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Post by SuzyQ on Jul 14, 2018 3:42:12 GMT
Telegraph
Let there be light: 'ghost' particle found a mile beneath Antarctica holds key to breakthrough in physics
Henry Bodkin
12 July 2018 • 6:43pm
The secrets of the origins of light are set to be unlocked by the discovery of an elusive “ghost” particle a mile beneath Antarctica, scientists have announced.
Astronomers have for the first time identified the source of a high-energy neutrino which shot through a solid ice laboratory at the South Pole last year in a “triumph” that promises to revolutionise understanding of fundamental physics.
Neutrinos are virtually massless, subatomic particles which race across the universe, passing unnoticed through planets and stars.
Despite their abundance - hundreds of billions pass through each human every second - they have so far proved impossible to detect because they interact with matter so rarely.
However, the detection of a neutrino on September 22 2017 has since enabled scientists to identify its point of origin using a complex network of ground and space-based radiation telescopes.
The international team traced the particle’s provenance to a flaring galaxy, or “blazar”, with a supermassive black hole at its heart four billion light years away.
more after the jump:
www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/07/12/let-light-ghost-particle-found-mile-beneath-antarctica-holds/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 14, 2018 10:57:54 GMT
Hi SuzyQ  |
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 14, 2018 11:08:03 GMT
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 15, 2018 10:58:02 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Jul 15, 2018 17:15:06 GMT
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Post by ZETAR on Jul 16, 2018 1:03:49 GMT
IT APPEARS THIS K-9 THOUGHT OUTTA THE BOX AND ONTO THE BED...WHEREIN, THE FELINE DETERMINES THAT'S NOT HIS SPOT!
THE LOOK ~ THE DETERMINATION ~ 
ON ANOTHER NOTE...
SHALOM...Z
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 16, 2018 12:10:50 GMT
Thanks for the laugh Z, good morning to you and all of our lovely UFOCasebookers,
Phys.org
July 16, 2018
by Tomasz Nowakowski
An international group of astronomers has discovered a new substellar object in the planetary system CoRoT-20. The newly identified object was classified as a brown dwarf due to its mass, which is greater than that of the heaviest gas giant planets. The finding is reported in a paper published July 3 on arXiv.org.
Located some 4,000 light years away from the Earth, CoRoT-20 is a star of spectral type G2V, similar in size and mass to our sun. In 2011, astronomers found a planet orbiting this star on a short-period eccentric orbit. The exoworld, which received designation CoRoT-20 b, is about the size of Jupiter but four times more massive. The exoplanet, classified as a "hot Jupiter," circles its host every 9.24 days at a distance of approximately 0.09 AU from it.
Now, a team of researchers led by Javiera Ray of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, have found a new substellar object in this system, also on an eccentric orbit, but with a much longer orbital period than that of CoRoT-20 b. The discovery was made as a result of follow-up observations of the CoRoT-20 system conducted between November 2011 and November 2017, using the HARPS and SOPHIE spectrographs.
"In this paper, we report a new substellar companion orbiting CoRoT-20, thanks to six years of additional observations obtained with HARPS and SOPHIE spectrographs," the researchers wrote in the paper.
Observations carried out by Ray's team show that the newly detected object, designated CoRoT-20 c, has a minimum mass of 17 Jupiter masses. Due to its mass, CoRoT-20 c was initially classified as a brown dwarf. Although the boundary between planet and brown dwarf is poorly defined, astronomers generally agree that brown dwarf are substellar objects at least 13 times more massive than Jupiter.
According to the study, CoRoT-20 c is separated from its parent star by approximately 2.9 AU. The planet has an orbital period of 4.59 years and orbital eccentricity of 0.6.
Notably, orbital parameters of the newly identified brown dwarf make CoRoT-20 the first known system with an eccentric "hot Jupiter" and an eccentric massive companion.
"CoRoT-20 is the first identified system with an eccentric hot Jupiter (e ≥ 0.2) and an eccentric massive companion with a fully probed orbit," the paper reads.
The researchers noted that the newly detected brown dwarf interacts with the "hot Jupiter," adding that the currently high eccentricity of CoRoT-20 b is likely entirely due to the presence of CoRoT-20 c.
Due to this interaction, the CoRoT-20 system is perceived by Ray's team as an excellent candidate to test tidal migration models. So far, astronomers have identified at least three migration mechanisms that can explain the existence of close-in "hot Jupiters" on eccentric orbits. Therefore, further observations of CoRoT-20 c, during its next transit, which is expected to occur in late 2020, could help us advance our understanding of these mechanisms.
phys.org/news/2018-07-brown-dwarf-corot-.html
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 16, 2018 22:32:40 GMT
Alas Obscura
Found: 14,400-Year-Old Flatbread Remains That Predate Agriculture
The burned crumbs shed light on prehistoric hunter-gatherers’ diets.
by Paula Mejia July 16, 2018
Bread-making around the world has evolved from a similar, ancient approach of combining flour, water, and sometimes yeast. But for prehistoric societies with limited tools, making bread wasn’t so simple. Given how laborious it was to make bread thousands of years ago, it’s long been associated with settled Neolithic societies—and only after the advent of agriculture.
