90s Cartoon Episode Where Radioactive Fossils Come Back to Life in a Cave

1 день, 3 часа назад 18.12.2021Science

In the 1974, Stephen Hawking and his PhD student Bernard Carr proposed primordial black holes, hypothetical black holes that existed soon after the Big Bang, could be the elusive dark matter first theorized in 1933 -and 47 years later, this theory could be proven.

Astrophysics at Yale, the University of Miami and the European Space Agency (ESA) tweaked the famed psychist's proposal and created a new model of how the early universe may have formed.

The new model shows that the first stars and galaxies would have formed around black holes, which had the ability to grow into supermassive black holes by feasting on gas and stars in their vicinity, or by merging with other black holes.

'If most of the primordial black holes were 'born' at a size roughly 1.4 times the mass of Earth's sun, they could potentially account for all dark matter, said Yale professor of astronomy and physics Priyamvada Natarajan, the paper's theorist.

'Primordial black holes, if they do exist, could well be the seeds from which all supermassive black holes form, including the one at the center of the Milky Way,' she continued.

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Many experts suggest about 85 percent of all the matter in the universe is dark matter – but for such a great amount, it has never been seen nor detected.

Black holes, on the other hand, have been observed and we even have a picture of one to prove their existence.

Hawking and Carr argued that during the first moments of the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago, 'lumpy' regions that had extra mass may have formed in the universe and turned into black holes when they collapsed.

Their theory, however, did not catch on among the scientific community, but the new study shows that with a few modifications, Hawking may have been right.

'What I find personally super exciting about this idea is how it elegantly unifies the two really challenging problems that I work on — that of probing the nature of dark matter and the formation and growth of black holes — and resolves them in one fell swoop,' said Natarajan.

Unraveling the mystery of primordial black holes would also solve another cosmic puzzle that has baffled scientists – the large amount of radiation that has been detected from distant, dim sources scattered around the universe.

Natarajan and her colleagues said growing, primordial black holes would present 'exactly' the same radiation signature.

The existence of primordial black holes could finally been determined by the James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch on December 22, and ESA's Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission announced for the 2030s.

The James Webb telescope's mission will be to find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe and see stars forming planetary systems.

LISA, meanwhile, will be able to pick up gravitational wave signals from early mergers of primordial black holes.

'If the first stars and galaxies already formed in the so-called 'dark ages', Webb should be able to see evidence of them,' says astronomer Günther Hasinger of the European Space Agency.

James Webb should reveal new and unexpected discoveries, and help humanity understand the origins of the universe and our place in it.

One of the objectives is to look back in time over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies that formed, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The telescope will mainly look at the universe in the infrared, while Hubble has examined it since its 1990 launch primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

Webb has a much bigger light-collecting area, letting it look at greater distances, and therefore further back into time than Hubble.

1 день, 5 часов назад 18.12.2021Science

Hundreds of thousands human brain cells grown in a petri dish have found a new meaning in life – they spend the day playing the retro videogame Pong.

Australian scientists at Cortical Labs taught the cells to play in just five minutes, which is faster than artificial intelligence (AI) that picks up the game after 90 minutes.

The system, called 'DishBrain,' is comprised of brain cells grown on top of microelectrode arrays that can both stimulate the cells.

To teach the mini-brains Pong, the team used a single player version of the game and sent electrical signals to either the right or left of the array to indicate where the ball is.

The brain would then fire off neurons to move the paddle back and forth according to the location of the ball.

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Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs, who leads the research, told New Scientist: 'We think it's fair to call them cyborg brains.

'We often refer to them as living in the Matrix. When they are in the game, they believe they are the paddle.'

While playing Pong, patterns of activity across the neurons are determined by the mini-brains as the paddle moving left or right.

The virtual world where the video game is played responds to this activity and the electrode's feed helps the mini-brains learn how to operate the paddle.

Kagan notes that although the mini-brains can learn faster than AI, they are not as skilled when it comes to playing the video game – the organoids would lose against a computer like DeepMind.

However, it takes AI 5,000 rallies, a rally is one gaming session that lasts for 15 minutes, to get a hang of the game, while it took the DishBrains 10 to 15 rallies.

'Using this DishBrain system, we have demonstrated that a single layer of in vitro cortical neurons can self-organize and display intelligent and sentient behavior when embodied in a simulated game-world,' reads the study published in bioRxiv.

