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Not really a science article, rather a technical one from the vaults of the Guardian 40 years ago speculating that email might have some long term effects on traditional post. It was probably the first of the world changing 'internet' technologies that normal folks used. There was also things like IRC, BBS etc, but these were less used and it wasn't until 1991 that the WWW started and the technologies became ubiquitous and here we are. Strange new lands with no maps to guide us.

www.theguardian.com

Could electronic mail undermine conventional post? – archive, 1 December 1983

1 December 1983: Electronic mail tends to be informal in style encouraging people to send brazen messages but even if you are abroad, work can follow you wherever you are
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
CD Xbow said:
Not really a science article, rather a technical one from the vaults of the Guardian 40 years ago speculating that email might have some long term effects on traditional post. It was probably the first of the world changing 'internet' technologies that normal folks used. There was also things like IRC, BBS etc, but these were less used and it wasn't until 1991 that the WWW started and the technologies became ubiquitous and here we are. Strange new lands with no maps to guide us.

www.theguardian.com

Could electronic mail undermine conventional post? – archive, 1 December 1983

1 December 1983: Electronic mail tends to be informal in style encouraging people to send brazen messages but even if you are abroad, work can follow you wherever you are
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
Click to expand...
I still (much prefer) to write with fountain pen on paper to someone 'dear'...text/whatsapp just don't cut it.

(then believe it or not....I take a pic of the letter...then text that!!! call me weird, I don't care)
 

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RNA Obelisks, a new form of life proclaims the article.
www.sciencealert.com

'Obelisks': Entirely New Class of Life Has Been Found in The Human Digestive System

Peering into the jungle of microbes that live within us, researchers have stumbled across what seem to be an entire new class of virus-like objects.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com
Are prions alive? Are these guys alive? The hosts that make these Obelisks is still unknown.

"While we don't know the 'hosts' of other Obelisks," write Zheludev and colleagues. "it is reasonable to assume that at least a fraction may be present in bacteria."

The question of the Obelisks' source aside, all seem to include codes for a new class of protein the researchers have named Oblins.

Instructions for building these proteins seem to take up at least half of the Obelisks' genetic material. As these proteins are so similar across all the Obelisks, researchers suspect they may be involved in the entity's replication process.

This ability to code for proteins makes them different from other known RNA loops called viroids, but they also don't seem to have the genes to make protein shells that RNA viruses (including COVID-19) live within when they're outside of cells.

In any case some new science needs to be done. There could be many biological or health implication of these obelisks, we will have to wait and see. It's interesting from an evolutionary point of view as a stage of RNA evolution has been proposed as a step just before 'life' evolved.
 

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The early Earth was an unstable beasty, with a few periods of extreme cold, leading to the 'Snownball' Earth - the Cryogenian period 720 to 635 million years ago. There is a lot of debate to what extent the Earth was glaciated and how much was cold and slushy. There has been debate about the causes. Australian geologists have recently used plate tectonic modelling to determine what most likely caused an extreme ice-age climate in Earth's history, more than 700 million years ago.

"Imagine the Earth almost completely frozen over," said the study's lead author, ARC Future Fellow Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz. "That's just what happened about 700 million years ago; the planet was blanketed in ice from poles to equator and temperatures plunged. However, just what caused this has been an open question.

"We now think we have cracked the mystery: historically low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions, aided by weathering of a large pile of volcanic rocks in what is now Canada"

www.miragenews.com

Scientists Uncover Cause of Earth's 700M-Year-Old Snowball Phase

Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz was inspired during a field trip to the Flinders Ranges to find out how volcanic activity turned our blue dot to an ice covered
www.miragenews.com www.miragenews.com

After this the Earth became warmer, the following Ediacaran period saw the development of complex multicellular lifeforms a real explosion of life.
 
Talking with friends working at South Australian Museum I heard a rather sad an sorry tale about their current restructure which essentially is stopping the museum doing research. I kid you not. Museum staff are banned from research. This is the first point mentioned in the part of the email I obtained through sneaky means and have posted below. Note SAM = South Australian Museum

"SAM staff will not be allowed to participate in Australian Research Council, ABRS or any International grants if they require in-kind commitment (e.g. time, space, facilities).

