Like the more famous Pompei, Herculaneum was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
In 1752, workmen discovered charred papyri and excavations of them started later. Over the years, attempts have been made to open and read them, but they have disintegrated.
Now, using volumetric scanning, the scrolls are beginning to be "unrolled."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculan…
The mRNA technology behind coronavirus vaccines is now being used to create bespoke vaccines for cancer patients.
"Cancer vaccines weren’t a proper field of research before the pandemic. There was nothing. Apart from one exception, pretty much every clinical trial had failed. With the pandemic, however, we proved that mRNA vaccines were possible.
mRNA cancer vaccines work by giving the body instructions to make a harmless piece of a cancer-related protein. This trains the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells carrying that protein. Think of it like a training manual for security guards. The vaccine gives the immune system a guide on what cancer looks like, so it knows exactly who to watch for and remove.
Going from mRNA Covid vaccines to mRNA cancer vaccines is straightforward: same fridges, same protocol, same drug, just a different patient.
In the current trials, we do a biopsy of the patient, sequence the tissue, send it to the pharmaceutical company, and they design a personalized vaccine that’s bespoke to that patient’s cancer. That vaccine is not suitable for anyone else. It’s like science fiction.
The UK was ready. We had fridges and we had world-class manufacturing and research facilities. During the pandemic, we had proven we could open and deliver clinical trials fast. Also, the UK had established a genomic global lead with Genomics England and the 100,000 Genome Project. All doctors and nurses in this country are trained in genomics.
So the UK government signed two partnerships: one with BioNTech to provide 10,000 patients with access to personalized cancer treatments by 2030, and a 10-year investment with Moderna in an innovation and technology center with capacity to produce up to 250 million vaccines. The stars were aligned.
For many years, we believed that research is inherently slow. It used to take 20 years to get a drug to market. Most cancer patients, unfortunately, will succumb by the time a drug gets to market. We showed the world that it could be done in a year if you modernize your process, run parts of the process in parallel, and use digital tools.
We have a trial to stop skin cancer coming back after you cut it out. It’s now completed. We over-recruited again, just like every single one of the trials that we ran, and the trial finished one year ahead of schedule. That’s completely unheard of in cancer trials because they normally run over-long.
What will happen now is that, over the next six to 12 months, we will monitor the people in the trial and work out if there’s a difference between the people who took the cancer vaccine and the ones who didn’t. We’re hoping to have results by the end of the year or beginning of 2026. If it’s successful, we will have invented the first approved personalized mRNA vaccine, within only five years of the first licensed mRNA vaccine for Covid. That’s pretty impressive."
- Dr. Lennard Lee, UK National Health Service oncologist and medical director at the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford
Here it is: The first clear image of an eclipse of the Sun by the Earth, taken from the surface of the Moon.
This is what last night's lunar eclipse looked like from the Blue Ghost lander's perspective on the Moon. Amazing!
flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace… #space #science #art #tech
Credit/copyright: Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost got her first diamond ring! Captured at our landing site in the Moon’s Mare Crisium around 3:30 am CDT, the photo shows the sun about to emerge from totality behind EarthFlickr
I loved working on this article:
The technology in your cell phone has a hidden connection to the stars. Modern computer chips are made using ultraviolet light from vaporized balls of tin--and those balls closely mirror the physics of supernova explosions!
spectrum.ieee.org/euv-light-so… #science #tech #space
The same math that describes supernovas makes EUV lithography possibleJayson Stewart (IEEE Spectrum)
Popular Science has an excellent article on how Josephine Cochrane transformed how dishes are cleaned by inventing an automated dish washing machine and obtaining a patent in 1886. Dishwashers had …Hackaday
Okay, now #trump is claiming to be tackling #toxic #chemical exposure & heralding #RFKJr as the #health secy. This will be very difficult for me to watch. #Liar.
Holy shit, he’s claiming a kid received #transition #medical procedures at school during the school day. Literally impossible.
He says #transgender care is mutilation.
