Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 119, Issue 52, December 2022.

Will science for cash.

It was thought that there was only one species of the ghost-like Monotropastrum humile plant found in woodlands across East and Southeast Asia. In a major new discovery, botanists reveal that a rosy pink colored variant is actually a distinct new species, shaking up our understanding of this unusual-looking genus of plants. This 20-year study emphasizes the importance of combining various analytical methods to fully understand and protect biodiversity.

A quarter-sized device could drastically alter the course of treatment for Type 1 diabetes, a chronic condition that impacts millions of Americans and does not have a cure.

An ultra-wide-band receiver based on a harmonic selection technique to improve the operational bandwidth of 5G networks has been developed. Fifth generation (5G) mobile networks are now being used worldwide with frequencies of over 100 Hz. To keep up with the data traffic in these networks, appropriate receivers are necessary. In this regard, the proposed technology could revolutionize the world of next-generation communications.

submitted by /u/gbbloom
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/PositivelyIndecent
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/hootsmcboots
[link] [comments]

Doctors at Oregon State University's veterinary hospital performed the first known total ear canal ablation surgery on a pig last week, in consultation with a human ear doctor who previously operated on the lead veterinary surgeon's ear.

Doctors at Oregon State University's veterinary hospital performed the first known total ear canal ablation surgery on a pig last week, in consultation with a human ear doctor who previously operated on the lead veterinary surgeon's ear.

When Renee Perez has any extra money, she sets it aside for her five children. For the 38-year-old business information technology major at Texas Christian University, anything that isn't essential, like professional clothing, is a difficult purchase to justify.

Harlene Schwander didn't need a second warning from firefighters as a blaze burned toward her home in Klamath River, California, in July.

Scientists have discovered that the pace of groundwater depletion in California's Central Valley has accelerated dramatically during the drought as heavy agricultural pumping has drawn down aquifer levels to new lows and now threatens to devastate the underground water reserves.

Cities need to plant more trees. But not just any trees.

Cities need to plant more trees. But not just any trees.

A major oil prospect on federal land in Alaska is hanging in the balance as pressure mounts on the Biden administration for a final decision to approve, or reject, the project.

The holidays are a notoriously fraught time for big feelings, loneliness chief among them. In 2017, the surgeon general declared loneliness an American "epidemic," with "over 40% of adults" in the U.S. suffering from it. Globally, the rates rose even further when the coronavirus pandemic made gathering dangerous.

What makes things tricky is that solitude is not the same as loneliness. Likewise, physical proximity to people is not necessarily an antidote to loneliness, as anyone who has ever felt alone in the company of others knows. The feeling flares when our emotional needs for intimacy and belonging aren't met.

Thankfully, social encounters aren't the only way to connect. Perhaps, like me, you find solace or comfort in art. Cinema, sculpture, and theater all fit the bill, but I find there's nothing quite like the rush of being seen by a book—that sense that the characters are right there, that the author understands something essential about how it feels to be alive. As the essayist Olivia Laing has written, "The weird gift of loneliness is that it grounds us in our common humanity. Other people have been afraid, waited, listened for news. Other people have survived." When you are feeling alone, these eight books will make excellent companions.

---

Milk Fed, by Melissa Broder

Broder's second novel follows 24-year-old Rachel as she becomes infatuated with Miriam, the voluptuous Orthodox Jewish woman who works at the local frozen-yogurt shop and couldn't possibly desire Rachel back. (Or could she?) Milk Fed captures the specific, and truly bleak, loneliness of trying to break out in the Los Angeles stand-up-comedy scene while working for a faux-woke talent manager and concealing an eating disorder. It combines that plot with a searching study of missing one's estranged mother—and some of the best sex scenes I've ever read. Rachel sleepwalks through life before meeting Miriam, collecting boyfriends "by default" when she's "too hungry and tired to deal with" moving their hands off her. Broder, a poet, fills in the texture of Rachel's alienation startlingly well, making each sentence so sharp, it's easy to miss how deeply it's lanced you. Of her mediocre therapist, she says: "She was probably someone who genuinely enjoyed a nice pear." Worshipping Miriam opens Rachel up to a future where she doesn't treat her own body with contempt, and where pursuing her unruliest desires can be a kind of mitzvah. Milk Fed treats queer coming-of-age and the tumultuous road to self-acceptance with the reverence both deserve.

[Read: The problem with the stories we tell about eating disorders]

---

The Lonely City, by Olivia Laing

Laing's exploration of loneliness as it intersects with art making, technology, and her experience relocating to New York in her 30s is one of my most frequently recommended books. She writes gorgeously about the visual artists David Wojnarowicz, Edward Hopper, and Andy Warhol, and many others whose work has something perceptive to say about being alone. Her writing is a warm bath for the senses, except the bathwater is seltzer: She describes the internet-entrepreneur Josh Harris's performance-art piece Quiet, in which 60 people spent the last month of 1999 locked in a bunker that the public could observe, as "a month-long party, a psychology experiment … a hedonistic prison camp or a coercive human zoo." I rarely laugh this hard reading cultural criticism, particularly on a topic this potentially unfunny. Before the bunker was shut down by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani (allegedly over concerns that it was a cult), it had become a brutal display of sex, defecation, and aggression, despite the project's supposed ethos of togetherness. This anecdote is one of many that Laing carves into like she's cutting unrefined crystal, exposing its luster. The Lonely City makes its heavy research endlessly interesting.

---

Jesus' Son, by Denis Johnson

For many writers, Johnson is the patron saint of loneliness, and his semiautobiographical cult hit, Jesus' Son, is scripture for learning how to write volcanic prose that aches. His narrator, referred to throughout the linked story collection as "Fuckhead," longs for connection but settles for alcohol and heroin. Fuckhead's prophetic, addled voice brings us sentences such as "The travelling salesman had fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out … I knew every raindrop by its name" and "The sky is blue and the dead are coming back." In the opening story, "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," Fuckhead catches a ride with a young family just before they get into a terrible accident. I've never forgotten how he describes the wife of the man driving the other car learning that her husband has died: "She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." These brief moments of transcendence, often experienced with fellow misfits, stave off the existential solitude always threatening to pull Fuckhead under—if only for another moment, if only until the drugs kick in.