That’s no longer the case. Today, a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the University College London, and the University of Cambridge released a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing their discovery of 14,400-year-old crumbs from a flatbread. The archaeological site, known as Shubayqa 1, is located in the Black Desert of northeastern Jordan and was home to Natufian hunter-gatherers. The flatbread remains are not only the oldest instance of bread found to date, but also preeminent examples of how bread-making existed even before agriculture developed some 4,000 years later.
“Nobody had found any direct evidence for production of bread, so the fact that bread predates agriculture is kind of stunning,” says Tobias Richter, a University of Copenhagen archaeologist who co-authored the paper. “Because making bread is quite labor-intensive, and you don’t necessarily get a huge return for it. So it doesn’t seem like an economical thing to do.” That’s because breadmaking doesn’t just involve baking: Back then, it would have also involved kneading, grinding cereals into fine grains, and dehusking plants.
Before the find at Shubayqa 1, the closest evidence of bread-like cereal meals had been identified at the Neolithic site Çatalhöyük, in Turkey. “We really didn’t think up until now that in the Natufian [period], people were making bread,” he adds. “We’ve just pushed that 5,000 years earlier.”
For years, researchers have been excavating Shubayqa 1 to learn more about the Natufians’ diet and lifestyle. “Natufian is a very interesting period in Near Eastern prehistory, because it does mark a real point of departure with some of the preceding periods,” Richter says. “They built some of the world’s earliest stone dwellings, and appear to have been more sedentary than periods before then.”
Richter says that compared to other Natufian sites, Shubayqa 1 is unusual in how well-preserved its plants are, and it reveals intriguing possibilities about the relationship between social change, economic shifts, and climate change. Previous findings suggest, for instance, that the Natufians had high-carbohydrate diets, hunted animals such as gazelles, and, as evidenced by their elaborate burials, had well-established cultural rituals.
The bread discovery happened by chance, when Amaia Arranz Otaegui, an archaeobotanist at the University of Copenhagen, found unidentifiable charred remains in fireplaces at Shubayqa 1. She took her findings to University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, which has a trove of modern plants that archaeologists can compare their findings to. There, she enlisted the help of Lara González Carretero, an authority on prehistoric bread. Using electronic microscopy, she determined that the charred remains—which Richter describes as “the kind of stuff you might find at the bottom of your toaster”—was likely evidence of unleavened bread.
Until recently, food remains weren’t given much attention within archaeological digs. “Mostly up until now archaeobotanists have been interested in seeds, wood fragments, and nuts and so forth,” Richter says. “It’s fairly new that people have started to look at food remains in these sediment samples that we’re excavating from various sites.” Several years ago, a team of researchers excavating the Natufian site Huzuq Musa (in Israel’s Jordan Valley) processed wild barley and loaves of unleavened bread using 12,500-year-old conical mortars. Some experts have speculated that bread-baking stretches back even further than 14,400 years ago.
Over the years, fossilized loaves and bread-making grains alike have been unearthed at archaeological sites, such as Italy’s Pompeii and Ohalo II, in what’s now considered Israel, respectively. But the recently discovered flatbread remains at Shubayqa 1 bear similarities to those found at various other sites around Turkey and Europe, too. “So we now know that bread-like products were produced long before the development of farming,” said Arranz Otaegui. “The next step is to evaluate if the production and consumption of bread influenced the emergence of plant cultivation and domestication at all.”
How Natufians made this bread, exactly, remains up for debate. “What’s quite surprising from the work we’ve done so far is that the flour they used is really fine, and you wonder, ‘How the hell did they do that?’” Richter says. “[It’s] really high-quality, so they must have spent a lot of time getting it into a really fine state.” He says the team has been awarded another grant to study food production, so making a very old flatbread is on the table. “One of the things we want to do next is to try and reproduce this bread experimentally,” Richter says. “And see what it tasted like.”
www.atlasobscura.com/articles/worlds-oldest-bread
Crystal
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2018 11:52:36 GMT
It's SHARK week (or two)
So
For you size matters folks
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 17, 2018 12:07:57 GMT
It's SHARK week (or two) So For you size matters folks
Crystal |
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 17, 2018 12:19:30 GMT
Good morning!
South China Morning Post
China’s AI industry gets the most funding, but lags the US in key talent, says Tsinghua
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 17 July, 2018, 2:17pm
by Iris Deng
China’s artificial intelligence industry has attracted the most funding, accounting for 60 per cent of all global investment from 2013 to the first quarter of 2018, but still lags behind the US in terms of AI talent, according to a new study.
