Lifeboat Foundation

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week’s contribution is from Beth Bartel and Tim Dittman, from the non-profit UNAVCO consortium in Boulder, Colorado.

About 18 miles west of the Yellowstone National Park boundary in Idaho, UNAVCO field engineer Tom Lyman surveys the damage at GPS station P361 on Sawtell Peak. This is an important site, not only because it is located close to active faults in the Yellowstone region, but also because it serves as a data relay for four additional nearby GPS stations. None of the GPS equipment is transmitting data.

UNAVCO, a member of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory consortium, is responsible for maintaining the deformation network in and around Yellowstone. In Yellowstone National Park alone this network includes 14 GPS stations and six borehole geophysics stations. All the data are free and open access.

Continue reading “Shocking stories about monitoring Yellowstone National Park” »

The oldest clue of animal life, dating back at least 100 million years before the Cambrian period, when most major types of animals appear, has been found by University of California, Riverside (UCR) researchers.

The researchers have been tracking molecular signs of animal life, called biomarkers, as far back as 660–635 million years ago during the Neoproterozoic Era. They found a steroid compound produced only by sponges, which are among the earliest forms of animal life, in ancient rocks and oils from Oman, Siberia, and India.

The biomarker identified, a steroid compound named 26-methylstigmastane (26-mes), has a unique structure that is currently only known to be synthesized by certain species of modern sponges called demosponges.

Continue reading “Researchers Find Oldest Evidence of Animal Life on Earth” »

A new treatment strategy could increase the success rate of stem cell transplants, according to University of Queensland researchers.

The approach removes the need for donor matching and the use of immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection, and could make stem cell treatment accessible to more patients.

UQ Diamantina Institute researcher Dr Jatin Patel said researchers found immunosuppressant drugs had a negative impact on the transplanted stem cells.

Continue reading “New treatment prevents transplant rejection” »

Whether they’ll ever be able to unearth it from a vast complex of at least seven dome-shaped burial mounds remains to be seen.

This is an issue that we cannot simply stand back and do nothing. This Social Media Purge is beneath Western Civilization and we have the power to stop it.

The WaPo hit piece in question: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washing…escription

Continue reading “The Social Media Purge Continues – Carey Wedler” »

George Chapline believes that the Event Horizon Telescope will offer evidence that black holes are really dark energy stars. NASAWhat…

Should there be any ethical or legal boundaries to technologies that enhance humans? I pondered this last week as I read an online article about the recent trials of upper-body “exoskeletons” by production line staff at Volkswagen and at Chrysler-Fiat. These lightweight wearable frames greatly reduce the physical strain of repetitive overhead assembly work, and will be an important industrial enhancement as workforces age.

We tend to think of medical advancement in terms of better cures for diseases and recovery from injury. Enhancement however goes beyond therapy, and extends us in ways that some may argue are unnatural. Some human enhancements are of course also pre-emptive therapeutic interventions. Vaccination is both an enhancement of our immune system, and a therapeutic intervention. However, in cases where there is little preventative justification, what degree of enhancement is acceptable?

We drink coffee expecting our work performance to improve. We accept non-elective operations, breast implants, orthodontic improvements and other interventions which improve our perception of ourselves. We generally accept such enhancements with little question. However devices and drugs that improve athletic performance can lead us to question their legitimacy.

Continue reading “To be – or not to be – an enhanced human” »

Researchers have revealed a radical new use of AI — to predict earthquakes.

A team from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used machine-learning techniques to analyze tiny changes in geomagnetic fields.

Continue reading “AI can analyze changes in Earth’s magnetic field to predict quakes ‘unprecedentedly early’” »

Humans are exterminating animal and plant species so quickly that nature’s built-in defence mechanism, evolution, cannot keep up. An Aarhus-led research team calculated that if current conservation efforts are not improved, so many mammal species will become extinct during the next five decades that nature will need 3 to 5 million years to recover.

There have been five upheavals over the past 450 million years when the environment has changed so dramatically that the majority of Earth’s plant and animal species became extinct. After each mass extinction, evolution has slowly filled in the gaps with new species.

The sixth mass extinction is happening now, but this time, the extinctions are not being caused by natural disasters; they are the work of humans. A team of researchers from Aarhus University and the University of Gothenburg has calculated that the extinctions are moving too rapidly for evolution to keep up.

Continue reading “Mammals cannot evolve fast enough to escape current extinction crisis” »