#Scientific & Technological Development

[wikinley]

Does a USB drive get heavier as you store more files on it?

Nope. Paradoxically (and theoretically), the more you save on a flash drive, the lighter it gets.

USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of the data are stored on transistors.

When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge.

To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams.

This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight.

[science70]

Ukrainian Institute of Scientific and Technological Research and Development, Kiev, Ukraine, 1971.

Architects: Lev Novikov, Florian Turiev

Photography: Johansen Krause

[xtruss]

[helpmakebetterdecisions]

9.5 ManufacturingPromote global innovation, R&D growth, and increased fu...

[townpostin]

NML Hosts Cutting-Edge Mineral Processing Training for SAIL

Executive trainees gain insights into characterization, beneficiation, and agglomeration techniques Innovative corporate training program at CSIR-NML aims to bridge science-industry gap, fostering technological advancements and sustainable practices in mineral processing sector. JAMSHEDPUR – A specialized four-day training program on advanced mineral processing techniques has been launched by the…

[biodiversityday]

PLENARY: Agenda items 10-Other matters; 11-Adoption of the report; and 12-Closure of the meeting.

Closing of 26th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice.

The Subsidiary Body was established under Article 25 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in its Article 27, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization provides that any subsidiary body established by or under the Convention may serve the Nagoya Protocol. United Nations Biodiversity.

Watch the PLENARY: Agenda items 10-Other matters; 11-Adoption of the report; and 12-Closure of the meeting!

[panafrocore]

Iron metallurgy in Africa

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"The Food and Drug Administration approved new mRNA coronavirus vaccines Thursday [August 22, 2024], clearing the way for shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to start hitting pharmacy shelves and doctor’s offices within a week.

Health officials encourage annual vaccination against the coronavirus, similar to yearly flu shots. Everyone 6 months and older should receive a new vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.

The FDA has yet to approve an updated vaccine from Novavax, which uses a more conventional vaccine development method but has faced financial challenges.

Our scientific understanding of coronavirus vaccines has evolved since they debuted in late 2020. Here’s what to know about the new vaccines.

Why are there new vaccines?

The coronavirus keeps evolving to overcome our immune defenses, and the shield offered by vaccines weakens over time. That’s why federal health officials want people to get an annual updated coronavirus vaccine designed to target the latest variants. They approve them for release in late summer or early fall to coincide with flu shots that Americans are already used to getting.

The underlying vaccine technology and manufacturing process are the same, but components change to account for how the virus morphs. The new vaccines target the KP.2 variant because most recent covid cases are caused by that strain or closely related ones...

Do the vaccines prevent infection?

You probably know by now that vaccinated people can still get covid. But the shots do offer some protection against infection, just not the kind of protection you get from highly effective vaccines for other diseases such as measles.

The 2023-2024 vaccine provided 54 percent increased protection against symptomatic covid infections, according to a CDC study of people who tested for the coronavirus at pharmacies during the first four months after that year’s shot was released...

A nasal vaccine could be better at stopping infections outright by increasing immunity where they take hold, and one is being studied in a trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

If you really want to dodge covid, don’t rely on the vaccine alone and take other precautions such as masking or avoiding crowds...

Do the vaccines help prevent transmission?

You may remember from early coverage of coronavirus vaccines that it was unclear whether shots would reduce transmission. Now, scientists say the answer is yes — even if you’re actively shedding virus.

That’s because the vaccine creates antibodies that reduce the amount of virus entering your cells, limiting how much the virus can replicate and make you even sicker. When vaccination prevents symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, people expel fewer respiratory droplets carrying the virus. When it reduces the viral load in an infected person, people become less contagious.

That’s why Peter Hotez, a physician and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said he feels more comfortable in a crowded medical conference, where attendees are probably up to date on their vaccines, than in a crowded airport.

“By having so many vaccinated people, it’s decreasing the number of days you are shedding virus if you get a breakthrough infection, and it decreases the amount of virus you are shedding,” Hotez said.

Do vaccines prevent long covid?