[Read: When a sentence changes your life—then changes its own meaning]

---

Real Life, by Brandon Taylor

In Taylor's debut novel, Wallace, a Black queer young man from Alabama, navigates the racism and tricky interpersonal politics of his predominantly white Ph.D. program in the Midwest. Real Life is a master class in depicting the penetrating feeling of isolation in a crowd, including among people who ostensibly care. A charged love affair with an allegedly straight classmate tests the boundaries of Wallace's (partly self-imposed) alienation from his peers. "There is a difference between entering someone, being in someone, and being with that person," he thinks. "There is an impossibility to the idea of simultaneously existing within them and beside them." One of the most moving chapters is a nine-page interlude in which he shares the intimate details and casual violence of his childhood. Taylor is one of our foremost chroniclers of social friction, whether he is conjuring chaotic dinner parties at which everyone says the wrong thing or describing how difficult—maybe unworkable—it is to fully see and be seen by others.

---

Bluets, by Maggie Nelson

Bluets is a group of prose poems, or perhaps a book-length essay, about the carnage of lost love. A few pages in, Nelson admits that she's been at work on a book about the color blue—which she's become obsessed with—"for years without writing a word. It is, perhaps, my way of making my life feel 'in progress' rather than a sleeve of ash falling off a lit cigarette." Bluets is meditative, devastating, and unexpectedly funny, even as Nelson recalls caring for a friend who suddenly became quadriplegic and her own grief after being left for another woman. So how does one fall in love with a color? "It began slowly. An appreciation, an affinity. Then, one day, it became more serious … It became somehow personal," Nelson writes. The color does not replace the speaker's aloneness, but it becomes its container. This makes me think of the Louise Glück line "At the end of my suffering / there was a door," and how loss catapults us into the arms of whatever can make us feel held. Blue is Nelson's door to hope, and a world in which she can become "a student not of longing, but of light."

[Read: Why do we look down on lonely people?]

---

Don't Let Me Be Lonely, by Claudia Rankine

Whether you're a fan of Citizen—Rankine's best-selling meditation on the accretive toxicity of everyday racism—or new to her work, her acolytes will insist that you not overlook Don't Let Me Be Lonely. An ingenious collection of news stories, photographs, and personal narrative, it unpacks the desolation of cancer and depression, of the George W. Bush years, of America's consistently insufficient response to white supremacy. Rankine's words are frank and mesmerizing. One poem in the form of a conversation reads, "Define loneliness? / Yes. / It's what we can't do for each other." Don't Let Me Be Lonely is similar in its experimental structure to Bluets, except the disaster at its center is not romantic but cultural. Of the first—and, for 73 days in 2001, only—person living with an artificial heart, Rankine writes, "His was a private and perhaps lonely singularity. No one else could say, I know how you feel." Despite the uncertainty of her subject matter, the author has an assured voice that never falters.

---

Heartbroke, by Chelsea Bieker

Bieker's collection chronicles Californians, mostly women, in the Central Valley who go to extremes to escape their lives, or, at the very least, to let some air in. Heartbroke is wildly original: The first story opens with "Now I didn't know a thing about mining when I got into it with Spider Dick one night working at the Barge." The bold choice to call the first named character "Spider Dick" fits right in with Bieker's clear-eyed candor and her vivid rendering of people who come alive on the page. The protagonists have learned to find grace and humor amid constant indignity. Their dangerous desires—to run away with a murderous outlaw, to steal an unhoused woman's baby, to consider pursuing a creative-writing career with no solid indication that one has the talent for it—bring them pain and magnificence. Short stories are often best savored slowly, but I tore through Heartbroke as though one of its protagonists were holding a gun to my head.

[Listen: How to know you're lonely]

---

¡Hola Papi!, by John Paul Brammer

Describing a Grindr hookup in college, Brammer writes, "Taking my clothes off, I must have looked like I was preparing to be executed, because he asked, 'Are you sure you want to do this?'" Adapted from Brammer's advice column of the same name, ¡Hola Papi! is a raucous contemplation of the loneliness of being closeted and biracial and the ecstasy of living on your own terms. He answers reader queries with self-effacing honesty, as when he tells the person who asked "How do I let go of a rotten relationship?" about the cognitive dissonance he'd felt while convincing himself that "getting naked with my 'best friend' from high school was just two hetero bros doing regular hetero-bro stuff." Brammer's essays address evergreen questions such as "How do I make peace with the years I lost in the closet?" and "How do you keep chasing your dreams even though you're most definitely a failure?" No one writes like him: He'll proclaim something outlandish but obviously true, like "Hot people often walk like nothing bad has ever happened to them," and follow it up with advice that feels like it's coming from an old friend who wants nothing more than to see you thrive. The results are tender, hysterical, and wise.

---

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

On Dec. 30, 2021, one of the most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado swept through neighborhoods just a few miles from our offices at the University of Colorado Boulder. The flames destroyed over 1,000 buildings, yet when we drove through the affected neighborhoods, some houses were still completely intact right next to homes where nothing was left to burn.

Driving home recently, I encountered a familiar sight: four dining chairs on the kerb waiting for some sucker to rescue them. Loading them into the car (sucker!) I wondered: how long were these chairs in shed limbo-land before finally getting kicked to the kerb?

Each December, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, among others, take over our thoughts and our wallets as we participate in ceremonies our ancestors have practiced for as long as we can remember. These are all example of traditions. And in most cases, traditions are accompanied by rituals.

One of my life's aims is to swim in as many lakes, rivers, pools and oceans as I possibly can, to use my liberty and swimming skills as freely as I can. I love the feeling of being in a large, fresh body of water, its soft immersive, vast or deep buoyancy.

For Australians, memories of childhood Christmas often include gifts, prawns and shooing uninvited buzzing guests away from the pavlova.

The year 2022 was a tough one for the growing number of people living in food insecurity and energy poverty around the world, and the beginning of 2023 is looking bleak.

For Australians, memories of childhood Christmas often include gifts, prawns and shooing uninvited buzzing guests away from the pavlova.

Drinking alcohol has been part of Australian culture for at least 240 years, and perhaps millennia prior.

You've probably seen what the weather models thought it would look like. Now, here's how it has really appeared, as seen from space.

While increasing immunity could be taming the coronavirus, this year also saw a variety of new variants, as well as the threat of the "tripledemic."

Global warming has increased the number of extreme weather events around the world by 400% since the 1980s. Countries know how to stop the damage from worsening: stop burning fossil fuels and shift to renewable energy, electrify transportation and industry, and reduce the carbon intensity of agriculture.

The bookmaker (nearly) always wins, as the adage goes. But if you want to tip the balance in your favor, look to female riders.

Drinking alcohol has been part of Australian culture for at least 240 years, and perhaps millennia prior.

From when our ancient relatives began walking on two feet to the first known medical amputation on Homo sapiens, here's what we learned in 2022 about our human ancestors.

