Octopus Overlords

According to a University news post, the researchers in question have developed an entirely new type of bandage that could "dramatically speed up healing." Apparently, the bandage uses energy generated from a patient's body motions to apple "gentle electrical pulses" to an injury.

During rodent tests, researchers discovered that healing times could be reduced down to as few as three days, which is significantly shorter than the "normal healing process" that lasts around two weeks

Unconscious processes greatly control our consciousness. Where you direct your attention, what you remember and the ideas you have, what you filter out from the flood of stimuli that bombard you, how you interpret them and what goals you pursue—all these result from automatic processes. Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia considers this reliance on the unconscious to be the price that we pay for survival as a species. If we were forced always to consider every aspect of the situation around us and had to weigh all our options about what to do, humankind would have died out long ago. The autopilot in our brain—not consciousness—makes us what we are.

The real mastermind that solves problems and ensures our survival, then, is the unconscious. It is understandable that people tend to distrust the unconscious, given that it seems uncontrollable. How are we supposed to be in control of something when we do not even know when and how it influences us? Nevertheless, the arrangement works.

Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 11:25 pm This is kinda neat: 35 years ago, Isaac Asimov predicted the world of 2019.

All I'll say is that people were more optimistic in 1983. If you asked eminent writers today to predict the world of 2054, you'd get a much grimmer outlook than what Ike foresaw back then.

Unless you're over 60, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 8:44 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Dec 29, 2018 11:25 pm This is kinda neat: 35 years ago, Isaac Asimov predicted the world of 2019.

All I'll say is that people were more optimistic in 1983. If you asked eminent writers today to predict the world of 2054, you'd get a much grimmer outlook than what Ike foresaw back then.

1983 is late for optimism. The turnover was some point during the late SF New Wave, when we flipped from Foundation to Neuromancer.

From Twitter, some time ago:

Unless you're over 60, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go.

We report, with review of the literature, the case of a patient who developed a subcutaneous abscess after intravenously injecting his own semen in an attempt to treat longstanding back pain. He had devised this “cure” independent of medical advice. This is the first reported case of semen injection for use as a medical treatment.

Smoove_B wrote:Since I have a reputation to maintain, enjoy this "semenly harmless" journal article:

We report, with review of the literature, the case of a patient who developed a subcutaneous abscess after intravenously injecting his own semen in an attempt to treat longstanding back pain. He had devised this “cure” independent of medical advice. This is the first reported case of semen injection for use as a medical treatment.

Spoiler: Injecting yourself with your own semen doesn't treat back pain, FYI.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:47 am Of course it didn't help his back pain, he injected it into his arm!

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:24 am Since I have a reputation to maintain, enjoy this "semenly harmless" journal article:

We report, with review of the literature, the case of a patient who developed a subcutaneous abscess after intravenously injecting his own semen in an attempt to treat longstanding back pain. He had devised this “cure” independent of medical advice. This is the first reported case of semen injection for use as a medical treatment.

Spoiler: Injecting yourself with your own semen doesn't treat back pain, FYI.

Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Jan 18, 2019 12:36 am Yeah, that's pretty fast. Now zoom out and watch light travel to the moon and back (to scale).

Spoiler:

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 10:17 pm they'll have a cure for cancer in a year. With no side effects.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:36 pm Chemicals in food wrappers and packaging linked to weight gain:

Chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—used frequently in fast-food wrappers and other products for their oil- and water-repellant properties—have been linked to hormone disruption, immune dysfunction, high cholesterol and even cancer. Now, a new study suggests that exposure to the chemicals could make it harder to keep weight off after dieting.

In the same way we wonder why people thought it was ok to dye clothing with arsenic or impregnate wallpaper with DDT, I now fully believe that a hundred years from now they're going to wonder why we never figured out how all these chemicals were slowly killing us.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday unveiled what officials called a historic effort to rein in a class of long-lasting chemicals that scientists say pose serious health risks. But environmental and public health groups, some lawmakers and residents of contaminated communities said the agency’s “action plan” isn’t aggressive enough and that the EPA should move more quickly to regulate the chemicals in the nation’s drinking water.

