Tag: science

Memory Manipulation

a mild version of this would make for interesting entertainment: slip into someone else’s life for a few hours.

Neuroscientists have shown that they can plant false memories in the brains of mice. They also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identical in nature to those of authentic memories.

The opposite is also possible:

Chinese scientists were able to use a chemical – the protein alpha-CaM kinase II – to successfully erase memories from the minds of mice.

Factor V fixes

“The data from 23andMe helped to rule out more worrisome diagnoses and stave off more invasive treatments”. Doctors ultimately removed the clot as they took out part of his liver, and the intervention cured the fevers.

interesting, the factor v mutation has been the most useful bit in my own 23andme data too.

Researchers have identified new genetic associations for blood clots, one of the leading causes of death worldwide. On top of finding these genetic associations, this new paper also offered a model for conducting future research into this difficult-to-study condition by using self-reported data from 23andMe research participants answering questions about their own history of blood clots.

Solving really cold cases

i find crime shows to be some of the biggest snoozefests around, but i’d watch this:

paleopathology practitioners worldwide are making startling discoveries. In December 2012, a team of scientists published results from an examination of the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses III, showing that he had died from having his throat slit, likely murdered in the so-called “harem conspiracy” of 1155 B.C.

Controversy on Wikipedia

who knew that List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. employees is the fourth most controversial topic on wikipedia?

Ultimately by visualizing the controversy in Wikipedia, we’re able to see both topics that appear to have cross-linguistic resonance (e.g. Arab-Israeli conflict), and those of more narrow interest such as the Islas Malvinas/Falkland islands article in the Spanish Wikipedia. The data presented here therefore offers a window into not just the topics and places that different language communities are interested in, but also the topics that seem worth fighting about.

Canonical science writing

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

“Basically, this is a brief soundbite,” the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. “The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on,” she or he will continue.

Homer social network

So homer checks out from a social network analysis perspective, how about that other fable, the bible? Anyone?

We managed to build and analyze a social network gathered across the classical epic, Odyssey of Homer. Longing for further understanding, topological quantities were collected in order to classify its social network qualitatively into real or fictional. It turns out that most of the found properties belong to real social networks besides assortativity and giant component’s size. In order to test the network’s possibilities to be real, we removed some mythological members that could imprint a fictional aspect on the network. Carrying on this maneuver the modified social network resulted on assortative mixing and reduction of the giant component, as expected for real social networks. Overall, we observe that Odyssey might be an amalgam of fictional elements plus real based human relations, which corroborates other author’s findings for Iliad and archaeological evidences.

The same thing is true for viking sagas:

Njal’s Saga has an average of 4 new characters every page. Whereas modern fiction tries to make sure you can keep track of everyone, with the exception of maybe Game of Thrones. That density of characters, and the realism of their networks, suggest a different purpose for literature than might be the case now — the creation of portraits of societies, rather than portraits of individuals.

Venus

This video makes it look like Venus is much closer to the sun than it actually is (100M km) but still, well done.

2014-07-02: Colonizing Venus

If the thought of Thanksgiving Dinner on Venus gives you the heebie jeebies, you don’t even need to think about plunging into the roiling atmosphere with nothing but a cheap plastic heat shield and a thin balloon to save you from the crematorium that yawns down below. Dangle the bird into the depths of the Stygian hell, feast as someone who walks between worlds and lives on an airship that rides the hell born winds 48km above a surface so hot it glows visibly red.

2014-07-03: Venus is a good fraction of solid surface in the solar system.

2020-09-18: Phosphine on Venus

observations indicate a level of phosphine at 20 parts per billion. That may sound low, but it turns out that from what we currently know, on Venus it’s hard to make anywhere near that much. The phosphine was seen at altitudes of at least 50 km. The environment there is pretty hostile to phosphine, which would decompose fairly rapidly. They estimate that that it should all be gone in less than 1 ka at that level, and probably much faster. So something must be actively making it to keep the levels up. But what?

2021-01-14: Jupiter killed Venus?

we present the results of a study that explores the effect of Jupiter’s location on the orbital parameters of Venus and subsequent potential water-loss scenarios. We argue that these eccentricity variations for the young Venus may have accelerated the atmospheric evolution of Venus toward the inevitable collapse of the atmosphere into a runaway greenhouse state. The presence of giant planets in exoplanetary systems may likewise increase the expected rate of Venus analogs in those systems.

Universal flu vaccine?

I hope this pans out. That would be extra amazing.

Current flu vaccines use inactivated whole viruses and must be regularly remade to target the strains most likely to cause illness in the coming year. But the new nanoparticles would require fewer updates because they induce the production of antibodies that neutralize a wider range of flu strains. They could even protect against varieties of flu that have not yet emerged.

2020-12-08: Targeting the stalk

The beauty part of this vaccine is that it’s not only broad, but multifunctional with stalk-specific antibodies that can neutralize many kinds of influenza viruses. This universal vaccine could be particularly beneficial to low and middle income countries that don’t have the resources or the logistics to vaccinate their populations each year against influenza.