For anyone who needs some relaxing distraction this afternoon, here is a large bubble in a viscous fluid bumping into a smaller one, and forcing it to distort before it engulfs it (taken at the Catalyst science centre in Widnes). I played with this for AGES... so much fun!
science
"In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims: the improvement of mankind."
Happy birthday Rosalind Franklin!
Her work was central to the understanding of the molecular structure of DNA. Though she was recognized for her other work in her time, her work on DNA was not appreciated until after her death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
The Rosalind Franklin question.
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-rosalind-franklin-question/?utm_campaign=PW-FB-PHL-072424&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
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THIS should be front-page news every day.
THIS should be the primary focus of every major world leader.
But it's not.
Instead, all we get is month after month of more Business As Usual.
‼️ 🚨 ‼️ 🚨 ‼️ 🚨 ‼️ 🚨 ‼️ 🚨 ‼️
Dr. Robert Rohde (@RARohde) delivers the latest update on our global climate emergency:
"The last 12 months were each at least 1.5°C (2.7°F) warmer than Berkeley Earth's 1850-1900 baseline. This brings the 12-month moving average of Earth's global temperature to a record high of +1.68°C (+3.02°F) above the 1850-1900 baseline, far surpassing previous short-term warming events."
See ➡️ https://fediscience.org/@RARohde/112824106977970378
Learn more ➡️ https://berkeleyearth.org/june-2024-temperature-update/
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
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#OTD in 1918.
Emmy Noether's paper, which became known as Noether's theorem was presented at Göttingen, Germany, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy.
This is the first of two theorems (see Noether's second theorem) proven by mathematician Emmy Noether in 1915 and published in 1918.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem
Noether's second theorem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_second_theorem
Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel was born #OTD in 1802.
His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation in radicals. This question was one of the outstanding open problems of his day, and had been unresolved for over 250 years. He was also an innovator in the field of elliptic functions and the discoverer of Abelian functions.
The five scholars who won two Nobel prizes – and what sets them apart.
There is often much debate about who is the greatest among sportsmen and women, movie stars, leaders or artists. But some scholars have truly made a staggering difference to the world.
By Sam McKee via @ConversationUK
#OTD in 1876.
Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
Mimeographs, along with spirit duplicators and hectographs, were common technologies for printing small quantities of a document, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins. For even smaller quantities, up to about five, a typist would use carbon paper.
NEW from my lab in Ecology Letters: Machine learning trained on >10k iNaturalist records let us "hindcast" Joshua trees' flowering back over the 20th Century. The hindcast recovers flowering events recorded in field notes, herbarium records, and newspaper archives. Joshua trees now flower a bit more often than they once did— but that's probably not good for the trees overall
OA paper: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14478
South African botanist and taxonomist Louisa Bolus was born #OTD in 1877.
She is known for her extensive work in the field of South African flora, particularly in the classification and description of new plant species. Her extensive collection and classification efforts greatly expanded the Bolus Herbarium, making it one of the most important botanical collections in the region.
#OTD in 1576.
The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uranienborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven.
It was the first custom-built observatory in modern Europe, and the last to be built without a telescope as its primary instrument. Brahe abandoned Uranienborg and Stjerneborg in 1597 after he fell out of favour with the Danish king, Christian IV of Denmark; Brahe left the country, and the institution was destroyed in 1601 after his death.
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PRESS RELEASE: https://www.seti.org/royal-commission-alula-collaborates-seti-institute-support-development-alula-manara-observatory
The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and SETI Institute announced their collaboration agreement as part of a long-term vision to further the development of AlUla Manara Observatory as a leading destination of the future, for space research, discovery and astro-tourism.
Greenpeace is being sued for $300 million. It's an attempt by the capitalist establishment to permanently silence them.
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Energy Transfer, the Big Oil company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, claims that Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International organized the 2016-2017 Standing Rock resistance. This is a false and racist attempt to erase Indigenous leadership from this historic protest.
The trial begins in February 2025. If we lose, Greenpeace USA could face financial ruin, ending over 50 years of environmental activism. But this is bigger than just us.
Energy Transfer’s lawsuit threatens our fundamental rights to organize and protest. A win for them sets a dangerous precedent – allowing more attacks on unions, activists, and journalists – and silencing our speech through intimidation.
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LEARN MORE -- https://greenpeaceontrial.org/
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British electrical engineer Godfrey Hounsfield died #OTD in 2004.
He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Allan MacLeod Cormack for his part in developing the diagnostic technique of X-ray computed tomography (CT). His name is immortalised in the Hounsfield scale, a quantitative measure of radiodensity used in evaluating CT scans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Hounsfield
His patent showed in the figure is avaliable here:
https://patents.justia.com/patent/4115698
![Schematic representation of CT scanner.
The author of This US Patent is Dr. Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield. Scanned by User:Tom Toyosaki. This Figure is extracted from US Patent and that patent is published before March 1, 1989 .
- Figure 1 of US4,115,698 (US Patent,Published at Sep. 19,1978)[1]](/proxy/post_attachment/321532/f608b312fa.jpg "Schematic representation of CT scanner.