By the end of 2017 China had amassed an AI talent pool of 18,232 people, accounting for 8.9 per cent of the world’s total talent and well behind the 13.9 per cent share held by the US. The top 10 countries accounted for 60 per cent of AI talent.
The report also stressed the country’s shortage of high level AI talent – those who produce research of high quality – with China only having one fifth the number of the US in this category, according to a report released Friday by Tsinghua University, China’s top research university.
In terms of AI research, China ranks first in the quantity and citation of research papers, and holds the most AI patents, edging out the US and Japan, the report shows.
China’s AI market was worth 23.74 billion (US$3.55 billion) yuan in 2017, up 67 per cent from the year before, with computer vision, voice, and natural language processing accounting for most the market. The report estimates China’s AI market will grow 75 per cent in 2018.
China has not been shy about its ambitions for AI dominance, with the State Council releasing a road map in July 2017 with a goal of creating a domestic industry worth 1 trillion yuan and becoming a global AI powerhouse by 2030. Last November China’s Ministry of Science and Technology identified internet giants Baidu, Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings – collectively known as BAT – and voice intelligence specialist iFlyTek, as the first group of “national champions” to spur development of next generation AI technologies that are vital to everything from voice activated digital assistants to self-driving cars.
The central government’s recent initiatives included the announcement in January of a US$2.1 billion blueprint to build an AI industrial park in the suburbs of Beijing, and the Ministry of Education’s launch in April of a five-year AI talent training programme.
In terms of AI investment, Beijing is far ahead of other Chinese cities with more than 250 billion yuan raised from over 450 deals from 2015 to the first quarter of 2018, followed by Shanghai with 50 billion yuan raised, according to the Tsinghua report. SenseTime, a Beijing-based start-up known for providing AI-powered surveillance software for China’s police, is the world’s most valuable AI start-up with a valuation of more than US$4.5 billion, after raising US$600 million from Alibaba in April.
Facial recognition has become a leading application of AI in China, with many of the country’s cities employing the technology to improve transport and security, according to the China Internet Report jointly published this month by the South China Morning Post, its tech news site Abacus and venture capital firm 500 Startups.
While China pushes ahead with its AI ambitions, officials openly admit the country’s weakness in core technology for manufacturing. “We are still decades behind the developed countries, and the road to building a strong manufacturing country is long,” Xin Guobin, vice-minister of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at a forum on Friday.
Xin’s comments come after reports that Chinese state media have been asked to play down coverage of the Made in China 2025 programme, an ambitious plan to give the country a leading edge in several technologies, including AI. It has also become a thorny issue between China and its trading partners, including the US and the EU.
Alibaba is the parent company of the Post.
www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2155600/chinas-ai-industry-gets-most-funding-lags-us-key-talent-says
Crystal
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Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2018 12:50:52 GMT
I was diving off Nantucket just after they filmed Jaws. One of the Orcas they used was left on the beach of Martha's Vineyard. So I took this picture. It shows how they varied the boats waterline by using fixed half barrels.  |
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 17, 2018 12:54:57 GMT
Science Alert
An Ancient Mystery Henge Has Appeared in 'Once in a Lifetime' Discovery in Ireland
"What the f*** is that?"
PETER DOCKRILL
17 JUL 2018
It materialised out of almost nowhere. Thousands of years after disappearing from human sight and knowledge, an ancient 'henge' site has been discovered hidden within the archaeological landscape of Ireland's Brú na Bóinne.
To reveal this long-forgotten structure, it took a chance intersection between an aerial drone flight and a brutal hot streak that's been slowly roasting the UK for weeks.
The same environmental conditions have unveiled dozens of concealed architectural apparitions in recent weeks, but when eyes were laid on this prehistoric, epic circle invisibly cradled within the Boyne Valley, the sacred truly met the profane.
"What the f*** is that?" photographer and author Anthony Murphy yelled to another photographer friend nearby.
"I've been telling all the media here that I shouted, 'What the hell is that,' but it was actually a stronger expletive," he explained to NPR.
"When we saw this, we knew straight away, this had never been seen or recorded before."
more after the jump:
www.sciencealert.com/never-before-seen-ancient-henge-appears-once-in-a-lifetime-discovery-ireland-heatwave-archaeology
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Jul 17, 2018 12:57:05 GMT
There it is! Great photo!
Crystal
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Post by lonegunman on Jul 17, 2018 15:54:55 GMT
I was diving off Nantucket just after they filmed Jaws. One of the Orcas they used was left on the beach of Martha's Vineyard. So I took this picture. It shows how they varied the boats waterline by using fixed half barrels. A old friend of mine was the Master Chief on the Coast Guard cutter that kept having to rescue the shark and the Orcas when it kept sinking ! |
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