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Semyon Grigoriev the Russian head of the Museum of Mammoths of the Institute of Applied Ecology at the North Eastern Federal University has been featured by George Dvorsky in an article published on io9 titled ‘Russians Recover Fresh Flowing Mammoth Blood’. Dvorsky states “About 15,000 years ago, an old female wooly mammoth plunged through the ice as she was being chased by predators. Her remains have now been uncovered by scientists working in Siberia. And remarkably, as they were digging it out, blood began to stream out. Which is weird given that it was 10° below freezing. It's not known if the blood or tissue samples contain living cells required for cloning. And even if such cells are recovered, the DNA repair would require a very complex process that could take years. …Semyon Grigoriev…is calling it "the best preserved mammoth in the history of paleontology." During the excavation, and as the researchers were chipping away at the ice, they noticed splotches of dark blood in the ice cavities below the mammoth’s belly. When they broke through with a poll pick, blood started to flow out. "It can be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryo-protective properties,” noted Grigoriev. Mammoth blood, it would appear, contains a kind of anti-freeze. This is consistent with work done by Canadian geneticists who in 2010 showed that mammoth hemoglobin releases its oxygen much more readily at cold temperatures than that of modern elephants. In addition to the blood, the paleontologists also recovered well-preserved muscle tissue. The scientists say it has a natural red color of fresh meat. The blood is currently undergoing a bacteriological analysis, and the results are expected soon. Based on the preliminary evidence, the scientists say the female wooly mammoth was anywhere from 50 to 60 years old and weighed about three tons. They theorize that she was trying to escape from predators when she fell through the ice, or that she got bogged down in a swamp.”  Inspired by George Dvorsky, io9 ow.ly/lEbpp Image source CBC ow.ly/lEbnj Best preserved mammoth in history (June 24 2013)

 

Semyon Grigoriev the Russian head of the Museum of Mammoths of the Institute of Applied Ecology at the North Eastern Federal University has been featured by George Dvorsky in an article published on io9 titled ‘Russians Recover Fresh Flowing Mammoth Blood’. Dvorsky states “About 15,000 years ago, an old female wooly mammoth plunged through the ice as she was being chased by predators. Her remains have now been uncovered by scientists working in Siberia. And remarkably, as they were digging it out, blood began to stream out. Which is weird given that it was 10° below freezing. It’s not known if the blood or tissue samples contain living cells required for cloning. And even if such cells are recovered, the DNA repair would require a very complex process that could take years. …Semyon Grigoriev…is calling it “the best preserved mammoth in the history of paleontology.” During the excavation, and as the researchers were chipping away at the ice, they noticed splotches of dark blood in the ice cavities below the mammoth’s belly. When they broke through with a poll pick, blood started to flow out. “It can be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryo-protective properties,” noted Grigoriev. Mammoth blood, it would appear, contains a kind of anti-freeze. This is consistent with work done by Canadian geneticists who in 2010 showed that mammoth hemoglobin releases its oxygen much more readily at cold temperatures than that of modern elephants. In addition to the blood, the paleontologists also recovered well-preserved muscle tissue. The scientists say it has a natural red color of fresh meat. The blood is currently undergoing a bacteriological analysis, and the results are expected soon. Based on the preliminary evidence, the scientists say the female wooly mammoth was anywhere from 50 to 60 years old and weighed about three tons. They theorize that she was trying to escape from predators when she fell through the ice, or that she got bogged down in a swamp.”

 

Inspired by George Dvorsky, io9 ow.ly/lEbpp Image source CBC ow.ly/lEbnj

Jennifer Viegas the American Discovery News reporter has published an article on io9 titled ‘This Fish Fossil Shows Why Humans Have Two Arms and Two Legs’. In the article Viegas states “An unusual prehistoric fish with fins near its butt has helped to solve the mystery over why most animals, including humans, have paired limbs. The fish, Euphanerops, is possibly the first creature on the planet to have evolved paired appendages, which in this case were fins. The 370-million-year-old species is described in the latest issue of Biology Letters. …This was a jawless fish that lived long before dinosaurs first emerged. Many living fish have a single anal fin, located at the center back of the fish’s underside near its rear end. The fin is thought to help maintain control of body position. Euphanerops, however, evolved two such fins. Some subsequent fish did not evolve the paired appendages, so fish with all sorts of fin combinations existed for a while. …later helped some species make the transition from water to land.  Heather King of the University of Chicago and colleagues studied living lungfish to see how that transition might have happened. "Lungfish are very closely related to the animals that were able to evolve and come out of the water and onto land, but that was so long ago that almost everything except the lungfish has gone extinct," she explained. King and her team found that lungfish could, as their name suggests, blow up with air like a balloon, giving their body buoyancy. Their scrawny back paired appendages can then either sort of hop or actually walk by alternating the movement of these limbs. …Since those first steps from water to land were taken, some animals evolved four limbs for walking. Even for these animals, like dogs and cats, the limbs come in pairs. For that innovation, we can probably thank the unusual, long-extinct jaw-less fish Euphanerops.”  Inspired by Jennifer Viegas, io9 ow.ly/k8YXQ Image source Twitter ow.ly/k8Zwf Why humans have two arms and two legs (May 15 2013)

