MarkAHirst posted a photo:
Assassin bug (Fitchia aptera) collected in Kouchibouguac National Park, New Brunswick, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG21781-C02; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=SSKOA2054-15; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:ACV2565)
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
Space Science image of the week is this striking view of Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko that reveals portions of both comet lobes, with dramatic shadows on the 'neck' region between them. It was taken by Rosetta's navigation camera (NavCam) on 30 June 2016, from a distance of 25.8 km, and measures about 2.3 km across.
Since reaching the comet on 6 August 2014, Rosetta has extensively mapped its surface. The comet nucleus has a curious shape consisting of two lobes that are often referred to as the 'head' and the 'body'.
Depicted in the lower right part of the image is the region Hathor, a very intriguing portion of the comet head, named after the ancient Egyptian deity of love, music and beauty. In this region, the head declines steeply towards the neck and body of the comet.
This view shows a good fraction of the 900-m high cliff that forms Hathor, with marked linear features crossing the region from left to right. Perpendicular to these, additional streaks and even small terraces can be seen.
Beyond the cliff of Hathor, on the right, are hints of the Ma'at region, named after the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth and balance.
In the upper right corner, smoother patches of the large comet lobe, or body, are visible, covered in dust and boulders. The large lobe casts its shadow on the comet's neck, which separates the two lobes and is hidden from view in this image.
You can use the comet viewer tool to aid navigation around the comet's regions.
Currently, Rosetta is on a 27 km x 9 km elliptical orbit around the nucleus; this weekend, it will move to a less eccentric, 9 km x10 km orbit, ahead of entering the end-of-mission orbit. The mission will continue its close-up investigation of the comet environment until the grand finale, a controlled descent of the spacecraft to the surface of the comet on 30 September.
This image is featured today on the ESA Rosetta blog: CometWatch 30 June.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence. The user is allowed to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate and publicly perform this publication, without explicit permission, provided that the content is accompanied by an acknowledgement that the source is credited as 'ESA - European Space Agency', a direct link to the licence text is provided and that it is clearly indicated if changes were made to the original content. Adaptation/translation/derivatives must be distributed under the same licence terms as this publication. The user must not give any suggestion that ESA necessarily endorses the modifications that you have made. No warranties are given. The licence may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from ESA. To view a copy of this licence, please visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo
Research published in April provided "slam dunk" evidence of two prehistoric supernovae exploding about 300 light years from Earth. Now, a follow-up investigation based on computer modeling shows those supernovae likely exposed biology on our planet to a long-lasting gust of cosmic radiation, which also affected the atmosphere.
"I was surprised to see as much effect as there was," said Adrian Melott, professor of physics at the University of Kansas, who co-authored the new paper appearing The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a peer-reviewed express scientific journal that allows astrophysicists to rapidly publish short notices of significant original research. "I was expecting there to be very little effect at all," he said. "The supernovae were pretty far way -- more than 300 light years -- that's really not very close."
According to Melott, initially the two stars that exploded 1.7 to 3.2 million and 6.5 to 8.7 million years ago each would have caused blue light in the night sky brilliant enough to disrupt animals' sleep patterns for a few weeks.
But their major effect would have come from radiation, which the KU astrophysicist said would have packed doses equivalent to one CT scan per year for every creature inhabiting land or shallower parts of the ocean.
"The big thing turns out to be the cosmic rays," Melott said. "The really high-energy ones are pretty rare. They get increased by quite a lot here -- for a few hundred to thousands of years, by a factor of a few hundred. The high-energy cosmic rays are the ones that can penetrate the atmosphere. They tear up molecules, they can rip electrons off atoms, and that goes on right down to the ground level. Normally that happens only at high altitude."
Melott's collaborators on the research are Brian Thomas and Emily Engler of Washburn University, Michael Kachelrieß of the Institutt for fysikk in Norway, Andrew Overholt of MidAmerica Nazarene University and Dimitry Semikoz of the Observatoire de Paris and Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.
The boosted exposure to cosmic rays from supernovae could have had "substantial effects on the terrestrial atmosphere and biota," the authors write.
For instance, the research suggested the supernovae might have caused a 20-fold increase in irradiation by muons at ground level on Earth.
"A muon is a cousin of the electron, a couple of hundred times heavier than the electron -- they penetrate hundreds of meters of rock," Melott said. "Normally there are lots of them hitting us on the ground. They mostly just go through us, but because of their large numbers contribute about 1/6 of our normal radiation dose. So if there were 20 times as many, you're in the ballpark of tripling the radiation dose."
Melott said the uptick in radiation from muons would have been high enough to boost the mutation rate and frequency of cancer, "but not enormously. Still, if you increased the mutation rate you might speed up evolution."