While the threat of acute serious respiratory covid disease has faded, developing the lingering symptoms of “long covid” remains a concern for people who have had even mild cases. The CDC says vaccination is the “best available tool” to reduce the risk of long covid in children and adults. The exact mechanism is unclear, but experts theorize that vaccines help by reducing the severity of illness, which is a major risk factor for long covid.

When is the best time to get a new coronavirus vaccine?

It depends on your circumstances, including risk factors for severe disease, when you were last infected or vaccinated, and plans for the months ahead. It’s best to talk these issues through with a doctor.

If you are at high risk and have not recently been vaccinated or infected, you may want to get a shot as soon as possible while cases remain high. The summer wave has shown signs of peaking, but cases can still be elevated and take weeks to return to low levels. It’s hard to predict when a winter wave will begin....

Where do I find vaccines?

CVS said its expects to start administering them within days, and Walgreens said that it would start scheduling appointments to receive shots after Sept. 6 and that customers can walk in before then.

Availability at doctor’s offices might take longer. Finding shots for infants and toddlers could be more difficult because many pharmacies do not administer them and not every pediatrician’s office will stock them given low demand and limited storage space.

This year’s updated coronavirus vaccines are supposed to have a longer shelf life, which eases the financial pressures of stocking them.

The CDC plans to relaunch its vaccine locator when the new vaccines are widely available, and similar services are offered by Moderna and Pfizer."

-via The Washington Post, August 22, 2024

[tenth-sentence]

The crucial techniques – crystallography, chromatography, radioactive tracers, the ultra-centrifuge – were all being developed.

"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney

[nucleartestsday]

15th Meeting, Biological Weapons Convention - Second Meeting of the Working Group on strengthening the BWC.

Topic: science and technology review mechanism.

 The Second Meeting of the Working Group on the Strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention will take place between 7 and 18 August 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland. In line with the indicative schedule of activities adopted at the First Meeting of the Working Group in March 2023, the following topics will be addressed:- 7 to 9 August 2023: international cooperation and assistance- 10 August 2023: international cooperation and assistance mechanism- 11, 14 to 15 August 2023: scientific and technological developments- 16 August 2023: science and technology review mechanism- 17 to 18 August 2023: national implementation.

Biological Weapons Convention: scientific and technological developments.

[nrpin]

Science and Society – Reckoning Revolution

Although scientific revolutions in how we see the world do occur, the bulk of our scientific understanding comes from the cumulative impact of numerous incremental studies that together paint an increasingly coherent picture of how nature works. – Michael E. Mann Society has been working in a certain way for ages which was primarily premised on mythology and theology. Knowledge then was based on…

[d0nutzgg]

Update: Plans for Speechy: the First Neurological Speech Disorder Identifier

Hey everyone, I have been hard at work on Speechy and I am happy to say I made a lot of progress last night! I now have a fully functional Youtube "Speech Disorder" audio clip scraper for the dataset.

It also now labels the videos into the right folder for me which is making the data scraping easier. It allows input of your own API key, and the ability to name the folder yourself.

Despite the roadblock on publishing the dataset itself (sorry to hype y'all up for nothing I really wanted to make the data publicly available but I also don't have lawyers like OpenAI to defend my ass lol).

For those who don't know OpenAI uses a dataset that was scraped from Google Searches. Not the most ethical but they haven't really made their stuff available and it's all currently proprietary which is saving their ass with lawsuits too.

Good news though, I also got the first very Alpha version of an NLP speech pattern recognition program to recognize the first of the disorders I am focused on - Ataxic Dysarthria which is what I have from my ongoing battle with Huntington's Disease.

This is very basic and I really need to train another neural network just for this but it'll pull out the *definite* matches and then only save those to another folder which cleans things up a bit then I can go back over some of it and add more to the files. It makes my life easier.

Also I want to note that this software is completely open source so anyone can fork it from my github and use it themselves! In fact I encourage you to do so!!