#POS
#PublicHealth #science #medicine #ConspiracyTheories #hate #bigotry #heterosexism #LGBTQIA #HumanRights #CivilRights #FactCheck #TrumpLies
I love rice cookers
youtube.com/watch?v=RSTNhvDGbY…
#Cooking #Food #Rice #RiceCookers #Science
You can support this channel on Patreon! Link below Bet you didn't think a rice cooker was so interesting, did ya?Links! Get your links! Hot, fresh, links...YouTube
We can now safely say, asteroid 2024 YR4 is not coming for us after all.
Latest observations indicate that the asteroid has just a 0.0039% risk of hitting Earth in 2032. But there's still a small chance it could hit the Moon.
cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/deta… #science #space #2024YR4
NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) web-site. Data related to Earth impact risk, close-approaches, and much more.cneos.jpl.nasa.gov
This is what an erupting volcano looks like from space.
Credit: NASA Johnson
More details: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/imag…
A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station in 2009 offered the astronauts a striking view of the volcano in an early stage of eruption.earthobservatory.nasa.gov
Fellow comrades in #academia - there’s a very cool project launching called Science Homecoming, that allows you to find local papers from your hometown and encourages you to pitch them an opinion piece about the current attacks on #science and #highered.
I pitched a piece to my hometown paper and they got back to me in about 10 minutes saying they definitely wanted to see it. So think this is a simple thing to do with high impact potential
More info here 👇
sciencehomecoming.com/
I've been seeing hate on NASA lately, being bought into by leftists even, and I just want to point out something very important:
Musk has hated NASA for a *long* time. There is a reason it is being attacked, and a reason public opinion is being swayed against NASA: It *keeps SpaceX in line* more than anything else.
NASA is being seen as "competition" to SpaceX, as the obstacle in his way. It has been like this for quite some time, and now, with DOGE and other things, he can do something about it.
I would like to point out a few things:
1. SPACEX IS NOT CHEAPER
They boast they can "do what NASA does for 10% the cost!" Sure, it's easy when you did none of the R&D.
SpaceX saved on:
Landing tech: DC-X project in 1991-1996
Tank structure: Shuttle SLWT tank, 1998-2011
Merlin Engines: direct descendant of the Fastrac Engine, 1997-2001.
Those three things alone saved SpaceX over 90% of the R&D costs. It's easy to "appear" cheap when you're using off the shelf tech someone else (NASA!) developed.
2. NASA IS GREAT FOR THE ECONOMY!
For every $1 spent on NASA, $8 is put into economy. Its stupid to not invest in that kind of ROI! 800%! At times, its ROI Has been 1600%!
Simply put, if you defund NASA, the economy would shrink so much you would actually have to RAISE taxes to make up for the lost revenue, and without its existence we would be 30 years behind in technology and the quality of life for everyone would be much lower. Science and research is GOOD for society, it's the fuel for all progress.
3. WHAT HAS NASA DONE FOR ME?! (Surely you just mean NASA is good for tech & science folk....)
Nope! Good for all!
Ever have an MRI or CAT Scan? They wouldn't exist without the Apollo program! The software that made them possible was originally written to analyze lunar photography.
Low power digital x-Rays was planetary body research.
Heart pumps are modeled after space shuttle turbopumps.
The software that designed your car was originally written to design spacecraft!
Who do you think pioneered all the early research into alternative power like solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, and durable batteries? NASA!
NASA developed tech and satellites is also what improves agricultural yields while reducing the needs for water, fertilizer, and pesticides.
Do you really think Musk gives two shits? No. He wants the money, he wants to let SpaceX run amok without any oversight for safety, without any "competition".
All fights are important, but do realise that this one is a huge thorn in his side, and one that is keeping a huge problem from ballooning and swallowing us all whole.
Do not be fooled or swayed by lies, of tactics meant to divide, of things being done to make you be angry at NASA. If he can make you hate NASA, he won.
Expect far more space junk to fall, the night sky to be ruined by satellites, and the loss of all things good that proper research and design does for humanity and gives back to the world. Not to mention: enjoy seeing the horrible things he can accomplish fully unchecked.
ETA: Now that you know, call / fax / email your senators and reps, and whatever else too! Boosting gets people thinking, but thinking is not action!
#SpaceX #nasa #space #earth #science #technology
These 2 papers provide compelling empirical evidence that competition in #science leads to sloppy work being preferentially published in hi-ranking journals:
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1…
academic.oup.com/qje/advance-a…
Using the example of structural #biology , the authors report that scientists overestimate the damage of being scooped, leading to corner-cutting and sloppy work in the race to be first. Faster scientists then end up publishing sloppier work in higher-ranking journals.
