are no new details, not already part of UFO lore, that are shared by the drawings. How come they match at all? Because the flying saucer was already part of the culture. We generally underestimate how pervasive culture is, and how much even young children absorb. They drew flying saucers because that’s what UFOs look like.

In other similar cases children have eventually come out (often as adults) and admitted they started the whole thing by making up a sighting, but then the other students joined in. No one has come forward in the Broad Haven case, but that is not surprising. Perhaps no one did make it up, and it started with a genuine sighting of something the child could not identify, and that triggered the rest. Harrier jets were in operation in the area. The military did come in and investigate the site and found no evidence of anything physical. And someone did later come forward to admit they walked around town that day in a silver firefighting suit as a prank, which was likely the trigger of the whole episode.

We may not have a complete and rock solid explanation for exactly what happened that day – but we also have no compelling evidence that there was alien activity there, and there are plenty of mundane explanations that cannot be ruled out, and fit the available evidence quite well.

There is another point worth emphasizing. The BBC reports: “And one aerospace expert tells the BBC that in 2024, thanks to everyone having a phone in their pocket and many people using apps to follow air traffic, we are in ‘a much stronger position to be able to track what’s known and what’s unknown’.”

We are also in a much stronger position to conclude that aliens are not visiting the Earth, at least not grays zipping around in flying saucers and occasionally crashing. Like many such phenomena, time is a great test. In 1967 with the Patterson-Gimlin film of an apparent Bigfoot, one might be forgiven for thinking that it’s possible for a population of large primates to be living in the Pacific Northwest that has so far evaded scientific detection. But here we are, almost 60 years later, and we still do not have a shred of hard evidence for Bigfoot. If Atlantis existed, by now there would be museums full of Atlantean artifacts. If there were a JFK assassination conspiracy, that would likely have been declassified by now. If the moon landings were hoaxed, that lie would have been exposed a long time ago.

And of course, if aliens were buzzing the Earth, the existence of so many smart phones would dramatically increase the chance of someone catching a good photo or video, one that withstands technical examination. But we have nothing – not one solid piece of evidence. We are still living in the same realm of fuzzy evidence – because, as I often say, the ambiguity is the phenomenon. If UFOs were alien, then the evidence should get better over time. If the fuzziness is the phenomenon, then it should remain so, because whenever the evidence is more clear it turns out to be something identifiable and mundane.

This is one explanation for the cycle. I do thing that “the public” gets bored with specific paranormal phenomena because there is nothing there. The excitement is largely around the idea that a revelation is right around the corner. It makes sense – a revelation should be coming soon if something so big were actually happening. You can only string people out for so long, because they move one. They may still think there is something to it, but the emotional connection and excitement fade. There are ghost hunting shows where they never, ever, find a ghost. There are bigfoot hunting shows where they never find a bigfoot. Paranormal shows are entirely about mystery, about the unknown. They are a giant tease, and the audience is made to feel as if the hammer is about to fall. But it never does.

People get bored, and the phenomenon recedes to the shadows where it awaits a new naive generation that can become infatuated with the mystery all over again.

The post BBC Gets Into UFOs first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Despite its growing popularity, there has been little scientific investigation into parents who give babies solid food to feed themselves, known as baby-led weaning

Syntrichia caninervis is found in some of the most extreme places on Earth and can survive conditions that would kill almost any other organism, making it a potential candidate for colonising Mars

Everything old is new once again, as COVID-19 quacks rehash old cancer quack claims that chemotherapy doesn't work in order to sell their preferred cancer quackery.

The post Paul Marik: Disparaging chemotherapy in order to sell cancer quackery first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.