Beachgoers could be safer thanks to a new technology with the potential to give real-time updates of rip currents.

Call for UK government ban of chemical in processed meat such as bacon and ham after mice tumours study

A leading scientist has urged ministers to ban the use of nitrites in food after research highlighted the "clear" risk of developing

from eating processed meat such as bacon and ham too often.

The study by scientists from Queen's University Belfast found that mice fed a diet of processed meat containing the chemicals, which are used to cure bacon and give it its distinctive pink colour, developed 75% more cancerous tumours than mice fed nitrite-free pork.

Continue reading…

Integrated photonics extensively uses on-chip optical elements such as sources, splitters, modulators, and high-confinement waveguides embedded in a planar platform to efficiently process and route optical signals. There is a growing interest in integrated Mid-IR and THz photonics for telecommunications and sensing. In the THz frequency range, a prominent candidate for source integration is the THz quantum cascade laser.

University of Adelaide researchers have built a comprehensive profile of homelessness and associated health issues in Adelaide. Their work is published in the Australian Journal of Social Issues.

Imagine a virtual human body, rich in complexity and detail, that enables scientists to simulate experiments that can't be conducted in vivo or in vitro. A team of Chinese researchers brought this vision closer to reality by developing a framework for seamless cell-centric data assembly and built the human Ensemble Cell Atlas (hECA) using data collected from scattered public datasets.

Imagine a virtual human body, rich in complexity and detail, that enables scientists to simulate experiments that can't be conducted in vivo or in vitro. A team of Chinese researchers brought this vision closer to reality by developing a framework for seamless cell-centric data assembly and built the human Ensemble Cell Atlas (hECA) using data collected from scattered public datasets.

Over a single day, in the placid waters of a single pond, a million virus particles might enter a single-celled organism known for the minuscule hairs, or cilia, that propel it through those waters.

Over a single day, in the placid waters of a single pond, a million virus particles might enter a single-celled organism known for the minuscule hairs, or cilia, that propel it through those waters.

Researchers at Nagoya University, Japan, have discovered a mechanism for the selective transportation of sugar and hormones in plants. The results also clarify that sugar transportation is necessary for male fertility in plants, which means pollen production. The findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at Nagoya University, Japan, have discovered a mechanism for the selective transportation of sugar and hormones in plants. The results also clarify that sugar transportation is necessary for male fertility in plants, which means pollen production. The findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Coal tar, once considered waste, has become a huge treasure trove because hundreds of compounds can be isolated from it. Most of these compounds tend to be aromatic hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heterocyclic compounds.

This month marks 50 years since humanity last ventured beyond low-Earth orbit. While NASA is currently working to send people back to the moon, Apollo 17 in 1972 is the most recent crewed mission to leave Earth behind. The mission is notable for another reason: the famous "Blue Marble" photograph of Earth fully illuminated by the sun. This stunning image supercharged the nascent environmental movement in the early 1970s and has been reproduced frequently over the decades. Now, it's being reproduced in a new way — scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology attempted to recreate the Blue Marble shot from scratch using a new climate model. The results, as you can see above, are impressive. The simulation on the right is a dead ringer for the authentic photo on the left.

You could argue that the foundation of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) was part of the environmental movement spurred on by the Blue Marble. MPI-M was set up under the direction of Prof. Klaus Hasselmann in 1975, who would go on to win the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for MPI-M's work on anthropogenic climate change.

Work on the climate at MPI-M is still ongoing. In late 2022, the institute completed work on a model known as ICON that can simulate fully coupled climate systems at kilometer scale. Climate scientists believe that being able to resolve atmospheric processes at this level of detail is essential to understanding how global warming is reshaping the globe. With the 50-year anniversary of the iconic Blue Marble photo, the MPI-M team decided to test the model by recreating the image using weather data from 1972.

MPI-M partnered with Nvidia and the German Climate Computing Center to run the simulation, beginning with a spun-up ocean two days before the famous image was captured. The institute describes it as a two-day forecast arriving fifty years too late. By simulating the physics of surface winds, water currents, and cloud fields, the team ended up with something that very closely matches the real photograph.

The image above was generated with the Nvidia Omniverse platform with internal RTX ray tracing. And it's not just a photograph. The simulation is a fully formed world, featuring details not recorded by the Apollo crew's camera. The simulation allowed the team to go beyond the superficial, studying the waves of warm water emanating from the African coast and subsurface eddies that rise upward as the sun heats the ocean. The team expressed pride that ICON was able to so closely mirror the Blue Marble, particularly given the rudimentary weather data from 50 years ago in the southern hemisphere. This work shows that ICON could become a key tool in understanding Earth's changing climate.

Now read:

• A Geoengineering Startup Is Releasing Sulfur Into the Atmosphere, Selling 'Cooling Credits'
• Billionaires are Searching for 'Green' Minerals Under Greenland's Melting Ice
• NASA: Tonga Volcanic Eruption Blasted 'Unprecedented' Amount of Water Into Atmosphere

Genetic information encoded in genomic DNA is transcribed to mRNAs and then the codons on mRNA are decoded by transfer RNAs (tRNAs) during protein synthesis. tRNAs deliver amino acids to ribosomes and proteins are synthesized from the amino acids on the ribosomes according to the decoded genetic information. Therefore, tRNA plays a key role during the translation of genetic information.

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-26430-5

FLIP-based autophagy-detecting technique reveals closed autophagic compartments

Genetic information encoded in genomic DNA is transcribed to mRNAs and then the codons on mRNA are decoded by transfer RNAs (tRNAs) during protein synthesis. tRNAs deliver amino acids to ribosomes and proteins are synthesized from the amino acids on the ribosomes according to the decoded genetic information. Therefore, tRNA plays a key role during the translation of genetic information.

According to quantum mechanics, the physics theory that describes the zoo of subatomic particles, all matter can be described as both particles and waves. But is it real?

The rapid rise of text-to-image generators powered by artificial intelligence has thrilled some people, but left others concerned for the future of art

submitted by /u/tristynjoshua
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Impossible_Cheetah_7
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Sawovsky
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/Adept-Engineering-71
[link] [comments]

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-27068-z

Author Correction: Effective screening strategies for safe opening of universities under Omicron and Delta variants of

There's an old adage in the engineering field—what gets funded gets built. So it's sure to be a happy time over at the Planetary Society, as NEO Surveyor, the project the organization has primarily supported over the past few years, has made it through NASA's grueling budgetary process to reach the "development" stage, with an eye for a launch of the system in 2028.

