Science

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/2147796

We identify "life" with the capability of self-replication plus some other features. In other conditions, for instance on other planets, it could be possible for self-replication to happen in a way different from the RNA/DNA-based one.

I remember stumbling, years ago, on research and papers that studied this kind of possibility. But I'm having a hard time finding the old references or new ones.

Do you have interesting papers and research material to share about this? Thank you!

Machine translation of the whole paper

https://gist.github.com/ConcurrentSquared/c65cbec8a05e72e3e49b91f2ec92236b

Gets me excited about another projects like SETI@Home coming along. The BOINC platform (which SETI@Home used to distribute work) is alive and well. You can contribute your spare computational power to finding pulsars, curing cancer, and more. !boinc@sopuli.xyz

Blame Capitalism?

The shortages, which have been going on for years, have typically affected only low-cost generics rather than profitable brand-name drugs.

The main goal of this work is three-fold. First, to establish whether models of schooling fish can generate realistic flash waves that propagate across the school in response to an attack. Second, to explore the possibility that school members are using this source of information themselves, and test how that can, in principle, affect the attack-response behavior. Third, to demonstrate that flash patterns indeed contain accessible information relating to the dynamics of the school, the behavior of individuals within it (in particular, their response to threats) and to the nature of the attack.

In a paper published today in Science Advances, we and our colleagues detail our findings of what seems to be evidence of Southeast Asia’s oldest known curry. It’s also the oldest evidence of curry ever found outside India.

. . .

The limits of human adaptability

Scientists and other observers have become alarmed about the increasing frequency of extreme heat paired with high humidity.

In the Middle East, Asaluyeh, Iran, recorded an extremely dangerous maximum wet-bulb temperature of 92.7 F (33.7 C) on July 16, 2023 – above our measured upper limit of human adaptability to humid heat. India and Pakistan have both come close, as well.

People often point to a study published in 2010 that theorized that a wet-bulb temperature of 95 F (35 C) – equal to a temperature of 95 F at 100% humidity, or 115 F at 50% humidity – would be the upper limit of safety, beyond which the human body can no longer cool itself by evaporating sweat from the surface of the body to maintain a stable body core temperature.

It was not until recently that this limit was tested on humans in laboratory settings. The results of these tests show an even greater cause for concern.

. . .

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1721793

The article introduces a dynamic cosmological constant in the current ΛCDM cosmological model to account for some data from the James Webb telescope. The new model would have the age of the universe at ~27 billion years.

This is interesting. Unfortunately some popular science magazines are already presenting it as a fact...