An AI-assisted robot can listen to spoken commands and assemble 3D objects such as chairs and tables out of reusable building blocks

Scientists say geoengineering, or doing things like intentionally increasing Earth’s reflectivity or blocking the sun, is a “really big deal” in slowing down climate change. Here are the ideas they are proposing.

Apple Music gives a whole new meaning to the phrase the hits just keep on coming.  It’s not the opposing candidates, it’s public AI systems that are spreading election disinformation, and LockBit, the cybercriminal gang may be back from the dead and saying so long to the ChatGPT plugins, which went from innovation to legacy […]

Modern life disrupts the circadian rhythms controlling our biology – increasing our risk of developing conditions ranging from diabetes to dementia. Lynne Peeples's new book The Inner Clock explores and offers solutions

Dispute risks damage to Canada's reputation as reliable trade partner, says Steven Mackinnon

Research expeditions conducted at sea using a rotating gravity machine and microscope found that the Earth’s oceans may not be absorbing as much carbon as researchers have long thought.

Oceans are believed to absorb roughly 26 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions by drawing down CO₂ from the atmosphere and locking it away. In this system, CO₂ enters the ocean, where phytoplankton and other organisms consume about 70 percent of it. When these organisms eventually die, their soft, small structures sink to the bottom of the ocean in what looks like an underwater snowfall.

This “marine snow” pulls carbon away from the surface of the ocean and sequesters it in the depths for millennia, which enables the surface waters to draw down more CO₂ from the air. It’s one of Earth’s best natural carbon-removal systems. It’s so effective at keeping atmospheric CO₂ levels in check that many research groups are trying to enhance the process with geoengineering techniques.

But the new study, published on 11 October in Science, found that the sinking particles don’t fall to the ocean floor as quickly as researchers thought. Using a custom gravity machine that simulated marine snow’s native environment, the study’s authors observed that the particles produce mucus tails that act like parachutes, putting the brakes on their descent—sometimes even bringing them to a standstill.

The physical drag leaves carbon lingering in the upper hydrosphere, rather than being safely sequestered in deeper waters. Living organisms can then consume the marine snow particles and respire their carbon back into the sea. Ultimately, this impedes the rate at which the ocean draws down and sequesters additional CO₂ from the air.

The implications are grim: Scientists’ best estimates of how much CO₂ the Earth’s oceans sequester could be way off. “We’re talking roughly hundreds of gigatonnes of discrepancy if you don’t include these marine snow tails,” says Manu Prakash, a bioengineer at Stanford University and one of the paper’s authors. The work was conducted by researchers at Stanford, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Oceans Absorb Less CO₂ Than Expected

Researchers for years have been developing numerical models to estimate marine carbon sequestration. Those models will need to be adjusted for the slower sinking speed of marine snow, Prakash says.

The findings also have implications for startups in the fledgling marine carbon geoengineering field. These companies use techniques such as ocean alkalinity enhancement to augment the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon. Their success depends, in part, on using numerical models to prove to investors and the public that their techniques work. But their estimates are only as good as the models they use, and the scientific community’s confidence in them.

“We’re talking roughly hundreds of gigatonnes of discrepancy if you don’t include these marine snow tails.” —Manu Prakash, Stanford University

The Stanford researchers made the discovery on an expedition off the coast of Maine. There, they collected marine samples by hanging traps from their boat 80 meters deep. After pulling up a sample, the researchers quickly analyzed the contents while still on board the ship using their wheel-shaped machine and microscope.

The researchers built a microscope with a spinning wheel that simulates marine snow falling through sea water over longer distances than would otherwise be practical.Prakash Lab/Stanford

The device simulates the organisms’ vertical travel over long distances. Samples go into a wheel about the size of a vintage film reel. The wheel spins constantly, allowing suspended marine-snow particles to sink while a camera captures their every move.

The apparatus adjusts for temperature, light, and pressure to emulate marine conditions. Computational tools assess flow around the sinking particles and custom software removes noise in the data from the ship’s vibrations. To accommodate for the tilt and roll of the ship, the researchers mounted the device on a two-axis gimbal.

