The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

Far removed from the Jomon period ... this is truly wonderful ...

3 paralyzed men can walk again after getting electrode implant

The device stimulates specific spinal nerves.

Three men with paralyzing spinal cord injuries can now stand, walk and cycle after electrodes were implanted into their spinal cords.

The electrodes deliver electrical pulses to specific regions of the spinal cord and thus activate muscles in the trunk and legs, according to a new study, published Monday (Feb. 7) in the journal Nature Medicine. The soft, flexible device lies directly on top of the spinal nerves, beneath the vertebrae, and can be controlled wirelessly with software, operated from a tablet, and a handheld clicker.

The software communicates with a pacemaker-like device in the abdomen, which then directs the activity of the nerve-bound electrodes on the spinal cord. So, with the tap of a touch screen, the user of the implant can prompt their device to generate a precise pattern of stimulation. These stimulation patterns translate to patterns of muscle activity, allowing the user to walk, cycle, or swim, for instance. Users can also manually switch between these stimulation patterns with their clicker. "All three patients were able to stand, walk, pedal, swim and control their torso movements in just one day, after their implants were activated ..."

After the initial implantation, the patients underwent extensive training to get used to using the device and regain muscle mass and motor control, co-senior author Dr. Jocelyne Bloch, an associate professor of neurosurgery at Lausanne University Hospital, told The Guardian. "It was not perfect at the beginning, but they could train very early to have a more fluid gait," she said. Eventually, the patients progressed from using the implants only in a controlled lab setting to using them out and about in their daily lives.

After four months of training, one patient, Michel Roccati, was able to walk about 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) outside the lab and without stopping, with only a frame for balance, AFP reported. He can now continuously stand for about two hours. Like the other participants in the trial, Roccati has a complete spinal cord injury, meaning the nerves below his site of injury cannot communicate with the brain at all. He was injured in a motorcycle accident in 2019 and lost both feeling and motor control in his legs.

...

The team is also investigating whether a similar stimulator could be implanted directly into the motor cortex, a key region of the brain for controlling voluntary movement, Courtine told NBC News. Such a device could allow people with paralysis to direct their movements without the aid of a tablet or clicker.

https://www.livescience.com/spinal-i...fter-paralysis

https://youtu.be/dTZ83SEQFDQ

Gassho, J

STLah

[Nengei]

That is freakin' coolio. A true antiquity!

Gassho,
Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

[Jundo]

PS - A close up picture of the striation lines on the pot, made by rolling rope over the surface ...

dlt koshiki 3.jpg

The oven was like this ...



Similar chord designed pottery is found around the world, showing amazing similarities in peoples far removed from each other ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord-marked_pottery

Gassho, J
STLah

[Jundo]

Well, a little mystery partially resolved in the Cohen house, but new mysteries added.

I found this old pot in a local junk shop about 3 years ago, and suspected that it is a kind of old rice cooking pot from maybe the Kofun (Burial Tumulus) Age in Japan, about 1500 to 1800 years ago. Because of Covid, I never got to show it to an expert, but finally did yesterday, asking our local city archeologist his opinion (yes, cities in Japan, like many in Europe, have town archeologists, because they are always digging up old things).

Turns out that I was partly wrong. While it appears to be an old rice cooking pot, it seems to be from the much earlier Late/Final Jomon period, the end of the Japanese stone age, about 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C., so maybe 2,500 or 3,000 years old? It is partially restored by someone, but we don't know how it ended up in the junk shop.

Late Jōmon (ca. 1500–1000 B.C.)
As the climate began to cool, the population migrated out of the mountains and settled closer to the coast, especially along Honshū’s eastern shores. Greater reliance on seafood inspired innovations in fishing technology, such as the development of the toggle harpoon and deep-sea fishing techniques. This process brought communities into closer contact, as indicated by greater similarity among artifacts. Circular ceremonial sites comprised of assembled stones, in some cases numbering in the thousands, and larger numbers of figurines show a continued increase in the importance and enactment of rituals.

Final Jōmon (ca. 1000–300 B.C.)
As the climate cooled and food became less abundant, the population declined dramatically. Because people were assembled in smaller groups, regional differences became more pronounced. As part of the transition to the Yayoi culture, it is believed that domesticated rice, grown in dry beds or swamps, was introduced into Japan at this time.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jomo/hd_jomo.htm

Now, here is the mystery. First, it does not appear to be from this region, but may be from Hokkaido in far northern Japan. However, rice had just come to Japan at the time, and is not thought to have made it this far north. So, it must be from Kyushu in southern Japan, in the very early days of rice cultivation in Japan! However, he is not sure, and it will need further research. He is only sure that it is late Jomon period.

