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Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts

In the 14th century, the Black Death(Plague) took out as much as 60% of the population of Europe, spreading rapidly from the shores of the Black Sea to central Europe. Although historical records first document its appearance in 1346 C.E. in the lower Volga region of Russia, researchers didn’t know whether the highly virulent strain of Yersinia pestis bacterium that caused the deadly pandemic came from a single source or was introduced to Europe more than once by travelers carrying diverse strains of plague from different parts of the ancient world.

Now, by analyzing 34 ancient genomes of Y. pestis from the teeth of people buried at 10 sites across Europe from the 14th to 17th centuries (including a mass grave in Toulouse, France—above), researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, have found the earliest known evidence of this pandemic comes from Laishevo, in Russia’s Volga region. There, researchers found a strain of Y. pestis that was ancestral to all other genomes they studied, differing by only one mutation from those that caused the Black Death in Europe, they report today in Nature Communications.

That doesn’t mean the Volga region was ground zero for the Black Death—it could have come from elsewhere in western Asia, where scientists have yet to sample ancient DNA of Y. pestis. The researchers found that once the plague made it to Europe, a single strain was responsible for the Black Death, from Italy to the United Kingdom. This strain also gave rise to other variants of Y. pestis that caused deadly plague outbreaks from the late 14th through the 18th centuries. This suggests the bacterium persisted locally in Europe, perhaps in rodent hosts, where it evolved into diverse strains that caused later epidemics.

Ancient DNA shows "The Plague" originating from Russia’s Volga region


Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, discovered the fossil "MRD" cranium in Ethiopia, posing with it at the site.
Recently a team of researchers has uncovered a 3.8 million years old complete cranium that belongs to 'Australopithecus anamensis' which is the oldest species of Australopithecus. "MRD" was found in Woranso-Mille site, Ethiopia.

(Photograph by Cleveland Museum of Natural History.)

 Researchers took three and a half years to finally determine that the skull was a part 'A.anamensis' species. The fossil was partially discovered in February 2016, the first part that was found was the upper jaw while the rest of the cranium was found soon after. The fossil comes from a male who's middle and lower parts extend forwards, which is distinguishable from Lucy's that has a flat mid-face similar to a human's flat face.



(by Dale Omori, Cleveland Museum of Natural History.)

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Lucy's oldest ancestor fossil discovered to be 3.8 million years old.


-source: aps.org
Chinese and Austrian scientists have successfully achieved in teleporting three-dimensional quantum states. This will be a major step into the future of quantum computers.



Before only two level states were successfully transmitted called "Qubits" which is a type of information with value "0 or 1 or both at the same time". But this study focused on teleporting the quantum state of one photon to a distant one, which is the third level state named " Qutrit ", now it has shown that there's another value " 2 ".

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Quantum teleportation goes successful for the first time.

source: Stanford.edu
Recently researchers have made a new type of heat shield for electronics that is just 10 atoms thick, made with Graphene and other materials that promises a safe and could make our electronics much more close-packed in the near future.
As we all know, the main issue with electronics is that they produce a lot of heat which degrades them overtime, we can recall many issues with throttling processors both in smartphones and laptops. that why many laptops have cooling systems that include spinning fans and heat sinks, and smartphones include thermal heat pipes to hopefully cool them down to avoid serious damage that can not only destroy the device it self but also put you in danger. But in most cases the heat always manage to slow down the performance of your device.

But Stanford electrical engineer Eric Pop  says that they are trying an entirely new and different approach to deal with this issue, when electrons pass through an electric circuit they generate small vibrations that generate heat but also creates high sound frequencies that humans can't hear. Just like we use insulated glazing in our homes to reduce heat and sound transfer, the researchers used the same method to develop the four layers heat shield composed of Graphene, molybdenum diselenide , molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide, which is about :
To make commercially available the researchers have to find a practical way of mass producing to some how either spray or place the thin layers on electronics as process of manufacturing. Scientists still hope to go beyond developing thin heat insulators, the control of the vibrational energy is the ultimate goal to achieve since they already know how to control electricity and light. like Eric Pop said: " As engineers, we know quite a lot about how to control electricity, and we’re getting better with light, but we’re just starting to understand how to manipulate the high-frequency sound that manifests itself as heat at the atomic scale,"


10 Atoms thick Heat Shield promises a safer future for electronics.


A recent breakthrough from Stanford engineers, have successfully developed a Health sensor that resembles a sticker, can measure physiological signals emanating from the skin and sends these readings to a receiver attached to the person's clothing.

source: nature electronics
The technology works as an array of sensor networks called " BodyNet" that can be placed onto different body parts, will be used to monitor patients that suffer from heart conditions and sleep disorders. Dr. Zhenan Bao, the chemical engineering professor says that her lab is also developing new stickers to sense sweat and other skin secretions to hopefully track body temperature and stress. "The ultimate goal is make the BodyNet work wirelessly that can track multiple types of physiological data without interfering with the person's normal behavior."

