Happy birthday Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 - 8 January 1642)

#science #tribute

There could soon be a test to detect cancer years in advance. Would you take it? | The Guardian

New research says mutations could be picked up long before symptoms appear. Society must be ready for the ethical problems this poses

An opinion piece by psychologist Dr Saskia Sanderson.

#science #medicine #health #psychology

Coronavirus: Can it spread via door handles? And other questions | BBC News

There have now been more than 43,000 cases of the new coronavirus, which has been declared a global health emergency. The disease has spread to many countries, including the UK.
The BBC News Health team's answers to a selection of readers' questions about the new virus are below.

#science #medicine #health #coronavirus

Coronavirus disease named Covid-19 | BBC News

The World Health Organization says the official name for the disease caused by the new coronavirus is Covid-19.
"We now have a name for the disease and it's Covid-19," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

Nice and memorable.

#science #medicine #health #coronavirus

Here comes the Sun

Image:

At this very moment, a spacecraft is headed toward the brightly burning Sun, photographed here on an Antarctic summer day by ESA sponsored medical doctor Stijn Thoolen at Concordia research station.

Solar Orbiter is ESA’s latest mission to study the Sun up close. Launched in the early hours of 10 February from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the spacecraft is due to arrive at its fiery destination in approximately two years.

Solar Orbiter will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury, approximately 42 million kilometres from the solar surface. This is an ideal distance: from here Solar Orbiter can take remote images and measurements that will provide the first views of the Sun’s uncharted polar regions.

At the southern poles on Earth, in Antarctica, the Sun has an exceptional presence on people living at the remote Concordia research station. During the Antarctic summer, the sun shines 24 hours a day. It would be perfect for sunbathing, except for the fact that the average summer temperature is only –30°C.

Consequently, in the winter the Sun does not appear above the horizon for over three months and the crew stationed in Concordia live with outside temperatures of –80°C in complete darkness.

In 2015 ESA-sponsored medical research doctor in Concordia Adrianos Golemis captured the Sun at 16:00 every Monday for a year and explains the technique in this blog entry.

While Solar Orbiter is en route to observing the Sun up close, the crew in Concordia are preparing for life without and enjoying the last rays of sunlight while they can. This picture shows a halo that can occur when sunlight is refracted off ice crystals in the atmosphere.

The mission will investigate how intense radiation and energetic particles being blasted out from the Sun and carried by the solar wind through the Solar System impact our home planet, to better understand and predict periods of stormy ‘space weather’.

While this results in beautiful aurora seen in the Arctic and Antarctic circles, stormy space weather can be disastrous. Solar storms have the potential to knock out power grids, disrupt air traffic and telecommunications, and endanger space-walking astronauts, for example.

A better understanding of how our parent star works is critical to our preparedness for these scenarios on Earth.

Follow more news about life and science at Concordia research station, located at Dome C in the Antarctic Peninsula, on the Chronicles from Concordia blog.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

'Reaper of death': Scientists discover new dinosaur species related to T Rex

"Scientists in Canada have announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex that strode the plain of North America about 80m years ago."

"Thanatotheristes degrootorum – Greek for 'reaper of death' – is thought to be the oldest member of the T rex family yet discovered in northern North America, and would have grown to around 8m (26ft) in length."

"'We chose a name that embodies what this tyrannosaur was as the only known large apex predator of its time in Canada, the reaper of death', said Darla Zelenitsky, assistant professor of dinosaur palaeobiology at Canada’s University of Calgary."

"'The nickname has come to be Thanatos', she told AFP."



#science #dinosaur #ReaperOfDeath #Thanatos

Coronavirus: Brighton GP practice closes after staff member tests positive | BBC News

A GP practice in Brighton has been temporarily closed after a staff member tested positive for the coronavirus.
Patients at the city's County Oak medical centre have been advised to contact the NHS 111 phone service if they have concerns.
Eight people in the UK have now been infected by the coronavirus.
The Department of Health has called the virus a "serious and imminent threat" to public health, but the overall risk level to the UK remains "moderate".
There have been more than 40,000 cases of the virus globally, mostly in China. The total number of deaths in China is now 908.

Brighton is less than 50 miles from London, and a lot of people commute each day. People in London are within spitting distance far more often, of course.

#science #medicine #health #coronavirus

♲ ScienceAlert:

- Physicists Have Finally Figured Out The Secret of How Soap Bubbles Get So Giant -

- #ScienceAlert - The #Best in #Science #News and #Amazing #Breakthroughs - #bot -

http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-worked-out-exactly-why-soap-bubbles-can-reach-such-gigantic-sizes

Dark Energy | https://heyokyay.com/dark-energy/

#cosmology #astrophysics #universe #darkenergy #science #stupidity #humor #comics

The Chinese doctor who tried to warn others about coronavirus | BBC News

Dr Li, 34, tried to send a message to fellow medics about the outbreak at the end of December. Three days later police paid him a visit and told him to stop. He returned to work and caught the virus from a patient. He had been in hospital for at least three weeks.