'We have shown that even without a substantial filtering of cellular activity, statistically robust differences over time and against controls could be observed in the behavior of neuronal cultures in adapting to goal directed tasks.

In August, German scientists unveiled their lab grown brains, but these were capable of developing their own rudimentary eye structures that can sense light and communicate with the rest of the brain.

Researchers at Heinrich-Heine-University's Institute for Human Genetics in Düsseldorf, Germany used stem cells to grow organoids pairs of 'optic cups,' an early stage of eye formation that develops when a fetus is about five weeks old.

1 день, 7 часов назад 17.12.2021Science

Muscles can swell in size by up to 60 per cent in some Covid-19 patients, according to researchers, who say it may be a severe immune response.

The immune response to Covid-19 damages mitochondria, the power stations of cells, leading to a loss of energy fuels which builds up water, which in tern causes the muscles to swell, according to the team from Jessa Hospital in Hassalt, Belgium.

Discovering the symptom 'stunned' the researchers, who say muscle shrinkage is a more common complication among critically ill patients.

They took biopsies from 18 Covid-19 patients, and found that the muscles of four had increased 'massively', over normal levels, however this was not the case for all 18.

Lead author, Dr Toon Mostien, says this type of swelling can lead to muscle fibres dying, but the increase in size was likely only a temporary symptom.

They found that one type of muscle fibre had swollen by 62 per cent, another by 32 per cent – both support endurance activities and quick, powerful movements.

If those who bucked the trend were excluded from the calculations, the remaining patients showed significant muscle wastage.

Dr Mostein said: 'Type I fibres shrank by eleven per cent and type 2 by 17 per cent.'

Tissue from the vastus lateralis was collected up to three days before and five to eight days after admission. It is the largest and most powerful muscle in the thigh.

The average age of the participants was 69 and the majority were men.

It isn't known why the muscle fibres increased in size in four of the patients but one possibility is that their immune response to Covid damaged their mitochondria, the tiny structures that provide cells with energy.

Samples were scanned under the microscope for any changes that had occurred during the first week in intensive care.

Bed rest and mechanical ventilation often leads to muscle wastage, which can hamper recovery and affect both mobility and quality of life.

Previous research has shown fibres reduce by almost a fifth after a week in ICU. It was feared Covid-19 causes even greater damage.

The researchers found the number of capillaries supplying type I and II fibres with oxygen and nutrients fell by five and ten per cent, respectively.

Dr Mostien said: 'Although the results were not significant, a drop in perfusion of 10 per cent could potentially contribute to muscle fibre destruction.'

'There are concerns immune response to Covid can exacerbate muscle wastage,' he said, adding that 'it means critically ill Covid patients experience more severe muscle damage than the general ICU population.

'Given the global burden of Covid-19 it is vital we learn more about this. Our research is an important first step.'

The study was presented at Euroanaesthesia, a virtual meeting of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care.

1 день, 7 часов назад 17.12.2021Science

Horseshoe crabs have been around for 450 million years, surviving mass extinctions and several ice ages, but conservationists say the creatures could soon go extinct because their bright blue blood is vital to pharmaceutical companies.

The blue blood has immune cells, known as Limulus polyphemus (LAL), which are sensitive to toxic bacteria and can be used to test vaccines and drugs for dangerous bacterial toxins before products hit the market.

The coveted blood has been used for nearly 20 years and has been vital took in testing the coronavirus vaccines currently on the market.

Scientists drain the horseshoe crabs of their blood and return them to the ocean, after which most of the creatures die – one South Carolina lab says crabs are drained for up to eight minutes.

While the horseshoe crab is not currently endangered, data shows up to 30 percent of the crabs harvested for their blood in the US die when returned to the ocean.

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Ryan Phelan, co-founder and Executive Director of Revive and Restore, a wildlife conservation group based in California that lobbied for the synthetic, told Yahoo News: 'You've got a very large, biomedical bleeding industry with a vested interest in keeping those horseshoes crabs coming in and basically protecting this monopoly.'

Pharmaceutical companies in Europe and Asia have switched to using a synthetic copy of Limulus polyphemus, but many American firms are still bleeding horseshoe crabs in labs.

