158688701
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Electric vehicle firm Polestar roasted Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Volkswagen in its Super Bowl ad, with references to 'conquering Mars' and 'Dieselgate'.
The electric vehicle startup's "No Compromises" advertisement, which lasted 30 seconds, featured close-up shots of the Polestar 2 with dramatic background music. The ad included phrases such as "no dirty secrets," "no empty promises," and "no greenwashing."
Words following “No” during the ad range from general terms such as “epic voiceovers” and “dirty secrets” to “dieselgate” – referring to a former diesel emissions scandal with Volkswagen – and “conquering Mars” – a critique on Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk, who has plans to land humans on Mars by 2026.Link to Original Source
150139291
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
According to theory, if you smash two photons together hard enough, you can generate matter: an electron-positron pair, the conversion of light to mass as per Einstein's theory of special relativity.
It's called the Breit-Wheeler process, first laid out by Gregory Breit and John A. Wheeler in 1934, and we have very good reason to believe it would work.
But direct observation of the pure phenomenon involving just two photons has remained elusive, mainly because the photons need to be extremely energetic (i.e. gamma rays) and we don't have the technology yet to build a gamma-ray laser.
Now, physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory say they've found a way around this stumbling block using the facility's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) — resulting in a direct observation of the Breit-Wheeler process in action.Link to Original Source
144962262
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Jiankui had made the first genetically modified babies in the history of humankind. After 3.7 billion years of continuous, undisturbed evolution by natural selection, a life form had taken its innate biology into its own hands. The result was twin baby girls who were born with altered copies of a gene known as CCR5, which the scientist hoped would make them immune to HIV.
But things were not as they seemed.
In the years since, it's become clear that Jiankui's project was not quite as innocent as it might sound. He had broken laws, forged documents, misled the babies' parents about any risks and failed to do adequate safety testing.
However, arguably the biggest twist were the mistakes. It turns out that the babies involved, Lulu and Nana, have not been gifted with neatly edited genes after all. Not only are they not necessarily immune to HIV, they have been accidentally endowed with versions of CCR5 that are entirely made up – they likely do not exist in any other human genome on the planet. And yet, such changes are heritable – they could be passed on to their children, and children's children, and so on.
In fact, there have been no shortage of surprises in the field. From the rabbits altered to be leaner that inexplicably ended up with much longer tongues to the cattle tweaked to lack horns that were inadvertently endowed with a long stretch of bacterial DNA in their genomes (including some genes that confer antibiotic resistance, no less) – its past is riddled with errors and misunderstandings.
More recently, researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London warned that editing the genetics of human embryos can lead to unintended consequences. By analysing data from previous experiments, they found that approximately 16% had accidental mutations that would not have been picked up via standard tests.
Why are these mistakes so common? Can they be overcome? And how could they affect future generations?Link to Original Source
142107300
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
There's already a long list of reasons to like trees, we know. Warding off depression could be the latest entry on that list, based on a study of 9,751 residents in Leipzig, Germany.
For a more consistent measure, researchers used antidepressant prescriptions rather than self-reporting to gauge the mental health of communities, and then cross-referenced these statistics with the numbers of street trees in each area.
They reported that more local foliage within 100 metres (328 feet) of the home was associated with a reduced likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants – findings that could be very useful indeed for city planners, health professionals, and governments.
The reduction in antidepressant use linked to street trees was particularly prominent in socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. While it's important not to take such findings too far, the results do hint that urban trees could act as a simple and affordable way of boosting mental health and assist in closing health inequality gaps across society.
137911410
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest's undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child's immune system, according to a small new experiment.
When daycare workers in Finland rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth such as dwarf heather and blueberries, and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time.
Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement, tile and gravel, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds at these greened-up daycare centres in Finland showed increased T-cells and other important immune markers in their blood within 28 days.
"We also found that the intestinal microbiota of children who received greenery was similar to the intestinal microbiota of children visiting the forest every day," says environmental scientist Marja Roslund from the University of Helsinki.
Prior research has shown early exposure to green space is somehow linked to a well-functioning immune system, but it's still not clear whether that relationship is causal or not.
The experiment in Finland is the first to explicitly manipulate a child's urban environment and then test for changes in their micriobiome and, in turn, a child's immune system.
While the findings don't hold all the answers, they do support a leading idea — namely that a change in environmental microbes can relatively easily affect a well-established microbiome in children, giving their immune system a helping hand in the process.Link to Original Source
136829824
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
A large new study suggests there may be unexpected impacts of that choice. A cross-sectional analysis of 11,489 children, 655 of whom were exposed to THC in the womb, has found cannabis use during pregnancy is tied to a small elevation in psychotic-like behaviours later in life.
These include aggression towards others, as well as attention and social problems.
While it could be that women with these behavioural features are more likely to use cannabis during pregnancy, the relationship stood even when other confounding factors, such as genetic predispositions, were considered.
Whether or not this link is causal is another matter — after all, there are many other factors the researchers may not have considered — but in the context of other research, it's an interesting link worthy of further exploration.Link to Original Source
135588914
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Many a conversation in France begins with a sigh and a lament.
The French attitude towards complaining is uncomfortable for many Anglophones, many of whom argue that negativity breeds negativity. But according to some experts, the French attitude may in fact be better for your health. A 2013 study in Biological Psychiatry found that attempts to regulate negative emotions could be linked with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, while 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin found that bottling up negative emotions can make people more aggressive.
