Tag: science

ENGINEERED ICE AGE: Congress funds NOAA scientist for geoengineering project to cool the Earth by artificially dimming the sun

During the last ice age, huge masses of ice covered the northern U.S., Canada, northern Europe and northern Asia. All that ended around 12,000 years ago, but we could be closer to another one than you think now that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has received funds from congress for a controversial geoengineering project that aims to cool our planet.

David Fahey, the director of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory Chemical Sciences Division, reportedly told staff that the federal government wished to examine the science behind geoengineering, something he described as a “Plan B” for climate change. Along with $4 million in funding, he was given the go-ahead to study two methods of geoengineering.

The first approach entails injecting sulfur dioxide or another aerosol into the stratosphere to shade the planet from more intense sunlight. This concept is modeled after what occurs naturally when volcanic eruptions emit huge clouds of sulfur dioxide that have the effect of cooling the earth. In the second approach, an aerosol of sea salt particles would be used to enhance the power of low-lying clouds over the ocean to serve as shade.

Keep reading

Chinese scientists get male rats to give BIRTH by conjoining them with females and transplanting a uterus in ‘vile Frankenscience’ study

A male rat in China has given birth by Caesarean section after a ‘vile’ experiment that involved joining it to a female rat and transplanting a uterus.

Scientists from the Naval Medical University in Shanghai said the experiment may have ‘a profound impact on reproductive biology.’ 

They did not spell out the implications for humans but it comes after studies exploring the possibility of transplanting a uterus into transgender women. 

The team joined a male and female rat together by attaching their skin and sharing their blood, then transplanting a uterus into the male and implanting embryos into both male and female rats.

The embryos were allowed to develop to term, that is 21.5 days, with ten successful pups out of 27 ‘normal’ embryos in the male delivered by Caesarean section.

Those went on to live into adulthood and were able to reproduce, suffering no wider ill effects to heart, lung or liver, the team explained. 

The scientists said: ‘A mammalian animal model of male pregnancy was constructed by us.’ However, PETA’s Senior Science Policy Advisor, Emily McIvor, called the study ‘frankenscience’ and ‘vile’. 

Keep reading

The demonstration of hydrodynamic cloaking and shielding at the microscale

Researchers at Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Technische Universität Darmstadt, and IBM Research Europe have recently proposed a new strategy to simultaneously achieve microscale hydrodynamic cloaking and shielding. While the idea of cloaking or shielding objects has been around for some time now, in contrast with other previously developed methods the technique they proposed allows physicists to dynamically switch between these two states.

“When we started with our research, we were aware of work in this direction that is based on porous metamaterials,” Steffen Hardt, who led the research team at TU Darmstadt, told Phys.org. “Our idea was that you do not need such metamaterials if you can inject momentum in a region around the object to be cloaked/shielded. Effectively, this means that you superpose the external flow field by some tailor-made local flow field. As a result, the total flow field (external and local one) comes out such that cloaking or shielding is achieved.”

As part of their previous studies, the researchers developed methods to locally inject momentum using what is known as electroosmotic flow (i.e., motion of liquids typically induced by an applied voltage across a porous material or other fluid conduits). The key objective of their new study was to demonstrate a new method to cloak/shield objects in a fluid flow and make this functionality real-time adaptive, as previously proposed approaches based on metamaterials are not.

Keep reading

Major Scientific Leap: Quantum Microscope Created That Can See the Impossible

In a major scientific leap, University of Queensland researchers have created a quantum microscope that can reveal biological structures that would otherwise be impossible to see.

This paves the way for applications in biotechnology, and could extend far beyond this into areas ranging from navigation to medical imaging.

The microscope is powered by the science of quantum entanglement, an effect Einstein described as “spooky interactions at a distance.”

UQ’s quantum microscope, ready to zero in on previously impossible-to-see biology. Credit: The University of Queensland

Professor Warwick Bowen, from UQ’s Quantum Optics Lab and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS), said it was the first entanglement-based sensor with performance beyond the best possible existing technology.

“This breakthrough will spark all sorts of new technologies — from better navigation systems to better MRI machines, you name it,” Professor Bowen said.

“Entanglement is thought to lie at the heart of a quantum revolution. We’ve finally demonstrated that sensors that use it can supersede existing, non-quantum technology.

Keep reading

Tiny animal survives after 24,000 years frozen in Siberian permafrost: “A big step forward”

A lot has changed on Earth in just the last few decades, but for a recently revived microscopic creature, it has tens of thousands of years to catch up on. 

In a new study published this week in the journal Current Biology, researchers report the surprising survival story of a bdelloid rotifer, a tiny freshwater creature that is common all over the world. The multicellular animals can only be seen under a microscope, but they are capable of surviving through drying, freezing, starvation and low oxygen.

Now, researchers have learned that these animals are not only resilient, but they can persist for extreme lengths of time — at least 24,000 years — in Siberian permafrost. Earlier evidence suggested they could survive for only a decade. 

“Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism,” study author Stas Malavin said in a statement. 

The Soil Cryology Lab in Pushchino, Russia used a drilling rig to collect the minuscule organism from nearly a dozen feet below one of the most remote Arctic locations. Researchers then deduced its age using radiocarbon dating. 

After the organism thawed, it was capable of reproducing asexually using a process called parthenogenesis. Repeating the freezing and thawing process dozens of times, researchers found that the animal innately performs a process to protect its cells and organs from the formation of ice crystals at extremely low temperatures.

Keep reading

MIT Engineers Have Discovered a Completely New Way of Generating Electricity

A new material made from carbon nanotubes can generate electricity by scavenging energy from its environment.

MIT engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them.

The liquid, an organic solvent, draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive chemical reactions or to power micro- or nanoscale robots, the researchers say.

“This mechanism is new, and this way of generating energy is completely new,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “This technology is intriguing because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with no wires.”

In a new study describing this phenomenon, the researchers showed that they could use this electric current to drive a reaction known as alcohol oxidation — an organic chemical reaction that is important in the chemical industry.

Strano is the senior author of the paper, which appears today (June 7, 2021) in Nature Communications. The lead authors of the study are MIT graduate student Albert Tianxiang Liu and former MIT researcher Yuichiro Kunai. Other authors include former graduate student Anton Cottrill, postdocs Amir Kaplan and Hyunah Kim, graduate student Ge Zhang, and recent MIT graduates Rafid Mollah and Yannick Eatmon.

Keep reading

China’s Advanced ‘Artificial Sun’ Fusion Reactor Just Broke a New World Record

China has achieved a new milestone in humanity’s experiments to harness the power of the stars.

On Friday, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ fusion machine reached 120 million degrees Celsius (216 million degrees Fahrenheit) and clung onto this for 101 seconds.

The last time EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak or HT-7U) held onto a writhing loop of plasma for so long was in 2017, but the temperature only reached a mere 50 million °C.

In 2018, the reactor held gas heated beyond the 100 million degree benchmark regarded as crucial for generating power, but could only sustain the plasma for around 10 seconds.

Now that it’s held plasma at eight times the temperature of the Sun’s core of 15 million °C for such a long period, the new record has nudged the world ever slightly closer to this elusive, yet highly sought-after clean power source.

“The breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time,” Southern University of Science and Technology physicist Li Miao told the Global Times.

Keep reading