Here are two pictures. It was a functional device, a family's kitchen vessel not made for beauty. However, you can see the lines carved into the surface, using a pressed rope pattern to make the design. The blackness either comes from the firing of the pottery or long use in cooking.

dlt koshiki 2.jpgdlt koshiki 1.jpg

The hole shows that it was probably a steamer for rice, used in some kind of oven like this ...

So, new mysteries to investigate!

The pot is not of financial worth in any way, but does have historical and personal value!

Gassho, J

STLah

[Naiko]

Fish communicate vocally!

https://www.sciencealert.com/fish-have-been-talking-with-delightfully-strange-sounds-for-at-least-155-million-years?fbclid=IwAR35d0AM1BA2YbTjPKDf83od-WkpPwOQzJkOcjuCGxQShP7Y733bJNlj3Pg

Gassho,
Naiko
st lah

[Jundo]

I want a Zafu that is harder than steel and bulletproof (in case the Zendo is attacked!) ...

MIT researchers have developed a new material that's as strong as steel but as light as plastic.

It can be easily manufactured in large quantities, and the use cases range from lightweight coatings for cars and phones to building blocks for massive structures such as bridges, according to Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of a new study.

“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” he said in a statement from MIT. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”

The material is several times stronger than bulletproof glass, and the amount of force needed to break it is twice that of steel, despite the fact that the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel, according to MIT.

The researchers were able to do this by developing a new process to form polymers. Plastics are an example of polymers, along with rubber and glass. ...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...newstopstories

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Life truly does find a way ...

Why a toxic volcanic lake on Earth reminds scientists of Mars

In the heart of the Costa Rican rainforest is a bright blue lake full of toxic metals. Clouds of stinging steam drift around the active volcanic crater hosting one of Earth's most acidic lakes. Located near the summit of the Poás volcano, Laguna Caliente is subject to frequent eruptions, releasing explosions of ash, rock and steam -- and sometimes roiling magma.

Yet microbes have found a way to live in this environment, one of the most hostile on our planet, according to multiple studies of the lake and new research published last week in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Although the diversity of the life in this lake isn't high, it has managed to adapt and persist in a multitude of ways.

Laguna Caliente presents an extremely dynamic terrestrial environment with near-ambient to boiling temperatures, pH fluctuations from −0.87 to 1.5, a wide range of chemistries and redox potential, and frequent phreatic-to-phreatomagmatic eruptions. Samples of lake fluid, sulfur clumps, and lake bottom sediment underwent 16S rRNA gene sequencing and metagenomic “shotgun” sequencing, which revealed this lake hosts an extremely low biodiversity of microorganisms dominated by Acidiphilium spp. Shotgun metagenomics of the samples suggests this community has numerous genetic adaptations that confer survival, including functional pathways to reduce the effects of toxic metals and numerous metabolic pathways utilizing a variety of simple and complex sugar molecules. The identification of these various metabolic pathways suggests adaptations related to carbon limited environments, fulfillment of high energy requirements, and survival in a hostile volcanic setting. The perseverance of life in Laguna Caliente indicates life on Mars could have thrived in analogous environments, stressing the need for the search for life in relict Martian acid-sulfate hydrothermal systems.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...22.817900/full

https://youtu.be/5qDADE-KBcc

Gassho, J

STLah

[Nengei]

Very cool, Neil. Thank you for sharing these.

Gassho
然芸 Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

[houst0n]

Some cool space stuff from today, behold the 'mysterious strands'!

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/01/nearly-1000-mysterious-strands-revealed-in-milky-ways-center/

Some of these are 150 light years long... 1 light year is about 10 trillion kilometres...

A radio view of what these look like: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_jcm/51847931721

Gassho,
./sat
Neil

[Getchi]

Wonderful to see knoll talked about. This thread is awesome, thankyou jundo.

LaH
SatToday

Gassho

[Nengei]

We live in such fragility for constancy, yet life toughs it out, over and over. Human kind may successfully wipe ourselves and a good number of species from the face of the earth, and perhaps something new will arise from the remnants. Picture them a billion years from now: thinking amphibians hammering at rocks, trying to figure out what happened... sitting zazen, wearing little rakusus made from old bits of kelp... though the number of times this cycle can go on is limited, as our own sun is doomed to die in another 4 billion years or so.

Gassho,
然芸 Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

[Jundo]

A fascinating story. Like the earth, our Zazen practice can also grow from the "down" times and the times of loss ... which lead to all that then comes ...

Meet the man who can explain the first 3 billion years of life on our planet

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday will award [paleontologist Andrew Knoll] the prestigious Crafoord Prize, considered a complement -- and for some winners, a precursor to -- a Nobel prize.

... The honor is for his work on illuminating the first 3 billion years of Earth's history, determining the ages of layers of bedrock, discovering tiny organisms from the depths of time that are the infinitesimal ancestors of every one of us and explaining the world's worst mass extinction."He really tries to integrate all the available data -- the geological, the biological and the chemical and puts things in perspective. ... It's not necessarily the glamorous side of paleontology -- Knoll mostly finds and examines microfossils only visible with a microscope, not towering skeletons of extinct giants that take center stage in museum atriums. But how he has pieced together the story of Earth's birth and life's earliest history has revolutionized the field.

... Our familiar world of complex animals began to take shape beginning about 540 million years ago, in what's known as the Cambrian explosion. But Knoll's discovery of microscopic fossils of bacteria-like organisms, single-celled protozoans and algae that date back as far as 3 billion years -- and the environment they emerged in -- have shown that the evolutionary path to our modern animal and plant life began much earlier. ... Knoll also first described what is sometimes known as the "boring billion" -- a period in Earth's history around 1.8 billion to 800 million years ago when nothing much appeared to happen biologically or climatically. Nonetheless, he said it was a crucial period that paved the way for life as we know it. "Our work and that of others, demonstrates that this is when the eukaryotic cell came of age -- all of the molecular and cell biology that eventually made animals possible, was hammered out during this boring billion," Knoll said.

... Knoll also came up with the most credible explanation for Earth's third and biggest mass extinction, when more than 90% of species in the ocean disappeared and 70% of land animals died out. The event ultimately paved the way for the rise of the dinosaurs.
Known as the "Great Dying," it marked the end of the Permian period 252 million years ago, and its cause had long been debated. ... The biological catastrophe unleashed at this juncture in time was chilling, Knoll said. At rocks exposed on a mountainside in China called Meishan, where Knoll has worked, the limestone rocks bristle with fossilized marine life, and then after one point no wider than a knife edge, they all disappear, he said. Puzzling over the phenomenon one night while he was awake caring for his son, Knoll came up with the idea that the apparent disappearance of life could have been due to a rapid rise in CO2. To understand what might have happened, Knoll and his colleagues dove into fossil records and divided the marine fauna that lived at the end of the Permian into two groups: vulnerable and tolerant to CO2. For example, animals with gills for gas exchange should be more tolerant, while corals -- which have carbonate skeletons -- didn't respond that well. The group with the traits more tolerant of CO2, such as clams and snails, largely survived the mass extinction. ... The cause of the rise in CO2 was ultimately determined to be a massive area of volcanic activity in what's now Russia known as the Siberian Traps.

...

https://us.cnn.com/2022/01/30/americ...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

... Those marks are left by a family, being. ...

And so for the scratches on the universe, perhaps ...

[Nengei]

But I am not kidding, and can save the scientists a lot of work! Just scratches, left by a failure of the universe to use placemats.

Of course, beautiful as it is ...







Gassho, J

STLah

I very much appreciate the beauty of things like your tabletop. Those marks are left by a family, being. Thank you for that.

Gassho,
然芸 Nengei
Sat today. LAH.

[Jundo]

Going slow, nothing to attain. The last comment is very lovely ... persistence in the face of change ...

190-year-old Jonathan is the oldest tortoise ever

Jonathan was already the oldest living land animal.

A 190-year-old tortoise named Jonathan has become the oldest tortoise ever, adding to his list of age-defying accolades.

Jonathan is estimated to have been born in 1832, which means he turned, or turns, 190 years old in 2022, Guinness World Records announced on Jan. 12. To put that into context, Jonathan was born before Queen Victoria ascended the British throne in 1837.

The elderly Seychelles giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea hololissa) was already the Guinness World Record holder for the oldest living land animal, but now he is officially the oldest turtle or tortoise ever recorded. He beat previous record-holder Tu'i Malila, a radiated tortoise (Astrochelys radiata) that lived to be at least 188 years old before dying in 1965.

In his twilight years, Jonathan is blind and can't smell but still grazes on the grounds of the governor of St. Helena's residence where he lives with fellow giant tortoises David, Emma and Fred. ... "In spite of his age, Jonathan still has good libido and is seen frequently to mate with Emma and sometimes Fred — animals are often not particularly gender-sensitive!" Hollins told Guinness World Records.

... Scientists don't yet understand all of the processes that allow tortoises like Jonathan to live for so long. Giant tortoises quickly kill off damaged cells in a process called apoptosis, which may help protect them against damage to cells that normally deteriorate as we age, Live Science previously reported. ... Jonathan's longevity may be unmatched on land, but there are longer living animals in water. For example, Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) have an estimated maximum life span of at least 272 years, and Hydra, a group of small jellyfish-like invertebrates, continually regenerate their cells and don't seem to age at all.

...

Jonathan lives on St. Helena, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean. "He is a local icon, symbolic of persistence in the face of change," Joe Hollins, Jonathan's veterinarian, told Guinness World Records.

https://www.livescience.com/jonathan-oldest-tortoise-ever

Gassho, J

STLah