Indeed, a minor mass extinction around 2.59 million years ago may be connected in part to boosted cosmic rays that could have helped to cool Earth's climate. The new research results show that the cosmic rays ionize the Earth's atmosphere in the troposphere -- the lowest level of the atmosphere -- to a level eight times higher than normal. This would have caused an increase in cloud-to-ground lightning.
"There was climate change around this time," Melott said. "Africa dried out, and a lot of the forest turned into savannah. Around this time and afterwards, we started having glaciations -- ice ages -- over and over again, and it's not clear why that started to happen. It's controversial, but maybe cosmic rays had something to do with it."
NASA's Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program supported the research, and computation time was provided by the High Performance Computing Environment at Washburn University.
The Daily Galaxy via University of Kansas
CNN | How robot, explosives took out Dallas sniper in unprecedented way CNN Dallas (CNN) Dallas Police Chief David Brown gave an order to his SWAT team after a 45-minute gun battle and two hours of negotiating with a sniper targeting police officers. He told them to come up with a creative plan to neutralize the suspect ... Dallas police chief says armed civilians in Texas 'increasingly challenging'Reuters Dallas Police Had Taken Steps to Mend Rift With MinoritiesABC News Dallas Police Chief, David O. Brown, Is Calm at Center of CrisisNew York Times Washington Post -Fox News -NBCNews.com -STLtoday.com all 10,506 news articles » |
The Republic | Alliance: Police shootings add to mistrust The Republic Frank Griffin — all expressed serious concern about the Dallas Police Department's judgment to use a bomb robot to stop the black sniper who killed five officers Thursday night during what had been a peaceful protest of officer-involved killings of ... and more » |
War on the Rocks | This is Not the Killer Robot You're Looking For: Dallas Police Used a Precision-Guided Munition to Kill the Shooter War on the Rocks There, they would engage in a spinning whirlwind of predictive doom, calling for new regulations, stoking fears of hordes of government-controlled killer robots, and speculating on the future of civilization. But all the hyperventilating over this by ... and more » |
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Full Text:
A high power magnification of a blood vessel. The blood vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transports blood throughout the human body. There are three major types of blood vessels: the arteries, which carry the blood away from the heart; the capillaries, which enable the actual exchange of water and chemicals between the blood and the tissues; and the veins, which carry blood from the capillaries back toward the heart.
Image credit: Courtesy of Michigan State University
Full Text:
A team of researchers has figured out how gold can be used in crystals grown by light to create nanoparticles, a discovery that has major implications for industry and cancer treatment and could improve the function of pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and solar panels. Nanoparticles can be “grown” in crystal formations with special use of light, in a process called plasmon-driven synthesis. However, scientists have had limited control unless they used silver, but silver limits the uses for medical technology. The team is the first to successfully use gold, which works well within the human body, with this process.
Image credit: Brendan Sweeny, Yueming Zhai, Joseph DuChene, Jingjing Qiu and Wei David Wei; Department of Chemistry, University of Florida
The Curiosity Rover is not about to become a nuclear waste dump on Mars as the trundling science lab has become mobile again after a glitch put it in safe mode last week.…
nonsuchtony posted a photo:
Kieran Williams Photography posted a photo:
AngeloDefensor posted a photo:
Screamer Graziano Pellè Newest Player To Get Stupid Rich By Going To China | Jezebel Catching Up with Milania Guidice: What's Up with Bravo's Dreaded Daughter? | Gizmodo This Tiny Robot Lets You Play God With Huge AI | Black Bag Pokémon Go Is a Government Surveillance Psyop Conspiracy |
Hollywood Reporter | Michael B. Jordan Posts Powerful Response to Police Shootings: "This Must Stop!" Hollywood Reporter My mission is to channel my anger and energy - along with my love and hope for the future into actively finding solutions. Change will take all of us, we can no ... He was killed when authorities detonated a bomb dispatched by a robot. Before he died ... and more » |
Wall Street Journal | Gunmen Targeted Police in Tennessee, Missouri and Georgia, Authorities Say Wall Street Journal After negotiating with Johnson for several hours, Dallas officers killed him using a bomb-disposal robot jury-rigged with explosives. In Valdosta, Ga., authorities said a man called 911 early Friday to report a car break-in, then ... John Bel Edwards ... and more » |
Blasting News | Micah X Johnson, the Dallas police shooter, was taken out with a robot delivered bomb Blasting News One of the little-reported aspects of the massacre in Dallas is that the shooter, Micah X Johnson, was taken out by a robot which delivered an explosive device to essentially blow him up. Sadly this act did not occur before he ... The root of the ... and more » |