You've probably heard that "we are stardust," but this graphic breaks it down further & tells you what kind of stars your dust came from--and which elements didn't come from stars at all.
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13873/ #science #nature #space
This periodic table depicts the primary source on Earth for each element. In cases where two sources contribute fairly equally, both appear. || PeriodicTableOrigins2_print.jpg (1024x682) [251.7 KB] || PeriodicTableOrigins2_Large.NASA Scientific Visualization Studio
One of the largest federal #science funding bodies in the World leaves Elon's Xitshow
DFG verlässt Plattform X
J. J. Thomson, who was born #OTD in 1856, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906 for his discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be found.
Thomson was also a teacher, and seven of his students went on to win Nobel Prizes: Ernest Rutherford, Lawrence Bragg, Charles Barkla, Francis Aston, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Owen Richardson and Edward Victor Appleton.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Th…
Books by J.J. Thomson at PG:
gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/38…
Project Gutenberg offers 74,754 free eBooks for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, and iPhone.Project Gutenberg
"I found that penguins differed in their reactions to being hoisted between human legs. Some were calm, mildly befuddled at how they got a foot off the ground. Others acted as if they were possessed, squirming and slapping and biting. Penguins are beefy birds, sleek bullets of swimming muscle, torpedoes of power, and they slapped impressively hard."
nautil.us/my-life-with-the-pen…
#Antarctica #Penguins #Marine #Birds #Science
How I came to feel at home in what some call the last wilderness on Earth—Antarctica.Naira de Gracia (Nautilus)
Britain's oldest tree says fuck you to JK Rowling and, after being a male for thousands of years, began producing female fruit.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home…
#science #sex #jkrowling #terfs #sexisnonbinary #TransRightsAreHumanRights
The Fortingall Yew is thought to be older than StonehengeAlexandra Sims (The Independent)
Mária Telkes died #OTD in 1980. She was a Hungarian-American biophysicist, engineer, & inventor who worked on solar energy technologies.
During World War II, she developed a solar water distillation device, deployed at the end of the war, which saved the lives of downed airmen and torpedoed sailors. In the 1940s she and architect Eleanor Raymond created one of the first solar-heated houses, Dover Sun House, by storing energy each day.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1r…
#science #technology #WomenInSTEM
When we interact with a chatbot, deeply ingrained habits make us behave as if it’s a person.The Conversation
Matching dinosaur footprints in Cameroon and Brazil record a time when Africa and South America were still connected & herds could wander between them.
I'm not saying the very same dinosaur was stomping around in both Cameroon and Brazil...but it's possible.
nytimes.com/2024/08/28/science…
#science #history #nature #dinosaurs
More than 260 similar footprints found in Brazil and Cameroon help us understand a region that broke apart millions of years ago.Alexandra E. Petri (The New York Times)
Taking a break from awful things:
Scientists taught rats to drive cars. The rats quickly learned to rev the engine and take longer routes just for fun.
Bonus: Watch the researcher do a little happy leap when the rat gets into the car.
theconversation.com/im-a-neuro… #science #tech
Equipped with a rodent version of a Cybertruck, these driving rats reveal that positive experiences may sculpt the brain just as powerfully as stressful onesThe Conversation
"Incorporating wood sawdust and chips into field soils stimulates fungal growth. In particular, incorporation of hardwood material resulted in rapid and long-term stimulation of fungal filamentous growth. The fungi that develop are not the wood rot basidiomycetes found in forests but ascomycetes (sac fungi) that have easy access to the cellulose polymers in shredded wood."
"Stimulating fungi through wood addition fits well with more sustainable agriculture. It suppresses plant pathogenic fungi and the excess nitrogen, which might otherwise wash out, is captured by the fungi. It also increases the overall diversity of soil life by providing fungal-eating soil creatures with a food source."
nioo.knaw.nl/en/news/the-hidde…
#Fungi #Microbes #Soil #Environment #Nature #Science #Biodiversity #FungiFriday
Of all the components of dead plants, wood is the hardest to break down. How come fungi know how to do this? What issues did they need to solve to achieve this? The Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) tries to find answers to these questions…nioo.knaw.nl
👉 "The core issue is that open source contributors are not paid fairly. 60% of open-source maintainers are unpaid volunteers, and just 13% make a living as professional project maintainers, according to the 2023 State of the Open Source Maintainer Report."
