An international team of scientists plans to dredge Scotland’s Loch Ness next month — seeking not the mythical monster, as so many have done before, but rather its DNA footprint.
Maybe. Don’t get your hopes up. Even the project’s leader, Neil Gemmell of New Zealand’s Otago University, doubts that the Loch Ness monster actually exists. The evolutionary genetics professor has been quite candid that he’s using the legend as a hook to attract interest in a study of the lake’s biodiversity. That said, if the team does come across the genetic sequence of some immortal dinosaur or a behemoth previously unknown to science, they have promised to let us know. Read Article: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/05/27/scientists-turn-to-dna-technology-in-search-for-loch-ness-monster/ So mankind has come a long way from those humble, wingless origins. Aviation was always a goal, since some guy looked up into the sky and thought being up there would be a good idea. Whoever was first to think that was probably not quite right in the head, but that’s fine, because the idea caught on. Parachuting is no different as far as insane ideas go. With any Google search, you will find that the parachute was born out of a necessity, but caught on as a really strange way to jump off tall stuff for fun.
Read Article: https://www.skydiving.com/skydiving/history-of-skydiving/ (3DShoes.com) The Marines’ Mountain Warfare Training Center located in California trains Marines in mountain and cold weather operations. During the winter, snow can reach six to eight feet high and temperatures of 20 degrees below zero. Upgrades to equipment under extreme conditions in such weather are necessary, and recent missions were able to repair equipment by using 3D printing to replace important parts of snowshoes.
Marines’ dedicated AM team 3D-printed some customized parts for snowshoes, to improve stability in the tough snowy conditions. With a 3D printed snowshoe clip, a Marine can quickly replace a clip if it breaks while they are running forward. The Additive Manufacturing team at the command worked to develop the 3D printed clip replacement for the snowshoes. It only took three days to complete them, from design phase to delivery. Read Article: https://inside3dprinting.com/news/us-marines-use-3d-printing-to-repair-snowshoes-for-mountain-training/45587/ Verona and several neighboring towns were all originally one town known as the Horseneck Tract. In 1702, a group of settlers left Newark and purchased a large tract of land northwest of their home city for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars from the Lenni Lenape Native Americans. This piece of land extended west and north to the Passaic River, south to the town center of what would become Livingston, and east to the First Watchung Mountain, and was called Horseneck by the natives because it resembled the neck and head of a horse. What was then known as Horseneck contained most of the present day northern Essex County towns: Verona, along with Caldwell, West Caldwell, Cedar Grove, Essex Fells, Fairfield, North Caldwell, and Roseland are all located entirely in Horseneck, and parts of what are today Livingston, Montclair, and West Orange also were contained in the Horseneck Tract.[21]
After the Revolutionary War, the area of Horseneck was incorporated as "Caldwell Township" in honor of local war hero James Caldwell, a pastor who used pages from his church's bibles as wadding to ignite the ammo in soldiers' cannons and helped to drive the British out of Horseneck.[22] Read Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona,_New_Jersey By Rachel Nuwer
May 14, 2018 “If everyone’s stomachs are up to it, we can go see the elephants,” said Rian Labuschagne, his voice crackling through my aviation headset. Receiving the thumbs-up from his three passengers, Mr. Labuschagne, who was then manager of Zakouma National Park in Chad, steered the fixed-wing Cessna C180 toward a spot 12 miles south. Earlier that morning, his rangers had spotted the elephants there. It was precisely these elephants that had drawn me to this remote Central African park. Although few Westerners have heard of it, Zakouma is home to one of the most stunning conservation success stories in Africa. Unchecked poaching had previously rendered the protected area a near war zone: as rebel factions attempted to overthrow the government from 2005 to 2010, poachers took advantage of the country’s lawless state to massacre 90 percent of the park’s elephants. But after taking over Zakouma’s management in 2011, Mr. Labuschagne and his team transformed it into a rare safe haven for Africa’s imperiled elephants. “If you look at the Central and West African savannas, elephants have almost been exterminated — their populations are just being lost nonstop,” said Chris Thouless, the director of the Elephant Crisis Fund at Save the Elephants, a nonprofit organization based in Kenya. “Zakouma, however, is an outstanding exception.” Read Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/travel/chad-elephants-zakouma-park.html It has been about two years since Yuri Milner announced his most audacious piece of science-focused philanthropy: Breakthrough Starshot, an attempt to send hardware to Alpha Centauri by mid-century. Although the technology involved is a reasonable extrapolation of things we already know how to make, being able to create materials and technology that create that extrapolation is a serious challenge. So much of Breakthrough Starshot's early funding has gone to figuring out what improvements on current technology are needed.
Read Article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/the-material-science-of-building-a-light-sail-to-take-us-to-alpha-centauri/ Driverless cars will encounter situations requiring moral assessment — and new research suggests that people may not be happy with the decisions their cars make. Experiments designed to test people’s reactions to a driving dilemma that endangers human life, revealed a high willingness for self-sacrifice, a consideration of the age of potential victims and swerving onto the sidewalk to save more lives — intuitions that are sometimes at odds with ethically acceptable behavior or political guidelines.
Read Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180503142637.htm Children raised in a rural environment, surrounded by animals and bacteria-laden dust, grow up to have more stress-resilient immune systems and might be at lower risk of mental illness than pet-free city dwellers, according to new research.
Read Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180430160419.htm With robotics on the rise, Imperial researchers look to the future, exploring everything from nature-inspired robot swarms to the ethics of AI.
Robotics is often still considered futuristic sci-fi, but the rapid rate of innovation suggests that we are well and truly living in a robot age. Where do we go from here? Read Article: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/185792/10-challenges-future-robotics/ By ROSHINI RAJAPAKSA, MD / HEALTH.COM
March 6, 2017 TIME Health One day inside probably won’t hugely affect your health—but it’s not great to constantly stay cooped up from morning until dark. The biggest issue is that entering hibernation mode means you don’t get any exposure to natural light. Sunlight tends to improve your mood, and it helps your body produce vitamin D, which has been shown to help regulate the immune system, reduce inflammation in the body, and more. Sunlight also helps keep your internal body clock on schedule; your circadian rhythm plays a major part in regulating your appetite, sleep schedule, and energy levels. Research has shown that excessive exposure to electric lighting can throw off those internal rhythms. Read Article: http://time.com/4692022/staying-inside-mental-health/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter&utm_campaign=time&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social |