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

[Jundo]

Not the best way to preserve a species, but also hope for someday replenishing the seas and the like ...

Scientists have cloned an endangered US animal for the first time, creating a black-footed ferret named Elizabeth Ann from the frozen cells of an ancestor in a landmark achievement that boosts conservation efforts.

Elizabeth Ann was made from the cells of Willa, another black-footed ferret who lived more than 30 years ago, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) said as they revealed her to the world on Thursday.

She was born to a surrogate mother in December, and scientists hope she will eventually be able to mate and help rescue the species from the brink of extinction.

... Elizabeth Ann's birth is a hopeful moment in the effort to boost its numbers, because her potential offspring would diversify the species. "Without an appropriate amount of genetic diversity, a species often becomes more susceptible to diseases and genetic abnormalities," the agency said in a statement.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/02/19/us/eli...scn/index.html

And this clone is cute ...



Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I first thought that this is just like someone talking in their sleep.

But Daniella (our regular member of Tsukuba Zazenkai) and her husband, both actual sleep scientists, say it is really quite amazing ...

Lucid dreamers can hear and answer questions while still asleep, scientists find

Scientists have successfully "talked" to a sleeping person in real-time by invading their dreams, a new study shows. The researchers say it's like trying to communicate with an astronaut on another world.

Dreamers can follow instructions, solve simple math problems and answer yes-no questions without ever waking up, according to the results of four experiments described Thursday (Feb. 18) in the journal Current Biology.

The researchers communicated directly with sleeping participants by asking them questions and having them respond with eye or facial movements during lucid dreams — when people are at minimum aware that they are dreaming. (Some lucid dreamers can control what happens in their dreams.)

"You might expect that if you were to try to communicate with somebody who was asleep, they just wouldn't answer," study first author Karen Konkoly, a cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Illinois, told Live Science. Although Konkoly hoped the real-time communication would work, she said she "didn't believe it" when someone first responded to her questions from their dream.

People dream every night, but scientists don't fully understand why we dream. Studying dreams is difficult because people often forget or distort details after waking up. That's in part because the brain doesn't form many new memories while sleeping and has a limited capacity to accurately store information after the dream has ended, according to the study.

To overcome this limitation, the researchers attempted to communicate with people while they were still dreaming. Because the study participants were having lucid dreams, that meant they could make a conscious effort to respond to cues coming in from the outside world, the researchers hypothesized.

Researchers placed electrodes on the participants' heads, to measure their brainwaves; next to their eyes, to track eye movements; and on their chin, to measure muscle activity. They used this data to determine when the participants entered the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, when lucid dreams are most likely to occur, Konkoly explained.

... Such two-way communication — from outside to inside the dream and back out again — is something that may seem to belong to the domain of science fiction," Pilleriin Sikka, senior lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at Sweden's University of Skövde ...

... About 23% of people have a lucid dream once a month or more, according to a 2016 research paper published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. Konkoly helped induce lucid dreams in her experiments by training participants to associate a sound with a lucid state of mind and then presenting them with that sound, or cue, again during sleep. (Those who want to try to experience lucid dreams for themselves can download an app called Lucid, developed by students in the Northwestern University lab, Konkoly said.)

The researchers suggest that the method in the experiments could be adapted to potentially help tailor a person's dream to a specific need, such as learning or coping with emotional trauma, according to the study.

Robert Stickgold, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the results of the study were "groundbreaking", in an email to Live Science. ...

https://www.livescience.com/real-time-communication-while-dreaming.html

An overview of the experiments including quotes from participants describing their experience.:



Gassho, J

STLah

[Inshin]

I read about it few days ago. Thank you for providing more links to this experiment. You've mentioned few times about your planned book about future and how you're hoping that we will develop technology to improve somehow our brains and be better less violent humans. I believe that more reaserch into dreams, unconscious mind and lucid dreaming will come up with interesting findings.

Gassho
Sat

[Jundo]

Images from Mars, the landing, and first sound of the Martian wind ...

https://youtu.be/o-48lBmZl2M

https://youtu.be/DyiUzmC3OT4

【天上大風】 SKY ABOVE, GREAT WIND by Ryokan

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Great name for a 70s 'prog-rock' band ... Space Hurricane ...

A 'space hurricane' hovered above the North Pole for about 8 hours, study says

For the first time, scientists have spotted what they're calling a "space hurricane" spinning above the North Pole, according to a new study. The roughly 600-mile-wide swirling mass of plasma was located several hundred miles above the North Pole, and "rained" electrons instead of water, according to the study.

Until now, it was uncertain that space hurricanes even existed, "so to prove this with such a striking observation is incredible," said study co-author Mike Lockwood, a space scientist at the University of Reading in the U.K., in a statement.


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

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

And now this is a thing ...

Deep Nostalgia uses AI to animate old photos — and it’s freaking us out

The Deep Fake-style tool from online genealogy company MyHeritage takes your old photos and uses machine learning to animate facial expressions and movements in a truly uncanny fashion. You can then download the 10-20 second videos and share them with your family.

... The service is super-easy to use. Simply head to the MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia page then click on the Upload photo button, or drag and drop your image across.

The AI will then take around 20 seconds to work its magic on the photo, before presenting the finished result for your amazement. And yes, it really is amazing. And creepy. At the same time.

I never knew my mother as a child, obviously. But the clip below does an uncannily good job of showing me what she was like — far more so than a static photo could.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/new-deepfake-ai-wandavisions-your-old-photos-to-life-so-we-tried-it-ourselves

Amelia Earhart from photo:





Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

And yet, there is no place to go ...