In a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team of researchers led by the University of Cologne in Germany examined how solar flares erupted by the TRAPPIST-1 star could affect the interior heating of its orbiting exoplanets.

Because why not?

Traditional mining has been subject to a negative stigma for some time. People, especially in developed countries, have a relatively negative view of this necessary economic activity. Primarily that is due to its environmental impacts—greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction are some of the effects that give the industry its negative image.

Studying the large-scale structure of our galaxy isn't easy. We don't have a clear view of the Milky Way's shape and features like we do of other galaxies, largely because we live within it. But we do have some advantages. From within, we're able to carry out close-up surveys of the Milky Way's stellar population and its chemical compositions. That gives researchers the tools they need to compare our own galaxy to the many millions of others in the universe.

PLUS. Hvert år udpeger Ingeniøren årets bedste danske forskningsresultater. Dette er et af dem.

A team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island, working with a colleague at the University of Richmond, has found that despite laws banning the sale of hatchling turtles, there is a thriving online market for them in the U.S. In their paper published in the open-access journal PLOS One, the group describes their survey of online sites selling turtles and whether such sites were adhering to federal regulations.

A team of researchers at the University of Rhode Island, working with a colleague at the University of Richmond, has found that despite laws banning the sale of hatchling turtles, there is a thriving online market for them in the U.S. In their paper published in the open-access journal PLOS One, the group describes their survey of online sites selling turtles and whether such sites were adhering to federal regulations.

This year,

researchers uncovered a variety of ways that tumors can survive and spread, ranging from damaging their own DNA to exploiting the nearby microenvironment for nutrients.

Nudging—the idea that simple changes to how a choice is presented can lead people to make better decisions—has been one of the most popular ideas to emerge from economics in the past two decades.

(Credit: RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images)

(Credit: RUNSTUDIO/Getty Images)The Earth's climate is warming, and the potential for serious consequences in the future is strong. Are things so dire that we need to start manipulating the atmosphere? One startup thinks so, and it's moving forward with a plan that scientists have condemned. Make Sunrise has started releasing reflective particles to cool the globe, and it'll even sell you "cooling credits" as a byproduct. It sounds good on paper, but this early attempt at geoengineering risks causing more problems than it solves.

Make Sunsets uses weather balloons that climb high into the stratosphere, releasing small clouds of sulfur particles. According to the company, one gram of sulfur released into the upper atmosphere counteracts one ton of carbon emissions for a period of one year. Scientists have been studying this form of geoengineering in the abstract for years — it mimics the natural release of sulfur in volcanic eruptions, which can lower temperatures as the particles reflect small amounts of sunlight. But doing it intentionally could have unforeseen consequences.

Multiple experts in the field of geoengineering contacted by MIT Technology Review have heavily criticized the company for moving forward with its plans. Luke Iseman, CEO of Make Sunsets, isn't surprised. He says that the company is equal parts entrepreneurial and provocation. He also understands the reaction, noting that it makes him look like a Bond villain. And like all good Bond villains, Iseman has a foreign lair from which he carries out his dastardly plan — in this case, Baja California.

Iseman says the company's first two balloon launches took place in Baja California this past April, which was before the company officially formed. The balloons were loaded with a few grams of sulfur and enough helium to get them high into the atmosphere, but we don't know how high. The goal was to get the balloons to burst in the stratosphere, but it's unclear if that happened or what the impact of the particles was. There was no monitoring hardware on the balloon, and Iseman did not seek the approval of any government before releasing the balloon.

While geoengineering has not been undertaken on a large scale, it's unlikely that a few grams of sulfur in a balloon will have serious negative impacts. But it's not certain it will do any good, either. Thus, the $10 Make Sunsets charges per "cooling credit" is completely speculative. The danger is that no one stops Make Sunsets from expanding operations, which could attract other players in the burgeoning field of geoengineering. Before we know it, we may have altered the atmosphere in unexpected ways. And maybe that will mean lower global temperatures, but what else could it mean?

Now read:

• Altering the Atmosphere to Combat Climate Change Might Not Kill Us All: Study
• Scientists Model Costs of Geoengineering Effort to Dim the Sun
• Why cut down on carbon emissions when you can curb climate change by simply blotting out the sun?

Public and private actors are duking it out for extraterrestrial control

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-26238-3

Author Correction: Neck-shaft angle measurement in children: accuracy of the conventional radiography-based (2D) methods compared to 3D reconstructions

In a recent article, Associate Professor Nevin Cohen discusses the opportunities presented by COVID-19 to address not only the symptoms of food insecurity, but the root causes as well.

In 2019, Shinshu University Special Contract Professor Domen Kazunari and colleagues developed the powdered oxysulfide photocatalyst Y2Ti2O5S2 that absorbs sunlight of wavelengths below 650 nm and splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Detailed predictions about how an approaching tsunami will impact the northeastern coastline in Japan can be made in fractions of a second rather than half an hour or so—buying precious time for people to take appropriate action. This potentially life-saving technology exploits the power of machine learning.

Cave paintings are the oldest known art. But we can only speculate about their meaning.

A research group has revealed that the checkerboard-like arrangement of cells in the inner ear's organ of Corti is vital for hearing. The discovery gives a new insight into how hearing works from the perspective of cell self-organization and will also enable various hearing loss disorders to be better understood.

Ethylene glycol is the most common ingredient in automotive antifreeze. But for years, it was used in deadly poisonings.

Researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have conducted a study on the separation route of germanium-68 and successfully prepared a germanium-68/gallium-68 generator.

A research team led by Prof. Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has revealed circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts based on precise observations of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST).

Many parents bring children to emergency rooms to manage aggressive behaviors. But the visits offer little long-term benefit, doctors said.

submitted by /u/DogOwn4675
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/kenickh
[link] [comments]

Physiological or clonal integration is a key ecological benefit where stolon or rhizome connections between ramets allow for translocation of resources from source-sites to sink-sites (in patchy or heterogeneous environments) within the clone. However, negative effects of ramet connection have also been found in previous studies.

Physiological or clonal integration is a key ecological benefit where stolon or rhizome connections between ramets allow for translocation of resources from source-sites to sink-sites (in patchy or heterogeneous environments) within the clone. However, negative effects of ramet connection have also been found in previous studies.

Finding where your family came from is as simple as a home DNA test. Determining ancestry from tumors alone is trickier, but could hold the key to

's origins. Now, researchers have software that accurately infers continental ancestry from tumor genomes. Their work may lead to a better understanding of the links between cancer and ethnicity, as well as future strategies for early detection and personalized treatment.

2022 was a landmark year for climate change action—and repercussions.