#science #medicine #health #coronavirus

FDA Warns Against Using Deadly Cesium Salts as a Cancer Cure | Gizmodo

The Food and Drug Administration is warning the public to stay far away from supplements, touted as a cancer cure, that are made with an ingredient linked to irregular heartbeats, seizures, and even deaths.

On Wednesday, the agency issued a public health alert for dietary supplements containing cesium salts, a kind of mineral salt. These products usually contain a specific formulation known as cesium chloride. The alert warns both customers to not take these products and doctors not to recommend them.

#science #medicine #health #PSA #cancer #CesiumChloride

Signs of cancer can appear long before diagnosis, study shows | Science | The Guardian

Early signs of cancer can appear years or even decades before diagnosis, according to the most comprehensive investigation to date of the genetic mutations that cause healthy cells to turn malignant.

The findings, based on samples from more than 2,500 tumours and 38 cancer types, reveal a longer-than-expected window of opportunity in which patients could potentially be tested and treated at the earliest stages of the disease.

#science #medicine #health #cancer

♲ ScienceAlert:

- New Research Estimates 75,000 People in Wuhan Are Infected With Coronavirus -

- #ScienceAlert - The #Best in #Science #News and #Amazing #Breakthroughs - #bot -

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-estimates-75-000-people-in-wuhan-infected-with-coronavirus

Random stuff.

#science #election2020

End of an era.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Ends Mission of Astronomical Discovery

"After more than 16 years studying the universe in infrared light, revealing new wonders in our solar system, our galaxy and beyond, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's mission has come to an end."

"Mission engineers confirmed at about 2:30 p.m. PDT (5:30 p.m. EDT) Thursday the spacecraft was placed in safe mode, ceasing all science operations. After the decommissioning was confirmed, Spitzer Project Manager Joseph Hunt declared the mission had officially ended."

"Launched in 2003, Spitzer was one of NASA's four Great Observatories, along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. The Great Observatories program demonstrated the power of using different wavelengths of light to create a fuller picture of the universe."

#NASA #Spitzer #science #space #astronomy

♲ ScienceAlert:

- Disturbing Video of a Firestorm in Australia Shows Just How Quickly They Can Move -

- #ScienceAlert - The #Best in #Science #News and #Amazing #Breakthroughs - #bot -

Disturbing Footage of a Firestorm in Australia Shows Just How Quickly Nature Turns Against Us

Australian lab first outside of China to copy coronavirus, helping vaccine push | ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

In a major breakthrough in the global fight against coronavirus, scientists in Australia have developed a lab-grown version of the disease.
Described as a "game changer" that will help scientists determine whether a future vaccine is effective, experts at Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity on Tuesday became the world's first scientific lab outside of China to copy the virus.

#science #medicine #health #coronavirus

♲ ScienceAlert:

- Rapid Evolution Made These Paper Wasps Capable of Recognising Each Other's Faces -

- #ScienceAlert - The #Best in #Science #News and #Amazing #Breakthroughs - #bot -

http://www.sciencealert.com/these-paper-wasps-rapidly-evolved-to-recognise-each-other-s-faces

Could there have been a technological civilization here on Earth before us? Perhaps.

"It would be easy, therefore, to miss an industrial civilization that only lasted 100,000 years—which would be 500 times longer than our industrial civilization has made it so far."

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/557180/

#Space #Science

CRISPR Could Fry All Cancer Using Newly Found T-Cell

#currentevents #hackadaycolumns #medicalhacks #news #science #antigen #cancer #cartcelltherapy #chimericantigenreceptor #immunesystem #mr1 #tcell #tcelltherapy #hackaday
posted by pod_feeder_v2

♲ ScienceAlert:

- Scientists Say We Need These 6 Things For Us to Meet Our Climate Goals -

- #ScienceAlert - The #Best in #Science #News and #Amazing #Breakthroughs - #bot -

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-these-6-things-have-to-happen-for-us-to-meet-our-climate-goals

"Dozens of government computers sit in a nondescript building here, able to connect to a data model that could help farmers manage the impact of a changing climate on their crops."

"But no one in this federal agency would know how to access the model, or, if they did, what to do with the data."

"That’s because the ambitious federal researcher who created it in Washington quit rather than move when the Agriculture Department relocated his agency to an office park here last fall."

"He is one of hundreds of scientists across the federal government who have been forced out, sidelined or muted since President Trump took office."

#Trump #GOP #corruption #science #FAIL #election2020

"Betelgeuse keeps getting dimmer and everyone is wondering what exactly that means. The star will go supernova at the end of its life, but that’s not projected to happen for tens of thousands of years or so. So what’s causing the dimming?"

