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Feb 27, 2020

Pope Francis, 83, cancels event as he’s taken ill amid Italy coronavirus crisis

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

POPE Francis cancelled a church service today after he was struck down with illness.

The 83-year-year-old pontiff was not well enough to attend the mass, although there is no suggestion at this stage he has coronavirus as the outbreak in Italy topped 500 cases.

The Pope covered his mouth as he coughed.

Feb 27, 2020

Trump says coronavirus will ‘disappear’ eventually

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Wuhan coronavirus pandemic — US strategic response.

“It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” said Trump.

🤣🤣🤣

Continue reading “Trump says coronavirus will ‘disappear’ eventually” »

Feb 27, 2020

Earth captures new ‘mini moon’

Posted by in category: space

Earth has acquired a second “mini-moon” about the size of a car, according to astronomers who spotted the object circling our planet.

The mass—roughly 1.9−3.5 meters (6−11 feet) in diameter—was observed by researchers Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on the night of February 15.

“BIG NEWS. Earth has a new temporarily captured /Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3,” likely to be a C-type asteroid, Wierzchos tweeted on Wednesday.

Feb 27, 2020

Should the US Have a Secretary For Influence Operations?

Posted by in category: military

Two former top special operations officials say their job was too junior and the Pentagon isn’t taking information warfare seriously enough.

Despite shifting military budgets to better keep up with competitors, there’s one area where countries like China, Russia, and even Iran are proving nimble and frustrating for the Department of Defense: influence operations.

In this new age of information warfare, the military art of influence ops — otherwise sometimes called psychological ops, information ops, or most-recently, military information support ops — lacks the senior level leadership it deserves, say two former Pentagon officials who were in charge of special operations policies. According to them, the position they once held is too junior for the seriousness of the threat and mission, and influence ops is spread so wide, that nobody is sure who is really in charge.

Feb 27, 2020

Astronomers detect biggest explosion in the history of the Universe

Posted by in category: cosmology

Scientists studying a distant galaxy cluster have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe since the Big Bang.

Feb 27, 2020

Recycled Nuclear Waste Will Power a New Reactor

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Last week, the Department of Energy gave a commercial company the green light to test fuel made from spent uranium.

Feb 27, 2020

Physicists may have accidentally discovered a new state of matter

Posted by in categories: climatology, computing, mobile phones, physics

Humans have been studying electric charge for thousands of years, and the results have shaped modern civilization. Our daily lives depend on electric lighting, smartphones, cars, and computers, in ways that the first individuals to take note of a static shock or a bolt of lightning could never have imagined.

Now, physicists at Northeastern have discovered a new way to manipulate . And the changes to the future of our technology could be monumental.

“When such phenomena are discovered, imagination is the limit,” says Swastik Kar, an associate professor of physics. “It could change the way we can detect and communicate signals. It could change the way we can sense things and the storage of information, and possibilities that we may not have even thought of yet.”

Feb 27, 2020

Science Fact or Fiction: We Can Jump Between Parallel Universes

Posted by in categories: cosmology, futurism

Frequently used to change scenery in science fiction, parallel universes and the multiverse are indeed possible, but jumping from one to another might be a little tricky.

Feb 27, 2020

How resident microbes restructure body chemistry

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, genetics, neuroscience

The team compared germ-free (sterile) mice and mice with normal microbes. They used a laboratory technique called mass spectrometry to characterize the non-living molecules in every mouse organ. They identified as many molecules as possible by comparing them to reference structures in the GNPS database, a crowdsourced mass spectrometry repository developed by Dorrestein and collaborators. They also determined which living microbes co-locate with these molecules by sequencing a specific genetic region that acts as a barcode for bacterial types.

In total, they analyzed 768 samples from 96 sites of 29 different organs from four germ-free mice and four mice with normal microbes. The result was a map of all of the molecules found throughout the body of a normal mouse with microbes, and a map of molecules throughout a mouse without microbes.

A comparison of the maps revealed that as much as 70 percent of a mouse’s gut chemistry is determined by its gut microbiome. Even in distant organs, such as the uterus or the brain, approximately 20 percent of molecules were different in the mice with gut microbes.

Feb 27, 2020

A woman took 550 times the usual dose of LSD, with surprisingly positive consequences

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Drug overdoses can be life threatening, but for two women who accidentally took massive hits of LSD the experience was life changing — and in a good way.

A 46-year-old woman snorted a staggering 550 times the normal recreational dose of LSD and not only survived, but found that the foot pain she had suffered from since her 20s was dramatically reduced.

Separately, a 15-year-old girl with bipolar disorder overdosed on 10 times the normal dose of the drug, which she said resulted in a massive improvement in her mental health.