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

[Jundo]

Sometimes I think that we would have done better staying in the ocean ... but I am glad we did not (I get sea sick) ...

Fish finger fossils show the beginnings of hands

Researchers have discovered the fossil of a fish with finger-like digits in its fin that lived 380 million years ago, according to a new study. And they believe it bridges the evolutionary gap between marine and land vertebrates as one of the oldest examples of a skeletal pattern resembling a hand.

About 374 million years ago, life on Earth began to transition out of the world's oceans to walk on land. This gave rise to the tetrapods, or four-limbed vertebrates, that included dinosaurs, land animals and eventually humans. Scientists consider this transition from water to land, and animals acquiring hands and feet, to be one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth.

But the fossil record about the evolutionary step between marine and land life is sparse. Researchers have focused their efforts on tetrapod-like fish, called elpistostegalians, that lived between 359 and 393 million years ago during the Middle and Late Devonian periods.

Until now, they had never found the complete skeleton of the pectoral fin, also known as the fore-fin. But researchers have discovered one of the most complete elpistostegalian fossils yet: a 5-foot-long fossilized fish in Miguasha, Quebec.

CT scans of the skeleton revealed at least two skeletal digits that resembled fingers, as well as three more potential ones. They also found an arm, elbow, forearm and wrist attached to the finger-like digits.

All of them were still contained within a fin ray, or webbed flipper-like appendage, but the researchers believe it's the missing link between fish fins and vertebrate hands.

... "This is the first time that we have unequivocally discovered fingers locked in a fin with fin-rays in any known fish. The articulating digits in the fin are like the finger bones found in the hands of most animals."

https://us.cnn.com/2020/03/18/world/...scn/index.html

Here is a picture ...



Oh, sorry, wrong picture. I meant here ...



Gassho, J

ST+lah

[Jundo]

This brought a smile, for those of us who remember when technology could be fixed by just banging on it a few times ...

NASA fixes Mars lander by hitting it with a shovel

NASA may have a multi-billion dollar budget and some of the most advanced technology in the world, but when the Mars InSight lander got into a spot of bother, scientists came up with a charmingly rudimentary fix for its space technology: Hit it with a shovel.

The trouble started when a heat probe, known as the "mole," did not manage to dig into the red planet as planned last year. This was due to a lack of friction, which the probe needs in order to burrow into the soil, according to a NASA statement. After several months, the NASA InSight Twitter account outlined its strategy as "giving it a push with my robotic arm." "A bit of good news from #Mars: our new approach of using the robotic arm to push the mole appears to be working!" it said on twitter.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/03/19/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, Jundo

STLah

[Kotei]

This brought a smile, for those of us who remember when technology could be fixed by just banging on it a few times ...

Must've been quite common some time ago...

You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. ... By all means, do not use a hammer.

— IBM maintenance manual (1925).

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Jundo]

I wish I could grab a surf board and ride this thing ...

Using the unique capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered the most energetic outflows ever witnessed in the universe. They emanate from quasars and tear across interstellar space like tsunamis, wreaking havoc on the galaxies in which the quasars live.

Quasars are extremely remote celestial objects, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy. Quasars contain supermassive black holes fueled by infalling matter that can shine 1,000 times brighter than their host galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars.

As the black hole devours matter, hot gas encircles it and emits intense radiation, creating the quasar. Winds, driven by blistering radiation pressure from the vicinity of the black hole, push material away from the galaxy's center. These outflows accelerate to breathtaking velocities that are a few percent of the speed of light.

"No other phenomena carries more mechanical energy. Over the lifetime of 10 million years, these outflows produce a million times more energy than a gamma-ray burst," explained principal investigator Nahum Arav of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. "The winds are pushing hundreds of solar masses of material each year. The amount of mechanical energy that these outflows carry is up to several hundreds of times higher than the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy."

It may be important in making sure that galaxies don't over-produce stars ...

The quasar winds snowplow across the galaxy's disk. Material that otherwise would have formed new stars is violently swept from the galaxy, causing star birth to cease. Radiation pushes the gas and dust to far greater distances than scientists previously thought, creating a galaxy-wide event. ... "Both theoreticians and observers have known for decades that there is some physical process that shuts off star formation in massive galaxies, but the nature of that process has been a mystery. ..."

Aside from measuring the most energetic quasars ever observed, the team also discovered another outflow accelerating faster than any other. It increased from nearly 43 million miles per hour to roughly 46 million miles per hour in a three-year period. The scientists believe its acceleration will continue to increase over time.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/quasar-tsunamis-rip-across-galaxies

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

In this time when we might think we are facing the end of the human race (we are not), it is good to recall where the race began ...

