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

[Jundo]

Give the thumb a big "thumb's up!"

Thumbs gave human ancestors a 'formidable' advantage

Whether we're texting or using tools, our hands -- perhaps more than any other body part -- are what equip us for modern life.

The killer app in the evolution of our hands was our opposable thumbs, which allow humans to precisely hold tiny things between our fingertips and pad of our thumb.

When did we first get this unusual manual dexterity?

It had been thought, based on comparisons of fossilized bones to modern human skeletons, that it may have emerged more than 3 million years ago when our earliest ancestors -- the australopithecines such as the famous fossil Lucy -- started using basic stone tools.

A new approach to this question, however, suggests that while early hominins may have been dexterous, they did not have the powerful thumb typical of humans today until later, about 2 million years ago. It was at this time an early species of humans first left Africa, and our dexterity could have been the driving force behind a more complex human culture that emerged then.

"Increased manual dexterity in the form of efficient thumb opposition was among the early defining characteristics of our lineage, providing a formidable adaptive advantage to our ancestors," said paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati, a professor at Eberhard Karls University ... in Germany and lead author of a new study that published in the journal Current Biology.

"It is likely a crucial element underlying the development of complex culture over the last 2 million years, shaping our biocultural evolution."

https://us.cnn.com/2021/01/28/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Watch: The spectacular female ‘Blanket Octopus’ was seen unfurling its stunning, fleshy cape
Part of the Tremoctopus genus, Blanket Octopus females are 10,000 times bigger than males.

... Very few videos exist of these octopuses, and they also exhibit the most extreme degree of sexual size-dimorphism (females being larger than males) known in any non-microscopic animal.

“Imagine a female the size of a person and the male a size of a walnut,” said Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Leeds in England. The female blanket octopus also has behaviours particular to her moods – when she feels insecure, she unfurls her fleshy colour-shifting cape (video below).

https://youtu.be/OD6QHW_nMoQ

Gassho, J

STLah

[Heiso]

This is going to be stating he blindingly obvious to many but I've been reading one of the physicist Carlo Rovelli's books alongside Dogen and ... well.. it nearly blew my head off!

Gassho,

heiso.

StLah

[Jundo]

This is going to be stating he blindingly obvious to many but I've been reading one of the physicist Carlo Rovelli's books alongside Dogen and ... well.. it nearly blew my head off!

Gassho,

heiso.

StLah

Ah, yes, Rovelli is into fluid visions of time too ...

https://youtu.be/vgsoI4ZUkUA

Gassho, J

STLah

[Doshin]

Jundo,

Regarding the octopus

Thank you

A lifetime studying, working with and being part of nature and it still amazes me with its wonders.

For all life

Doshin
St in nature (as I try to do each day) as the wind mussed my hair

[Jundo]

Chemists create and capture einsteinium, the elusive 99th element

Scientists have successfully studied einsteinium — one of the most elusive and heaviest elements on the periodic table — for the first time in decades. The achievement brings chemists closer to discovering the so-called "island of stability," where some of the heftiest and shortest-lived elements are thought to reside.

The U.S. Department of Energy first discovered einsteinium in 1952 in the fall-out of the first hydrogen bomb test. The element does not occur naturally on Earth and can only be produced in microscopic quantities using specialized nuclear reactors. It is also hard to separate from other elements, is highly radioactive and rapidly decays, making it extremely difficult to study.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) at the University of California, recently created a 233-nanogram sample of pure einsteinium and carried out the first experiments on the element since the 1970s. In doing so they were able to uncover some of the element's fundamental chemical properties for the first time.

... "It is a very small amount of material," Carter said. "You can't see it, and the only way you can tell it is there is from its radioactive signal." ... Einsteinium-254 has a half-life of 276 days — the time for half of the material to decay — and breaks down into berkelium-250, which emits highly damaging gamma radiation. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico designed a special 3D-printed sample holder to contain the einsteinium and protect the Berkeley Lab scientists from this radiation.


