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Apr 29, 2019

Grain of dust found from dead star that predates the Sun

Posted by in category: space

At a glance, meteorites might only be marginally more interesting than regular old rocks, but look closely and they can tell us stories of ancient stars and long-lost planets. One of these stories has now been uncovered in a piece of space rock retrieved from Antarctica, containing grains from a stellar explosion that predates the Sun.

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Apr 29, 2019

A Programmer Solved a 20-Year-Old, Forgotten Crypto Puzzle

Posted by in category: computing

A self-taught coder dedicated a CPU core to performing continuous computations for three years to crack the puzzle, beating a competing team by mere days.

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Apr 29, 2019

Cars will be lowered into the tunnel from the roads on a car skate

Posted by in category: transportation

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Apr 29, 2019

‘Earth-shattering’: Drone delivers kidney for transplant over Baltimore

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, drones, robotics/AI

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RNYCCbCpAlM

The drone delivery of a kidney recently used for an organ transplant in Baltimore is being characterized by the University of Maryland as a “pioneering breakthrough” advancement in human medicine and aviation technology.

“It’s huge. We knew from the very first time that we met with Dr. (Joseph) Scalea, and he suggested the idea of what he wanted to do — we knew it would be earth-shattering and life-changing, and it really has become that,” Matthew Scassero, director of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site at the University of Maryland, told WTOP.

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Apr 29, 2019

Planting 1.2 Trillion Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions, Scientists Find

Posted by in categories: climatology, space, sustainability

There is enough room in the world’s existing parks, forests, and abandoned land to plant 1.2 trillion additional trees, which would have the CO2 storage capacity to cancel out a decade of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new analysis by ecologist Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university.

The research, presented at this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington, D.C., argues that planting additional trees is one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

Trees are “our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change,” Crowther told The Independent. Combining forest inventory data from 1.2 million locations around the world and satellite images, the scientists estimate there are 3 trillion trees on Earth — seven times more than previous estimates. But they also found that there is abundant space to restore millions of acres of additional forests, not counting urban and agricultural land.

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Apr 29, 2019

MIT continues progress toward practical fusion energy

Posted by in categories: climatology, nuclear energy, sustainability

In series of talks, researchers describe major effort to address climate change through carbon-free power.

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Apr 29, 2019

On the right path to fusion energy

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

National Academies study recommends a pilot fusion energy program that aligns with MIT’s fusion approach and SPARC project.

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Apr 29, 2019

Every three minutes, an earthquake strikes in California

Posted by in category: futurism

A comprehensive new catalog that factors in “hidden” quakes is helping scientists better understand the planet’s tectonic activity.

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Apr 29, 2019

Burger King plans nationwide roll out of vegan Impossible Whopper

Posted by in categories: food, sustainability

‘IMPOSSIBLE WHOPPER:’ The new Impossible Whopper is a plant-based version of the brand’s iconic Whopper sandwich, and has no beef. MORE: https://bit.ly/2GPqNe2


— Burger King announced on Monday that it plans to extend testing of their vegan Impossible Whopper into additional markets across the nation, eventually making the vegan burger available nationwide.

The new Impossible Whopper is a plant-based version of the brand’s iconic Whopper sandwich, and has no beef.

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Apr 29, 2019

Slow slip events in the roots of the San Andreas fault

Posted by in category: futurism

Episodic tremor and accompanying slow slip are observed at the down-dip edge of subduction seismogenic zones. While tremors are the seismic signature of this phenomenon, they correspond to a small fraction of the moment released; thus, the associated fault slip can be quantified only by geodetic observations. On continental strike-slip faults, tremors have been observed in the roots of the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas fault. However, associated transient aseismic slip has never been detected. By making use of the timing of transient tremor activity and the dense Parkfield-area global positioning system network, we can detect deep slow slip events (SSEs) at 16-km depth on the Parkfield segment with an average moment equivalent to Mw 4.90 ± 0.08. Characterization of transient SSEs below the Parkfield locked asperity, at the transition with the creeping section of the San Andreas fault, provides new constraints on the seismic cycle in this region.

The discovery of deep-seated slow slip events (SSEs) was enabled by the establishment of continuous global positioning system (GPS) measurements at the Nankai and Cascadia subduction zones (1, 2). Soon after, tectonic tremors that are temporally and spatially correlated with SSEs were discovered in Japan , leading to the recognition of the coupled phenomenon called episodic tremor and slip (ETS) (4, 5). ETS mostly occurs below the transition from brittle to ductile fault zone properties , where increasing temperatures and pore pressures due to metamorphic dehydration reactions inhibit fast ruptures. Long-lived tremor signals, in contrast with classical earthquakes, are made of a large number of low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) that are thought to be due to the activation of small seismic asperities by surrounding slow slip. Strain rate transients due to SSEs correlated with tremor bursts are observed for transient durations ranging from minutes to months.

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