Science & TechnologyS


Roses

Do plants feel pain? Scientists conduct experiments to find out

Arjun Walia
Collective Evolution
Wed, 09 May 2018 13:49 UTC
plants
The study of plants and other lifeforms on the planet is shedding light on concepts that were already known in our ancient world. Everything on our planet is alive. Just because it is living in a different form than we are, and has different biological processes than we do, does not mean that these lifeforms do not possess consciousness or that they cannot think, feel, and react.

If you told somebody that plants can feel pain, they might think you are nuts, but the truth is - an enormous amount of research has been conducted by plant scientists, and much of it clearly shows how plants have some remarkable abilities to react to and sense the world around them. Some plant scientists insist that yes, plants are intelligent, they learn, remember, and again, react. So, it's not far off to suggest that they might even feel pain. There are also studies suggesting that plants can learn from experience.
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Info

Cells speak in a language similar to viruses

Carrie Arnold
Quanta Magazine
Mon, 14 May 2018 12:04 UTC
flu virus
Live viruses may seem completely different from the message-carrying vesicles that cells release. But a vast population of particles intermediate between the two hints at their deep evolutionary connection.

For cells, communication is a matter of life and death. The ability to tell other members of your species - or other parts of the body - that food supplies are running low or that an invading pathogen is near can be the difference between survival and extinction. Scientists have known for decades that cells can secrete chemicals into their surroundings, releasing a free-floating message for all to read. More recently, however, scientists discovered that cells could package their molecular information in what are known as extracellular vesicles. Like notes passed by children in class, the information packaged in an extracellular vesicle is folded and delivered to the recipient.

The past five years have seen an explosion of research into extracellular vesicles. As scientists uncovered the secrets about how the vesicles are made, how they package their information and how they're released, it became clear that there are powerful similarities between vesicles and viruses.
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Fire

Worldwide volcanic activity raises concerns of US West Coast's chain of 13 active volcanoes


AP News
Sun, 13 May 2018 16:01 UTC
Mount Rainier
© AP Photo/Ted S. WarrenIn this May 7, 2018 photo, Mount Rainier is seen at dusk and framed by the Murray Morgan Bridge in downtown Tacoma, Wash. The eruption of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has geologic experts along the West Coast warily eyeing the volcanic peaks in Washington, Oregon and California, including Rainier, that are part of the Pacific Ocean’s ring of fire.
The eruption of a Hawaii volcano in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" has experts warily eyeing volcanic peaks on America's West Coast that are also part of the geologically active region.

The West Coast is home to an 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) chain of 13 volcanoes , from Washington state's Mount Baker to California's Lassen Peak. They include Mount St. Helens, whose spectacular 1980 eruption in the Pacific Northwest killed dozens of people and sent volcanic ash across the country, and massive Mount Rainier, which towers above the Seattle metro area.

"There's lots of anxiety out there," said Liz Westby, geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. "They see destruction, and people get nervous."

Kilauea, on Hawaii's Big Island, is threatening to blow its top in coming days or weeks after sputtering lava for a week, forcing about 2,000 people to evacuate, destroying two dozen homes and threatening a geothermal plant. Experts fear the volcano could hurl ash and boulders the size of refrigerators miles into the air.


Comment: Kilaeua's newest fissure roars to life propelling lava four storeys high in dramatic uptick in activity


Comment: There is good reason to be concerned: For more, check out SOTTs monthly documentary: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - April 2018: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs

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Microscope 1

Stem cells could reveal how Neanderthal DNA works in modern humans

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Fri, 11 May 2018 12:00 UTC
neaderthal suit
© DPA Picture Alliance Archive / Alamy Stock Photo
We could soon find out how the Neanderthal DNA many of us carry actually affects us. It turns out that stem cells, which have been hyped as a way to treat incurable diseases, can also be used to examine what Neanderthal genes do.

Since 2010 evidence has been growing that many living people carry tiny amounts of Neanderthal DNA in their cells. It's been suggested that this Neanderthal DNA has all sorts of effects, from our immune systems to skin colour. But it's hard to be sure what it's really doing.

Now Gray Camp and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany say they have found a way to study how Neanderthal DNA works in living humans in unprecedented detail.

Comment: This is presuming that Neanderthal stem cells will behave in the way scientists expect them too. Because there is still so much we don't know about DNA and, after all, it wasn't long ago many scientists were proclaiming a huge portion of it to be junk! See also:

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Galaxy

Rogue stars seen zooming through Milky Way may have originated outside our galaxy

Anil Ananthaswamy
New Scientist
Wed, 09 May 2018 15:28 UTC
Fast stars
© Pluto/Alamy Stock PhotoFast stars whipped to high speed by a black hole or supernova
At least two intergalactic interlopers are hurtling through our galaxy at more than 700 kilometres per second. These stars from outside the Milky Way are among almost 30 runaways that have been spotted in a treasure trove of data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite mission.

The Gaia satellite has been charting the stars for years in an effort to make the largest 3D map of our galaxy. On 25 April, Gaia released its second batch of data on 1.7 billion stars. For a subset of 7 million, Gaia measured how fast they are moving away from or towards Earth.

Of these, Tommaso Marchetti and colleagues at Leiden University in the Netherlands looked for hypervelocity stars, those travelling at speeds greater than 450 kilometres per second. They found 165 candidates.

The team calculated that 28 have a greater than 50 per cent chance of escaping our galaxy's gravitational pull. "They are basically flying away forever from the Milky Way," says Marchetti.
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Compass

China's first home-built aircraft carrier heads out for sea trials


RT
Sun, 13 May 2018 15:48 UTC
China's first domestic-built aircraft carrier
China's first domestic-built aircraft carrier has been sent on its first voyage for sea trials, according to Chinese media. It's the latest development in Beijing's mission to modernize its military.

The 77,000-ton Type 001A carrier left a shipyard in the northeastern port of Dalian at 6:45am local time on Sunday, Xinhua reported. It sailed out to sea half an hour later.

The sea trials will test the reliability and stability of the vessel's power system and other equipment, according to sources cited by Xinhua. Once it is in service, it will be able to accommodate China's Shenyang J-15 fighter jets.
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2 + 2 = 4

Schizophrenia affects your body, not just your brain

Toby Pillinger
The Conversation
Sun, 13 May 2018 13:29 UTC
mind and body
© 777888/Shutterstock.com
Schizophrenia is considered a disorder of the mind, influencing the way a person thinks, feels and behaves. But our latest research shows that organs, other than the brain, also change at the onset of the disease.

Scientists have known for a long time that people with schizophrenia have much higher rates of physical illness compared with the general population, and this contributes to startlingly high rates of premature death. People with the disorder die 15 to 20 years earlier than the average person.

Comment: Also see: The sound of psychosis

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Bizarro Earth

The effect of volcanoes on climate and climate on volcanoes

Andy May
WUWT
Thu, 10 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Kilauea volcano
© volcanoes.usgs.gov
The relationship between volcanoes and climate is a very complex one. From reading the media one gets the impression that they are some sort of climatic wild card. They are used to explain the cooling after the Pinatubo eruption, or the Little Ice Age cooling as a detriment to the solar hypothesis. But they are also used to explain the warming leading to mass extinctions in the distant past.

To be able to fulfill such a dual role, scientists take advantage of the different gas emissions from volcanoes. About 50-90 % of the gas emitted by volcanoes is water vapor. The rest is highly variable from one volcano to another, but CO2 can be 1-40 %, SO2 1-25 %, H2S 1-10 %, and HCl 1-10 %, plus a lot of other minor gases. H2S gets quickly oxidized to SO2.

Comment: See also:

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2 + 2 = 4

Researchers find that conspiracy theorists are not necessarily paranoid

Eric W. Dolan
Psy Post
Sat, 12 May 2018 23:57 UTC
A new study from psychologists Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz helps to untangle the relationship between belief in conspiracy theories and paranoia.
tin foil hat tinfoil conspiracy theories
© afxhome
The researchers found that conspiracy theorists are not necessarily paranoid. While paranoid people believe that almost everybody is out to get them, conspiracist believe that a few powerful people are out to get everybody. Their findings were published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Comment:

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2 + 2 = 4

Survey says: Cocaine delivered to homes quicker than pizza


RT
Sat, 12 May 2018 17:28 UTC
cocaine
© Mohssen Assanimoghaddam / Global Look Press
A study run by the 2018 Global Drug Survey has revealed that a third of cocaine sniffers around the world say that home delivery of the drug has become so efficient that you can get it "more quickly than pizza."

The study says that just like other commodities, more and more people expect drugs to be delivered quickly to their door. According to the survey, which examined the lifestyle of 130,000 drug addicts and 15,000 cocaine users in 44 countries, 30.3 percent reported they could get cocaine in just half an hour, while only half of pizza deliveries are made within the same time frame.
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