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September 09, 2021

 

Increasingly Humans are developing a new artery, indicating that we are still evolving.

When imagining how our species could look in the future, it's common to get carried away with details like height, brain size, and skin colour. Even now, minor changes in our body show how unpredictable evolution may be.

Consider something as simple as an extra blood vessel in our arms, which, if current trends continue, may become commonplace in a few generations.

According to researchers from Flinders University and the University of Adelaide in Australia, an artery that runs down the centre of our forearms while we're still in the womb isn't disappearing as frequently as it used to.

That implies there are more adults than ever before who have an extra vascular channel running beneath their wrist.

In 2020, Flinders University anatomist Teghan Lucas remarked, "Anatomists have been investigating the incidence of this artery in people since the 18th century, and our work indicates it's obviously rising."

"When it comes to evolution, the prevalence was around 10% in people born in the mid-1880s compared to 30% in people born in the late 20th century, so that's a huge increase in a relatively short period of time."

Three major arteries in the forearm - median in the center. (ilbusca/Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images)


The median artery, which transports blood down the centre of our arms to feed our growing hands, originates quite early in the development of all humans.

It normally regresses after eight weeks, leaving the job to two other vessels: the radial (which we can feel when taking a person's pulse) and the ulnar.

Anatomists have known for a long time that the median artery's withering isn't a guarantee. It may linger for another month or so in certain circumstances.

It may still be pumping when we're born, nourishing either just the forearm or, in some cases, the hand as well.

Lucas and colleagues Maciej Henneberg and Jaliya Kumaratilake from the University of Adelaide analysed 80 limbs from cadavers given by Australians of European heritage to compare the prevalence of this persisting blood channel.

On passing, the donors ranged in age from 51 to 101, indicating that they were nearly all born in the first half of the twentieth century.

The researchers recorded how often they came across a chunky median artery capable of delivering a good supply of blood and compared the statistics to records gleaned from a literature search, taking into account tallies that would over-represent the vessel's appearance. Their findings were published in the Journal of Anatomy in 2020.

The fact that the artery is three times as frequent in adults now as it was more than a century ago is a remarkable discovery that implies natural selection favours individuals who keep this extra bit of blood flow.

"This rise could have been caused by changes in genes involved in median artery formation, or health issues in mothers during pregnancy, or both," Lucas adds.

We could suppose that having a long-lasting median artery would provide a steady supply of blood to dexterous fingers and powerful forearms long after we were born. However, having one puts us at a higher risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful ailment that limits our ability to use our hands.

It will take a lot more detective work to figure out what kinds of factors play a big part in the processes that lead to a persistent median artery.

Whatever they are, we are sure to see more of these vessels in the future years.

"By 2100, the majority of people will develop median artery disease of the forearm," Lucas said.

The reemergence of a knee bone called the fabella, which is also three times more prevalent today than it was a century ago, parallels the dramatic increase of the median artery in adults.

Small microevolutionary changes add up to large-scale variances that identify a species, no matter how minor they are.

Together, they produce new pressures, leading us down new paths of health and sickness that we may find difficult to envisage right now.