As Dogen said ...

Why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands? If you make one misstep you stumble past what is directly in front of you.

... he also said in Zazen-shin ...

The water is clear to the earth; a fish is swimming like a fish.
The sky is vast, extending to the heavens; a bird is flying like a bird.

And yet, we can explore, and wherever we roam, this is present too ...

The son of a NASA astronaut and a video game pioneer who previously traversed both the North and South poles and funded his own trip to the International Space Station, Garriott completed a dive to Challenger Deep, the lowest point on Earth, on March 1.

"I am the first person to go pole to pole, space and deep and the second person — first male — to go space [to] deep," Garriott told collectSPACE in a call while still at sea on Tuesday (March 2).

https://www.livescience.com/astronau...nger-deep.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Say hello to your grandmother ...

Primate ancestor of all humans likely roamed with the dinosaurs
Our ancient ancestors looked like squirrels

Scientists have identified the earliest primate fossils: tiny ancient teeth from a rat-size creature that suggest our ancient ancestors once lived alongside the dinosaurs.

The teeth are 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) long and are from the oldest group of primates, known as plesiadapiforms. They were found in the Fort Union Formation in northeastern Montana in the 1980s, but have now been formally identified in a new study, published Feb. 24 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

These early primates represent life beginning to recover after the giant asteroid slammed into Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago, causing a mass extinction that wiped out nonavian dinosaurs. The researchers dated the fossils to between 105,000 and 139,000 years after the extinction event; but these creatures likely evolved from an unknown ancestor primate that lived alongside the dinosaurs, the researchers said.

... Plesiadapiforms are the ancestors of all modern primates, including humans.

https://www.livescience.com/earliest...iscovered.html

So, not this ...



... but this ...



Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Okay, this is one of the weirdest headlines in awhile ...

Scientists grow human-Neanderthal hybrid 'minibrains' in petri dishes

Sesame seed-size brains created from a mix of human and Neanderthal genes lived briefly in petri dishes in a University of California, San Diego laboratory, offering tantalizing clues as to how the organs have evolved over millennia.

Scientists have long wondered how human beings evolved to have such big, complex brains. One way to figure that out is by comparing modern genes involved in brain development with those found in our ancient cousins. Though scientists have found plenty of fossilized remains from Neanderthals — cousins of modern humans that died out about 37,000 years ago — they have yet to find a preserved Neanderthal brain. To bridge that gap in knowledge, a research team grew tiny, unconscious "minibrains" in petri dishes. Some of the brains were grown using standard human genes, and others were altered using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to have a brain development gene taken from Neanderthal remains.

The difference between the completely human brain and the human-Neanderthal hybrid was immediately obvious, Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at UCSD who led the project, told Nature.

Human minibrains tend to be smooth spheres, like little marbles. The Neanderthal brains were smaller and more irregular, the researchers reported. They also took longer to develop. Anyone looking at the different petri dishes could immediately spot the difference, the researchers said.

A closer analysis revealed that the part-Neanderthal minibrains were more chaotic in their neural activity and produced different sets of proteins than the all-human ones

... NPR reported that the differences suggest Neanderthal brains matured more quickly than human brains did, making Neanderthals more capable at younger ages. But that quick development robbed Neanderthals of the extended development period that likely gave human children advantages in complex thought and social bonding.

https://www.livescience.com/human-ne...s-created.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jishin]

The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery!

https://youtu.be/qjE6uGbzuLI

https://youtu.be/SAyICqCGzyA

Deepfakes of me and Jundo singing.

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jishin]

One more of Jundo singing. [emoji3]

https://youtu.be/7NMf_chUVAo

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jundo]

Did you get a camera in my shower?? I actually do that!

(We are about to enter a very dangerous world in which the eye and ear can be trusted even less)

Gassho, J

STLah

The link https://www.wombo.ai/

[Jishin]

[emoji3]

[Jundo]

The Building Blocks of life on ... a driveway in Winchcombe ...

Rare meteorite that fell on UK driveway may contain 'ingredients for life'

The fireball that lit up the sky over the United Kingdom and Northern Europe on February 28 was an extremely rare type of meteorite. Fragments of the space rock discovered on a driveway in the Cotswolds could provide answers to questions about the early history of the solar system and life on Earth.

Almost 300 grams (10.6 ounces) of the meteorite have been collected from the small Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe by scientists, who said the rock was formed of carbonaceous chondrite. The substance is some of the most primitive and pristine material in the solar system and has been known to contain organic material and amino acids -- the ingredients for life.

The Natural History Museum in London said the fragments were retrieved in such good condition and so quickly after the meteorite's fall that they are comparable to rock samples returned from space missions, both in quality and quantity.

... There are approximately 65,000 known meteorites on Earth, the museum said. Only 1,206 have been witnessed to fall, and of these, only 51 are carbonaceous chondrites. ... The original space rock was traveling at nearly 14 kilometers per second before hitting the Earth's atmosphere and ultimately landing on a driveway in Winchcombe. Other pieces of the meteorite have been recovered in the local area.

... "Nearly all meteorites come to us from asteroids, the leftover building blocks of the solar system that can tell us how planets like the Earth formed. The opportunity to be one of the first people to see and study a meteorite that was recovered almost immediately after falling is a dream come true!" said Ashley King, UK research and innovation future leaders fellow in the department of earth sciences at the Museum. ...

https://us.cnn.com/2021/03/08/europe/uk-meteorite-extremely-rare-scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Doshin]

Just add water and life may appear

Cool

Doshin
St