Slower Marine Snow Reduces Carbon Sequestration

With this setup, the team observed that sinking marine snow generates an invisible halo-shaped comet tail made of viscoelastic transparent exopolymer—a mucus-like parachute. They discovered the invisible tail by adding small beads to the seawater sample in the wheel, and analyzing the way they flowed around the marine snow. “We found that the beads were stuck in something invisible trailing behind the sinking particles,” says Rahul Chajwa, a bioengineering postdoctoral fellow at Stanford.

The tail introduces drag and buoyancy, doubling the amount of time marine snow spends in the upper 100 meters of the ocean, the researchers concluded. “This is the sedimentation law we should be following,” says Prakash, who hopes to get the results into climate models.

The study will likely help models project carbon export—the process of transporting CO₂ from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, says Lennart Bach, a marine biochemist at the University of Tasmania in Australia, who was not involved with the research. “The methodology they developed is very exciting and it’s great to see new methods coming into this research field,” he says.

But Bach cautions against extrapolating the results too far. “I don’t think the study will change the numbers on carbon export as we know them right now,” because these numbers are derived from empirical methods that would have unknowingly included the effects of the mucus tail, he says.

Marine snow may be slowed by “parachutes” of mucus while sinking, potentially lowering the rate at which the global ocean can sequester carbon in the depths.Prakash Lab/Stanford

Prakash and his team came up with the idea for the microscope while conducting research on a human parasite that can travel dozens of meters. “We would make 5- to 10-meter-tall microscopes, and one day, while packing for a trip to Madagascar, I had this ‘aha’ moment,” says Prakash. “I was like: Why are we packing all these tubes? What if the two ends of these tubes were connected?”

The group turned their linear tube into a closed circular channel—a hamster wheel approach to observing microscopic particles. Over five expeditions at sea, the team further refined the microscope’s design and fluid mechanics to accommodate marine samples, often tackling the engineering while on the boat and adjusting for flooding and high seas.

In addition to the sedimentation physics of marine snow, the team also studies other plankton that may affect climate and carbon-cycle models. On a recent expedition off the coast of Northern California, the group discovered a cell with silica ballast that makes marine snow sink like a rock, Prakash says.

The crafty gravity machine is one of Prakash’s many frugal inventions, which include an origami-inspired paper microscope, or “foldscope,” that can be attached to a smartphone, and a paper-and-string biomedical centrifuge dubbed a “paperfuge.”

The new Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public classroom by Jan. 1 was temporarily blocked Tuesday. The judge said the law is "unconstitutional on its face."

The two men found guilty of mischief and firearms offences for their roles in the 2022 Coutts border blockade want the Alberta Court of Appeal to overturn their convictions, while prosecutors are seeking new trials on the more serious charge of conspiring to murder RCMP officers, for which they were acquitted.

Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the decision to dissolve TikTok of its Canadian business is meant to address risks perceived to be related to TikTok's Chinese parent company.

Starring Tamannaah Bhatia, Jimmy Shergill, and Avinash Tiwary, ‘Sikandar Ka Muqaddar’ is directed by Neeraj Pandey

It’s that time again: eShop sale time! Nintendo’s calling this one the Blockbuster Sale, so I’m sure we can expect …

Continue reading "The Best Nintendo Switch eShop Sales From The ‘Blockbuster Sale’"

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for September 2nd, 2024. I think it’s a holiday today in …

Continue reading "SwitchArcade Round-Up: Reviews Featuring ‘Bakeru’ & ‘Peglin’, Plus Highlights From Nintendo’s Blockbuster Sale"

Is Fortnite old enough to elicit nostalgia? Last year’s trial run of bringing back the battle royale game’s original map, weapons and early seasons would suggest so — at least for folks of a certain age. That test led to record-breaking player counts, topping 44.7 million in October 2023. Epic Games said on Tuesday that the OG Fortnite rewind is coming back again, and this time, it’s for good.