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December 28, 2016

Super Fast Cameras

from NOVA PBS

Key Facts In This Video

  • 1
    Researchers at MIT have created a camera with an exposure time of two trillionths of a second. (0:44)
  • 2
    Watch a pulse of light move through a bottle with help from MIT's super high-speed camera28: (1:29)
  • 3
    Learn how an MIT camera can "see" around a corner: (3:41)
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December 22, 2016
Scientists Turn Nuclear Waste-Diamond Batteries-Last for Thousands of Years
Nuclear energy is carbon free, which makes it an attractive and practical alternative to fossil fuels, as it doesn’t contribute to global warming. We also have the infrastructure for it already in place. It’s nuclear waste that makes fission bad for the environment. And it lasts for so long, some isotopes for thousands of years. Nuclear fuel is comprised of ceramic pellets of uranium-235 placed within metal rods. After fission takes place, two radioactive isotopes are left over: cesium-137 and strontium-90.
These each have half-lives of 30 years, meaning the radiation will be half gone by that time. Transuranic wastes, such as Plutonium-239, are also created in the process. This has a half-life of 24,000 years. These materials are highly radioactive, making them extremely dangerous to handle, even with short-term exposure.
The typical nuclear power plant creates about 2,300 tons of waste annually. 99 reactors are currently employed in the United States. That’s a lot of waste per year. The US is currently stockpiling 75,000 tons of nuclear waste. It is carefully stored and maintained. However, just like anything else it is vulnerable to natural disasters, human error, even terrorism. Storage is also costly. American taxpayers are on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.  
So what can be done? Researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK have a solution. Geochemist Tom Scott and colleagues have invented a method to encapsulate nuclear waste within diamonds, which as a battery, can provide a clean energy supply lasting in some cases, thousands of years.  
How a nuclear power plant works.
Scott said there were no emissions, no moving parts, no maintenance, and zero concerns about safety. The radiation is locked safely away inside the gemstone. All the while, it generates a small, steady stream of electricity. Nickel–63, an unstable isotope, was used in this first experiment. It created a battery with a half-life of a century.
There are other substances which would last over ten times longer, while helping to reduce our nuclear waste stockpile. Older nuclear reactors, in service between the 1950s and the 1970’s, used graphite blocks to cool the uranium rods. But after years of service these blocks become covered in a layer of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of around 5,730 years. Once a power plant is decommissioned, those blocks must be stored as well.
By heating the blocks, scientists can turn carbon-14 into a gas, which would be gathered and compressed into a diamond—since diamonds are just another form of carbon, anyway. Each gemstone emits short-range radiation, which is easily contained by just about any solid material. Since diamond is the strongest substance on Earth, it can be safely stored inside. Researchers covered their work in a lecture at the university entitled, “Ideas to change the world.”
The diamond batteries only put out a small amount of current. They can’t replace contemporary ones quite yet. Scott told Digital Trends, "An alkaline AA battery weighs about 20 grams, has an energy density storage rating of 700 Joules/gram, and [uses] up this energy if operated continuously for about 24 hours." Meanwhile, "A diamond beta-battery containing 1 gram of C14 will deliver 15 Joules per day, and will continue to produce this level of output for 5,730 years — so its total energy storage rating is 2.7 TeraJ." Another stumbling block is cost, as anyone who has ever saved up for an engagement ring can attest.
Once these hurdles are overcome, possible applications include powering spacecraft, satellites, high- flying drones, and medical devices such as pacemakers—anything really where batteries are difficult or impossible to charge, or change. One tantalizing speculation: powered by such crystals, interstellar probes could operate even in the darkest reaches of space, where solar power is no longer feasible.
Applications abound. So much so, that Dr. Scott and colleagues are asking the public for other possible uses. Weigh in with yours at: #diamondbattery

To learn more about this project click here:
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October 02, 2016

old_Pub_Unearthed_Manchester

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND—The Manchester Evening News reports that an excavation ahead of a construction project in the city center has uncovered the remains of a 200-year-old pub and several houses. Artifacts from the site include unopened bottles of brandy and crockery personalized with the name of Thomas Evans, owner of the Astley Arms pub in 1821. “It’s brilliant because you can suddenly connect it to the local people in the area,” said senior archaeologist Aidan Turner. “We looked online about his family history and one of his descendants now lives in Texas.” The team also recovered keys, pots for quills, and pipes. The pub was renamed the Paganini Tavern in 1840, when it was owned by Thomas Inglesent, but the property reverted to the Astley Arms by the 1850s. The pub remained open until 1928. To read more about urban archaeology in England, go to "Haunt of the Resurrection Men."
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August 08, 2016
Dr. Masaru Emoto, a researcher and alternative healer from Japan has given the world a good deal of evidence of the magic of positive thinking. He became famous when his water molecule experiments featured in the 2004 film, What The Bleep Do We Know?

SCIENTIFIC_ PROOF_ THOUGHTS_ AND_ INTENTIONS_ CAN_ ALTER_ THE_ WORLD_ AROUND_US!

His experiments demonstrate that human thoughts and intentions can alter physical reality, such as the molecular structure of water. Given that humans are comprised of at least 60% water, his discovery has far reaching implications… can anyone really afford to have negative thoughts or intentions?

