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

[Jundo]

The earth, seas and land, used to be quite unlike now ... (although maybe a boat dropped it over the side??) ... or maybe a mammoth out for a swim?? ... or maybe tusks float???? ...

Mammoth tusk recovered from an unlikely place: the bottom of the ocean

Mammoths are long to be known as ancient land dwellers, so scientists were shocked to find remains from the animal at the bottom of the ocean.

Pilot Randy Prickett and scientist Steven Haddock, researchers with Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), discovered a Columbian mammoth tusk 185 miles offshore and 10,000 feet deep in the ocean in 2019, the institution said in a news release.

At the time they were only able to collect a small piece of the tusk, so they returned in July 2021 to get the complete sample.

... University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher, who specializes in the study of mammoths and mastodons, said it is unlike anything he has ever seen.
"Other mammoths have been retrieved from the ocean, but generally not from depths of more than a few tens of meters," Fisher said.

... The scientists believe it could be the oldest well-preserved mammoth tusk recovered from this region of North America, and the UCSC Geochronology Lab estimates it is more than 100,000 years old after analyzing the radioisotopes.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/11/23/us/mam...rnd/index.html

Tsukuba Japan, where I live, was under the ocean not so long ago, with our local Tsukuba Mountain an island like Hawaii ... although 3 million years ago ...

Gassho, J

STLah

Follow-up to the above ... Modern elephants can swim, although 125 miles would be quite a trip! ...

Elephants can swim – they use their trunk to breathe like a snorkel in deep water.
https://elephantconservation.org/ele...out-elephants/

This poor fellow was rescued just in time ...

https://youtu.be/p7XMHNdY2Ss

I don't think a trunk would float ...

The head end of the tusk has a hollow cavity that runs for some distance along its interior, but the tusk gradually becomes entirely solid, with only a narrow nerve channel running through its centre to the tip of the tusk.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ivory

[m.c.]

Well, sometimes finding out that there is something we have wrong is as important as being right ...



Gassho, J

STLah

awesome!
not a day goes by i dont get to make that bug a feature

m.c.
satten
or is it maybe sut
as in
sit sat sut

[Jundo]

World's first living robots can now reproduce, scientists say

The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce -- and in a way not seen in plants and animals.

Formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which it takes its name, xenobots are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide. The tiny blobs were first unveiled in 2020 after experiments showed that they could move, work together in groups and self-heal.

Now the scientists that developed them at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering said they have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction different from any animal or plant known to science.

"I was astounded by it," said Michael Levin, a professor of biology and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University who was co-lead author of the new research.

...

Robot or organism?

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that have the ability to develop into different cell types. To make the xenobots, the researchers scraped living stem cells from frog embryos and left them to incubate. There's no manipulation of genes involved.

"Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people," said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study.

"In that way it's a robot but it's also clearly an organism made from genetically unmodified frog cell."

Bongard said they found that the xenobots, which were initially sphere-shaped and made from around 3,000 cells, could replicate. But it happened rarely and only in specific circumstances. The xenobots used "kinetic replication" -- a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms, Bongard said.

...

The xenobots are very early technology -- think of a 1940s computer -- and don't yet have any practical applications. However, this combination of molecular biology and artificial intelligence could potentially be used in a host of tasks in the body and the environment, according to the researchers. This may include things like collecting microplastics in the oceans, inspecting root systems and regenerative medicine.

While the prospect of self-replicating biotechnology could spark concern, the researchers said that the living machines were entirely contained in a lab and easily extinguished, as they are biodegradable and regulated by ethics experts.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/11/29/americas/xenobots-self-replicating-robots-scn/index.html

https://youtu.be/aBYtBXaxsOw

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

... Astounding human-like robot 'wakes up' ...

https://youtu.be/Resrf9GYypc

Gassho, J

STLah

[Koushi]

... Astounding human-like robot 'wakes up' ...

https://youtu.be/Resrf9GYypc

Gassho, J

STLah

Yeah... that little "breath" it did gave me the creeps.

Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH

[Jundo]

Yeah... that little "breath" it did gave me the creeps.

Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH

No creeps ... just another sentient being is born.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

A very Japanese story. 'Hikikomori' are young folks, usually in their 20s but sometimes older, who stay in their room, usually at their parent's house, and refuse social interaction...

Kobe to use avatar robots to ease 'hikikomori' shut-ins back into society

The municipal government of this west Japan city will introduce avatar robots to help "hikikomori" shut-ins ease back into society by giving them a way to interact with others remotely.

In the initiative, the government aims to nudge shut-ins to step outside their homes and socialize with other participants at hikikomori support facilities

The blue-eyed, 23-centimeter-tall avatar robot is called OriHime. It was developed by Tokyo-based Ory Lab Inc., which was founded in 2012. Users can remotely make conversation with people around the robot and move its arms through a smartphone or computer. The robots have been used in business for people to participate in remote conferences, and at schools for hospitalized children to attend classes virtually.

There are an estimated 6,600 or so recluses in Kobe, and the city's social welfare council and community activity centers have set up 13 places for them to spend time as they gradually transition back into society, such as by eventually getting a job. The approach at each facility is different. At one, people read comics and play games, and at another, they do light work such as bagging products. The municipal government's office for social recluse support came up with the idea of using OriHime because several shut-ins with interest in the programs have held back from joining, saying they "want to know the atmosphere first," or, "I'm anxious about meeting people I don't know."
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles...0m/0na/012000c

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

It has been confirmed! The sun is really HOT!

NASA's Parker Solar Probe becomes first spacecraft to 'touch' the sun

Sixty years after NASA set the goal, and three years after its Parker Solar Probe launched, the spacecraft has become the first to "touch the sun." The Parker Solar Probe has successfully flown through the sun's corona, or upper atmosphere, to sample particles and our star's magnetic fields.

"Parker Solar Probe 'touching the Sun' is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement.

"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and (its) impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe." The announcement was made at the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday, and research from the solar milestone has been published in the Physical Review Letters.

The Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and set out to circle closer and closer to the sun. Scientists, including the spacecraft's namesake astrophysicist Eugene Parker, want to answer fundamental questions about the solar wind that streams out from the sun, flinging energetic particles across the solar system.

The sun's corona is much hotter than the actual surface of the star, and the spacecraft could provide insight about why. The corona is one million degrees Kelvin (1,800,000 degrees Fahrenheit) at its hottest point, while the surface is around 6,000 Kelvin (10,340 degrees Fahrenheit).

https://us.cnn.com/2021/12/14/world/nasa-parker-solar-probe-sun-scn/index.html

This illustration shows Parker Solar Probe reaching the outer atmosphere of the sun.



I look forward to the day that we land the FIRST MAN ON THE SUN!

https://youtu.be/r4bTmJ7Q-vA

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

We can stop off for a quick drink after touching the sun ...

'Significant amounts of water' found in Mars' massive version of the Grand Canyon

Mars has its own version of the Grand Canyon, and scientists have learned this dramatic feature is home to "significant amounts of water" after a discovery made by an orbiter circling the red planet, according to the European Space Agency.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in 2016 as a joint mission between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, detected the water in Valles Marineris on Mars. This canyon system is 10 times longer, five times deeper and 20 times wider than the Grand Canyon.

The water is located beneath the surface of the canyon system and was detected by the orbiter's FREND instrument, or Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector. This instrument is able to map hydrogen in the top meter (3.28 feet) of Martian soil.

Most water on Mars is located in the planet's polar regions and remains frozen as water ice. Valles Marineris is just south of the planet's equator, where temperatures typically aren't cold enough for water ice to remain.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/12/16/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Okay, maybe not the most attractive product in the age of Covid and, anyway, who wants to lick their pizza off a screen?

Starved for content? New Japanese TV offers "lickable" screen

A professor in Japan has created a television that uses ten different flavor "canisters" to create different tastes.

https://youtu.be/buPZMgWG42A

Gassho ... and are they serious? ... J

STLah

[Jundo]

You always had this but just never knew ... like Buddha Nature! ...

I bet this muscle is very helpful in screen licking!

Scientists discover new part of the body

The newfound structure sits within the masseter, a key muscle for chewing.