OG Fortnite will let you play the original map, along with the loot and seasons as they were in 2017. In addition to the nostalgia factor, many players appreciate that era’s simpler gameplay mechanics, map designs, weapons and items. It was also before expansion updates that added new game modes (it was Battle Royale only) and vehicles like cars, boats and helicopters.

Old-school Fortnite fans have less than a month to wait. The OG version returns to the game on December 6.

Blizzard must have seen something it liked in the 2023 trial. It borrowed a page from Epic and brought back Overwatch in its original form for a three-week event starting today.

Le syndicat des facteurs de Postes Canada a remis un préavis de grève de 72 heures à l’employeur, qui a répliqué aussitôt avec un avis de lock-out.

Ottawa aurait laissé trop de liberté aux syndicats, en leur donnant «carte blanche» pour déclencher des grèves dans les ports du pays.

The employers' association is threatening to lock out workers at 9 p.m. Sunday if a deal isn't reached.

Contract negotiations in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia's ports since Monday have been called off. It comes as more than 100 organizations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

A lockout at the Port of Montreal began Sunday night. The CEO of the Montreal Port Authority says if the dispute between dockworkers and the Maritime Employers Association drags on, it will have disastrous consequences for the economy.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has sent labour disputes at ports in Quebec and British Columbia to binding arbitration and has ordered people back to work after the disputes reached what he called a "total impasse."

The Grattan Institute has warned Victoria’s gas moratorium may have to be partially lifted to save the smelter.

Sweat: We all do it. It plays an essential role in controlling body temperature by cooling the skin through evaporation. But it can also carry salts and other molecules out of the body in the process. In medieval Europe, people would lick babies; if the skin was salty, they knew that serious illness was likely. (We now know that salty skin can be an indicator for cystic fibrosis.)

Scientists continue to study how the materials in sweat can reveal details about an individual’s health, but often they must rely on gathering samples from subjects during strenuous exercise in order to get samples that are sufficiently large for analysis.

Now researchers in China have developed a wearable sensor system that can collect and process small amounts of sweat while providing continuous detection. They have named the design a “skin-interfaced intelligent graphene nanoelectronic” patch, or SIGN for short. The researchers, who described their work in a paper published in Advanced Functional Materials, did not respond to IEEE Spectrum’s interview requests.

The SIGN sensor patch relies on three separate components to accomplish its task. First, the sweat must be transported from the skin into microfluidic chambers. Next, a special membrane removes impurities from the fluid. Finally, this liquid is delivered to a bioreceptor that can be tuned to detect different metabolites.

The transport system relies on a combination of hydrophilic (water-attracting) and hydrophobic (water-repelling) materials. This system can move aqueous solutions along microchannels, even against gravity. This makes it possible to transport small samples with precision, regardless of the device’s orientation.

The fluid is transported to a Janus membrane, where impurities are blocked. This means that the sample that reaches the sensor is more likely to produce accurate results.

Finally, the purified sweat arrives at a flexible biosensor. This graphene sensor is activated by enzymes designed to detect the desired biomarker. The result is a transistor that can accurately measure the amount of the biomarker in the sample.

At its center, the system has a membrane that removes impurities from sweat and a biosensor that detects biomarkers.Harbin Institute of Technology/Shenyang Aerospace University

One interesting feature of the SIGN patch is that it can provide continuous measurements. The researchers tested the device through multiple cycles of samples with known concentrations of a target biomarker, and it was about as accurate after five cycles as it was after just one. This result suggests that it could be worn over an extended period without having to be replaced.

Continuous measurements can provide useful longitudinal data. However, Tess Skyrme, a senior technology analyst at the research firm IDTechEx, points out that continuous devices can have very different sampling rates. “Overall, the right balance of efficient, comfortable, and granular data collection is necessary to disrupt the market,” she says, noting that devices also need to optimize “battery life, calibration, and data accuracy.”

The researchers have focused on lactate—a metabolite that can be used to assess a person’s levels of exercise and fatigue—as the initial biomarker to be detected. This function is of particular interest to athletes, but it can also be used to monitor the health status of workers in jobs that require strenuous physical activity, especially in hazardous or extreme working conditions.