A group of approximately 2,000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions toward water samples located inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls. Ice crystals formed in both sets of water samples, yet only certain kinds of formations were present within the water they were concentrating on. That group was unaware of similar water samples set aside in a different location as controls.

Ice crystals formed from both sets of water samples were blindly identified and photographed by an analyst, and the resulting images were blindly assessed for aesthetic appeal by 100 independent judges. In conclusion, the present pilot results are consistent with a number of previous studies suggesting that intention may be able to influence the structure of water. Here is a photo of the effects direct states of conscious intention had on the structure of water.

SCIENTIFIC_ PROOF_ THOUGHTS_ AND_ INTENTIONS_ CAN_ ALTER_ THE_ WORLD_ AROUND_US13

The rice experiment is another famous Emoto demonstration of the power of negative thinking (and conversely, the power of positive thinking.) Dr Emoto placed portions of cooked rice into two containers. On one container he wrote “thank you” and on the other “you fool”. He then instructed school children to say the labels on the jars out loud everyday when they passed them by. After 30 days, the rice in the container with positive thoughts had barely changed, while the other was moldy and rotten. Here is a video demonstrating this:



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August 05, 2016

The Standard Model remains in tact, for now...

10117B72000000514-0-A_typical_candidate_event_including_two_high_energy_photons_whos-a-9_145751989492222-http://www.woobleweb.com/

Well, we called it earlier today, and now it's official. CERN has announced that, for the present at least, we haven't detected a brand new particle capable of breaking the Standard Model of particle physics.
If you've been following the story so far, you'll know that the news comes as a blow for many physicists who've spent the past seven months coming up with possible explanations for this new particle.
(And if you're playing along with our CERN announcement drinking game, you should have finished your glass by now).
CERN made the announcement this morning at the International Conference of High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Chicago, alongside a huge slew of new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data.
"The intriguing hint of a possible resonance at 750 GeV decaying into photon pairs, which caused considerable interest from the 2015 data, has not reappeared in the much larger 2016 data set and thus appears to be a statistical fluctuation," CERN announced in a press release sent via email.
Why did we ever think we'd found a new particle in the first place?
Back in December, researchers at CERN's CMS and ATLAS experiments smashed particles together at incredibly high energies, sending subatomic particles flying out as debris.
Among that debris, the researchers saw an unexpected blip of energy in form of an excess in pairs of photons, which had a combined energy of 750 gigaelectron volts (GeV).
The result lead to hundreds of journal article submissions on the mysterious energy signature - and prompted many physicists to hypothesise that the excess was a sign of a brand new fundamental particle, six times more massive than the Higgs boson - one that wasn't predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.
But, alas, the latest data collected by the LHC shows no evidence that this particle exists - despite further experiments, no sign of this 750 GeV bump has emerged since the original reading.
So, we're no closer to finding a new particle - or evidence of a new model that could explain some of the more mysterious aspects of the Universe, such as how gravity works (something the Standard Model doesn't account for).
But it's not all bad news.
CERN researchers also announced that the LHC is now at peak luminosity - which means it's performing around 1 billion high-energy particle collisions per second, "so that even the rarest processes at the highest effective energy could occur".
It's also running at record-breaking energy levels of 13 trillion electronvolts (TeV).
Because of this, the LHC has already recorded five times more data in 2016 than it did in all of 2015, despite only running for a few months this year. Amongst those data is even more verification for the Higgs boson.
In other words, we may not have found any new particles just yet, but if they're out there, it's only a matter of time, because the LHC is running bigger and better than ever before.
"This is one of the most exciting times in recent years for physicists, as we dig into the unknown in earnest: the particle physics at an energy never explored before," said CERN Director for Research and Computing, Eckhard Elsen.
If you're really keen, you can start wading through some of the LHC results yourself to look for signs of new physics - the ATLAS experiment just releasedthe data from 100 trillion proton collisions from 2012 to the public.

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July 19, 2016
So... it could still get us to Mars in 70 days?
EM Drive-machine-propulsion

Physicists have just published a new paper that suggests the controversial EM drive - or electromagnetic drive - could actually work, and doesn't defy Newton's third law after all.
In case you've missed the hype, here's a quick catch-up: a lot of space lovers are freaking out about the EM drive because of claims it could get humans to Marsin just 10 weeks, but just as many are sick of hearing about it, because, on paper at least, it doesn't work within the laws of physics.
Despite that not-insignificant setback, the EM drive shows no signs of quitting, and test after test - including trials by NASA scientists at the Eagleworks lab, and an independent researcher in Germany - has conceded that the propulsion system, somehow, does produce thrust.
Why is that so surprising? That's because of how the EM drive is supposed to work, in theory at least. First designed by British scientist Roger Shawyer back in 1999, the EM drive uses electromagnetic waves as fuel, and creates thrust by bouncing those microwaves back and forth within a metal cavity to trigger motion.
According to Shawyer's calculations, that could produce enough thrust to blast humans to Mars in just 70 days, and potentially even help us reach the next star system, Alpha Centauri, in just 92 years, all without the need for heavy, expensive rocket fuel.
That sounds pretty incredible, right? But there's one big problem - according to Newton's third law, everything must have an equal and opposite reaction, which means that something needs to be pushed out the back of propulsion system for it to move forwards. And, you pretty quickly see the dilemma - the EM drive doesn't use any fuel propellants, and so it doesn't have an exhaust, and so... it can't produce thrust. Even though it does.
Now that we've taken that round-trip right back to the dilemma we started with, let's present you with a potential solution, from physicists at the COMSOL company, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.
According to their new peer-reviewed study published in AIP Advances, the EM drive doesn't actually defy Newton's third law, because it does produce exhaust.
*Cue scream face emoji*
According to the researchers, the exhaust being blasted out is actually light, or more specifically, photons that have become paired up with another out-of-phase photon in order to shoot out of the metal cavity and produce thrust.
So if that's the case, why hasn't anyone detected it before?
The researchers predict that's because photons need to become paired up in order to escape the fuel cavity, so that the two photons in those pairs are out of phase, which means they completely cancel each other out and have no net electromagnetic field. If you think of it like waves of water, if the crest of one wave occurs at the exact same time as the trough of another, they'll cancel each other out and produce a flat patch of water - despite the fact that two waves are still passing through it.
That's what's happening with the photons, so, in other words, the exhaust photons become invisible from an electromagnetic point of view because they're being masked by their out-of-sync partner.
"The EM drive operates by the same principle, for example, as a jet engine, where the high speed exhaust gases backwards (opposite reaction) push the airplane forwards," one of the researchers Arto Annila, told ScienceAlert over email.  
"Light at microwave lengths is the fuel that's being fed into the cavity ... and the EM drive exhausts backwards paired photons," he says. "When two photons travel together, but having opposite phases, then the pair has no net electromagnetic field, and hence it will not reflect back from the metal walls, but goes through."
And those escaping photons are the equal and opposite reaction that's producing the EM drive's thrust.
To be clear, this is just a hypothesis based on theoretical calculations. But it's not the first time photons have been used to propel spacecraft forward - it's also the idea that Bill Nye's solar sail is based on.
Annila is now hoping that engineers will take on the challenge of testing for these exhaust photon pairs in order to test whether their hypothesis holds up.
And that's going to be a challenge in itself, because without an electromagnetic signature, researchers are going to have to detect them by looking for "excess energy density above the surrounding background density of the gravitational field," Annila explained. That requires a device called an interferometer - not dissimilar to the ones that detect gravitational waves.
But if scientists can verify that these paired photons really are being pushed out the back, sh*t's going to get real for EM drives, because it'll help engineers design better cavities and produce even more thrust.
"If our proposal is found worthy then EM drive research is no longer questioned but propelled," said Annila.
But as exciting as that is, for Annila the space travel aspect is less interesting than the fundamental physics behind the controversial propulsion system.