 

Jennifer Viegas the American Discovery News reporter has published an article on io9 titled ‘This Fish Fossil Shows Why Humans Have Two Arms and Two Legs’. In the article Viegas states “An unusual prehistoric fish with fins near its butt has helped to solve the mystery over why most animals, including humans, have paired limbs. The fish, Euphanerops, is possibly the first creature on the planet to have evolved paired appendages, which in this case were fins. The 370-million-year-old species is described in the latest issue of Biology Letters. …This was a jawless fish that lived long before dinosaurs first emerged. Many living fish have a single anal fin, located at the center back of the fish’s underside near its rear end. The fin is thought to help maintain control of body position. Euphanerops, however, evolved two such fins. Some subsequent fish did not evolve the paired appendages, so fish with all sorts of fin combinations existed for a while. …later helped some species make the transition from water to land.  Heather King of the University of Chicago and colleagues studied living lungfish to see how that transition might have happened. “Lungfish are very closely related to the animals that were able to evolve and come out of the water and onto land, but that was so long ago that almost everything except the lungfish has gone extinct,” she explained. King and her team found that lungfish could, as their name suggests, blow up with air like a balloon, giving their body buoyancy. Their scrawny back paired appendages can then either sort of hop or actually walk by alternating the movement of these limbs. …Since those first steps from water to land were taken, some animals evolved four limbs for walking. Even for these animals, like dogs and cats, the limbs come in pairs. For that innovation, we can probably thank the unusual, long-extinct jaw-less fish Euphanerops.”

 

Inspired by Jennifer Viegas, io9 ow.ly/k8YXQ Image source Twitter ow.ly/k8Zwf

There is no such thing as empty space (April 23 2013) There is no such thing as empty space (April 23 2013)

 

Esther Inglis-Arkell the American physics writer blogging about what makes things explode has published an article on io9 titled ‘There is no such thing as emptiness. There is only quantum foam’. Inglis-Arkell states “According to some scientists, there is no such thing as empty space. What we have instead is called “quantum foam.” We can’t see it, but we just might be able to sense it. The guy who came up with the term “quantum foam” is John Wheeler. In the “shut up and calculate” era of post-World War II era, he pushed both students and the world at large to keep thinking about Einstein’s theory of relativity and its consequences – so you know he was cool. He also had the middle name of Archibald – so you know he knew a thing or two about cool names. And so it’s natural that he used term “quantum foam” to describe one of the more perplexing ideas of physics. The idea comes from the attempts to merge relativistic gravity with quantum mechanics. Gravity, Einstein proved, was a bending of the fabric of spacetime. It also behaves like a field. Place a point far away from the Earth, and it still will be part of the Earth’s gravitational field, but it will be out where the tug of gravity is weak. Place it close to the Earth, and the tug is stronger, and it will fall. Other planets warp spacetime and create their own gravitational tugs. So space isn’t gravity-free, but a vast array of different gravitational tugs through which particles move. Pretty much everywhere that anything is placed, there is a gravitational field that it moves through. …There are ideas on how to “see” this quantum foam. They vary in technique. Some ideas, such as the randomly appearing and disappearing particles, have already been established.  Either way, we have a creamy new way of seeing the universe.”

 

Inspired by Esther Inglis-Arkell, io9 ow.ly/jBdnL Image source Revision3 ow.ly/jBdmi

Michael Bruce Sterling the 58 year old American science fiction author best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology helping to define the cyberpunk genre has been featured by George Dvorsky in an article published on io9 titled ‘Bruce Sterling Thinks Artificial Intelligence Has Jumped the Shark’. Dvprsky states “…if his recent comments about the potential risks of greater-than-human artificial intelligence — or lack thereof — are any indication, he's itching to start a giant fight among futurists. …Sterling penned a four paragraph article saying that we shouldn't fear the onset of super AI because a "Singularity has no business model." He writes: This aging sci-fi notion has lost its conceptual teeth. Plus, its chief evangelist, visionary Ray Kurzweil, just got a straight engineering job with Google. Despite its weird fondness for AR goggles and self-driving cars, Google is not going to finance any eschatological cataclysm in which superhuman intelligence abruptly ends the human era. Google is a firmly commercial enterprise. It's just not happening. All the symptoms are absent. Computer hardware is not accelerating on any exponential runway beyond all hope of control. We're no closer to "self-aware" machines than we were in the remote 1960s. Modern wireless devices in a modern Cloud are an entirely different cyber-paradigm than imaginary 1990s "minds on nonbiological substrates" that might allegedly have the "computational power of a human brain." A Singularity has no business model, no major power group in our society is interested in provoking one, nobody who matters sees any reason to create one, there's no there there. So, as a Pope once remarked, "Be not afraid." We're getting what Vinge predicted would happen without a Singularity, which is "a glut of technical riches never properly absorbed." There's all kinds of mayhem in that junkyard, but the AI Rapture isn't lurking in there. It's no more to be fretted about than a landing of Martian tripods.”  Inspired by George Dvorsky, io9 ow.ly/gXH7O Image source Pablo Balbontin Arenas ow.ly/gXH9v Artificial intelligence has jumped the shark (February 2 2013)

Michael Bruce Sterling the 58 year old American science fiction author best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology helping to define the cyberpunk genre has been featured by George Dvorsky in an article published on io9 titled ‘Bruce Sterling Thinks Artificial Intelligence Has Jumped the Shark’. Dvprsky states “…if his recent comments about the potential risks of greater-than-human artificial intelligence — or lack thereof — are any indication, he’s itching to start a giant fight among futurists. …Sterling penned a four paragraph article saying that we shouldn’t fear the onset of super AI because a “Singularity has no business model.” He writes: This aging sci-fi notion has lost its conceptual teeth. Plus, its chief evangelist, visionary Ray Kurzweil, just got a straight engineering job with Google. Despite its weird fondness for AR goggles and self-driving cars, Google is not going to finance any eschatological cataclysm in which superhuman intelligence abruptly ends the human era. Google is a firmly commercial enterprise. It’s just not happening. All the symptoms are absent. Computer hardware is not accelerating on any exponential runway beyond all hope of control. We’re no closer to “self-aware” machines than we were in the remote 1960s. Modern wireless devices in a modern Cloud are an entirely different cyber-paradigm than imaginary 1990s “minds on nonbiological substrates” that might allegedly have the “computational power of a human brain.” A Singularity has no business model, no major power group in our society is interested in provoking one, nobody who matters sees any reason to create one, there’s no there there. So, as a Pope once remarked, “Be not afraid.” We’re getting what Vinge predicted would happen without a Singularity, which is “a glut of technical riches never properly absorbed.” There’s all kinds of mayhem in that junkyard, but the AI Rapture isn’t lurking in there. It’s no more to be fretted about than a landing of Martian tripods.”

 

Inspired by George Dvorsky, io9 ow.ly/gXH7O Image source Pablo Balbontin Arenas ow.ly/gXH9v

 

Zachary "Zack" Kopplin the 19 year old American science education activist from Louisiana  known for his campaigns to keep creationism out of public schools and focuses on separation of church and state causes, has been featured by George Dvorsky in an article published on io9 titled ‘How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists’. Dvorsky states “For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference. Kopplin, who is studying history at Rice University, had good reason to be upset after the passing of the LSEA — an insidious piece of legislation that allows teachers to bring in their own supplemental materials when discussing politically controversial topics like evolution or climate change. Soon after the act was passed, some of his teachers began to not just supplement existing texts, but to rid the classroom of established science books altogether. It was during the process to adopt a new life science textbook in 2010 that creationists barraged Louisiana's State Board of Education with complaints about the evidence-based science texts. Suddenly, it appeared that they were going to be successful in throwing out science textbooks. "This was a pivotal moment for me," Kopplin told io9. "I had always been a shy kid and had never spoken out before — I found myself speaking at a meeting of an advisory committee to the State Board of Education and urging them to adopt good science textbooks — and we won." The LSEA still stood, but at least the science books could stay…”  Inspired by George Dvorsky, io9 ow.ly/gXDfK Image source Facebook ow.ly/gXDbO Making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists (January 29 2013)

Zachary “Zack” Kopplin the 19 year old American science education activist from Louisiana  known for his campaigns to keep creationism out of public schools and focuses on separation of church and state causes, has been featured by George Dvorsky in an article published on io9 titled ‘How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for Louisiana’s creationists’. Dvorsky states “For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest — and most feared — advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he’s making a difference. Kopplin, who is studying history at Rice University, had good reason to be upset after the passing of the LSEA — an insidious piece of legislation that allows teachers to bring in their own supplemental materials when discussing politically controversial topics like evolution or climate change. Soon after the act was passed, some of his teachers began to not just supplement existing texts, but to rid the classroom of established science books altogether. It was during the process to adopt a new life science textbook in 2010 that creationists barraged Louisiana’s State Board of Education with complaints about the evidence-based science texts. Suddenly, it appeared that they were going to be successful in throwing out science textbooks. “This was a pivotal moment for me,” Kopplin told io9. “I had always been a shy kid and had never spoken out before — I found myself speaking at a meeting of an advisory committee to the State Board of Education and urging them to adopt good science textbooks — and we won.” The LSEA still stood, but at least the science books could stay…”

 

Inspired by George Dvorsky, io9 ow.ly/gXDfK Image source Facebook ow.ly/gXDbO

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