This isn’t to say that complaining is always positive. Complaining too often can get you caught in a spiral, actually rewiring your brain to always focus on the negative. But French râleurs may well avoid this unfortunate side effect, in part because they rarely complain about their own lives but rather about external issues.Link to Original Source
124153854
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
The vegan diet is low in â" or, in some cases, entirely devoid of â" several important brain nutrients. Could these shortcomings be affecting vegans' abilities to think?
To see how crucial B12 is for the brain, take what happens when we donâ(TM)t get enough of it. In children, the consequences of B12 deficiency can be life-altering. âoeThere are some tragic cases of children whose brains failed to develop because of their parents being ill-informed vegans,â says Benton. In one example, the child was unable to sit or smile. In another, they slipped into a coma.
Later in life, the amount of B12 in a personâ(TM)s blood has been directly correlated with their IQ. In the elderly, one study found that the brains of those with lower B12 were six times more likely to be shrinking.
Even so, low B12 is widespread in vegans. One British study found that half of the vegans in their sample were deficient. In some parts of India, the problem is endemic â" possibly as a consequence of the popularity of meat-free diets.
For example, one 2007 study found that giving young women iron supplements led to significant intellectual gains.Link to Original Source
122503982
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
American scientist Frances Arnold, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, has retracted her latest paper.
Prof Arnold shared the award with George P Smith and Gregory Winter for their research on enzymes in 2018.
A subsequent paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams was published in the journal Science in May 2019.
It has been retracted because the results were not reproducible, and the authors found data missing from a lab notebook.
Reproduction is an essential part of validating scientific experiments. If an experiment is a success, one would expect to get the same results every time it was conducted.
Prof Arnold came forward with the news herself on Twitter on 2 January.
"For my first work-related tweet of 2020, I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year's paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams. The work has not been reproducible," she tweeted.
"It is painful to admit, but important to do so. I apologize to all. I was a bit busy when this was submitted, and did not do my job well." ...
Prof Arnold is a widely respected chemical engineer, whose work pioneering "directed evolution" won her the â1m (£0.8m) Millennium Technology Prize in 2016.
She is also on the board of directors for Google's parent company Alphabet.Link to Original Source
115995958
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Life on Earth is amazingly diverse, and exhibits striking geographical global patterns in biodiversity. A pair of companion papers reveal that mountain regions — especially those in the tropics — are hotspots of extraordinary and baffling richness. Although mountain regions cover only 25 percent of Earth's land area, they are home to more than 85 percent of the world's species of amphibians, birds, and mammals, and many of these are found only in mountains.Link to Original Source
115368406
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Eight years after Japan's worst nuclear disaster, the government is not sure what to do with the contaminated water that remains — but its environment minister says dumping it into the ocean might be the only choice.
To cool fuel cores at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, operator Tokyo Electric has pumped in tens of thousands of tons of water over the years, according to Japanese national broadcaster NHK. Once used and contaminated, the water is put into storage.
Now, storage space is running out. And during a televised press conference Tuesday, Japan's environment minister Yoshiaki Harada said he believed the only solution was to "release it into the ocean and dilute it."Link to Original Source
112468638
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
With all the new/old school gamers, software developers, and puzzle lovers on Slashdot, I'm surprised there hasn't been a Mario Maker 2 article. It was just released a few weeks back.
If you like old games from the 1980s, this is your game. If you like creating things, you make your own standard Mario levels here. If you like solving or creating puzzles, there is a whole branch of levels you can filter by that are puzzle levels... and some are stinking hard.
Link?
[spam URL stripped]...
[spam URL stripped]...
Review link:
[spam URL stripped]...Link to Original Source
108170196
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
From the article:
Boeing’s solution to its hardware problem was software.
I will leave a discussion of the corporatization of the aviation lexicon for another article, but let’s just say another term might be the “Cheap way to prevent a stall when the pilots punch it,” or CWTPASWTPPI, system. Hmm. Perhaps MCAS is better, after all.
MCAS is certainly much less expensive than extensively modifying the airframe to accommodate the larger engines. Such an airframe modification would have meant things like longer landing gear (which might not then fit in the fuselage when retracted), more wing dihedral (upward bend), and so forth. All of those hardware changes would be horribly expensive.
“Everything about the design and manufacture of the Max was done to preserve the myth that ‘it’s just a 737.’ Recertifying it as a new aircraft would have taken years and millions of dollars. In fact, the pilot licensed to fly the 737 in 1967 is still licensed to fly all subsequent versions of the 737.” —Feedback on an earlier draft of this article from a 737 pilot for a major airlineLink to Original Source
107451144
submission
omfglearntoplay writes:
Ancient Hunter-Gatherer people often had front teeth that met together, unlike today's more common agriculture diet teeth where the upper front teeth "overbite" the lower front teeth. This affects the sounds we use in speech, according to a study.
From the article:
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"It is often assumed that the structure and the processes we see in languages today were the same as 10,000 years ago," Blasi said. "Now we have a very strong case to think that there are some global and very frequent linguistic phenomena that are surprisingly recent in times of human history."
The study: [spam URL stripped]...Link to Original Source