This worm-like creature is the first ancestor on the human and animal family tree

Evidence of a worm-like creature about the size of a grain of rice has been uncovered in South Australia, and researchers believe it is the oldest ancestor on the family tree that includes humans and most animals.

The creature lived 555 million years ago.

It's considered to be the earliest bilaterian. Bilaterians are organisms with a front, back, two openings on either end and a gut that connects them. They were an evolutionary step forward for early life on Earth.

... Developing bilaterian body structure and organization successfully allowed life to move in specific, purposeful directions. This includes everything from worms and dinosaurs to amphibians and humans. ...

A 3-D laser scan revealed the impressions contained evidence of a body shaped and sized like a rice grain, with a noticeable head, tail and even V-shaped grooves suggesting muscles. Contractions of the muscles would have enabled the creature to move and create the burrows, like the way a worm moves. Patterns of displaced sediment and signs of feeding led the researchers to determine that it had a mouth, gut and posterior opening.
And the size of the creature matched with the size of the burrows they found.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/03/23/world/animal-ancestor-ikaria-scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Heiso]

I happened to be listening to this podcast today, an interview with the physicist Carlo Rovelli the author of 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics'.

It is fascinating and some of the themes he touches on will sound incredibly familiar to most Buddhists particularly when talking about time and how there is no such thing as permanence, everything is a continual process and interaction: https://onbeing.org/programs/carlo-r...s-interaction/

Gassho,

Heiso

StLah

[Jundo]

I just found this beautiful and inspiring ...

OTHERWORLDLY, 150-FOOT-LONG STRING-LIKE ORGANISM SPOTTED IN DEEP SEA IS MADE UP OF 'MILLIONS OF INTERCONNECTED CLONES'

Researchers have captured fascinating video footage of an otherworldly organism in the waters off the coast of Western Australia. ... Resembling a long piece of string, siphonophores—a group of creatures related to jellyfish and corals—may look like one organism, but they are actually made up of many thousands of individual, specialized clones that come together to form a single entity.

... "This animal is a kind of jelly, called a siphonophore. It's made of millions of interconnected clones, like if the Borg and the Clone Wars had a baby together. There are about a dozen different jobs a clone can do in the colony, and each clone is specialized to a particular task," Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville who saw the SCI video, wrote in a Twitter thread. ... I've gone on numerous expeditions and have never, EVER, seen anything like this. Let me tell you what this is and why it is blowing my mind," she said. "Most of the siphonophore colonies I've seen are maybe 20 centimeters long, maybe a meter. But THIS animal is massive."

https://youtu.be/f2Iq8X1KMyc

More here, from Prof. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonophorae

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I think some positive medical news is cause for celebration, and a reminder that science is a tool we have that our ancestors did not. Saw this today ...

Breakthroughs in Treating Hepatitis C

As recently as 1986, doctors had just one drug for hepatitis C: interferon, similar to a protein that occurs naturally in the body. And it worked in only 6% of patients.

Now, new approaches that combine multiple medications can successfully treat more than 80% of people with this virus.

In fact, hepatitis C, which causes inflammation of the liver, is one of the few chronic diseases that doctors have cured—meaning no traces of the virus remain in the bloodstream. And researchers continue to make discoveries that improve the safety and effectiveness of hepatitis C therapies.

https://healthguides.cnn.com/getting...-c?did=t1_rss5

Gassho, J

STLah

[Amelia]

My aunt had hers cured, it really is amazing.

Gassho
Sat today, lah

[Jundo]

Alas, a bit of a counterbalance to what I posted immediately above ...

Rate of new US hepatitis C infections rises threefold in the past decade, new report finds

The annual rate of newly reported hepatitis C infections in the United States has increased threefold, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A new CDC report finds that the annual rate rose from a rate of 0.3 cases per 100,000 people in 2009 to a rate of 1.2 per 100,000 people in 2018. That report also makes new recommendations for all adults to get screened for hepatitis C at least once in their lifetimes.

The new Vital Signs report included data on confirmed acute hepatitis C cases between 2009 and 2018 from the CDC's National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. Hepatitis C is the most commonly reported bloodborne infection in the United States.

The report, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Thursday, finds that the highest rate of new hepatitis C cases in 2018 was among younger adults ages 20 to 39.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/04/10/health...ses/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Amelia]

My aunt and uncle, unfortunately, both received it from a blood transfusion during which the hospital either negligently or by mistake was reusing the tainted needle on both of them.

Gassho
Sat today, lah

[Jundo]

My aunt and uncle, unfortunately, both received it from a blood transfusion during which the hospital either negligently or by mistake was reusing the tainted needle on both of them.

