Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

[ponchi101]

But with the much lower gravity, it should be easier too, right? Don't you have a logarithmic drop in forces when the gravity is less?

[Suliso]

But with the much lower gravity, it should be easier too, right? Don't you have a logarithmic drop in forces when the gravity is less?

I think it's easier and harder at the same time. Easier because gravity is just a fraction of ours and hence fuel needed for the takeoff is low. On the other hand when this rocket lands on earth much of the loss of momentum is accomplished via friction with an atmosphere there as on the Moon it will have to be 100% rocket power. Also you need to land and then take off again without any service options.

Take off and landing on Earth size planet would be impossible with this technology. On Mars possible, but only if you can refuel locally.

[Suliso]

Lots of important space news this weekend. The other story is the launch of Europa Clipper by NASA. Will explore Jupiter moon Europa when it arrives in 2030. As you probably know there are supposed to be liquid water oceans below the ice cap there.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/n ... on-europa/

[ponchi101]

I didn't know that was being planned. Pretty cool.
I like that they quoted Clarke's 2010. In 3001, he goes further to discuss what happens to the first Chinese mission that lands there. And then, when Lucifer goes off (the hydrogen in Jupiter is consumed), the monolith re-awakens. One of the best sci-fi books ever, and one I wonder why it has never been turne4d into a movie.
Guess we have to wait until 2030 to see the first photos from Europa, through these cameras.

[ponchi101]

So, when people malign modern science and especially medicine, let's remember cases like this one.
I will not make mock this woman because she is going to go through one horrible period of her life. But...

Former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis Says Her Cancer Has Spread After She Decided to 'Keep My Tumor'

A brief part:
“My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body. I felt like my body is intelligent, I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made,” Lewis explained.

“I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way,” she shared. “Looking back on that, I go, ‘You know what? Maybe I should have.’ “
...

Elam explains in a voice-over that Lewis pursued homeopathic remedies as well as medication and radiation, and better sleep and diet. While she says Lewis improved for a while, last year the MTV alum discovered her cancer had spread.
---0---
The BS about toxins is so infuriating. People, that is what you have two kidneys and a liver for. You have very few toxins in your body (or you would be dead).
End of rant. I hope they can help her (the real doctors).

[ti-amie]

BrianKrebs
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange
Developing scoop:

Fintech Giant Finastra Investigating Data Breach

The financial technology firm Finastra is investigating the alleged large-scale theft of information from its internal file transfer platform, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Finastra, which provides software and services to 45 of the world's top 50 banks, notified customers of the security incident after a cybercriminal began selling more than 400 gigabytes of data purportedly stolen from the company.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/11/fi

On Nov. 8, a cybercriminal using the nickname “abyss0” posted on the English-language cybercrime community BreachForums that they’d stolen files belonging to some of Finastra’s largest banking clients. The data auction did not specify a starting or “buy it now” price, but said interested buyers should reach out to them on Telegram.


abyss0’s Nov. 7 sales thread on BreachForums included many screenshots showing the file directory listings for various Finastra customers. Image: Ke-la.com.

[ponchi101]

Today is Edwin Hubble's birthdate, the man that delivered the last of the "Great demotions".

[ti-amie]

Ironically both Reddit and Blue Sky were down most of the afternoon.

[ti-amie]

USSMarauder
•
12m ago
•
Are these mofos trying to speedrun this thing so the outbreak starts the week before Biden leaves office?

I used to think that you guys were over the top when you said that idiocy like this was Darwinism in action.
I don't think you're extra anymore.

If bird flu makes the jump to humans we will know who to blame. It's highly contagious and the fatality rate is high.

[dryrunguy]

Footprints Suggest Different Human Relatives Lived Alongside One Another

A discovery in northern Kenya hints that two extinct species that were our ancient relatives shared the same habitat and possibly interacted.

A million and a half years ago, amid giant storks and the ancestors of antelopes, two extinct relatives of humans walked along the same muddy lakeshore in what is today northern Kenya, new research suggests.

An excavation team uncovered four sets of footprints preserved in the mud at the Turkana Basin, a site that has led to important breakthroughs in understanding human evolution. The discovery, announced on Thursday in a paper in the journal Science, is direct evidence that different kinds of human relatives, with distinct anatomies and gaits, inhabited the same place at the same time, the paper’s authors say.

It also raises questions about the extent of the species’ interactions with each other.

“They might have walked by one another,” said Kevin Hatala, an evolutionary anthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh who led the study. “They might have looked up in the distance and seen another member of a closely related species, occupying the same landscape.”

Based on skeletal remains found in the region, Dr. Hatala’s team attributed the footprints to Paranthropus boisei and Homo erectus, two types of hominins, the group consisting of our human lineage and closely related species. Paranthropus boisei had smaller brains along with wide, flat faces and massive teeth and chewing muscles; Homo erectus more closely resembled modern human proportions and are thought to be our direct ancestors.