Boosts appreciated 🚀
➡️ infoworld.com/article/3557846/…
#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #SoftwareLibre #Business #KDE #Research #Science #NLnet #softwareDevelopment
Experts with deep experience across open-source software communities share their opinions on how to sustain this critical ecosystem.Bill Doerrfeld (InfoWorld)
What is "Amoc" and why is it so important?
_________________________________________
The dangers of a collapse of the main Atlantic Ocean circulation, known as Amoc, have been “greatly underestimated” and would have devastating and irreversible impacts, according to an open letter released by 44 experts from 15 countries.
There are indications that Amoc has been slowing down for the last 60 or 70 years due to global heating. The most ominous sign is the cold blob over the northern Atlantic. The region is the only place in the world that has cooled in the past 20 years or so, while everywhere else on the planet has warmed – a sign of reduced heat transport into that region, exactly what climate computer models have predicted in response to Amoc slowing as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
Another indicator is a reduction in the salt content of seawater. In the cold blob region, salinity is at its lowest level since measurements began 120 years ago. This is probably linked to Amoc slowing down and bringing less salty water and heat from the subtropics.
It is an amplifying feedback: as Amoc gets weaker, the oceans gets less salty, and as the oceans gets less salty, then Amoc gets weaker. At a certain point this becomes a vicious cycle which continues by itself until Amoc has died, even if we stop pushing the system with further emissions.
The big unknown here – the billion-dollar question – is how far away this tipping point is. It is very difficult to answer because the process is non-linear and would be triggered by subtle differences in salinity, which in turn depend on amounts of rainfall and cloud cover over the ocean as well as Greenland melting rates. These are hard to model accurately in computers so there is a big uncertainty relating to when the tipping point will be reached.
_________________________________________
FULL ARTICLE -- theguardian.com/environment/20…
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
A fireball streaked by while Yasutaka Saika was taking a photograph of Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, producing this beautiful, accidental celestial alignment.
Captured on Oct 24 from Tereske, Hungary.
facebook.com/yasutaka.saika/ #space #science #astronomy #photography
Yasutaka Saika je na Facebooku. Přidejte se na Facebook a spojte se s Yasutakou Saikou a dalšími lidmi, které znáte. Facebook dává lidem příležitost sdílet a dělá tak svět otevřenější a propojenější.www.facebook.com
Space, the final frontier. Our solar system is in space, right? This BBC series gets into the nitty gritty of Earth, asteroids, moons and the other planets near us. Maybe it doesn't sound like edge of your seat stuff but Brian Cox does his best to keep your attention. Cox simplifies complicated concepts while he tries to figure out how life began here while postulating about where else life could be found. BBC 2 on iPlayer.
#tv #space #science #astronomy
Professor Brian Cox explores planets and moons erupting with fire and ice.BBC
Who Will Care for Americans Left Behind by #Climate Migration?
—
#HurricaneHelene was the latest in a generation of storms that are intensifying faster and dumping more rain as the climate warms. It's precisely the kind of event expected to drive more Americans to relocate as climate change gets worse — leaving behind those who are older, poorer and more vulnerable.
#News #ClimateChange #Hurricane #ExtremeWeather #Migration #Science #Flood
You get excited about sending your robotic submarine to the very bottom of Mariana's Trench anxious at the rare wonders you'll encounter, perhaps for the first time, and this is what you see miles below the ocean surface.
#Science #Oceanogrophy #Microplastics
What a cool astrophotography winner in the "People and Space" category.
Oh look, that's the International Space Station in front of the Sun! (Credit: Tom Williams)
#astronomy #science #photography
The 2024 winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year are out...and they are spectacular.
