Lifeboat Foundation

Can you craft a message to be understood by aliens?

The main goal of this activity is to educate the youth on Radio Astronomy techniques and Exoplanetary cutting-edge science, presenting the uniqueness of the Arecibo Observatory capability and raising the awareness of the possible risks involved on messaging unknown earthlings (through social medias) or extraterrestrial civilizations (through radio waves).

Diverse, inter-generation, multi-disciplinary and international teams of 10 students + 1 mentor (professor/scientist/teacher) will have to design the NEW Arecibo message. To unlock the call, register the teams and access the references and specifications for the project, the students will have first to learn about scientific method, AO activities, space sciences and peaceful uses of space issues for, then, be able to break coded messages, solve brain-puzzles and design their new Arecibo Message version.

Our NASA InSight lander just needs some peace and quiet to get its work done. After next week’s #MarsLanding, the spacecraft will study the entire Red Planet by… staying put. Learn how: https://go.nasa.gov/2FwIth3

Click on photo to start video.

This infrared tour of Jupiter’s north pole allows us to see deep inside the swirling clouds of the cyclones and anticyclones that permeate the planet’s polar regions. In the animation that uses data from our Juno spacecraft, the yellow areas are warmer (or deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere) and the dark areas are colder (or higher up in Jupiter’s atmosphere). Take the virtual tour: https://go.nasa.gov/2Fwf7zm

Is it a bird? A plane? No — it’s a galaxy. Take a closer look: https://go.nasa.gov/2FypUZL

Fruit flies and a common energy drink ingredient may help explain how the brain regulates sleep and how that regulation can go wrong.

Soon enough, agriculture might need a lot more bots.

By matt simon and melanie ruiz

We found that the evolution of anti-predatory defense in the prey species stabilized predator population size but that this was delayed in the presence of the abiotic stressor. This corresponded with a lack or delay in the evolution of resistance to the abiotic stressor. Therefore, the abiotic stressor had a big effect on the eco-evolutionary dynamics, weakening the evo-to-eco link. One might expect that this is caused by competition between (asexual) bacterial lineages possessing different adaptations, decreasing the rate and directionality of evolution under multiple selection pressures. Instead, the genomic investigation showed that different targets (genes or duplicated sites) were repeatedly mutated in the individual and combined treatments. The population genetics thus revealed complex mechanistic underpinnings for a seemingly sensible difference in dynamics. Perhaps a specific type of bacterial cell clumping or another adaptation is favored in the dual-stressor environment because of conferring a degree of resistance to both types of stressors? This could then direct the mutational path away from the optimal adaptations to the individual stressors.

It took us five years to disentangle the complex interplay between ecology and evolution in an experimental system consisting of bacteria, ciliates and antibiotics.

Continue reading “Coming to terms with complexity: Eco-evolutionary dynamics under more than one selection pressure” »

Over two decades, I’ve worked with many collaborators studying infrastructure commons and knowledge commons. We developed the Governing Knowledge Commons framework, adapting Ostrom’s empirical approach to the special characteristics of knowledge resources. Understanding how communities share and develop knowledge is crucial in today’s “information society.” And, of course, sharing and developing knowledge is critical to successful governance of natural resources, especially on a global scale. Using the GKC framework, we’ve made substantial progress toward an empirical picture of knowledge-related commons governance. But it’s not nearly enough. Here’s why.

A classic study of the perils of resource sharing, with implications for how we deal with climate, has been updated.

• By Brett Frischmann on November 19, 2018

After over a decade of development, the world’s first full-body medical scanner has produced its first images. The groundbreaking imaging device is almost 40 times faster than current PET scans and can capture a 3D picture of the entire human body in one instant scan.