Here is the actual full code for the Youtube Scraper too

It's a bit hard to see but you can find it on my Github here:

Anyways, I got quite a bit done, now onto making the rest of the ID scripts (I would put them together but realized this would not be effective tbh. Here is the current state of the Github repo right now:

I also plan to make some visualization programs and do some of my own scientific research (ah.. reminiscing over my academic researching days with Michael J Fox Foundation data..) and I will probably even submit my own findings to be peer reviewed later on.

Thank you for your continued support and I will continue to post my "Dev log" of sorts every day (if I can remember, sorry I have Early Onset FTD).

Cheers!

[nasa]

Student Experiments Soar!

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get a technology ready for space? The NASA TechRise Student Challenge gives middle and high school students a chance to do just that – team up with their classmates to design an original science or technology project and bring that idea to life as a payload on a suborbital vehicle.

Since March 2021, with the help of teachers and technical advisors, students across the country have dreamed up experiments with the potential to impact space exploration and collect data about our planet.

So far, more than 180 TechRise experiments have flown on suborbital vehicles that expose them to the conditions of space. Flight testing is a big step along the path of space technology development and scientific discovery.

The 2023-2024 TechRise Challenge flight tests took place this summer, with 60 student teams selected to fly their experiments on one of two commercial suborbital flight platforms: a high-altitude balloon operated by World View, or the Xodiac rocket-powered lander operated by Astrobotic. Xodiac flew over the company’s Lunar Surface Proving Ground — a test field designed to simulate the Moon’s surface — in Mojave, California, while World View’s high-altitude balloon launched out of Page, Arizona.

Here are four innovative TechRise experiments built by students and tested aboard NASA-supported flights this summer:

1. Oobleck Reaches the Skies

Oobleck, which gets its name from Dr. Seuss, is a mixture of cornstarch and water that behaves as both a liquid and a solid. Inspired by in-class science experiments, high school students at Colegio Otoqui in Bayomón, Puerto Rico, tested how Oobleck’s properties at 80,000 feet aboard a high-altitude balloon are different from those on Earth’s surface. Using sensors and the organic elements to create Oobleck, students aimed to collect data on the fluid under different conditions to determine if it could be used as a system for impact absorption.

2. Terrestrial Magnetic Field

Middle school students at Phillips Academy International Baccalaureate School in Birmingham, Alabama, tested the Earth’s magnetic field strength during the ascent, float, and descent of the high-altitude balloon. The team hypothesized the magnetic field strength decreases as the distance from Earth’s surface increases.

3. Rocket Lander Flame Experiment

To understand the impact of dust, rocks, and other materials kicked up by a rocket plume when landing on the Moon, middle school students at Cliff Valley School in Atlanta, Georgia, tested the vibrations of the Xodiac rocket-powered lander using CO2 and vibration sensors. The team also used infrared (thermal) and visual light cameras to attempt to detect the hazards produced by the rocket plume on the simulated lunar surface, which is important to ensure a safe landing.

4. Rocket Navigation

Middle and high school students at Tiospaye Topa School in LaPlant, South Dakota, developed an experiment to track motion data with the help of a GPS tracker and magnetic radar. Using data from the rocket-powered lander flight, the team will create a map of the flight path as well as the magnetic field of the terrain. The students plan to use their map to explore developing their own rocket navigation system.

The 2024-2025 TechRise Challenge is now accepting proposals for technology and science to be tested on a high-altitude balloon! Not only does TechRise offer hands-on experience in a live testing scenario, but it also provides an opportunity to learn about teamwork, project management, and other real-world skills.

“The TechRise Challenge was a truly remarkable journey for our team,” said Roshni Ismail, the team lead and educator at Cliff Valley School. “Watching them transform through the discovery of new skills, problem-solving together while being driven by the chance of flying their creation on a [rocket-powered lander] with NASA has been exhilarating. They challenged themselves to learn through trial and error and worked long hours to overcome every obstacle. We are very grateful for this opportunity.”

