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Science (General/Chat)

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  • More Adventures with AI Claude, the Contrite Poet

    06/09/2024 11:08:43 AM PDT · by Rev M. Bresciani
    New American Prophet ^ | June 9, 2024 | Dr. Michael Brown
    Working with the AI bot Claude is, in no particular order, amazing, frustrating, and hilarious. On the one hand, when “he” gets things right, the knowledge base is beyond staggering. (Yes, I know I’m dealing with an “it,” but Claude has so much personality that I’ll stay with “he.”) I asked Claude some questions from my wife Nancy about types of soil, and Claude responded in massive accurate detail, as confirmed by Nancy, who is quite expert in landscaping related issues. I then asked Claude to translate his answers into Mandarin Chinese, which he did instantly, although I couldn’t verify...
  • The Linux Foundation Diversity & Inclusivity

    06/09/2024 8:45:20 AM PDT · by fireman15 · 35 replies
    https://www.linuxfoundation.org/ ^ | June 9, 2024 | Linux Foundation
    Diversity & Inclusivity The power of collaboration is greater when many different perspectives are included. Addressing Diversity and Inclusivity A diversity of ideas and contributions, one that originates from a diverse community, from all walks of life, cultures, countries, and skin colors—is vital for building sustainable and healthy open source communities. Individuals from diverse backgrounds inject new and innovative ideas to advance an inclusive and welcoming ecosystem for all. Linux Foundation is committed to building diverse and inclusive communities. Creating those diverse communities requires effort and commitment to creating inclusive and welcoming spaces. We continue to work to address this...
  • Horses may have been domesticated twice. Only one attempt stuck

    06/09/2024 3:24:03 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 14 replies
    Science News ^ | June 6, 2024 | Tina Hesman Saey
    Horses were domesticated at least twice, researchers report June 6 in Nature. Genetic data suggest Botai hunter-gatherers in Central Asia may have been the first to domesticate the animals for milk and meat around 5,000 years ago. That attempt didn't stick. But other people living north of the Caucasian Mountains domesticated horses for transportation about 4,200 years ago, the researchers found.Those latter horses took the equine world by storm. In just a few centuries, they replaced their wild cousins and became the modern domestic horse...ancient people from southwest Asia known as the Yamnaya have been credited with being the first...
  • Thomas Edison invented the concept of the job interview. Albert Einstein himself failed Edison's Test

    06/06/2024 8:51:08 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 66 replies
    History Facts ^ | 06/06/2024
    Although Thomas Edison was awarded 2,332 worldwide patents as an inventor, one of his lasting contributions to modern society was not proprietary: the job interview. Edison was not just a prolific inventor — he was also a businessman in charge of an industrial empire. His corporation, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., employed more than 10,000 workers at dozens of companies. Edison wanted employees who could memorize large quantities of information and also make efficient business decisions. To find them, he devised an extensive questionnaire to assess job candidates’ knowledge and personality.Edison began using tests for candidate assessment in the late 19th...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - Pandora's Cluster of Galaxies

    06/08/2024 12:07:45 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 5 replies
    NASA ^ | 8 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh), Pro
    Explanation: This deep field mosaicked image presents a stunning view of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 recorded by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam. Also dubbed Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744 itself appears to be a ponderous merger of three different massive galaxy clusters. It lies some 3.5 billion light-years away, toward the constellation Sculptor. Dominated by dark matter, the mega-cluster warps and distorts the fabric of spacetime, gravitationally lensing even more distant objects. Redder than the Pandora cluster galaxies many of the lensed sources are very distant galaxies in the early Universe, their lensed images stretched and distorted into arcs. Of...
  • Elon Musk's xAI selects southern city for 'world's largest' supercomputer site

    06/07/2024 8:06:33 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 51 replies
    MSN Via Fox News ^ | 06/06/2024 | Aislinn Murphy
    XAI has its sights set on creating the world’s largest supercomputer and, according to a recent announcement, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence company has selected Memphis for its site. The Greater Memphis Chamber revealed the southwestern Tennessee city had landed the planned project on Wednesday, saying it will be the "largest capital investment by a new-to-market company in Memphis history." The supercomputer will be called the "Gigafactory of Compute," the group said. Musk said it's "true" in a reply to an X post that contained footage of the Greater Memphis Chamber’s press conference announcing plans for Memphis to get the...
  • William Anders dies in plane crash: Apollo 8 astronaut, 90, named as pilot killed in Washington fireball smash