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-25712-2

Fabrication of wafer-scale nanoporous AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet distributed Bragg reflectors via one-step selective wet etching

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-27014-z

Artificial temperature-compensated biological clock using temperature-sensitive Belousov–Zhabotinsky gels

It's been an eventful year for space exploration, with successes including the completion of Nasa's Artemis 1 mission (finally), the inauguration of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the completion of China's Tiangong space station.

If an asteroid were to gain sentience and set a course for Earth, might it pick a time like the holidays in order to catch the humans off guard? Well, that's not going to work: Someone is monitoring space for incoming objects, holidays or not.

Kelly Fast manages the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which funds observatory teams at U.S. institutions using telescopes located around the world. And yes, she told me, researchers monitor the night sky even when most of the country has the day off.

[From the January/February 2023 issue: Seeing Earth from space will change you]

Fast and I discussed the program and the day-to-day work of keeping the planet safe from asteroids.

Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

---

Caroline Mimbs Nyce: When we talk about looking for asteroids—or near-Earth objects—what does that mean?

Kelly Fast: It's astronomers using telescopes. What they're looking for are objects that look like stars but are moving relative to those background stars. And then they report those observations.

You have a number of telescopes, like the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona and Pan-STARRS at the University of Hawaii, that NASA funds to search for near-Earth asteroids. They do that survey every night—or every night that they can. Things like weather or the full moon can be a problem. But that's why it's nice having a number of telescopes, because someone can always be looking, even if the sky is cloudy in one location.

Nyce: Is a full moon just too bright?

Fast: Right. It just makes the sky bright. And so, if you're looking for fainter objects, it kind of overwhelms them. But only the area of sky right around the full moon is a problem.

We have a network of telescopes doing that search effort. And all of them report their observations of moving objects to the Minor Planet Center, which is funded by NASA but is the internationally recognized repository for natural-object, small-body position measurements of all kinds—not just near-Earth asteroids. Everybody reports their measurements there. And if there is something that isn't already associated with an object that's already known, then it's put on the near-Earth-object confirmation page at the Minor Planet Center.

Other astronomers can go and look there and see what needs additional observations. It's one thing to have spotted something that might be a new asteroid discovery, but if you don't get enough information on it—enough positions to be able to calculate an orbit and figure out where it's going to be in the future—then that doesn't help you much.

Nyce: When you do identify something, could it also be falling space junk?

Fast: Or, really, space junk in orbit. Or operating satellites. But that gets weeded out to the extent possible based on what's available in public catalogs. Plus, often, they move at different rates.

It's for the Minor Planet Center to make that determination, because they take those observations and determine an orbit from it. And from that they can tell, Oh, this is in orbit around the sun. This isn't an Earth-orbiting satellite.

Nyce: How close is "near Earth"?

Fast: The definition of a near-Earth asteroid is any asteroid with an orbit that brings it within about one-and-a-third of the distance from the sun to the Earth. But not all near-Earth asteroids actually come close to Earth's orbit. And so there's a subset of those that we'd really want to keep an eye on—that if it were to be in the same place at the same time as the Earth one day, we'd want to know well ahead of time.

NASA also funds the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They look at all those data at the Minor Planet Center, and do a precision orbit determination way out into the future to see if anything could pose a long-term impact threat to Earth. The goal is to find something that maybe poses a threat years or decades in advance.

Nyce: It sounds like we have a little bit of lead-up time to figure out where they're going and where they might come into the Earth.

Fast: That is certainly the goal. But there is always the chance that something could be discovered maybe in the short term. But probably very small. You can see most of the large objects much farther away, maybe many orbits ahead of time. But it can happen. We actually had an impactor just a few weeks ago.

Nyce: Oh, really?

Fast: Well, we're talking very small. The nice thing about our atmosphere is it does a good job of disintegrating small objects. You just see a pretty shooting star or fireball. That happens all the time.

Technically, an asteroid, as defined by the International Astronomical Union, is a natural object larger than a meter in size. Our atmosphere takes care of objects that are that size very easily. The one we had a few weeks ago, 2022 WJ1, was discovered in space before it impacted. And that's only happened, like, six times before—where an object was discovered in space and linked to an actual fireball seen in Earth's atmosphere. One of them, a number of years ago, was on New Year's Day. The universe doesn't care that we have holidays.

I know you were interested in who's on the watch over the holidays. The nice thing is it's not just one person; there are teams of people and a lot of automated systems that do orbit determination and then flag if there's something that should be an alert.

If you read about the object just a few weeks ago, that's exactly what happened. A telescope reported the data. Minor Planet Center put it on the confirmation page. And then the Scout system, which was developed by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, flagged it and said this has a chance of impacting. And so then there were more observations taken, and the impact region was narrowed down. And then the fireball was seen—a nice exercise of the system.

Nyce: You said we've had only six that we've been able to connect from to the fireball actually in the atmosphere? Are there other ones that slip through?

Kelly: Well, these objects are very small—just a couple of meters in size—and they're not the ones that NASA is tasked to try to discover, and certainly not ones that we need to warn people about. We end up treating it like an exercise. It's not that others slip through. They are taken care of by the atmosphere anyway.

We'd certainly want to warn about something much larger. In the case of the Chelyabinsk impact in Russia back in 2013, that was a much larger object, probably about 20 meters in size. But it was coming from the direction of the sun, from the daytime sky. So it wasn't something that could be warned about ahead of time. And it wasn't one that was known many orbits ahead of time. And so that was one that did catch everyone, because there was no way to see it.

Nyce: So there are still surprises in your business?

Fast: Right. NASA is tasked by Congress to find these objects, specifically near-Earth asteroids 140 meters in size and larger—a size that can have regional consequences should one impact the Earth. Obviously, NASA wants to find objects of any size that could hit the Earth, but this is the task Congress has assigned.

[From the August 1898 issue: Reminiscences of an astronomer]

NASA's been looking for ways to kind of speed up the discovery of near-Earth asteroids, because we keep finding objects of that size and larger. And people who do models of the asteroid population can tell that there are more out there that we haven't found. So NASA is working on a mission to help speed up the discovery of near-Earth asteroids. And it's called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor. It's a space telescope that works in the infrared, and it's very specifically designed to search for near-Earth asteroids. It would be able to look in parts of the sky closer to the direction of the sun, for instance, than what the telescopes on the ground can do.

It's going to be a very powerful way to speed up the discovery of these objects. Maybe we'll find none of them pose an impact threat. And that would be fabulous. And maybe we find that one could pose a threat, and it's years in the future, and that would give time to learn more about it—maybe plan, if needed, a deflection mission. The goal is to not be in a scrambling situation but to have the luxury of time.

