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Hominins may have learned how to make bone tools by adapting the techniques they mastered for stone ones

Quickie with Bob: Atlantic Shutdown; News Items: Measles Outbreak, Reintroducing Wolves, TIGR-Tas Gene Editing, Blood Donor Who Saved Millions Dies, Star Mergers; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Intricate Web of Civilization; Science or Fiction

Software used by banks and the space industry may still rely on archaic code. We went in search of the oldest code in use and asked, what happens when it glitches?

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “limp2,” is actually a “resurrection from 2009.” It appears to show Mo in a burqa, and mocks the tendency of pious religionists to ape the behavior of their leader.

Today we have tidepool photos by Intellectual Hero Abby Thompson, a mathematician from UC Davis. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

More tidepool pictures from Dillon Beach, CA,  plus a vegetable.  As usual I got help with some of the IDs from people on inaturalist.   First the vegetable:

This is Romanesco from our local farmers’ market, carefully selected as the most beautiful in the pile. It’s a fractal-ly vegetable; the large spiraling pattern repeats in the smaller spirals which repeat in the even smaller spirals which…..   In a mathematical fractal this goes on ad infinitum, in a vegetable, not so much.  I posted a similar picture outside my office door about 20 years ago and a computer scientist stopped by to ask me how I’d generated the image.   He was disappointed it was an actual photograph of an actual vegetable.

   On to the tidepools:

Hermissenda crassicornis (nudibranch) doing this interesting thing- using the surface tension of the water to “walk” upside down on the surface of the pool.   For some reason they often do this as the tide is beginning to come back in:

An infant Kelp Crab (Pugettia sp.), through a microscope:

Dendronotus venustus (nudibranch). A fractal-ly nudibranch.:

Aeolidia loui (nudibranch) with its eggs, above the water line:

Aeolidia loui:

A baby Ochre Star (Pisaster ochraceus). This was about an inch across.    The adults are the large (usually 6 inches or more), very common orange or purple stars.   For some reason I see the adults (always) and the small babies (sometimes) and not anything in between:

Cuthonella cocoachroma (nudibranch). This picture doesn’t do it justice.     They are quite small (about ½” long), and findable only because the white tips of the cerata (those things on its back) sparkle like gems when they catch the light:

Eudendrium californicum,  a colonial hydroid.    Each “flower” is an animal, and the orange blobs are part of the reproductive structure.:

Camera info:  Mostly Olympus TG-7, in microscope mode, pictures taken from above the water.

An excellent article on the BBC gives a good overview of the continuing controversy over universal lockdowns as a pandemic mitigation strategy during COVID. We now have significant data about how various countries around the world fared compared to their mitigation strategy. Interestingly, this data is unlikely to resolve the controversy. But it can inform our decisions for the next pandemic – […]

The post Looking Back 5 Year Later – Were Lockdowns Worth It? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The stars as seen from Earth would have looked dimmer 14 million years ago, as the solar system was in the middle of passing through clouds of dust and gas

In an effort to conserve Voyager 2's dwindling energy and extend the spacecraft's mission, NASA has shut down another of its instruments. They did it with the Plasma Spectrometer in October 2024, and it won't be the last. In March, Voyager 2's Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument will be powered down.

The Turing award, often considered the Nobel prize of computing, has gone to two computer scientists for their work on reinforcement learning, a key technique in training artificial intelligence models

The discovery of new exoplanets can help scientists understand how planets form and evolve.

Researchers are working to move cold atom quantum experiments and applications from the laboratory tabletop to chip-based systems.

Researchers are working to move cold atom quantum experiments and applications from the laboratory tabletop to chip-based systems.

When competition for food is high, both chimps and bonobos sometimes rub their genitals together to cope

The Trump administration’s latest move to improve government efficiency has purged tech consultants that worked to improve government efficiency

Soilless growing systems inside greenhouses, known as controlled environment agriculture, promise to advance the year-round production of high-quality specialty crops, according to an interdisciplinary research team. But to be competitive and sustainable, this advanced farming method will require the development and implementation of precision agriculture techniques. To meet that demand, the team developed an automated crop-monitoring system capable of providing continuous and frequent data about plant growth and needs, allowing for informed crop management.

Researchers have demonstrated that multicolored stickers applied to stop or speed limit signs on the roadside can 'confuse' self-driving vehicles, causing unpredictable and possibly hazardous operations.

Researchers have demonstrated that multicolored stickers applied to stop or speed limit signs on the roadside can 'confuse' self-driving vehicles, causing unpredictable and possibly hazardous operations.

The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show '3 Body Problem.' There's no problem, however, with what a team of researchers say is likely a stable trio of icy space rocks in the solar system's Kuiper Belt.

The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show '3 Body Problem.' There's no problem, however, with what a team of researchers say is likely a stable trio of icy space rocks in the solar system's Kuiper Belt.

Technology is changing how physicians think about assessing patients and, in turn, how patients expect to be able to measure their own health. Apps designed for smartphones and wearable devices can provide unique insights into users' brain health. It is estimated that 55 million individuals worldwide suffer from some form of dementia. Alzheimer's disease and related dementias being the leading causes, with numbers expected to triple by 2050.