Evolutionary Biology Unit and Australian Tissue Collection no longer supported

All current Research & Collections 27 positions (25 FTE) are abolished, so we’re all be kicked out by the end of June. Instead they will create 10 Curators and 10 collections manager positions ant much lower levels.

Less than 5 years ago (October 2019) there were 14 Science research positions. By July 2023 these were down to 10, and in the proposed structure for July 2024 that is down to 5 Science Curators. These will be very broad, non-specialist “portfolios”: overarching 'Natural Science’ and under it junior curators in 'Terrestrial Zoology’, 'Aquatic Zoology’, ‘Palaeontology’ and ‘Mineralogy’.

Similarly, in October 2019 there were 14 Science collection manager positions. By July 2023 there were down to 12 and in the proposed structure that is down to 5: ‘Vertebrates’, 'Terrestrial Invertebrates’, 'Aquatic Invertebrates’, ‘Palaeontology’ and ‘Mineralogy’. The workload will be so huge, it'll make the collections unmanageable and in the mid-term grind access to a halt.

While these cuts are happening, supposedly due to budget constrains, the Director has changed his position to CEO and has upgraded an Assistant and a Deputy Director positions to Director salaries"

The new director is a pommy archeologist who is clearly completely ignorant about the importance of the Ediacaran collection and the Emu Bay shale (cambrian) collections. These are accessed by many scientist world wide and they have now been banned. Even scientists whose papers are undergoing peer review and have been asked to check something in the specimens have been banned. I only know about the paleo collections, there may be many other important collections in other area of science of world significance that access will be lost to.

Also note while the museum curators and the scientific staff are being hacked to the bone, the management staff are increasing.

This is not just an issue just for South Australians, but for all folks in Australia and researchers world wide. It needs to be stopped.
 
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Interesting work from scientists looking at how we lost our tail. The team identified that primates without a tail had one additional “jumping gene” called TBXT. When this gene was inserted into mice, many developed with no tail, some however developed spina bifida and other neural tube defects. So we have had to pay a price for loosing our tails.
Note - compared to other species, we have an unusually high mutation rate, with between 10 and 100 mutations each new individual, other vertebrates have an average of 1 per new individual.
theconversation.com

Losing their tails provided our ape ancestors with an evolutionary advantage – but we’re still paying the price

Many evolutionary changes also come with costs.
theconversation.com theconversation.com
The original paper is here, On the genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes - Nature and is a difficult read for a non specialist.
 
CD Xbow said:
Talking with friends working at South Australian Museum I heard a rather sad an sorry tale about their current restructure which essentially is stopping the museum doing research. I kid you not. Museum staff are banned from research. This is the first point mentioned in the part of the email I obtained through sneaky means and have posted below. Note SAM = South Australian Museum

"SAM staff will not be allowed to participate in Australian Research Council, ABRS or any International grants if they require in-kind commitment (e.g. time, space, facilities).

Evolutionary Biology Unit and Australian Tissue Collection no longer supported

All current Research & Collections 27 positions (25 FTE) are abolished, so we’re all be kicked out by the end of June. Instead they will create 10 Curators and 10 collections manager positions ant much lower levels.

Less than 5 years ago (October 2019) there were 14 Science research positions. By July 2023 these were down to 10, and in the proposed structure for July 2024 that is down to 5 Science Curators. These will be very broad, non-specialist “portfolios”: overarching 'Natural Science’ and under it junior curators in 'Terrestrial Zoology’, 'Aquatic Zoology’, ‘Palaeontology’ and ‘Mineralogy’.

Similarly, in October 2019 there were 14 Science collection manager positions. By July 2023 there were down to 12 and in the proposed structure that is down to 5: ‘Vertebrates’, 'Terrestrial Invertebrates’, 'Aquatic Invertebrates’, ‘Palaeontology’ and ‘Mineralogy’. The workload will be so huge, it'll make the collections unmanageable and in the mid-term grind access to a halt.