Scientists have long known that different types of hominins coexisted on Earth. Homo sapiens, who emerged only around 300,000 years ago, shared the planet with Neanderthals and Denisovans for thousands of years. Traces of their DNA are still present in us today.

But evidence of species overlap and how behavior differed from one species to another is mostly inferred from bones. Such fossils are often preserved in irregular ways, or found in sediments that accumulate over millenniums. This can lead to a large margin of error in dating.

Footprints, on the other hand, fossilize in a much more straightforward manner, often within hours or days of their creation. They provide a clear snapshot of both a moment in time and a pattern of locomotion.

In 2021, Dr. Hatala was part of a team that reported footprints found in Tanzania were made by two distinct hominin species 3.6 million years ago. Now, he’s found a similar occurrence in Kenya.

The researchers uncovered three single footprints that seemed to come from the same type of hominin, and one long, continuous trail of prints that came from another.

It wasn’t immediately clear that the footprints were from distinct species. Because the fossil record is sparse, “you can’t do the Cinderella thing of fitting the foot skeleton into the footprint,” Dr. Hatala said.

Instead, the scientists relied on results from earlier experiments that used X-ray technology to understand how foot motion affects imprints left in the mud. Compared with the continuous trail of prints, the three isolated footprints all had higher arches, indicating that they arose from a gait more similar to that of humans today.

They also found that the feet responsible for the trail of prints had a big toe with a position that changed from step to step. The toe was not as mobile as those on apes, but more varied than what is seen in modern humans.

“That, to me, is fascinating,” said William Harcourt-Smith, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who wrote a perspective article that accompanied the study in Science. “Here we’ve got diversity in the way these creatures are moving around on the landscape, in each other’s backyards.”

Because they are more humanlike, the team believes that Homo erectus individuals created the three isolated prints, and that the continuous trail of prints, which have similarities to those left by earlier relatives of humans, came from Paranthropus boisei.

While Dr. Hatala and his colleagues have made that call, Dr. Harcourt-Smith said, “it’s hard to tell which species made which print.”

“I think more data are needed for that,” he said.

A re-analysis of footprints from a site nearby showed a similar overlap of the two hominins occurring more than 100,000 years later. This suggests that the two species possibly lived alongside each other for a long time, and that they weren’t in direct competition for resources.

“One wasn’t driving the other off their turf or something like that,” Dr. Hatala said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t see multiple instances of their overlap, or at least that would be much less likely.”

He finds it intriguing to ponder how they might have regarded each other: What would it be like to live in the same habitat as another humanlike species, one that shares some resemblance, but still looks so different?

The time we live in today, where Homo sapiens dominates the landscape, “is actually super rare,” Dr. Hatala said. “It’s only been this tiny, recent blip where we have had only one human species on the planet.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/scie ... f11dfcd63a

[ti-amie]

Making polio great again

[ti-amie]

Warning to Kennedy
“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” said the former Republican leader, who is a polio survivor.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Dec. 13, 2024
Updated 6:12 p.m. ET

Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader and a survivor of polio, issued a pointed statement in support of the polio vaccine on Friday, hours after The New York Times reported that the lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has petitioned federal regulators to withdraw the vaccine from the market.

Without naming Mr. Kennedy, Mr. McConnell suggested that the petition could jeopardize his confirmation to be health secretary in the incoming Trump administration.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” he said. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”

Mr. Kennedy has said he does not want to take away anyone’s vaccines. His lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit run by Mr. Kennedy’s former communications director. Mr. Siri is advising Mr. Kennedy as he vets candidates for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Mr. McConnell, 82, contracted polio as a child, more than a decade before the vaccine became widely available. When his left leg was paralyzed, his mother took him for treatment in Warm Springs, Ga., at the same treatment center frequented by another famous polio survivor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Although Mr. McConnell eventually recovered, the lingering effects of the disease followed him into adulthood, leaving him with a wobbly, uneven gait. He has spoken often of the experience.

“From the age of 2, normal life without paralysis was only possible for me because of the miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love. But for millions who came after me, the real miracle was the saving power of the polio vaccine,” Mr. McConnell said.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/us/p ... fk-jr.html

[Owendonovan]

I'm ready to chase these morons through the streets with torches.

[ponchi101]

This is the Science and Technology topic. You don't get to say here that you will chase people, for whatever reason, with torches.
You chase them with flame throwers. Or some other state of the art fire spewing device.
Get with it

[ti-amie]

This is the Science and Technology topic. You don't get to say here that you will chase people, for whatever reason, with torches.
You chase them with flame throwers. Or some other state of the art fire spewing device.
Get with it