Gassho
Sat today, lah

I have friends who got it most likely from tattoos at a "good" place.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Important to remember the little blue dot where all this is happening ...

Mercury probe snaps stunning photos of our planet during Earth flyby

https://youtu.be/Ir5ZUKbt0b4

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

What came first, the skink or the egg?

An extraordinary feat pulled off by a lizard could suggest the species is going through a rare evolutionary transition

For most of the animal kingdom, babies are born in one of two ways: their parent either lays eggs or gives birth to live offspring.

Recently, a three-toed skink (Saiphos equalis) pulled off an extraordinary feat: It laid three eggs and delivered another baby through live birth in the same pregnancy. That suggests that the lizard species is in a rare transitional form between egg-laying and live-bearing animals, according to a study published in Molecular Ecology last month.

... Three-toed skinks, found in Australia, are already a fascinating species for evolutionary scientists, explains Whittington. One reason is that some populations reproduce by laying eggs, while others reproduce through live birth.

The mode skinks use to reproduce generally corresponds with their environment. Skinks around the Sydney area lay eggs, albeit ones with thin shells and embryos that are almost completely developed. In northern parts of Australia, the skinks give birth to live young.

But never before had scientists seen a species lay eggs and experience live birth in a single pregnancy until it was observed in the three-toed skink last year, Whittington wrote. It was the first record of a vertebrate doing so.

... There are a couple of explanations as to why the skink both laid eggs and had a live baby in the same pregnancy, Whittingon said. One is that it was a form of "bet-hedging," meaning that the ability to switch between laying eggs and live birth could provide the lizard an advantage in unpredictable environments. ... Another explanation is that some feature of the environment could have caused the skink in question to lay part of her clutch abnormally early.

... The finding could mean that the skink is transitioning to only laying eggs or only experiencing live birth. But scientists say it's too soon to tell which direction it's moving in.
In general, animals that give birth to live young have evolved from ancestors that laid eggs and it would be rare for an animal to evolve in the other direction, according to Whittington.

... Still, it's "impossible" to determine what course natural selection is taking in this skink species, Whittington said. Their research shows that the uterus of the "transitional" three-toed skinks and live-bearing three-toed skinks function similarly, which could make it possible for the species to reverse from live-bearing to egg-laying, she said.
"At the moment, we can't rule out the possibility that the transitional animals could be descended from live-bearing ancestors -- which is why we are continuing to study these amazing lizards," she wrote.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/04/11/us/ski...rnd/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I found this a good reminder. Most younger folks today will not remember these times (I was born just after) ...

The other time America desperately sought a miracle cure for a devastating disease

... As I grew up in my part of the world, the word polio came with a thunderclap of fear. Poliomyelitis, the scientific name, had another name that summed up its awfulness -- infantile paralysis.
No childhood disease was more terrifying. ... Rose Nell, still in her twenties, complained of a severe headache, and then pain in her back and legs. The doctors diagnosed her polio just in time -- the poliovirus attacked the muscles of her diaphragm, and she lost the ability to breathe on her own. ...

... Medicine began to win the battle against poliovirus in the early 1950s. The virologist Jonas Salk developed a vaccine, and he became a household name. The United States Food and Drug Administration fully approved large-scale polio vaccinations on April 12, 1955. ... Another researcher, Albert Sabin, developed an oral version of the vaccine -- something like that pink liquid dropped onto those sugar cubes in Dothan. ...

The vaccine officially arrived for many kids in my part of the world on March 31, 1965, with this headline in our hometown newspaper, The Dothan Eagle: "Timetable Given For Polio Program"
Vaccines would be administered on a schedule to hundreds of thousands of first and second grade Alabama children (9 million nationally) in a broad effort to eradicate the disease.

For the skeptical, the article addressed vaccine safety. Dr. W. J. Donald of the State Health Office declared, "It has already been proved safe. Not a single child had any adverse effects in any field trial."

... The miracle end of polio came too late for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stricken at age 39 and paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. Polio killed many others -- in 1952, the US saw 57,879 cases, the most ever, with 3,145 deaths -- but it could also prove milder. Prominent victims, with various degrees of disability, include celebrated violinist Itzhak Perlman, athlete Wilma Rudolph, singers Neil Young and Judy Collins, golfer Jack Nicklaus, moviemaker Francis Ford Coppola, artist Frida Kahlo, swimmer and film Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller, and Emmett Till.

The list gets shorter over time. In 2016, only 42 cases of polio were diagnosed, these in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. The vaccine has worked its miracle for billions of people.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/04/09/opinio...air/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah