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Overnight News Digest - Saturday Science The difference between Libs & Qs not what you may think [1]
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Date: 2023-03-04
Some topics presented in this digest:
Fabric solar cells have multiple applications
One basic belief separates liberals and conservatives [with a survey]
Sustaining peak performance as we age
Legislation to move freight more safely and efficiently
El Niño may bring a new record warm year
Gel-based cartilage substitute better than the real thing
Deflecting an asteroid from its orbit
A personality profile linked to war crimes
New record holder for the earliest known structure in the universe
2022 World nature photography awards
The Brighter Side News
by Adam Zewe
Breakthrough fabric solar cells can turn any surface into a power source
MIT engineers have developed ultralight fabric solar cells that can quickly and easily turn any surface into a power source. These durable, flexible solar cells, which are much thinner than a human hair, are glued to a strong, lightweight fabric, making them easy to install on a fixed surface. They can provide energy on the go as a wearable power fabric or be transported and rapidly deployed in remote locations for assistance in emergencies. They are one-hundredth the weight of conventional solar panels, generate 18 times more power-per-kilogram, and are made from semiconducting inks using printing processes that can be scaled in the future to large-area manufacturing. Because they are so thin and lightweight, these solar cells can be laminated onto many different surfaces. For instance, they could be integrated onto the sails of a boat to provide power while at sea, adhered onto tents and tarps that are deployed in disaster recovery operations, or applied onto the wings of drones to extend their flying range. This lightweight solar technology can be easily integrated into built environments with minimal installation needs.
Scientific American
by Jer Clifton
Many Differences between Liberals and Conservatives May Boil Down to One Belief
Disagreement has paralyzed our politics and our collective ability to get things done. But where do these conflicts come from? A split between liberals and conservatives, many might say. But underlying that division is an even more fundamental fissure in the ways that people view the world. In politics, researchers usually define conservativism as a general tendency to resist change and tolerate social inequality. Liberalism is a tendency to embrace change and reject inequality. Political parties evolve with time—Democrats were the conservative party 150 years ago—but the liberal-conservative split is typically recognizable in a country’s politics. It’s the fault line on which political cooperation most often breaks down. Psychologists have long suspected that a handful of fundamental differences in worldviews might underlie the conservative-liberal rift. Forty years of research has shown that, on average, conservatives see the world as a more dangerous place than liberals. This one core belief seemed to help explain many policy disagreements, such as conservative support of gun ownership, border enforcement and increased spending on police and the military—all of which, one can argue, aim to protect people from a threatening world.
Big Think
by Steven Kotlor
Rules for sustaining peak performance as we grow older
Recent discoveries in embodied cognition, flow science, and network neuroscience have revolutionized how we think about human learning. On paper, these discoveries “should” allow older athletes to progress in supposedly “impossible” activities like park skiing. To see if theory worked in practice, I put these ideas to the test on the ski hill, conducting my own ass-on-the-line experiment in applied neuroscience and later-in-life skill acquisition — aka I tried to teach this old dog some new tricks. Over the past decade, scientists have learned a great deal about maintaining vitality into our later years. Research into communities with exceptional longevity — technically known as Blue Zones — reveal five keys to a long, happy life: move around a lot, de-stress regularly, have robust social ties, eat well — meaning, eat mostly plants and not too much of anything — and try to live with passion, purpose, and regular access to flow. In other words, we now know the basic requirements for long-term health and well-being. In recent years, scientists have uncovered the nine major causes of aging. There are now billions of dollars and dozens of biotech companies aimed at eliminating each of them. In fact, thanks to continual advancements in biotech, every day we manage to stay alive, we gain an additional five hours of life expectancy.
Axios
by Emily Peck
How the derailment in East Palestine changes the calculus on railroad regulation
A bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation to address safety issues highlighted by the derailment of a Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. Why it matters: Major freight operators have fended off tighter regulations for years, but the tragic derailment appears to have changed the calculus. Some of the measures included in the Railway Safety Act of 2023 have long been on the agenda of the industry's unions and workers — particularly a provision requiring a crew of at least two people on each train. Driving the news: The bill was introduced Wednesday by the two senators from Ohio, J.D. Vance (R) and Sherrod Brown (D), along with two Democratic senators from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey and John Fetterman. The derailment happened near the border between the two states.