... They found that einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides. This is something that had been theoretically predicted in the past, but has never been experimentally proved before.

Compared with the rest of the actinide series, einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light, which Carter describes as "an unprecedented physical phenomenon." Further experiments are needed to determine why.

https://www.livescience.com/einstein...roperties.html

Named after Albert Einstein, the chemical element einsteinium has 99 electrons swirling around its nucleus



Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I will go out on a limb, but there is something fishy here ...

One change took this fish from fins to limbs

Life on Earth began in the water. When animals moved onto the ground, they switched fins for limbs.

How exactly that might have happened hundreds of millions of years ago, however, has long been an evolutionary mystery that has puzzled scientists.
Now, US scientists say they may have stumbled on a possible answer.

By tweaking a single gene, researchers at Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital have engineered zebrafish that showed the beginning of limblike appendages.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/02/04/americas/zebrafish-fins-limbs-scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Treeleaf definitely needs its own satellite! Star Base Treeleaf!

A “space temple” is planned for the inside of a private satellite to be launched in 2023, and the holy place will be reachable from Earth, organizers said Friday.

Kyoto’s Daigoji Temple [Shingon Buddhism] and Terra Space inc., a satellite developer, have teamed up to launch an ultrasmall satellite the size of a jewelry box that will orbit around Earth. The temple, named Jotenin Gounji Temple, will be placed inside the satellite along with a small Buddha statue and mandala paintings, Terra Space said.

“In the past, people had a temple in their neighborhood where they could go regularly. However, with many people relocating to other places, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, that has become difficult,” said a Terra Space official. “We wanted to build a temple people can easily turn to.”

Gounji Temple will be accessible to people on Earth. Daigoji Temple priests will remotely hold “space services” promoting peace and humanity from the Kyoto temple for those who apply online, and their prayers will be sent to the space temple to be saved in its memory.

In addition to its religious purpose, the satellite is expected to facilitate the checking of cultural assets and damage in times of disaster in mountainous areas where there is no internet access or cell phone reception.

However, funding remains a problem. A satellite of this size usually costs around ¥200 million to build and launch. The company is currently looking for investors and is planning to use revenue from space-related products, such as lucky charms, and services offered at Daigoji Temple.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/02/05/national/satellite-temple/

Gassho, J

STLah

[aprapti]

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/02/05/national/satellite-temple/

maybe its going to be a meeting point with Buddhists from other planets..




aprapti

std

[Jundo]

maybe its going to be a meeting point with Buddhists from other planets..




aprapti

std

Oh, the crazy sex & UFO cult, the 'RAELIANS' already have that covered (not to mention their claim to already be engaged in successful human cloning). The Raelians are noted for this embassy project (I don't think they ever broke ground though), which perhaps will come equipped with an inter-stellar orgy room given their other interests ...

“EXTRATERRESTRIALS REQUIRE SPECIAL DIPLOMATIC STATUS”

It is becoming increasingly obvious that an ET civilization is contacting us and providing signs to prepare us for official contact.

In any case, it is a good fund raising scheme. Maybe Treeleaf needs its own space alien embassy too?

https://youtu.be/fB37tB5vT_4

I was invited by a Raelian friend (an otherwise seemingly sane Japanese medical doctor) to a Rael conference, to see Rael Maitreya, their guru. Rael supposedly was taken by the aliens to their planet, where he met Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha, and saw their advanced technology. He came out to smoke effects, dressed like Elvis.



I commented to my friend at the time that, judging from appearances, the alien's advanced technology must not have included hair transplants.

PLEASE BEWARE OF CULTS!!

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

All composite things are change, even the solid ground which we stand on ...

Watch a billion years of tectonic plates moving in one minute

https://youtu.be/e3-yQQeXUJQ

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I have been avoiding to post most Covid-19 medical and science stories, as there are so many and I am not qualified to say which are important. However, this tale of the young scientists who are responsible for laying the basic groundwork on the vaccines we will all be taking should be widely known, and is simply inspiring ...