... The newly discovered muscle layer runs from the back of the cheekbone to the anterior muscular process of the lower jaw. (S= superficial layer, D= deep layer, C= coronoid layer)
https://www.livescience.com/new-body...jaw-discovered

And, just in case we mess things up, well, the world and universe will just hit the reset button ... and it ain't in no rush... !

When humans are gone, what animals might evolve to have our smarts and skills?

Other primates, like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), our closest living relatives, already have opposable thumbs that they use to make tools in the wild. It's possible that if humans go extinct, these hominids might replace us hominins, à la "Planet of the Apes." There is precedent for that kind of overlap — after all, our species managed to outlast the intelligent Neanderthals during the most recent ice age 40,000 years ago, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Nature. That said, it would probably take hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of evolution for other apes to develop the ability to create and use sophisticated, human-like tools. To add context to this scenario, the common ancestor of modern humans and chimpanzees lived about 7 million years ago, Live Science previously reported.

... Despite stereotypes to the contrary, birds are very brainy: Some birds, such as crows and ravens, have intellects that rival even chimps, according to research published in 2020 in the journal Science. And some birds can use their dexterous feet and beaks to fashion wire into hooks, according to a famous 2002 study published in Science. Meanwhile, trained African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) can learn upward of 100 words and do simple math, including understanding the concept of zero,

... octopuses would be hard-pressed to adapt to life on land. Vertebrates have iron in their blood cells, which binds to oxygen very efficiently. In contrast, octopuses and their relatives have copper-based blood cells. These molecules still bind to oxygen, but less readily, and as a result octopuses are confined to oxygen-saturated waters as opposed to thin air. "They've taken an inefficient metabolism as far as they can go," Mather said.

Because of this, Mather thinks that octopuses and other cephalopods are unlikely to make the transition to land and take over humanity's mantle as the smartest and most ecologically impactful land animal. Her money is on social insects, like ants and termites. ...

https://www.livescience.com/what-ani...l-human-niches

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Is it a bird? ... No, it is a dinosaur perfectly preserved in an egg ... a mere 66 million years old ... in position, like a bird, to peck out of its shell ...

Blue Cliff Record, Case 16 ...

A monk asked Kyôsei, "I, your student, am picking from inside the shell. I beg you,
Master, please peck from outside." Kyôsei said, "But will you be alive or not?" The monk
said, "If I were not alive, people would all laugh." Kyôsei said, "You useless fool!"

https://youtu.be/hSd9oBL_5w8

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

And on this day there way born ... the Webb Space Telescope ... following the stars ... real time travel ...

In a historic launch, the Webb Telescope blasts off into space

Heads up, Hubble — another massive space telescope just launched on a historic mission to observe the faintest, oldest objects in the universe in unprecedented detail.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a school-bus-size satellite observatory weighing about 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms), lifted off the launch pad on Saturday (Dec. 25) at 7:20 a.m. ET ...

Building the telescope cost nearly $10 billion — almost doubling the estimated cost since 2009, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office — and that very expensive observatory is now headed for a destination that's nearly 1 million miles (1,600,000 kilometers) from Earth.

... Six months from now, when JWST is up and running, it's going to be very, very busy. Its sensitive imaging and spectroscopy instruments will enable researchers to penetrate dense clouds of cosmic dust and collect data from objects that are so faint they are almost undetectable by other telescopes, and JWST's infrared "eyes" are the most powerful ever sent into space, said astrophysicist Jackie Faherty, a senior scientist in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

... Infrared instruments will also enable JWST to detect and look through cosmic dust clouds surrounding starburst galaxies, which are hotbeds of star formation. Other researchers will use JWST to investigate dust shrouds enveloping energetic baby stars, known as Herbig-Haro objects, and to create and test models of the explosion that created the spectacular Crab Nebula. Astrophysicists are also lining up to investigate the atmospheres of exoplanets in the Trappist-1 system about 39 light-years from Earth, and to peer backward in time to discover the earliest galaxies. Because star birth begins in cosmic dust clouds, using JWST to "follow the dust" will offer new insights into the birth of stars, planets and galaxies that make up our universe, Faherty said.

https://www.livescience.com/webb-telescope-launches

https://youtu.be/tnbSIbsF4t4

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

This headline today ...