    06/07/2024 8:38:15 PM PDT · by Morgana · 39 replies
    Daily Mail UK ^ | June 7, 2024 | James Gordon
    Retired American astronaut William Anders, who was part of the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has died after his small plane crashed into Puget Sound in Washington State. The 90-year-old died after the small aircraft he was piloting crashed near Orcas Island on Friday, resulting in a fireball as the plane hit the water. Officials with the United States Coast Guard Pacific Northwest said the crash happened just before 11:45am on Friday. Video footage shot on the Sound shows the plane flying high in the sky before it plummets as it begins a dive. Just before the plane began to...
  • Biden’s climate chief warns against ‘U-turn agenda’ (only 6.65 years left)

    06/07/2024 6:27:30 PM PDT · by Libloather · 13 replies
    Politico ^ | 6/05/24 | Zack Colman
    resident Joe Biden’s top climate adviser said he understands young activists’ impatience with the slow progress on combating climate change — but warned that the president’s political rivals are preparing a “U-turn agenda” that would reverse all the administration’s progress. White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi’s comments Wednesday at the POLITICO Energy Summit come as the youth-led environmental group Sunrise Movement signaled it is withholding its endorsement of Biden, who has struggled to draw support from the young voters who were crucial to his election four years ago. Zaidi said the administration needs to communicate the stakes of the...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - SH2-308: The Dolphin Head Nebula

    06/07/2024 1:05:24 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 4 replies
    NASA ^ | 7 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Prabhu Kutti
    Explanation: Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,000 light-years away toward the well-trained constellation Canis Major and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast...
  • China lands on far side of the moon

    06/07/2024 8:10:44 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 55 replies
    UPI ^ | June 04, 2024 | Mark Moran
    Technical personnel work at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing, on Sunday. China's Chang'e 6 touched down on the far side of the moon and will collect samples from the surface. Photo by Jin Liwang/EPA-EFE June 2 (UPI) -- After a month-long journey, a Chinese spacecraft has landed on the far side of the moon, the China National Space Administration said. Chinese space administration officials have said they intend to collect rock and soil from this notoriously difficult-to-reach region of the lunar surface for the first time in history, the CNSA said. "Everyone is very excited that we might...
  • Optical Engineers Invent Ultra-Thin Coating That Turns Ordinary Glasses into High-Efficiency Night Vision Goggles

    06/07/2024 7:26:59 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 50 replies
    The Debrief ^ | June 07, 2024 | CHRISTOPHER PLAIN
    A team of scientists has created an ultra-thin coating that can provide high-efficiency night vision to any glass surface, including ordinary reading glasses. Designed using something called a non-local metasurface, the plastic-wrap-thin coating also lets through all of the visible light, allowing users to see perfectly during daytime or at night. Some previous efforts using a non-local metasurface to create a night vision coating have shown limited success. However, those efforts have suffered from severely limited image quality. The inventors of this newest coating say they have broken through that barrier, resulting in a high-definition image visible light image that...
  • Pride Month – Are we proud of the decimation, disfigurement and death of children?

    06/07/2024 6:41:01 AM PDT · by Rev M. Bresciani · 20 replies
    New American Prophet ^ | June 7, 2024 | Michael Bresciani
    Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall – Proverbs 16:18 This proverb has been until recently, a prophetic warning. In today’s America it is a news item. We are already in a great fall from grace. It raises the question – what will we do about it? Here is what the present administration is doing, along with the medical community, and the rest of sleepy overindulgent America.
  • Woman Killed Attempting to Take a Selfie With a Speeding Steam Locomotive

    06/07/2024 3:54:56 AM PDT · by Libloather · 21 replies
    Men's Journal ^ | 6/05/24 | Stacey Ritzen
    A 29-year-old woman in Hidalgo, Mexico is dead after attempting to take a selfie with a train bound for Mexico City, but got too close to the tracks. The woman, who has not been identified, was part of a crowd to witness the final leg of a Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) 1930 Empress 2816 steam locomotive's journey, which departed from Calgary in Alberta, Canada on April 24. Last year, the cross-continental Final Spike Steam Tour became the first ever steam-powered passenger train in North America to traverse across Canada, the United States, and Mexico in a single trip. In...
  • The 50 Best Beers in the World