Nyce: How much can be done by humans? Are asteroids a solvable problem by mankind?

Fast: An asteroid impact is the only natural disaster that could be avoided because mankind can do something.

The DART [Double Asteroid Redirection Test] mission [during which NASA flew a spacecraft into an asteroid and changed its orbit] was fabulous, because that was just a test just to try it out. It's physics. If you want to deflect an asteroid, the simplest way is to impact it and change its velocity so that its orbit changes. This was very small scale, and it was done in a test situation with a binary asteroid, because it was just changing the orbit of one asteroid around another. It was very successful. We can use these data to help inform, should we ever have to design a larger mission. That was a big milestone, to have gone from just doing calculations for how you could deflect an asteroid to an actual mission test.

As for the large or multi-kilometer-sized near-Earth asteroids that would pose global consequences, we're not as concerned about those, because most of that population has been discovered. And so that population is a lot better understood. At the other end of the spectrum, as I mentioned, there are these small, couple-of-meter-sized asteroids that don't make it to the ground intact.

It's that intermediate range that wouldn't have global consequences but could still do some serious regional damage. And so, we're working on that population. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Judging by its press since COVID began, you might think that married motherhood is a pathway to misery and immiseration. "Married heterosexual motherhood in America, especially in the past two years, is a game no one wins," wrote Amy Shearn in one of many New York Times op-eds about the difficulties of marriage in the time of COVID. "Moms Are Not Okay: Pandemic Triples Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in New Mothers," read a headline in Forbes. Bloomberg went so far as to suggest that family life was a financial dead end for women in an article headlined "Women Who Stay Single and Don't Have Kids Are Getting Richer."

The COVID-induced stresses of juggling work, child care, kids' schooling, and lockdowns clearly made life difficult for many mothers, and navigating all of this with a spouse could bring its own challenges. "During the height of the pandemic, my mom-friend group chats roiled: I'm going to scream, typed women trying to do it all. I am seriously going to kill my husband and/or devour my young," Shearn wrote. The New York Times parenting columnist Jessica Grose had a similarly dispiriting article, titled "America's Mothers Are in Crisis," pointing to a group of New Jersey mothers who had become so anxious during the pandemic that "they would gather in a park, at a safe social distance, and scream their lungs out."

But was all of this negative commentary about marriage and motherhood, primarily written by and for left-leaning, affluent, educated mothers, an accurate reflection of reality? And today, as we put the worst of the pandemic behind us, are America's moms still "screaming on the inside," to borrow the title of Grose's new book? Are they socially and emotionally worse off than women without kids?

Actually, no. As tough as motherhood was during COVID, mothers were both happier and more financially secure than childless women during the pandemic. This gap existed before COVID, but it continued during the worst days of the pandemic and has remained since then. This phenomenon is especially noteworthy because moms, and parents more generally, used to be less happy than childless adults as recently as the 2000s.

[Read: The pandemic exposed the inequality of American motherhood]

In 2020, 69 percent of mothers ages 18 to 55 were completely or somewhat satisfied with their life, compared with 61 percent of childless women the same age, according to our analysis of data from the YouGov/Deseret News American Family Survey, which annually surveys 3,000 Americans. It's true that women saw their happiness dip from 2019 to 2020 as COVID set in, but this dip was more acute among childless women, according to the survey. Challenging as they were to care for while many schools were closed, kids seem to have brought a sense of direction, connection, and joy to the average mother's life during the pandemic, at a time when so many other social ties were cut off.

Financially speaking, mothers ages 18 to 55 were also better off than childless women. The median family income for mothers with children under age 18 was $80,000 in 2021 but only $67,000 for childless women, according to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. These results are consistent with other recent research by the economists Angus Deaton and Arthur Stone, who found that American parents report more income and "daily joy" than their childless peers, even though they also report more stress.

The picture becomes more complex when we consider socioeconomic status. Poor mothers consistently report lower levels of satisfaction compared with wealthier mothers. This held true during the pandemic: In 2020, 62 percent of poor mothers were at least somewhat satisfied with their lives, compared with 79 percent of rich moms and 80 percent of middle-class moms, according to the American Family Survey data. This is perhaps not surprising given that lower-income moms were more likely than more affluent moms to lose their job and face child-care problems, as Stephanie Murray noted recently in The Atlantic.

However, wealthier moms experienced a COVID-induced decline in life satisfaction, while poor mothers stayed constant. The share of upper-income moms who reported being completely satisfied with their lives dropped a full 10 percentage points from 2019 to 2020, according to the American Family Survey. One possible explanation is that wealthier mothers were more likely to have had their life disrupted by social distancing—which was associated with emotional distress among mothers—compared with lower-income mothers.

Still, even in the worst moments of the pandemic, more prosperous moms fared better than poor moms. One explanation that many articles have overlooked is that wealthier mothers were more likely to have had a co-parent. A staggering 95 percent of rich moms had a husband or partner at home during the pandemic, as did 81 percent of middle-class moms. But only 55 percent of poor moms had a partner, according to the 2021 Current Population Survey. And despite all the media coverage discounting or minimizing the importance of marriage during COVID, mothers with partners were generally happier: In 2020, 75 percent of married mothers were somewhat or completely satisfied with their lives versus 58 percent of their unmarried peers.

Single parenthood has obvious financial implications, which helps explain why poor mothers are more likely to struggle to feed, clothe, educate, and house their children. And less money can translate into less happiness for parents. But there are also social and emotional consequences of single parenthood. In 2020, poor single mothers were the moms most likely to report loneliness—22 percent said they often felt isolated from others—whereas rich married mothers were the least likely to report loneliness: Only 2 percent said they often felt isolated, according to the American Family Survey. (Rich or middle-class unmarried mothers in the survey were too small a group to analyze.)

"Being a single parent is really lonely, even when you're not social-distancing," Shoshana Cherson, a 35-year-old single mother in New York City, told The New Yorker in the middle of the pandemic. "The whole support system I had put in place to keep me going has now completely fallen apart." Another single mother in the city said: "Some days, I feel like I'm melting."

[Annie Lowrey: The child tax credit was a little too subtle]

Even as we attempt to move past the pandemic, these trends are continuing to shape motherhood: The 2022 American Family Survey reported similar divides in loneliness and happiness along class and marital lines. This year, in spite of the challenges associated with parenting, affluent married mothers had a striking 30-percentage-point advantage in their reports of being somewhat or completely satisfied with their life, compared with poor single moms.