'In the US, 525,000 horseshoe crabs per year were captured during 2013 to 2017 and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission estimates short-term bleeding-induced mortality to be 15 percent (4 percent to 30 percent), resulting in mortality of approximately 78,750 horseshoe crabs annually in recent years comprising a minor portion,' according to a study published in Frontiers.

The Atlantic Marine Fisheries Commission also estimates that in 2019 US labs extracted blood from 640,000 horseshoe crabs.

According to The Verge, horseshoe crab blood has become a $500 billion industry – it can bring as much as $15,000 per quart – and a South Carolina lab that still clings to the old practice is worth $13 billion because of it, The State reports.

Representatives from Charles River previously said that more than 80 million LAL tests are performed each year .

Dr James Cooper, who founded the Charleston facility in 1987, wrote in a company publication last year: 'The horseshoe crab blood donation is similar to human blood donation.

'The crabs are bled for a few minutes and returned to sea unharmed.'

A Charles River representative told The State: 'Eight minutes is unofficially recognized as the maximum bleeding time across the industry.'

Research conducted at the College of Charleston shows that half of the horseshoe crab's blood can be drained within those eight minutes and this much harvested can the creatures to move slower when returned to the ocean.

Never mind the stress of being captured, hours spent out of the water and mishandling in the lab – all of which experts say contribute to their deaths.

A 2011 study conducted by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), conservation officers responsible for enforcing the environmental and conservation laws and policies, found 20 percent of the crabs, according to records obtained by The State.

1 день, 9 часов назад 17.12.2021Science

Giant, long-necked sauropods preferred to live in warmer, more tropical regions on Earth, suggesting they may have had a different physiology from other dinosaurs, a new study has found.

Species such as Diplodocus and Brontosaurus appear to have avoided freezing temperatures, researchers said, meaning they could have been more 'cold-blooded' like modern-day reptiles.

The study looked at fossil records of three main dinosaur types: sauropods, theropods – which include velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex – and ornithischians such as the Triceratops.

Combining this with data about the climate throughout the Mesozoic era, which lasted from around 230 to 66 million years ago, along with information about how continents have moved across the globe, researchers concluded that sauropods were restricted to warmer, drier habitats than other dinosaurs.

These habitats were likely to be open, semi-arid landscapes, similar to today's savannahs.

The study, which was led by experts at University College London (UCL) and the University of Vigo, wanted to investigate the enigma of why sauropod fossils are only found at lower latitudes, while fossils of other main dinosaur types seem to be everywhere, with many located in the polar regions.

'Our research shows that some parts of the planet always seemed to be too cold for sauropods,' said co-author Dr Philip Mannion, of UCL's Earth Sciences department.

'They seem to have avoided any temperatures approaching freezing.

'Other dinosaur types, in contrast, could thrive in Earth's polar regions, from innermost Antarctica to polar Alaska — which, due to the warmer climate, were ice-free, with lush vegetation.

'This suggests sauropods had different thermal requirements from other dinosaurs, relying more on their external environment to heat their bodies — slightly closer to being 'cold-blooded', like modern-day reptiles.

'Their grand size hints that this physiology may have been unique.'

The fossil records showed no examples of sauropods above a latitude of 50 degrees north – an area encompassing most of Canada, Russia, northern Europe and the UK – or below 65 degrees south, making up Antarctica.

In contrast, there are rich records for theropods and ornithischians living above 50 degrees north in later periods from 145 million years ago.

To test if this was a true reflection of where sauropods lived, researchers used a statistical technique to adjust for gaps in the fossil record, and also analysed where the highest diversities of dinosaur types were in different periods throughout the Mesozoic era.

While in the past it was believed that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, relying on the external environment to heat their bodies, it is now thought they were closer to warm-blooded mammals, generating some of their own body heat.

However, the study authors said sauropods, which were among the largest land animals ever to have existed, may have had a unique in-between physiology, closer to being cold-blooded than other dinosaur types.

First author Dr Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, formerly of UCL who is now based at the University of Vigo, Spain, said: 'It may be that sauropods were physiologically incapable of thriving in colder regions, or that they thrived less well in these areas than their dinosaurian cousins and were outcompeted.

'A mix of features may have helped sauropods shed heat more easily than mammals do today.

'Their long necks and tails would have given them a larger surface area, and they may have had a respiratory system more akin to birds, which is much more efficient.

