i fucking love science

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

the Time magazine where she won person of the year has a few really interesting articles on her if you're interested

 

[silkyman]

http://m.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ABC/?linkId=19968195

 

[voltage]

The discovery of gravitacional waves from black holes is truly very interesting, a big path to a beautiful science that is Physics.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

Einstein really was ridiculously ahead of his time.

The equipment used to detect this is pretty damn cool from an engineering perspective. Measuring the distance between mirrors placed a mile or more apart using laser, detecting the absolutely tiny change as a gravitational wave passes us.

 

[SALTIRE]

It's a monumental discovery and proof of just what a great jump Einsteins theories were when they came out. I love the work of plenty of other scientists down the years but Einstein is in my eyes the great genius of them all.

 

[KevinMcallister]

I've always had gravity when inside black holes, I don't get the hype

 

[blade1889]

http://ideas.ted.com/the-promising-...k.com&utm_content=ideas-blog&utm_term=science

An interesting debate has been building for a few years now since the discovery of a gene editing system that is incredibly accurate. IMO its the biggest biological and genetic breakthrough since the discovery of DNA itself and I'd love to work on it in the future. In theory with this technology you could wipe our nearly all genetic disorders...but to do that you have to edit the genomes of human embryos, and here comes the debate!

Personally I'd be curious to use it to cure HIV. The system essentially replaces one gene with another and is so potent that it can spread through tissues like wildfire if necessary, thus removing all copies of the 'target' gene and replacing tem with another. I'd be intrigued to use this with HIV to eliminate a gene that helps HIV 'hide' in our bodies (which is one of the main reasons it is currently un-curable).

Regardless of the debate its and the possibilities are amazing to just think about.

I was planning on doing this to win me a Nobel prize but seems someone beat me to it last week: http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/hivs-genome-edited-out-infected-cells

Any more ideas anyone???

It really is such an exciting time for genetics since the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9. I used to think my tutor was going ott when he raved on about it but the more i read the more obvious it becomes that this discovery is absolutely huge with so much potential. Now I'm the one raving about it getting slightly odd looks at parties.

 

[blade1889]

US medical students less accurate at prescribing medication for black patients due to racial biases. What!?!?!? Wonder what a study in the UK would find.

http://www.iflscience.com/health-an...-racial-biases-based-false-biological-beliefs

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

 

[Tilbury]

http://conservationmagazine.org/2016/04/rooftop-solar-panels-provide-nearly-half-power/
'Rooftop solar panels could provide nearly half of our power'.

 

[silkyman]

Biggest problem with solar is the energy storage for when it's, you know, night time.

I'm doing some work for a company trialling a new battery system to try and solve that. Which would be nice.

 

[Tilbury]

Yeh that would be a useful advancement. A solar farm was recently opened near me, what a waste of valuable arable land when we have so much unused rooftop space across the country.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

I wonder what the effect of painting every rooftop white would be.

 

[silkyman]

My shares in Dulux would go through the fucking roof!

 

[silkyman]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...h-vast-vaccine-switch/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share

 

[blade1889]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...h-vast-vaccine-switch/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share

Was reading this earlier, the endgame for Polio seems to have been going on for ages. Of course I'm sure some will twist the type-2 Polio strain potentially causing Polio infection as evidence as why vaccines are bad...as opposed to opening their eyes at what vaccinations have achieved. Medical advancement in the last century is astonishing and showing no signs of slowing.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

The pharmaceutical companies are probably looking for a way to treat it instead of cure it.

 

[silkyman]

That's why they are so keen to nip measles and mumps in the bud.... Those bastards...

 

[voltage]

Taking a read at IEEE Spectrum found a very interesting article about a paralyzed guy who restored his hand movement through a chip implanted on his brain that stores and decodes his neural signals and transferes it to a bypass system passing through the computer that sends the movement information to a kind of electronic thin wearable on his arm. For what I read they were testing it since 2014 and there's some kind of logic (maybe fuzzy or something similar I presume) learning to figure out the bypass with the pacient so his movements skills can be more accurate. I get always suspicious about chips implanted mainly in the brain which is very risky cirurgically and collaterally but watching the video and the bright in the eye of the guy while moving his hand was worthy. Also this still isn't a cure for paralysis since it's impossible to take a computer everywhere (Hawking's style) for most people due to a lot of factors mostly the price but as the creators said it's a great start to develop stuff each time improved and who knows compacter.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-...d-paralysis-neural-bypass-links-brain-to-hand

 

[blade1889]

Davey C has decided to try andcensor science. Brilliant idea. Link to a petition at thebottom of this article.


http://www.iflscience.com/editors-b...n-be-unable-speak-freely-about-their-research

 

[voltage]

This article approaches a pertinent point in research. Many good stuff is blocked to the public, mainly in medical/farmaceutic and renovable energy/susteinable development which would mean a lot of improvement on our quality of life not to mention many of this would be way cheaper to develop, because of not only political agencies but the powerful ones that gets a lot of money with symptom inhibitors medicines; electriciy, water and fuel distribution, etc. and for them to put cheaper and durabler stuff in the market would be an "affront". It's understandable some things must be thoroughly analyzed before provided to public because of ethic, like artificial intelligence and genetic engineering related for example. But it's harmful - not only for science but also for all the people whose could be benefited by it - to derail this big amount of important researches.