For years one group of people has been trying to push a giant boulder to the top of a hill, like Sisyphus. But in this case, it looks like they’ve actually succeeded! David Kestenbaum spoke with four scientists who have been working on a coronavirus vaccine, one that was just shown to work. (21 minutes)

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/727/boulder-v-hill/act-two-11

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Still gives me goose bumps ...

There is no place to go, no goals and nothing to attain ...

... and yet ...

Perseverance rover has successfully landed on Mars and sent back its first images

Landing was 9 minutes of sheer terror

What's special about Perseverance ... an amazing engineering story ...

https://youtu.be/yqqaW8DCc-I

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Interesting research (although never mix with Zazen please) ...

LSD alters consciousness by breaking down barriers in the brain

"LSD did not change the layout of the roads, but it did change the traffic."

LSD may alter consciousness by freeing the brain from its natural barriers, allowing neurons that wouldn't normally interact, to have unusual conversations, brain scans show.

Investigating how "mind-altering" substances such as LSD can change the brain can be a "powerful method for interrogating and understanding" how the mind meets the brain, the authors wrote in the study, first reported by PsyPost.

The brain is made up of 86 billion neurons that communicate with each other over a network of connections. With limited space in the skull, not every neuron has a direct connection to every other neuron, and each person's brain is wired a bit differently. But neuroscientists have created maps that roughly sketch out which brain regions tend to be more or less connected to each other, in the average person.

... LSD temporarily reorganized the traffic of the brain, triggering communication between regions that don't normally interact. Instead of traveling well-worn superhighways, brain signals took circuitous routes through tiny backroads to distant locales in the brain.

"LSD changes the parts of our brain that can chat," Luppi said. Specifically, the change in traffic temporarily altered the way the brain takes in and categorizes information from the outside world. They also found that the effects of the drug on brain function were not constant over the entire duration of the psychedelic experience.

These new communication patterns were correlated with feelings of bliss, complex imagery and a phenomenon known as ego dissolution, or losing one's sense of self.

Under the influence of LSD, "the brain is free to explore a variety of functional connectivity patterns that go beyond those dictated by anatomy — presumably resulting in the unusual beliefs and experiences reported during the psychedelic state," the authors wrote. Understanding how exactly psychedelics affect brain function "may hold further promise for our understanding of the therapeutic effects," the authors wrote.

This isn't the first time researchers have found that psychedelics change brain connectivity; magic mushrooms, which contain psilocybin, can also create a hyperconnected brain, Live Science previously reported.

https://www.livescience.com/lsd-brea...ers-brain.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

And this is cool. Who needs LSD to appreciate a wonder like this?

Incredibly detailed video shows DNA twisting into weird shapes to squeeze into cells

Scientists recently captured a high-resolution video of DNA shimmying into weird shapes in order to squeeze inside cells.

In 1952, Rosalind Franklin produced the first indirect picture of DNA by studying how X-rays bounce off these fundamental molecules. But it wasn't until 2012 that scientists captured a direct photo of DNA using an electron microscope, Live Science previously reported.

Now, a group of researchers in the United Kingdom has captured high-definition videos of DNA in motion using a combination of advanced microscopy and simulations. But they weren't just playing paparazzi to the building blocks of life — they were trying to understand how DNA moves to squeeze itself into cells.

Human cells contain about 6.6 feet (2 meters) of DNA. Considering human cells are on the order of micrometers, DNA has to be really good at "supercoiling" or bending and folding itself to tightly pack inside the cell. But until recently, technology wasn't good enough for scientists to clearly see what the DNA structure looked like as it supercoiled, the authors wrote in the study.
https://www.livescience.com/dna-fold...alization.html

https://youtu.be/fJ4JMXkQzoA

Gassho, J

STLah