'Some species of theropods and ornithischians are known to have had feathers or downy fur helping them retain body warmth.

'This suggests they may have generated their own body heat. For sauropods, however, there is no evidence of this kind of insulation.'

He added: 'Sauropods' strategies for keeping their eggs warm may also have differed from the other dinosaurs.

'Theropods probably warmed eggs by sitting on them, whereas ornithischians seem to have used heat generated by decaying plants.

'Sauropods, meanwhile, may have buried their eggs, relying on heat from the sun and the ground.'

The study has been published in the journal Current Biology.

1 день, 9 часов назад 17.12.2021Science

It's the go-to destination for many party-loving sunseekers every summer, but a new study will fill Ibiza fans with dread.

Scientists have warned that up to 65 per cent of all beaches in the Balearic Islands will be permanently lost by the end of the century – and climate change is to blame.

A model was created to look at sea level changes under current climate change projections by researchers from the Oceanographic Centre of the Balearic Islands.

While the impact of the climate crisis on coastal areas has been widely studied, this is the first to show the impact specifically on popular tourist spots in the Balearics.

More than a quarter of the economy of the Balearic Islands comes from beach and sun tourism, so losing the beaches to climate change would be devastating.

'Here we show that climate change will lead to the permanent loss of more than 50 per cent of the beach surface, rising up to more than 80 per cent during storm conditions,' said study author Miguel Agulles.

These predictions are based on the worst case scenario of climate change, but efforts to cut carbon emissions could see a significant reduction in sea level rises around the world, the team said.

They also call on local and national governments to enact measures to reduce the risk of climate change on beaches, including by planting more seagrass.

Even under the most extreme climate change models, sea levels are not expected to rise everywhere on Earth to the same extent.

There will be differences caused by winds and ocean currents, according to researchers.

Earlier studies have predicted that around the Balearic islands, sea levels will increase by up to 26 inches, under the highest level of warming.

However, it isn't just sea levels that will impact the quality of beaches for tourism.

Flood levels, rather than constant sea level rises, depend on tides and waves, and are more of an important indicator of the future shape of beaches, the team behind this study explained.

They created a new, cost-efficient and accurate method to model future flood levels along the coastlines of the Balearic islands.

They considered the shape and slope of each beach, how grainy the sand is on the beach, the extent of seagrass meadows and used it to predict coastal flooding.

'A detailed analysis of the evolution of each beach in the Balearic archipelago is very demanding on computer power,' Agulles told Frontiers.

'We have therefore devoted considerable effort in our study to develop methodologies for the analysis and to optimise the computation.'

They discovered that it isn't all bad news, with extreme events less extreme than previously thought.

Wave heights will be up to six inches lower than the current maximum heigh of up to 13ft, they predict.

Despite this, Agulles and colleagues warn there will still be 'devastating inroads on the coastline', leading to a reduction in the number of beaches.

They say this will be mainly due to the overall rise in sea level, with at least 56 per cent of beaches in the region permanently lost to the sea.

This, combined with regional projections of sea level and wave changes over the next 100 years, allowed them to predict the future total water level.

They applied their new model to 869 beaches across the Balearic Islands, and looked at what is most likely to happen for the next few decades.

Under the most pessimistic climate change scenario, 66 per cent of current beaches will be flooded, and lost to the sea by the end of this century.

This is under average conditions, but under the most extreme conditions it will increase to a loss of 86 per cent of beaches during a storm.

In total, 72 of the 869 beaches of the region would permanently disappear, while 314 would be completely flooded during storm episodes.

Under a moderate scenario of emissions, considered the most likely under current climate change scenarios, 37 beaches would permanently disappear while 254 would disappear only during storm episodes.

In both cases, the average permanent loss of beach surface area by the end of the century will still be over 50 per cent, and could reach 80 per cent.

Co-author Dr Gabriel Jordà said the results show climate change is a serious threat to tourism in the islands, and beaches will be seriously impacted.

He said national and regional governments should make plans to minimise hte impact of storms by preserving seagrass – a natural protection against storms.

'These projections indicate that adaptation plans for beach areas should be put in place as soon as possible.'

The findings have been published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

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90s Cartoon Episode Where Radioactive Fossils Come Back to Life in a Cave

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