Here's the overall winner: a time-sequence of a solar eclipse that shows deepening shadows from mountains on the Moon. (Credit: Ryan Imperio)
rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-p…. #science #space #photography #nature
Brand-new pics of planet Mercury, just in from the European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft!
esa.int/Science_Exploration/Sp… #space #science #astronomy #ESA
I really love this description of a retracted study: not only does it explain what was retracted (turns out men don't generally divorce their sick wives), but also it covers what the error was (a coding problem treated people who left the study as divorced) how it all went down (someone tried to replicate, asked for data and didn't get the same analysis. Contacted the authors and they were horrified and immediately worked to retract).
It's a really nice story of why replication matters and how to be good at science. This is how I was taught science should work, but I rarely come across such good retrospectives.
retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21…
A widely reported finding that the risk of divorce increases when wives fall ill — but not when men do — is invalid, thanks to a short string of mistaken coding that negates the origina…Retraction Watch
Roger Hallam is one of the founders of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, and a leader in the fight against global climate change. I would like you to read this statement he posted yesterday… 🧵1/4
_______________________
I've just been sentenced to 5 years in prison.
The longest ever for nonviolent action.
The 'crime'?
Giving a talk on civil disobedience as an effective, evidence-based method for stopping the elite from putting enough carbon in the atmosphere to send us to extinction.
I have given hundreds of similar speeches encouraging nonviolent action and have never been arrested for it. This time I was an advisor to the M25 motorway disruption, recommending the action to go ahead to wake up the British public to societal collapse.
I was not part of the planning or action itself.
In the trial, I swore before God to tell the truth. The truth is the science. The science is clear. We're heading for billions of deaths and ecological collapse. To prove this, I presented the jury with a 250-page dossier of leading scientists' research as evidence in my defence. This was denied by the judge as an invalid - climate science is now illegal in the British courtroom.
I then began to speak about the apocalyptic conditions humanity faces - floods, wildfires, mass heat deaths - and was silenced by the judge. He sent out the jury and threatened to arrest me if I didn't stop. Instead, I stayed in the dock and argued that until I was given the right to complete my defence – I would not move. Even the prosecution tried to argue in my defence and the judge let me continue.
When the jury had shuffled in again, I spoke about the legal concept of “equality of arms” – that as the prosecution had had a right to lay facts over a whole week, I also wanted an equal opportunity. I spoke of various cases where juries had acquitted defendants when they had heard the facts, such as the Extinction Rebellion cracking of Shell's windows in 2018 as a reasonable action against criminal destruction. The Dutch Supreme Court has even said that all governments have a legal obligation to prevent the emission of greenhouse gases. Whilst the prosecution accepted that emissions pose an existential threat, for the first time in British history no less, they still tried to convict us for public nuisance rather than praise us for trying to stop those emissions. Given the objectivity of existential threat, there were overwhelming grounds to be involved in a plan to cause some disruption to the M25.
In the British law on public nuisance, there is a ‘reasonable excuse’ clause. Science says there is an overwhelming threat to my life, my children, you and your children. To argue there is not a reasonable excuse directly defies the wish of this legislation. Things are happening that cause harm – people are engaged in physical acts to stop that harm – it doesn’t matter whether it’s a protest or not.
As I began to offer up some case law, the judge kept intervening telling me I was “wasting my time” and ordering the jury to disregard me. To illustrate that I was not talking about my motivations but speaking about real necessity, I referred to a famous case over a decision to operate on conjoined twins with the likelihood that one would die. In this dilemma, I quoted the 19th Century principle that the action was necessary if the threat faced was inevitable and irrevocable, that no more should be done than essential, and that it must be proportionate. I argued that there was a “duress of circumstances” including the objective danger I’ve experienced as a farmer unable to grow food, and the global significance of “food insecurity” – a euphemism for famine and starvation.
There has never been a moment in history where ‘necessity’ has been more supported by objective facts – more than 10,000 scientific and peer-reviewed papers, indicating an outcome of mass starvation and death from man-made climate collapse.
In response, Judge Hehir called for an early lunch and dismissed the jury. He turned to me and warned that I wasn't a lawyer and that “this is not the Roger Hallam show”.
He then gave me just 15 more minutes to put forward my “beliefs” - a totally fucking incoherent statement. This isn’t belief - it’s the objective threat of destruction of property and livelihoods of billions of people and the secondary effects of famine i.e. war, rape, and torture.
_______________________
That's Part 1 of 4. Read the next below...
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ClimateJustice