The sticker sensors are strechable which makes them more comfortable to wear without the need of batteries or rigid circuitry, the stricker works similarly to an RFID ID card, it has small antenna that stretches as well, although to make it's signal stable the researchers made a new RFID system that generates accurate signals to the receiver even if the antenna is bent or stretched. then uses bluetooth to upload the proccessed data from the sticker to a smartphone, computer. But to make this technology consumer friendly they need to keep the receiver and the sensors close to each other, the researchers stick the receiver to the clothing above each sensor.

New Wireless Health Sensor that sticks to your Skin.

A new report released by the UN And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and land use is finally here. While the 20 documents report that provides 300 pages of details on the best science to solve the issue at hand, the IPCC has fully summarized it in a simple draft: 
 -source here: IPCC final draft

 Obviously it isn't that simple of a chart but here's a round up: this chart assesses how multiple ways we can change our land so that it will help in limiting climate change, from fire management to agricultural diversification. While this chart optimistically tries to sum up the results of thousands of studies, we've concluded three ways that we can change how use land can tackle the effects of Climate Change:

Restoring land requires extended periods Of Attention and Care.

 If we were to restore forests, green spaces and Drainage basins we would need to apply conservation strategies as well as monitor the progress carefully. Without using anything that would discourage it's progress or degrade it again. As the restorations of Biomes is  highly complicated, and that there's nothing that would assure that it would be fine if were to step back from the restored ecosystems and let nature take it's course, we are definitely obligated to carefully observe and monitor the restoration progress of each land.

 It's all about Reduction.

 it's not about stopping climate change immediately from 100 mph to 0 mph, but it's rather about reducing it's destructive effects such as land slide,deforestation, soil erosion...  Many ecosystems are of course trying to regenerate from its effects, but the destructive trend is far out pacing the regenerative process. As stated many times in the report "management" is a key that would help speed up the regeneration. for example: forest management defines many practices that would help speed up the regenerative process such as; better scheduled logging, thinning, selective logging leads to reduced impact logging and a faster regenerating ecosystem. As well as our excessive manhunt for natural resources completely decimates many ecosystems such as rain-forests, so we would need to slow down our consumption.

 Wasted Lands

 Up to 30% of our produced food is wasted, imagine if we used the land that produces 30% of wasted food differently, this would allow to free several million square kilometers of land that can be used for forestation. We would have an immense impact on consumption in general (less fuel, less water, less fertilizers, less electricity) all this can be done through proper education, better harvesting techniques, on farm-storage, infrastructural upgrades,retail and packaging can potentially lower food loss percentage and waste.

New UN, IPCC report shows how we can use Land to limit Climate Change


A 10 year old kid from china accidentally discovered 65 Million year old dinosaur eggs while playing near a lake in Héyuán, Guangdong. Zhang was playing beside the river, while he was trying to find something to crack open coconut with, he found what he called a " strange stone". Realizing what he had found was very unusual since he was a very interested in science, he called his mom to help him find out. She suspected the same that they may be in fact dinosaur eggs. His mother contacted a local museum to report her find.

Experts confirmed in fact that the strange was indeed a dinosaur egg, after excavating the site, they found 10 additional eggs, to which they concluded that Zhang has found a dinosaur nest. Experts have also determined that the eggs were 65 million years old. 

Zhang was absolutely thrilled about his find, he will certainly enjoy seeing his finds at his local museum in the city of Héyuán. Experts are looking forward to find out what species of dinosaurs may have laid the eggs, in hopes to understand and figure out how prehistoric creatures lived just before their extinction.

 -source: dailymail

Kid Accidentally Discovered Fossilized Dinosaur Eggs 65 Million Years Old

-source: "Cognitive Processing Journal"

Some people enjoy humor differently. Therefore you must have met someone with a bit of a dark sense of humor, you sometimes could feel offended by it and some times it makes you laugh harder than ever. It's been seen that dark humor has a correlation with the individuals that make/ laugh at the jokes are often likely to have a Higher IQ. Let's explain why.

 

 Well a new study published on the journal of "Cognitive Processing". The reaction you make could hint to how intelligent you are. Psychologists suggest that those who enjoy  dark humor or rather make jokes that treat sensitive subjects are more likely to be less aggressive and avoid negative feelings and thoughts, more likely to be intelligent than those are offended or avoid it completely. The study had more than 150 participants both Men and Women and were shown many Dark Humor related Jokes, and later asked if they understand the jokes that they were shown and explain why it seemed funny/ not funny for them. After that, they were all asked about they educational background as well as they had to take some basic IQ tests.

The results turned out be very surprising. Individuals who laughed at the jokes had higher results on the IQ tests than those who were offended by it, and had less aggressive tendencies. While those who didn't like the jokes, had the highest levels of aggressive tendencies and had the lowest IQ scores, these results actually make sense when an older study has shown why smiling and laughter can make you a happier person.

The link between the Dark Humor and intelligence is due to dark humor jokes are relatively more complex to understand than normal ones, that's because the brain is required to show distance from the context of the jokes while also calculating several layers of meaning of the joke. To conclude, jokes that are based on wordplay such as dark humor require a much intense brain processing the meaning and emotional distance to be able to crack a smile or a laugh.

If You Laugh At Dark Humor, Then You Probably Have A Higher IQ

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