The author of This US Patent is Dr. Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield. Scanned by User:Tom Toyosaki. This Figure is extracted from US Patent and that patent is published before March 1, 1989 .
- Figure 1 of US4,115,698 (US Patent,Published at Sep. 19,1978)[1]")
Edited 1y ago
Experts believe it’s only a matter of time until we find intelligent extraterrestrial life. With new tools and technologies, we search more of the cosmos every day. But what happens when we detect ET? How will we interact? What will we say? A scientist, a poet, and a science communicator explore these questions, grounding their perspectives in science.
Vote for our #SXSW2025 PanelPicker proposal: https://buff.ly/3yJB4ak
Bananas are at risk of extinction, but scientists have a plan. 🍌
From @popsci: A fungus that can infect over 100 different plants is devastating the popular fruit.
#Bananas #Food #ClimateChange #Climate #Agriculture #Botany #Science
This week, we've featured several amazing tech and science voices from the Mastodon community on Flipboard!
In case you missed the news, you can now follow anyone from the fediverse in the Flipboard app. We're excited to introduce our readers to people in the Mastodon community, including @alyssam_infosec, @annaleen, @pomarede, @HelenBranswell, @lisamelton, @percepticon, @parismarx, @TatianaIlyina, @skrishna and @zackwhittaker.
To follow these accounts on Flipboard, download the app and visit the Tech & Science tab in Explore. You'll see posts from the fediverse accounts you follow in the new Fediverse Activity carousel in the For You feed.
https://about.flipboard.com/download-flipboard/
#Tech #Science #Flipboard #Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialMedia #Technology
Italian physician, physicist, biologist Luigi Galvani was born #OTD in 1737.
In 1780, Galvani discovered that the muscles of dead frogs' legs twitched when struck by an electrical spark. Galvani's report of his investigations were mentioned specifically by Mary Shelley as part of the summer reading list leading up to an ad hoc ghost story contest on a rainy day in Switzerland—and the resultant novel Frankenstein—and its reanimated construct.
Danish noblewoman & horticulturalist Sophia Brahe was born #OTD in 1559 (or 22 September 1556).
She played an essential role in assisting her brother, Tycho Brahe, with his astronomical observations. She worked alongside him at the Uraniborg observatory on the island of Hven, where they made some of the most precise measurements of planetary positions before the invention of the telescope. was deeply interested in horticulture, alchemy, & medicine.
English physicist and radio astronomer Bernard Lovell was born #OTD in 1913.
He is best known for his contributions to the development of airbone radar (particularly on the magnetron) during World War II. He was also the founder of Jodrell Bank Observatory. The centerpiece of the observatory was the Lovell Telescope, completed in 1957. At the time, it was the largest steerable radio telescope in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lovell
Modern rodenticides can kill rats with a single dose – but they readily pass up the food chain to larger carnivores, like this bobcat.
They are widely used and largely unregulated.
https://theconversation.com/rat-poison-is-moving-up-through-food-chains-threatening-carnivores-around-the-world-232471
#animals #science #news #wildlife #environment
How Colorful Ribbon Diagrams Became the Face of Proteins.
Proteins are often visualized as cascades of curled ribbons and twisted strings, which both reveal and conceal the mess of atoms that make up these impossibly complex molecules.
By Yasemin Saplakoglu via @QuantaMagazine
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-colorful-ribbon-diagrams-became-the-face-of-proteins-20240823/
This is a terrifying article.
Methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, is increasing fast in our atmosphere — both from industrial emissions AND from "natural" sources triggered by global warming, which then cause more global warming, and so on, and so on...
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New research shows that feedbacks in the climate system are boosting methane emissions from natural sources, especially tropical wetlands.
Scientists say that an abrupt surge in methane emissions in the early 2000s is probably due mainly to the response of wetlands to warming, with additional contributions coming from fossil fuel use, “implying that anthropogenic emissions must decrease more than expected to reach a given warming goal.”
Increasing rainfall, a well-documented impact of global warming, is making wetlands larger and wetter, and a warmer world fosters more plant growth, which means more decomposing material that emits methane.
About 60% of methane emissions are from fossil fuel use, farming, landfills, and waste, with the rest coming from rotting vegetation in wetlands in the tropics and Northern Hemisphere.
A new trouble spot is in the Arctic, where scientists recently found unexpectedly large methane emissions in winter. And globally, the increase in water vapor caused by global warming is slowing the rate at which methane breaks down in the atmosphere.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28082024/surging-methane-emissions-major-climate-shift/
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
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Scientists Discover New Evidence That a Magma Ocean Once Covered the Moon
Scientists believe the Moon was created when a protoplanet impacted the early Earth, breaking off a large chunk of matter, and eventually formed a new body. This new body became the Moon we know through a cooling process over millions of years. During that time, scientists have long believed the surface was covered in an ocean of magma.
By Madeleine Muzdakis via @mymodernmet
#OTD in 1803.
British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
In his laboratory notebook there is a list in which he set out the relative weights of the atoms of a number of elements, derived from analysis of water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, etc. by chemists of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton#Atomic_theory
Books about John Dalton at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56648