We have heard about these challenges and rewards in interviews. Lucy Fatula, a 37-year-old upper-middle-class mother who lives with her husband in Virginia, told us parenthood has entailed some sacrifice: "We gave up eating out whenever we wanted, hanging out with friends for" long stretches, and lots of sleep, she said. But it was worth it: "Seeing my sons happy gives me so much joy, especially knowing that I play such an important role in their lives." Having a husband who is "a hands-on dad and is always supportive of me" has made the journey that much better, Fatula told us.

The tragedy is that millions of moms across the country, especially poor ones, are not similarly situated. Yet the roles of marital status and class have been strangely absent from our recent national conversation about motherhood. Maybe that's because many of the dominant voices in that conversation have their own ambivalent or even negative feelings about marriage. What they don't seem to appreciate is that their experiences are not representative of married motherhood in general, and that the hardship of navigating motherhood without a partner is especially great for poor mothers.

If the data tell us anything, it's that, at least for most American women, the pathway to happiness runs through married motherhood, not away from it.

Green leaves and photosynthesis were once considered essential characteristics of plants. However, some plants have stopped performing photosynthesis and take the nutrients they need from other organisms instead. One such mycoheterotrophic plant is the ghostly-looking Monotropastrum humile, which is widely found across East and Southeast Asia. It often grows in woodlands where there is little sunlight, obtaining the nutrients it needs by feeding off the hyphae of fungi.

Green leaves and photosynthesis were once considered essential characteristics of plants. However, some plants have stopped performing photosynthesis and take the nutrients they need from other organisms instead. One such mycoheterotrophic plant is the ghostly-looking Monotropastrum humile, which is widely found across East and Southeast Asia. It often grows in woodlands where there is little sunlight, obtaining the nutrients it needs by feeding off the hyphae of fungi.

(Credit:

Tesla

)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new bill into law that effectively bans Tesla from advertising its cars as fully self-driving, Government Technology reports. The legislation stipulates that beginning Jan. 1, 2023, Tesla can no longer use the phrase Full-Self Driving, commonly abbreviated as FSD, to refer to a feature in its vehicles.

Senate Bill 1398, sponsored by Democratic State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, prohibits dealers and automakers from "deceptively naming or marketing" a car as self-driving if it still requires human attention and intervention. The report said that the state DMV already had rules banning this kind of false advertising, but the lack of enforcement led Gonzalez and state legislators to advance the bill so that it's now state law.

"(This bill) increases consumer safety by requiring dealers and manufacturers that sell new passenger vehicles equipped with a semiautonomous driving assistance feature… to give a clear description of the functions and limitations of those features," Gonzalez said in a statement (PDF). Tesla has countered by saying that it already makes its customers aware of the software's limitations.

This is something we've always wondered about, as Tesla vehicles have never progressed beyond Level 2 self-driving ability, as defined in 2014 by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) via document J3106. Level 2 means the car accelerates, steers, brakes, and can maintain or switch lanes and avoid a front-end collision, but still can't drive itself from point A to point B without a human paying attention at all times, ready to take over in a sticky situation or if the car can't read pavement markings or road signs.

In any common-sense reading, that's not fully self-driving. Level 3 and 4 self-driving are much closer, and Level 5 would mean completely autonomous even on roads that haven't been mapped or in heavy storms. To date, no cars are available to consumers with Level 3, 4, or 5 self-driving ability.

Tesla sells FSD as an additional over-the-air option for $15,000 or $199 per month. A statement on the automaker's website regarding the feature reads: "The currently enabled Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot, and Full Self-Driving features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. Full autonomy will be dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions." The automaker also says on its website that all new vehicles already have the hardware necessary to add FSD in the future.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in 2017 that he had planned for a Tesla to drive itself across the country without the need for human assistance before 2018. As PCMag reports, last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched two more crash investigations into accidents where Tesla FSD is alleged to have been at least partially responsible.

Earlier this month, a filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indicated Tesla is working on a new radar system operating in the 76-77GHz range. The filing suggests the automaker is planning to bring back a radar hardware component to at least some of its models, which raises the question of whether existing vehicles without this hardware will ever be good enough to drive themselves without human intervention.

Now read:

• Tesla Driver Claims Model Y Ordered Him to Pull Over, Shut Down Despite Full Charge
• Tesla Delivers First Electric Semi Trucks After 3-Year Delay
• Tesla Releases Full Self-Driving Beta to Everyone in North America

The "feel good" neurotransmitter serotonin is associated with mood.

Metallic spheres zooming past military jets, mysterious signals inside the world's largest telescope, and theories on why we have yet to make contact.

A masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art found in a palace is so finely detailed that researchers have been able to pinpoint the bird species it depicts. These images of the natural world likely created a space for relaxation and recreation in the palace.

The

has improved communication between researchers and officials, and may have even prompted Uganda's first lockdown against Ebola

As the sense of urgency around climate change intensifies, most of the focus is on shifting energy production away from fossil fuels and electrifying transport, from cars to buses to planes. Transportation and electricity production are the top two culprits when it comes to emitting CO2 (but also two of the most necessary tools for our day-to-day lives). Third on the list and an equally complex beast is industry, and a big part of industry is concrete.

It's been said that concrete is the most widely-used substance on Earth after water. It's all around us, but we never really think about it. Modern society is built on it; it's in our roads, schools, homes, offices, and more; we can't live without it. Yet we're going to have to start trying.

The manufacture of cement, concrete's key ingredient, accounts for a whopping eight percent of the world's emissions. We're not going to stop building things; on the contrary, we're in the midst of a major housing crisis that's going to require a lot more building of things (and doing so cheaply). So how do we build strong, durable structures without continuing to harm the planet? What could reliably and affordably take the place, going forward, of the concrete that blankets our cities?

A startup called CarbiCrete has been developing one promising solution: carbon-negative concrete.

CarbiCrete was founded by Dr. Mehrdad Mahoutian and Chris Stern, both alumni of Montreal's McGill University; Mahoutian started developing the company's tech as a PhD student. Earlier this year the company secured $17.3 million (23.5 million CAD) in Series A funding.

Status-Quo Concrete

The key ingredient in concrete is cement, a complex compound made from calcium, silicon, aluminum, iron, and other ingredients These are heated to extremely high temperatures (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit!), causing a chemical reaction where some elements burn off and the remaining ones end up as a powder. There's a double-whammy of emissions from this process: first, coal or natural gas are burned to create the energy and heat needed to reach such high temperatures; and second, the chemical reaction of the cement compounds emits CO2.