    06/07/2024 3:36:54 AM PDT · by Libloather · 72 replies
    Men's Journal ^ | 5/15/24 | Joshua M. Bernstein
    The best beers in the world are easier to get than ever before. Forty years ago, customers strolling through grocery stores would only find endless variations on the easy-drinking domestic lager. Care for a Busch? Miller High Life? Bud Light? If you were lucky, you might find an imported Irish beer like Guinness, a beach-y Mexican beer such as Corona, or perhaps even Foster’s, that Australian beer sold in the oversized can. Today’s hopheads can pick from tens of thousands of the best beers that deliver every conceivable flavor and alcohol level. Hazy double IPAs are now sold alongside zippy...
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day - NGC 4565: Galaxy on Edge

    06/06/2024 12:02:01 PM PDT · by MtnClimber · 11 replies
    NASA ^ | 6 Jun, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Lóránd Fényes
    Explanation: Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This sharp, colorful image reveals the galaxy's boxy, bulging central core cut by obscuring dust lanes that lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane. NGC 4565 itself lies about 40 million light-years distant and spans some 100,000 light-years. Easily spotted with small telescopes, sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed.
  • A strange intermittent radio signal from space has astronomers puzzled

    06/06/2024 11:46:47 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 37 replies
    The Conversation ^ | June 05, 2024 | Staff
    When astronomers turn our radio telescopes out towards space, we sometimes detect sporadic bursts of radio waves originating from across the vast expanse of the universe. We call them “radio transients”: some erupt only once, never to be seen again, and others flicker on and off in predictable patterns. We think most radio transients come from rotating neutron stars known as pulsars, which emit regular flashes of radio waves, like cosmic lighthouses. Typically, these neutron stars spin at incredible speeds, taking mere seconds or even a fraction of a second to complete each rotation. Recently, we discovered a radio transient...
  • Breakthrough Study Uncovers Brain Network Key to Human Consciousness

    06/06/2024 11:34:25 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 20 replies
    The Debrief ^ | June 04, 2024 | TIM MCMILLAN
    In a pioneering study, a team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital have identified a brain network essential for human consciousness. Aided by advances in ultrahigh-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, researchers discovered previously unknown pathways connecting various brain regions, forming what they termed the “default ascending arousal network” (DAAN). In findings published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers propose that this brain network plays a pivotal role in maintaining wakefulness and integrating arousal with awareness in the resting human brain. The discovery could be a significant breakthrough in understanding a range of neurological disorders while shedding...
  • Spacex Super Heavy has splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico

    06/06/2024 10:40:53 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 56 replies
    Jared Isaacman @rookisaacman · 4h Unreal SpaceX team.. great job. You just brought the most powerful booster in the world one step closer to reusability.
  • Stunning New Pics of Jupiter's Hellish Moon Snapped From Earth's Surface

    06/06/2024 9:26:08 AM PDT · by Red Badger · 13 replies
    Science Alert ^ | June 05, 2024 | MATT WILLIAMS, UNIVERSE TODAY
    The Jovian moon Io as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. The mission's camera caught a view of one of this moon's volcanos erupting. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), located on Mount Graham in Arizona and run by the University of Arizona, is part of the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs). With two primary mirrors measuring 8.4 m (~27.5 ft), it has a collecting area slightly greater than that of a 30-meter (98.4 ft) telescope. With their resolution, adaptive optics, and sophisticated instruments, these telescopes are expected to probe deeper...
  • SpaceX Starship Flight Test 4

    06/06/2024 5:07:02 AM PDT · by 6ppc · 128 replies
    SpaceX ^ | 6/6/2024 | Various
    SpaceX is targeting 8:50 am EDT, 7:50 am CDT for Starship Flight Test 4. Didn't see where a live thread had been started, so thought I would do it. Link above goes to https://www.spacex.com/launches which will redirect to X.com You can also watch on Nasa Space Flight's Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg