Scientists unearth ancient Papua New Guinea artifacts in the highlands of the island that settle a longstanding archaeological argument regarding the emergence of complex culture on the island.
About 10,000 years ago, the climate changed to better suit the planting of crops and the Neolithic revolution that brought about agriculture emerged in different parts of the world at different times. In Europe and Asia it is known that at this time cultural complexity developed as people began settling and living together on farms.
But archaeologists have now discovered buried artifacts on the island of Papua New Guinea, which suggest ancient people began farming and making tools, arts and crafts around the same time as their Eurasian contemporaries.
Terahertz (THz) waves fall between microwave and infrared radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum, oscillating at frequencies of between 100 billion and 30 trillion cycles per second. These waves are prized for their distinctive properties: they can penetrate paper, clothing, wood and walls, as well as detect air pollution. THz sources could revolutionize security and medical imaging systems. What’s more, their ability to carry vast quantities of data could hold the key to faster wireless communications.
THz waves are a type of non-ionizing radiation, meaning they pose no risk to human health. The technology is already used in some airports to scan passengers and detect dangerous objects and substances.
Despite holding great promise, THz waves are not widely used because they are costly and cumbersome to generate. But new technology developed by researchers at EPFL could change all that. The team at the Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics Research Laboratory (POWERlab), led by Prof. Elison Matioli, built a nanodevice that can generate extremely high-power signals in just a few picoseconds, or one trillionth of a second, which produces high-power THz waves.
Since the start of deliveries, we have been learning more details about the new electric SUV through Tesla releasing Model Y support videos and the owner’s manual.
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has developed a new photosynthetic protein system enabling an enhanced and more sustainable approach to solar-powered technological devices.
The initiative is part of a broader effort in the field of synthetic biology to use proteins in place of man-made materials which are often scarce, expensive and can be harmful to the environment when the device becomes obsolete.
The aim of the study, published today in Nature Communications, was the development of “chimera” photosynthetic complexes that display poly-chromatic solar energy harvesting.
Those were the days. In the last couple of weeks, and especially in the last week, those issues have largely disappeared as what is now a pandemic takes hold in the United States and many other nations. But while many parts of the economy have ground to a halt, like retail and tourism, the effects on the space industry have been uneven. Some parts of it have also effectively halted, yet others continue ahead at essentially full speed—at least for now.
The first clear signs of the effects of the pandemic on the industry was bringing the circuit of conferences and other events to a standstill. On March 9, the Satellite 2020 conference got underway in Washington despite growing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, including the first cases diagnosed in the city. Conference organizers plowed ahead even as some major companies, like satellite operator SES, bowed out, saying only about 10 percent of attendees as 12 percent of exhibitors had cancelled their plans.
No Autonomous Trucks? Wait, What? ‘…it resembled conventional human-operated transportation vehicles, but with one exception — there was no driver’s cabin.’ — Philip K. Dick, 1955.
Elon Musk’s Traffic Tunnel Challenge Is Boring ‘The car vibrated… threading the maze of local tubes.’ — Jack Vance, 1954.
HVSD, Kitty Hawk’s Electric Plane Very quiet commuter plane offers VTOL service.
A “highly pathogenic” strain of the H5N1 bird flu has been reported in China’s Hunan province, Chinese officials said, according to a Saturday report from Reuters.
The outbreak was reported on a farm in the city of Shaoyang in the Hunan province, according to China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Of the 7,850 chickens on the farm where the outbreak occurred, 4,500 died of the H5N1 avian flu, Reuters reported.
The Chinese government said it culled 17,828 chickens as a result of the H5N1 outbreak, per Reuters.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an American oncologist and bioethicist who is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress as well as Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said on MSNBC on Friday, March 20, that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told him it would probably take 8–10 weeks to get ventilator production started at his factories (he’s working on this at Tesla and SpaceX).
I reached out to Musk for clarification on that topic and he replied that, “We have 250k N95 masks. Aiming to start distributing those to hospitals tomorrow night. Should have over 1000 ventilators by next week.” With medical supplies such as these being one of the biggest bottlenecks and challenges at the moment in the COVID-19 response in the United States (as well as elsewhere) — something that is already having a very real effect on medical professionals and patient care — the support will surely be received with much gratitude. That said, while there has been much attention put on the expected future need for ventilators, very few places reportedly have a shortage of them right now. In much greater need at the moment are simpler supplies like N95 masks, which must be why Tesla/SpaceX is providing 250,000 of them.
Dr. Emanuel also said in the segment of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” he was on that we probably need 8–12 weeks (2–3 months) of social distancing in the US in order to deal with COVID-19 as a society. However, he also expects that the virus will come back and we’ll basically have a roller coaster of “social restrictions, easing up, social restrictions, easing up … to try to smooth out the demand on the health care system.”
Trapping a molecule inside a liquid helium nanodrop allows clean measurements of the molecule’s vibrations.
The solvent in which a molecule is suspended can strongly influence the molecule’s motion. Now researchers have demonstrated that a molecule dissolved inside a superfluid helium nanodrop experiences very little effect from the solvent. The researchers measured, with femtosecond resolution, the intramolecular vibrations of an indium dimer (In2) in a helium nanodrop. They say that their method could be used to study molecules relevant for light-harvesting technologies, such as solar cells, that have been difficult to observe because of solvent effects.