The cement powder gets mixed with aggregate materials like sand and gravel, and when water is added another chemical reaction takes places that causes the whole mixture to harden, reaching its full strength in a little under a month.

Earth-Friendly Concrete

CarbiCrete is doing things differently in a couple ways. For starters, they've cut out cement altogether and replaced it with steel slag. Slag is the waste that comes from the metal-making process; once iron is extracted from iron ore to make steel, slag is what's left over. It's not uncommon to use slag as an aggregate in construction, most often for paving roads.

They mix the slag with aggregate and water, then pour the mixture into forms to make CMUs (concrete masonry units, the concrete blocks used for construction). The last step is to cure the blocks so that they harden and reach full strength. This happens in an absorption chamber into which CO2 is injected, causing yet another chemical reaction; the company's website explains, "During the carbonation process, the CO2 is permanently captured and converted into stable calcium carbonates, filling the voids of the matrix to form a dense structure and giving the concrete its strength." Full strength is reached in 24 hours.

What makes CarbiCrete carbon-negative instead of carbon-neutral is that the company uses CO2 gas sourced from industrial vents in its absorption chambers. So they're not creating CO2 up front, and they're sequestering some that's been removed from the atmosphere.

The company says its CMUs have mechanical and durability properties equivalent to or better than cement-based CMUs, including higher compressive strength by up to 30 percent, and better freeze/thaw resistance.

Scaling Up

One potential drawback, though, is that since the CO2 absorption is a critical part of the process and must be done in a special chamber, CarbiCrete can only be used in pre-cast form; it can't be put in a mixer truck and poured on-site at a construction location. Rather than selling CMUs, CarbiCrete licenses out its technology to concrete manufacturers, who can implement the company's technology in precast facilities. Depending on the size of the absorption chamber, the tech could be used to make blocks, panels, beams, or really any other pre-cast product.

CarbiCrete claims that if a typical CMU-producing plant adopts its technology, the environmental impact can be significant, with 20,000 tons of CO2 abated and removed, 4,400 cubic meters of water saved, and 33,000 tons in landfill avoidance annually.

There's no doubt CarbiCrete's product seems like the way to go. But in addition to having to be pre-cast, it could be difficult to scale the product's final curing process to reach the volume necessary to make a dent in traditional concrete use.

Hopefully the company has more innovations up its sleeve that can address its current limitations. Investors seem to think so; last month CarbiCrete secured a new $5 million (USD) from BDC Capital's newly-launched Climate Tech Fund II, which the founders say they'll use for working capital, product development, and building out business development and marketing operations.

We're still a ways away from converting to truly sustainable building technology, but carbon-negative concrete, even on a small scale, is a step in the right direction.

Image Credit: Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Natural gas is a relatively clean burning fossil fuel, that causes less air pollution than coal and is widely used in the world. Recent studies have shown that the natural gas leaks from production, supply chain, and end-use facilities are a large source of atmospheric methane (CH4), and the leaking budget is underestimated in many places by bottom-up inventories.

Using the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) onboard the International Space Station (ISS), an international team of astronomers has inspected the recent outburst of an accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar known as SAX J1808.4−3658. Results of the study, published December 19 on the preprint server arXiv, shed more light on the nature of this source.

Polarimetric images can provide information such as shading and surface morphologies by using polarizers that selectively reflect the transverse electric (TE) field and transmit the transverse magnetic (TM) field of unpolarized incident light. However, current IR polarizers are mainly based on expensive and brittle ceramics (such as semiconductors and chalcogenides) with nano-gratings usually fabricated by time- and cost-consuming interference lithography.

In 2022, the best albums were the ones that called people back out into the world.

From Bad Bunny to Beyoncé, this year's best albums dominated by delivering more than just TikTok hits.

submitted by /u/darth_nadoma [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/ColumbusClouds
[link] [comments]

submitted by /u/lughnasadh [link] [comments]

An extreme heat wave struck the Pacific Northwest in June 2021. Temperatures soared above 40°C (104°F) across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, sometimes even approaching 50°C (122°F). Experts estimate that at least several hundred people died as a result.

A Japanese research group has become the first to reveal that the checkerboard-like arrangement of cells in the inner ear's organ of Corti is vital for hearing. The discovery gives new insight into how hearing works from the perspective of cell self-organization and will also enable various hearing loss disorders to be better understood.

A Japanese research group has become the first to reveal that the checkerboard-like arrangement of cells in the inner ear's organ of Corti is vital for hearing. The discovery gives new insight into how hearing works from the perspective of cell self-organization and will also enable various hearing loss disorders to be better understood.

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-27007-y

detection and localization from mpMRI using auto-deep learning as one step closer to clinical utilization

Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is one of North America's most enduring legends, with thousands of people claiming to have seen the giant ape-like creature. Here are the most famous Bigfoot sightings.

Nature Communications, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41467-022-35614-6

Design of recombinases with new target sites is usually achieved through cycles of directed molecular evolution. Here the authors report Recombinase Generator, RecGen, an algorithm for generation of designer-recombinases; they perform experimental validation to show that this can predict recombinase sequences.

From Magnifier to Lookout, here's how you can benefit from features on Android and Apple devices.

It's almost impossible to earn a living on the streaming service. Maybe it's time to stop trying.

PLUS. Forbydes ældre brændeovne i København, hvilket er muligt med en ny lov, vil det betyde et meget lille fald i den samlede luftforurening, men dog spares syv for tidlige dødsfald i kommunen.

On a continent that has long attracted western expeditions, a wave of young people are now exploring sites

A late morning in Khartoum. Inside a low, dusty building in the centre of the Sudanese capital, there are crates of artefacts, a 7ft replica of a 2,000-year-old stone statue of a Nubian god, and students rushing through the corridors. Outside is noisy traffic, blinding sunlight and both branches of the Nile.

Heading down one staircase are Sabrine Jamal, Nadia Musa, Athar Bela and Sabrine al-Sadiq, all studying archaeology at Khartoum University. Not one of them is older than 24 and they see themselves as pioneers, breaking new ground on a continent that has long attracted western expeditions, specialists and adventurers but whose own archaeologists have received less attention overseas.

Continue reading…

Scientific Reports, Published online: 27 December 2022; doi:10.1038/s41598-022-27006-z

Sexual dysfunction is more common among men who have high sperm DNA fragmentation or teratozoopermia

Scientists are beginning to decode endangered creatures' microbial ecosystems

Earth's climate is warming dramatically, and the signs are all around us, from vanishing glaciers to zombie viruses awakening in melting permafrost.

Times have changed.