Not all experts are convinced that biomarkers in sweat can provide accurate health data. Jason Heikenfeld, director of the Novel Device Lab at the University of Cincinnati, has pivoted his research on wearable biosensing from sweat to the interstitial fluid between blood vessels and cells. “Sweat glucose and lactate are way inferior to measures that can be made in interstitial fluid with devices like glucose monitors,” he tells Spectrum.

The researchers also developed a package to house the sensor. It’s designed to minimize power consumption, using a low-power microcontroller, and it includes a Bluetooth communications chip to transmit data wirelessly from the SIGN patch. The initial design provides for 2 hours of continuous use without charging, or up to 20 hours in standby mode.

As radiopharmaceuticals enter a new phase, industry leaders must rethink external services and internal capabilities to master the complexities of delivering advanced therapies.

The post Unlocking the Future of Radioligand Therapy: From Discovery to Delivering at Scale appeared first on MedCity News.

Growth Unlocked: Closing the Strategy-to-Execution Gap

These students think they are boarding an ordinary school bus, but when they depart, a virtual reality experience �transports� them to the surface of Mars.

Everyday Health Inc. Introduces the What to Expect Pregnancy Clock Apple Watch� app.

Garlock Bankruptcy Overview Video

We have a lot going on this year, but most of it isn’t happening here on this site. Yes, some of our plans involve additional content here at schlockmercenary.com, but the biggest plans revolve around finally getting the entire series into print.

I’ll try to do better about posting things here. Until then, you might consider checking out our Discord community server, “Hypernode Connect,” where I’m quite a bit more active. This invite link should be good through January 17th.

(If you miss the window, you can request a fresh link by emailing schlockmercenary@gmail.com.)

I've spent a month doing my best to help my community and prepare my household for Covid-19.

Microsoft's latest Windows 11 Insider Beta Build (22635.4445) introduces a hidden universal Share button, marking the company's ongoing efforts to unify the user experience and simplify file-sharing across devices. The feature was first identified by Windows enthusiast @phantomofearth on X (formerly

Redeem Codes for Garena Free Fire Max on November 13, 2024: Gain an advantage over your opponents or enhance your character's appearance with these codes, offering in-game items for free. Acquire weapons, skins, diamonds, and more through these codes. Garena Free Fire

An AI-assisted robot can listen to spoken commands and assemble 3D objects such as chairs and tables out of reusable building blocks

“My very first experience was in asking the cards about a novel I was writing at the time and it wasn’t going anywhere," says Chelsey Pippin Mizzi in an interview with Lauren Parker. “Up until that point, so much of my writing had been informed by visuals. And then suddenly there were these three pocket-sized pictures that were inviting me to consider creative ideas.” 

Continue reading “Tarot for Creativity” helps writers and artists get through creative blocks at The Wild Hunt.

NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard says the decision, in July 2020, was very disappointing.

Probability of operating an alarm clock

Employees must stick to official channels to make sure their messages are fully retrievable.

EFL chairman Rick Parry tells BBC Sport's Dan Roan about his hopes for the new football regulator as the Football Governance Bill has its second reading before parliament.

The Swiss Finance Department has said that changes to tax law are not currently needed in response to developments in distributed ledger technology and blockchain.

A Swedish study has challenged the widespread use of beta-blockers for all heart attack patients. While these medications are commonly prescribed to regulate

A study has found that proteins from meat and milk help prevent small intestine tumors by acting as protective antigens.

Highlights: Researchers at JNU have discovered a novel chemical with strong transmission-blocking activity for

A strong nursing sector is an important building block of a strong healthcare sector. Nurses are the foundation of hospitals and the heart and the soul

In the intricate ecosystem of the medlinkgut microbiome/medlink, where various bacteria influence immunity and health outcomes, understanding their

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US have identified over 275 million medlinkgenetic variants/medlink that were not previously reported.

Stem cell-based embryo models (SCBEMs) are three-dimensional lab-created structures that replicate early human embryo development, providing researchers

Common heart medications, like beta blockers, could have side effects including triggering depression in heart attack patients.