The EPA promised last spring to devise a plan to address the widespread contamination caused by perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS, which have been detected in the drinking water of millions of Americans. The agency’s leader at the time, Scott Pruitt, called the problem “a national emergency.”

The man-made chemicals have long been used in an array of consumer products, from water-repellent fabrics to nonstick cookware to grease-resistant paper products, as well as in firefighting foams used at airports and on military bases. Long-term exposures have been associated with an array of health problems, including thyroid disease, weakened immunity, infertility risks and certain cancers. Because they do not break down in the environment, they have become known as “forever chemicals.”

Unagi wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 9:50 am Is it just me, or is that almost EXACTLY the speed of the original Pong game?

A paper published Monday in a well-known science journal begins with the following sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a pair of grape hemispheres exposed to intense microwave radiation will spark, igniting a plasma.” A universally acknowledged truth indeed... but what causes this microwave marvel?

If you’re not familiar, putting grapes into a microwave to make sparks has become a popular YouTube trick. This new research from Canadian scientists shows that worthwhile advances can come from anywhere, even by studying something sort of silly.

“This is a regime that hasn’t been significantly studied before,” one of the paper’s authors, Pablo Bianucci from Concordia University in Montreal, told Gizmodo.

The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals — guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively.

Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA.

In a study published on 22 February in Science, a consortium of researchers led by Steven Benner, founder of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, suggests that an expanded genetic alphabet could, in theory, also support life.
...
For a long time, scientists have tried to add more pairs of these chemicals, also known as bases, to this genetic code. For example, Benner first created ‘unnatural’ bases in the 1980s. Other groups have followed, with Romesberg’s lab making headlines in 2014 after inserting a pair of unnatural bases into a living cell.

But the latest study is the first to systematically demonstrate that the complementary unnatural bases recognise and bind to each other, and that the double helix that they form holds its structure.
...
By adjusting these holes and prongs, the team has come up with several new pairs of bases, including a pair named S and B, and another called P and Z. In the latest paper, they describe how they combine these four synthetic bases with the natural ones. The researchers call the resulting eight-letter language ‘hachimoji’ after the Japanese words for ‘eight’ and ‘letter’. The additional bases are each similar in shape to one of the natural four, but have variations in their bonding patterns.

Merryman told NPR's "All Things Considered" in 2013, "It was late 1965 and Jack Kilby, my boss, presented the idea of a calculator. He called some people in his office. He says, we'd like to have some sort of computing device, perhaps to replace the slide rule. It would be nice if it were as small as this little book that I have in my hand."

Merryman added, "Silly me, I thought we were just making a calculator, but we were creating an electronic revolution."

stessier wrote:These are some amazing pictures of shockwaves that NASA was able to get.



Two more at the link.

Shock waves and streamlines over a 20° half-angle wedge at (a) Mach 2 and (b) Mach 20 [from Anderson, 2000]
...
Traveling at the speed of sound makes the ratio equal one and results in a Mach angle of ninety degrees. At transonic speeds the shock wave is a wall of high pressure moving with the object, perpendicular to its velocity. Above the speed of sound, the ratio is less than one and the Mach angle is less than ninety degrees. The faster the object moves, the narrower the cone of high pressure behind it becomes. Measuring the vertex angle is thus a simple way to determine the speed of a supersonic object.

It may be hard to imagine towering Tyrannosaurus rex as tiny, but the toothy Cretaceous giant didn't spring from an egg fully grown. In fact, T. rex hatchlings were about the size of very skinny turkeys, with "arms" that were longer in proportion to their tiny bodies than in adults. And each baby T. rex was covered in a coat of downy feathers.

What's more, T. rex's feathers likely grew along the animal's head and tail into adulthood, according to new reconstructions that represent the most accurate models of the dinosaur to date.

These and many more T. rex surprises abound in T. rex: The Ultimate Predator, a new exhibit opening March 11 at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City.