#space #science #astronomy #Betelgeuse

The US has its first case of the new Wuhan coronavirus | The Verge

A case of the new virus spreading rapidly in China has been reported in a patient in Seattle, Washington, Reuters reports. The patient had recently returned from China, and is clinically healthy but still being monitored. This is the first US case of the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan, a city in central China in late December 2019. It has already sickened around 300 people and killed six.

It's getting closer.

#science #medicine #health #CoronaVirus

What the five hottest years on Earth look like - in pictures | The Guardian

The past five years – and the past decade – are the hottest in 150 years, the latest research has shown. It is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, drought and wildfires, with one scientist saying the records being broken year after year is “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”. We look at what the five hottest years look like in pictures

#science #environment #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateBreakdown

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2020/jan/15/what-the-five-hottest-years-on-earth-look-like-in-pictures

Bring up the bodies: the retired couple who find drowning victims | The Guardian

Gene and Sandy Ralston are a married couple in their 70s, who also happen to be among North America’s leading experts at searching for the dead.

A long, sad, slightly gruesome, but interesting and rewarding read.

#technology #tech #science

Fascinating.

Mystery Objects Near Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole Discovered

"A group of mystery objects have been discovered near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. These objects are huge, measuring around 100 AU—or 9.3 billion miles—and they appear to be interacting with the black hole, Sagittarius A (Sgr A), researchers say."

"In total, researchers found six of these objects at the center of our galaxy. They have been named G1 to G6. The first, G1, was discovered in 2005 and the second, G2, was found in 2012. However, researchers led by Anna Ciurlo, from UCLA, have now found four more. Their findings have been published in Nature."

#space #science #MilkyWay #blackholes

Machine keeps human livers alive for one week outside of the body | ScienceDaily

Until now, livers could be stored safely outside the body for only a few hours. With the novel perfusion technology, livers -- and even injured livers -- can now be kept alive outside of the body for an entire week. This is a major breakthrough in transplantation medicine, which may increase the number of available organs for transplantation and save many lives of patients suffering from severe liver disease or a variety of cancers.

#science #medicine #health

#CarlSagan #SaveTheWorld #Revolution #Science #Politics

Crazy, man.

The Oldest Material Discovered on Earth Is 7-Billion-Year-Old Literal Stardust

"Scientists have identified the oldest material ever found on Earth inside a space rock that crashed into Australia more than a half-century ago."

"The meteorite is filled with tiny grains of ancient stardust that predate the birth of the Sun and our solar system by more than two billion years, according to a study published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

"The 'presolar' grains were dated with the help of NASA’s Voyager 1 probe, which collected necessary new data when it crossed into interstellar space in 2012. The stardust is an unprecedented time capsule from an era of our galaxy before the solar system had coalesced into existence."

#science #space

Everyone Knows Memory Fails as You Age. But Everyone Is Wrong |The New York Times

I’m 62 years old as I write this. Like many of my friends, I forget names that I used to be able to conjure up effortlessly. When packing my suitcase for a trip, I walk to the hall closet and by the time I get there, I don’t remember what I came for.
And yet my long-term memories are fully intact. I remember the names of my third-grade classmates, the first record album I bought, my wedding day.
This is widely understood to be a classic problem of aging. But as a neuroscientist, I know that the problem is not necessarily age-related.

#science #neuroscience #CognitiveDecline

Researchers Develop Universal Flu Vaccine with Nanoparticles That Protects Against Six Different Influenza Viruses in Mice | Georgia State University News

A novel nanoparticle vaccine that combines two major influenza proteins is effective in providing broad, long-lasting protection against influenza virus in mice, showing promise as a universal flu vaccine, according to a study by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

Great news for mice!

#science #medicine #health

MDMA researcher is fixing the bad science that sent him to prison | The Verge

Like other drugs, the legal history of the chemical 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, better known as MDMA, is driven more by fear and politics than science. Developed as a blood-clotting agent in 1912, MDMA gained popularity in the 1970s and ‘80s as a party drug and as a psychotherapy tool used in conjunction with traditional treatments. Though the drug was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, some therapists incorporated it into their treatment regimens for patients struggling with PTSD, depression, phobias, and relationship problems. They credited MDMA with inducing empathy, hailing the drug as “penicillin for the soul.”

If it induces empathy, why would politicians and lawmakers want it legalised?

This is a longish read that shows some of the problems with inadequate drugs trials, misinterpreted results, and just plain wrong-headedness. For example:

Using data Lisdahl’s lab had already collected on people with a history of ecstasy use, he found that users showed more depressive symptoms compared to control groups and that users with a specific variant of the S100B gene, which is associated with psychiatric conditions, showed even greater levels of depressive symptoms than users without the variant. To Medina-Kirchner, these results supported the common belief that ecstasy can impair users by causing severe depressive mood disruptions.

Isn't it just as likely that people who use MDMA are people who had a history of depressive symptoms?

#science #medicine #drugs #research #MDMA