 

[voltage]

Just read this article about engineers who developed surgical devices based on origami tech. And they already used the same tech based on origami to spacecrafts compact devices for NASA too. Very curious.
http://transmitter.ieee.org/artful-inspiration-behind-surgical-tech/

 

[SALTIRE]

Hawking radiation potentially discovered around a black hole. The great man could get his Nobel Prize yet.

 

[voltage]

Find it really fascinating technology/science to ecological issues, also the sea seems to be a very interesting field of study. And just dropped with something about optical fiber sensors under the seafloor to help saving and preserving marine species and using better (susteinable/smart use) the sources of the sea. Very nice.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-seafloor-sensors-can-save-fisheries

 

[blade1889]

This is great and so true:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?st...2895558058&ref=m_notif&notif_t=group_activity

The dangers of what people believe through poor reporting of 'science'

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

I fucking love science

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...thy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more/

 

[Aber gas]

Attenborough coming for the aquatic ape deniers like a fucking G
https://twitter.com/draliceroberts/status/775969142037942272

 

[blade1889]

Attenborough coming for the aquatic ape deniers like a fucking G
https://twitter.com/draliceroberts/status/775969142037942272

Cheers G. Took me a while to get round to listening to it (got a life...shock...horror) but very interesting, ties in quite well with some of my dissertation stuff on early humans. We don't get taught very much about why humans became bipedal (two footed) because it is still a very controversial topic. Not listened to the second episode yet but assume it may go on to mention how living in aquatic environments could have (in theory) favoured walking upright more. Can't remember the main arguments for the Savannah hypothesis (walking upright to see over long grasses when we came down from the trees 'so to speak') but both are quite plausible when you only consider one argument. Although the biology presented in that documentary is rather convincing for swaying it towards aquatic ape. Listening to that counts as 'homework', right!?

 

[Aber gas]

Cheers G. Took me a while to get round to listening to it (got a life...shock...horror) but very interesting, ties in quite well with some of my dissertation stuff on early humans. We don't get taught very much about why humans became bipedal (two footed) because it is still a very controversial topic. Not listened to the second episode yet but assume it may go on to mention how living in aquatic environments could have (in theory) favoured walking upright more. Can't remember the main arguments for the Savannah hypothesis (walking upright to see over long grasses when we came down from the trees 'so to speak') but both are quite plausible when you only consider one argument. Although the biology presented in that documentary is rather convincing for swaying it towards aquatic ape. Listening to that counts as 'homework', right!?

Absolutely does
It's a interesting theory which is greeted with quite vehement responses from its detractors. I've been interested in the subject for a while but hadn't realised quite how controversial it is. It can get quite flaky at the margins ( see mermaid believers) but I'm quite interested in the premise of human life evolving in a non linear way. The idea that human evolution was and is more complicated than is the generally accepted " Savannah truth"

 

[blade1889]

Absolutely does
It's a interesting theory which is greeted with quite vehement responses from its detractors. I've been interested in the subject for a while but hadn't realised quite how controversial it is. It can get quite flaky at the margins ( see mermaid believers) but I'm quite interested in the premise of human life evolving in a non linear way. The idea that human evolution was and is more complicated than is the generally accepted " Savannah truth"

Yeah, totally. It's very intricate and trying to 'unpick' it is very interesting. We generally believe that everything evolves in a linear fashion that X leads to y and eventually to z that will then evolve to a new species but that couldn't be further from the truth. Taking human origins as an example, humans closest ancestor would have been homo erectus ('mother') if you like.,.as opposed to the more often thought of Neanderthal (who was more similar to a 'cousin' or 'uncle'). But then we've now discovered thanks to genetics (and the topic of my dissertation) that Neanderthals bread with humans, but only those that left Africa, so they also contributed directly (but not as much as H.erectus) to yours and mine genomes. It then gets even more murky as it's quite possible Neanderthals were also having it off with H.erectus and a separate 'cousin' (Denisovans) were sleeping with early Asian humans...and potentially a third but that's even less clear.

And those are just the things that are easily proveable thanks to genetics. You then have the theories like Savannah and Water Ape for why certain big steps in our evolution occurred. Topics that you could genuinely go on about for ages. Have to say the blubber argument wasn't one I was familiar with before and is very intriguing.