While these cuts are happening, supposedly due to budget constrains, the Director has changed his position to CEO and has upgraded an Assistant and a Deputy Director positions to Director salaries"

The new director is a pommy archeologist who is clearly completely ignorant about the importance of the Ediacaran collection and the Emu Bay shale (cambrian) collections. These are accessed by many scientist world wide and they have now been banned. Even scientists whose papers are undergoing peer review and have been asked to check something in the specimens have been banned. I only know about the paleo collections, there may be many other important collections in other area of science of world significance that access will be lost to.

Also note while the museum curators and the scientific staff are being hacked to the bone, the management staff are increasing.

This is not just an issue just for South Australians, but for all folks in Australia and researchers world wide. It needs to be stopped.
Click to expand...

www.indaily.com.au

Tim Flannery warns SA Museum restructure could 'destroy' the institution - InDaily

Renowned Australian scientist Tim Flannery has warned of the “death” of the South Australian Museum following its restructure announcement
www.indaily.com.au www.indaily.com.au
 

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The Conversation has an interesting article about the history of AI and the extraordinary claims that are always made at the time for the tech.

theconversation.com

We’ve been here before: AI promised humanlike machines – in 1958

Enthusiasm for the capabilities of artificial intelligence – and claims for the approach of humanlike prowess –has followed a boom-and-bust cycle since the middle of the 20th century.
theconversation.com theconversation.com

The header pic reminded me of my old chemistry teacher, Bernie Smith who made robots in the 50's and 60's. Constructed with surplus materials from the aircraft industry (we had one of had one of those once) they were remote control devices without any smarts, except for Bernie working the levers. Wish our tech still had levers!



Watching the video again I'm not sure about the wisdom of letting Robert carry a babe. Different times. Robert is in the Museum of Victoria but I have never seen or heard of him being exhibited.

collections.museumsvictoria.com.au

Robot - 'Robbie', Bernard Smith, Hawthorn, Victoria, circa 1957

Robot built by science teacher Mr Bernard Smith in the 1950s. Mr Smith named it "Robbie the Robot." Bernard Smith, a teacher at Hawthorn Central School in Melbourne, built the robot to demonstrate the possibilities of mechanical devices to his students. The robot was built from scratch using...
collections.museumsvictoria.com.au collections.museumsvictoria.com.au
 
CSIRO have developed technology to print light weight solar cells.
www.theguardian.com

CSIRO claims new record for energy efficiency in lightweight printed solar cells

Lead researcher says use of machine learning meant over 10,000 cells could be produced and tested in a day
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
The efficiency is up to 15% which is a about 2/3's that of current cells on the market, but these are lighter and flexible. These cells are being tested on the recent Australian satellite.
 
A private company, interestingly named Boom, have flown a small scale prototype of their planned future supersonic airliner, the Overture which is planned to cruise at mach 1.7. Nice digital image of a 3D model of the craft below:

1711242337827.png ​

The model prototype that flew looked like this, with a bit of an old NASA X plane look about it.

1711242670021.png ​

There always seems to be plans for new generation of supersonic passenger craft but they never go anywhere. Perhaps this one will be different. They seem to be depending on modern materials and the incremental improvements in engine tech (no need for super cruise) to improve efficiency rather than any startling new design or tech.

www.twz.com

Boom's XB-1 Supersonic Test Jet Takes To The Skies

Getting XB-1 airborne is an important moment for Boom in its efforts to develop economical supersonic travel.
www.twz.com www.twz.com
 
One of physics Holy Grails, a Graviton, at last. Well maybe, a very big maybe. The Standard Model of physics explains how matter and the 4 forces combine to make the basic structure of our universe. But there is a gaping hole in the Standard Model when it comes to gravity. The other 3 forces have recognised carrier particles that the forces can be quantitised to. With Electromagnetism Photons mediate the electromagnetic force, Gluons mediate the Strong Nuclear Force, which binds quarks to each other. and the Weak Nuclear Interactions are mediated by gauge bosons (W+, W−, and Z). Gravity 'should' be mediated by a Graviton but until now the graviton has remained a unicorn. Certainly the physicists are excited by this.

phys.org

Researchers find first experimental evidence for a graviton-like particle in a quantum material

A team of scientists from Columbia, Nanjing University, Princeton, and the University of Munster, writing in the journal Nature, have presented the first experimental evidence of collective excitations with spin called chiral graviton modes (CGMs) in a semiconducting material.
phys.org phys.org
 

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