Axios
by Andrew Freedman
The "triple-dip" La Niña may give way to an El Niño
The first "triple-dip" La Niña event of the 21st century is waning, and the odds of an El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean are rising, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Wednesday. Why it matters: El Niño events release a tremendous amount of ocean heat into the atmosphere and would increase the odds for a new record warm year in 2024. State of play: These events require a complex series of coordinated moves to take place between the waters of the equatorial tropical Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere, with each responding to the other as if in a complex dance number.
The Brighter Side News
byRobin A. Smith
Groundbreaking artificial knee cartilage will outperform the real thing, study finds
Over-the-counter pain relievers, physical therapy, steroid injections -- some people have tried it all and are still dealing with knee pain. Often knee pain comes from the progressive wear and tear of cartilage known as osteoarthritis, which affects nearly one in six adults -- 867 million people -- worldwide. For those who want to avoid replacing the entire knee joint, there may soon be another option that could help patients get back on their feet fast, pain-free, and stay that way. Writing in the journal Advanced Functional Materials , a Duke University-led team says they have created the first gel-based cartilage substitute that is even stronger and more durable than the real thing.
Science Alert
by Michelle Starr
NASA Slammed a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid And It Didn't Go Quite as Expected
In September of last year, after years of careful planning and development, NASA crashed a spacecraft smack into a rock drifting through the Solar System, just minding its own business. It wasn't for the sheer hatred of space rocks, or the joy of collisions; the motive behind this exercise was to test our ability to knock an asteroid off-course, in the interest of Earth's safety. And now we know we're onto something. The measurements have come in, and the rock's course changed by significantly more than expected. A series of five papers describing this course deflection, and the mechanisms behind it, have been published in Nature.
Big Think
by Magnus Linden and David Whetham
How we discovered a personality profile linked to war crimes
Former US Private First Class Stephen Green was found guilty of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl and murdering her family in Mahmudiyah, Iraq in 2006. Four years later, US Corporal Jeremy Morlock was convicted of ambushing, murdering and maiming Afghan civilians in 2010. Investigations revealed that Green had a pre-existing antisocial personality disorder. This effectively made him indifferent to the suffering of others. Morlock, too, had a personal history of anti-social behaviour. Now our recent study, published in Military Psychology, has identified a personality profile linked with such war atrocities. It raises the question of whether military organisations could and should take more care when recruiting people.
Wired
by Rebecca Boyle
No, the James Webb telescope has not broken cosmology
THE CRACKS IN cosmology were supposed to take a while to appear. But when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) opened its lens last spring, extremely distant yet very bright galaxies immediately shone into the telescope’s field of view. “They were just so stupidly bright, and they just stood out,” said Rohan Naidu, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. … The galaxies’ apparent distances from Earth suggested that they formed much earlier in the history of the universe than anyone anticipated. (The farther away something is, the longer ago its light flared forth.) Doubts swirled, but in December, astronomers confirmed that some of the galaxies are indeed as distant, and therefore as primordial, as they seem. The earliest of those confirmed galaxies shed its light 330 million years after the Big Bang, making it the new record holder for the earliest known structure in the universe. That galaxy was rather dim, but other candidates loosely pegged to the same time period were already shining bright, meaning they were potentially humongous.
Colossal
by Grace Ebert
The 2022 world -nature-photography awards vacillate between the humor and brutality of life on earth
Moments of coincidental humor, stark cruelty, and surprising inter-species intimacies are on full display in this year’s World Nature Photography Awards. The winners of the 2022 competition encompass a vast array of life across six continents, from an elephant’s endearing attempt at camouflage to a crocodile covered in excessively dry mud spurred by drought. While many of the photos highlight natural occurrences, others spotlight the profound impacts humans have on the environment to particularly disastrous results, including Nicolas Remy’s heartbreaking image that shows an Australian fur seal sliced open by a boat propellor. Find some of the winning photos below, and explore the entire collection on the contest’s site.
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
I’m in NYC to watch my granddaughter, aka “Lightning,” run the 4x800 NY HS championship relay, visit some sights and hear the Allentown Band in concert at Carnegie Hall (my oldest kid plays clarinet). Please comment among yourselves.
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