Virginia family gets keys to Habitat for Humanity's first 3D-printed home in the US

One Virginia family received the keys to their new 3D-printed home in time for Christmas.

The home is Habitat for Humanity's [a charity in the USA that builds houses for low income families] first 3D-printed home in the nation, according to a Habitat news release.

Janet V. Green, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg, told CNN it partnered with Alquist, a 3D printing company, earlier this year to begin the process.

The technology allowed the home to be built in just 12 hours, which saves about four weeks of construction time for a typical home.

April Stringfield purchased the home through the Habitat Homebuyer Program. She will move in with her 13-year-old son just in time for the holidays.

https://youtu.be/sB_6IaFg8uM

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Baby Fitz was born without an immune system. His treatment offers hope for curing rare diseases.

Fitz Kettler was born June 21, 2019, without a functioning immune system.

Babies with his condition, commonly known as "bubble boy disease," rarely survive to toddlerhood. Normal colds and germs prove lethal.

But Fitz was seemingly cured before his first sniffle.

... He became one of the first babies anywhere to get a specific diagnosis within days of birth and an experimental therapy several months later that appears to have worked. ...

...

On Aug. 4, the family drove to the University of California, San Francisco, where they would live, again in isolation, for four months, as Fitz became the seventh child to participate in a gene therapy clinical trial for Artemis SCID.

Doctors harvested his bone marrow. In a lab, scientists corrected the genetic mistakes in his stem cells.

Fitz was cranky, but nothing worse during his two days of chemo on Aug. 27 and 28. The toxic chemicals were meant to make room for the treated cells to become established and build an immune system.

The next day, a milky white liquid containing these corrected cells was infused into his tiny body. It took all of 20 minutes. "The transplant itself feels a little anticlimactic," Christina Kettler said.



...

He is now building up a genetic database of at least 10,000 babies with rare diseases, sequencing samples from the sickest children in 70 hospitals across the U.S. and Canada. The “Tipping Point 10,000” project aims to train providers to use genetic information and build evidence to persuade payors that rapid whole genome sequencing should be standard-of-care for newborns hospitalized with diseases of unknown cause.

Getting kids out of intensive care units and home faster saves money as well as families' emotional distress. Rady has been charging $8,500 per child for the sequencing, but is trying to get the price below $5,000, Kingsmore said. In the next year or two, he hopes to develop a $200 test that could be used by hospitals around the world to rapidly diagnose 600 known rare diseases in newborns.

...

Russell Kirby, an epidemiologist specializing in maternal and child health, said he's optimistic about the idea of fetal gene therapy over the long-term, but skeptical at the moment. He and several colleagues wrote a critique of the approach earlier this year.

Even after fetal surgery, children born with spina bifida have lingering health problems, Kirby said, probably because scientists don't fully understand the condition and all its ramifications. Most research tracks whether a fetus who had heart surgery lived or died, not the long-term outcomes of children with congenital heart defects.

"We need to let our scientific and clinical trials processes play out and make sure we really understand both," said Kirby, a professor at the University of South Florida School of Public Health.

Many birth defects, probably more than half, remain poorly understood. Some genetic diseases are evident in only some of the cells, which would make it harder to diagnose and correct before birth, or even to know if they need correcting, he said.

But it's now feasible to identify genetic disorders early in pregnancy, simply by analyzing the mother's blood.

Stephen Quake, a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Stanford University, developed the technology that finds fetal DNA in the bloodstream of the mother – a proverbial needle in a haystack.


...

The medical advance doesn't mean an end to all rare diseases. Not every one of the 7,000 known childhood conditions is caused by a simple glitch in a gene. And even if a genetic fluke can be reversed shortly after birth, the child might already have lost brain or muscle cells, requiring extensive, ongoing therapy to participate in daily activities.

In the coming years, scientists hope to end a number of illnesses that have caused misery for generations – sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, PKU and a host of lesser known conditions – at least in places and among people who can afford state-of-the-art care.

"It's a wonderful time in gene therapy," said Harvard geneticist George Church, a pioneer in genetic sequencing and editing.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ba...ses/ar-AAS9wfj

Gassho, J

ST+Lah