"In history often curious phenomena and perplexing observations have opened up a whole new paradigm," he says. Maybe this time, it'll open up a whole new pathway to the Universe. Watch this space.
Read more »
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July 19, 2016
So... it could still get us to Mars in 70 days?
EM Drive-machine-propulsion
Physicists have just published a new paper that suggests the controversial EM drive - or electromagnetic drive - could actually work, and doesn't defy Newton's third law after all.
In case you've missed the hype, here's a quick catch-up: a lot of space lovers are freaking out about the EM drive because of claims it could get humans to Marsin just 10 weeks, but just as many are sick of hearing about it, because, on paper at least, it doesn't work within the laws of physics.
Despite that not-insignificant setback, the EM drive shows no signs of quitting, and test after test - including trials by NASA scientists at the Eagleworks lab, and an independent researcher in Germany - has conceded that the propulsion system, somehow, does produce thrust.
Why is that so surprising? That's because of how the EM drive is supposed to work, in theory at least. First designed by British scientist Roger Shawyer back in 1999, the EM drive uses electromagnetic waves as fuel, and creates thrust by bouncing those microwaves back and forth within a metal cavity to trigger motion.
According to Shawyer's calculations, that could produce enough thrust to blast humans to Mars in just 70 days, and potentially even help us reach the next star system, Alpha Centauri, in just 92 years, all without the need for heavy, expensive rocket fuel.
That sounds pretty incredible, right? But there's one big problem - according to Newton's third law, everything must have an equal and opposite reaction, which means that something needs to be pushed out the back of propulsion system for it to move forwards. And, you pretty quickly see the dilemma - the EM drive doesn't use any fuel propellants, and so it doesn't have an exhaust, and so... it can't produce thrust. Even though it does.
Now that we've taken that round-trip right back to the dilemma we started with, let's present you with a potential solution, from physicists at the COMSOL company, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.
According to their new peer-reviewed study published in AIP Advances, the EM drive doesn't actually defy Newton's third law, because it does produce exhaust.
*Cue scream face emoji*
According to the researchers, the exhaust being blasted out is actually light, or more specifically, photons that have become paired up with another out-of-phase photon in order to shoot out of the metal cavity and produce thrust.
So if that's the case, why hasn't anyone detected it before?
The researchers predict that's because photons need to become paired up in order to escape the fuel cavity, so that the two photons in those pairs are out of phase, which means they completely cancel each other out and have no net electromagnetic field. If you think of it like waves of water, if the crest of one wave occurs at the exact same time as the trough of another, they'll cancel each other out and produce a flat patch of water - despite the fact that two waves are still passing through it.
That's what's happening with the photons, so, in other words, the exhaust photons become invisible from an electromagnetic point of view because they're being masked by their out-of-sync partner.
"The EM drive operates by the same principle, for example, as a jet engine, where the high speed exhaust gases backwards (opposite reaction) push the airplane forwards," one of the researchers Arto Annila, told ScienceAlert over email.  
"Light at microwave lengths is the fuel that's being fed into the cavity ... and the EM drive exhausts backwards paired photons," he says. "When two photons travel together, but having opposite phases, then the pair has no net electromagnetic field, and hence it will not reflect back from the metal walls, but goes through."
And those escaping photons are the equal and opposite reaction that's producing the EM drive's thrust.
To be clear, this is just a hypothesis based on theoretical calculations. But it's not the first time photons have been used to propel spacecraft forward - it's also the idea that Bill Nye's solar sail is based on.
Annila is now hoping that engineers will take on the challenge of testing for these exhaust photon pairs in order to test whether their hypothesis holds up.
And that's going to be a challenge in itself, because without an electromagnetic signature, researchers are going to have to detect them by looking for "excess energy density above the surrounding background density of the gravitational field," Annila explained. That requires a device called an interferometer - not dissimilar to the ones that detect gravitational waves.
But if scientists can verify that these paired photons really are being pushed out the back, sh*t's going to get real for EM drives, because it'll help engineers design better cavities and produce even more thrust.
"If our proposal is found worthy then EM drive research is no longer questioned but propelled," said Annila.
But as exciting as that is, for Annila the space travel aspect is less interesting than the fundamental physics behind the controversial propulsion system.

"In history often curious phenomena and perplexing observations have opened up a whole new paradigm," he says. Maybe this time, it'll open up a whole new pathway to the Universe. Watch this space.
Read more »
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