Are you ready to bring your experiment design to the launchpad? If you are a sixth to 12th grade student, you can make a team under the guidance of an educator and submit your experiment ideas by November 1. Get ready to create!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[headspace-hotel]

I went down the internet rabbit hole trying to figure out wtf vegan cheese is made of and I found articles like this one speaking praises of new food tech startups creating vegan alternatives to cheese that Actually work like cheese in cooking so I was like huh that's neat and I looked up more stuff about 'precision fermentation' and. This is not good.

Basically these new biotech companies are pressuring governments to let them build a ton of new factories and pushing for governments to pay for them or to provide tax breaks and subsidies, and the factories are gonna cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require energy sources. Like, these things will have to be expensive and HUGE

I feel like I've just uncovered the tip of the "lab grown meat" iceberg. There are a bajillion of these companies (the one mentioned in the first article a $750 MILLION tech startup) that are trying to create "animal-free" animal products using biotech and want to build large factories to do it on a large scale

I'm trying to use google to find out about the energy requirements of such facilities and everything is really vague and hand-wavey about it like this article that's like "weeeeeell electricity can be produced using renewables" but it does take a lot of electricity, sugars, and human labor. Most of the claims about its sustainability appear to assume that we switch over to renewable electricity sources and/or use processes that don't fully exist yet.

I finally tracked down the source of some of the more radical claims about precision fermentation, and it comes from a think tank RethinkX that released a report claiming that the livestock industry will collapse by 2030, and be replaced by a system they're calling...

Food-as-Software, in which individual molecules engineered by scientists are uploaded to databases – molecular cookbooks that food engineers anywhere in the world can use to design products in the same way that software developers design apps.

I'm finding it hard to be excited about this for some odd reason

Where's the evidence for lower environmental impacts. That's literally what we're here for.

There will be an increase in the amount of electricity used in the new food system as the production facilities that underpin it rely on electricity to operate.

well that doesn't sound good.

This will, however, be offset by reductions in energy use elsewhere along the value chain. For example, since modern meat and dairy products will be produced in a sterile environment where the risk of contamination by pathogens is low, the need for refrigeration in storage and retail will decrease significantly.

Oh, so it will be better for the Earth because...we won't need to refrigerate. ????????

Oh Lord Jesus give me some numerical values.

Modern foods will be about 10 times more efficient than a cow at converting feed into end products because a cow needs energy via feed to maintain and build its body over time. Less feed consumed means less land required to grow it, which means less water is used and less waste is produced. The savings are dramatic – more than 10-25 times less feedstock, 10 times less water, five times less energy and 100 times less land.

There is nothing else in this report that I can find that provides evidence for a lower carbon footprint. Supposedly, an egg white protein produced through a similar process has been found to reduce environmental impacts, but mostly everything seems very speculative.

And crucially none of these estimations are taking into account the enormous cost and resource investment of constructing large factories that use this technology in the first place (existing use is mostly for pharmaceutical purposes)

It seems like there are more tech startups attempting to use this technology to create food than individual scientific papers investigating whether it's a good idea. Seriously, Google Scholar and JSTOR have almost nothing. The tech of the sort that RethinkX is describing barely exists.

Apparently Liberation Labs is planning to build the first large-scale precision fermentation facility in Richmond, Indiana come 2024 because of the presence of "a workforce experienced in manufacturing"

And I just looked up Richmond, Indiana and apparently, as of RIGHT NOW, the town is in the aftermath of a huge fire at a plastics recycling plant and is full of toxic debris containing asbestos and the air is full of toxic VOCs and hydrogen cyanide. ???????????? So that's how having a robust industrial sector is working out for them so far.

[townpostin]

Jamshedpur Engineer Soumya Deep Claims Breakthrough In Flywheel Energy Storage

Saumya Deep’s Patent Challenges Conventional Thermodynamics Laws Invention promises increased efficiency for renewable energy storage systems. JAMSHEDPUR – Saumya Deep, who is a mechanical engineer and school administrator, recently made an exciting announcement about a potentially revolutionary invention in flywheel energy storage technology. Deep’s patent, titled "A Process to Make Over Unity…

[biodiversityday]

Closing press conference of the SBSSTA.

Press Conference on the closing session of the 26th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice.