Meanwhile in science news.

[Wondering Beard]

Ancient teeth show history of epidemics is much older than we thought


"Paleogenomics, which adapts high-end medical tools similar to some now being used to track the coronavirus, has amounted to a “revolution” in understanding disease history, says Maria Spyrou, a microbiologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany."


"Scientists and archaeologists now believe, however, that the plague bacteria, which caused the medieval Black Death that killed up to half of Europe’s population, infected humans roughly 5,000 years ago in the Stone Age. The bacteria, after it had entered the bloodstream and likely killed the host, circulated into the pulp chamber of teeth, which kept its DNA insulated from millennia of environmental wear and tear. In the past decade, scientists have been able to extract and analyze that DNA."


“It probably was the first pandemic,” said Simon Rasmussen, a genomicist at the university and lead researcher on the plague study. In the Stone Age, also called the Neolithic period, humans made unprecedented moves to gather in large settlements with up to 10,000 people in close quarters with animals and virtually no sanitation. “It’s the textbook place of where you could have a new pathogen,”


“The steppe migrations would not have succeeded without the plague . . . and [those living in what is now Europe] would not all have spoken Indo-European languages,” Kristiansen said. “Later prehistory has been turned upside down to say the least.”


"The process is expensive, and it’s dominated by labs in Europe with equipment and funding. Conducting a complete survey of teeth can cost upward of $1 million. That depends, still, on a team’s good fortune in finding enough ancient teeth that have experienced the right conditions over millennia to preserve pathogen DNA."

[Baldanders]

https://www-wired-com.cdn.ampproject...th-its-mate%2F

Study that shows how male and female anglerfish fuse into a reproductive unit may lead to less complications with organ transplants.

If you aren't familiar with the lovely lifecycle of the anglerfish:


https://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

It's pretty gross.

[Baldanders]

Ancient teeth show history of epidemics is much older than we thought


"Paleogenomics, which adapts high-end medical tools similar to some now being used to track the coronavirus, has amounted to a “revolution” in understanding disease history, says Maria Spyrou, a microbiologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany."


"Scientists and archaeologists now believe, however, that the plague bacteria, which caused the medieval Black Death that killed up to half of Europe’s population, infected humans roughly 5,000 years ago in the Stone Age. The bacteria, after it had entered the bloodstream and likely killed the host, circulated into the pulp chamber of teeth, which kept its DNA insulated from millennia of environmental wear and tear. In the past decade, scientists have been able to extract and analyze that DNA."


“It probably was the first pandemic,” said Simon Rasmussen, a genomicist at the university and lead researcher on the plague study. In the Stone Age, also called the Neolithic period, humans made unprecedented moves to gather in large settlements with up to 10,000 people in close quarters with animals and virtually no sanitation. “It’s the textbook place of where you could have a new pathogen,”


“The steppe migrations would not have succeeded without the plague . . . and [those living in what is now Europe] would not all have spoken Indo-European languages,” Kristiansen said. “Later prehistory has been turned upside down to say the least.”


"The process is expensive, and it’s dominated by labs in Europe with equipment and funding. Conducting a complete survey of teeth can cost upward of $1 million. That depends, still, on a team’s good fortune in finding enough ancient teeth that have experienced the right conditions over millennia to preserve pathogen DNA."

So now we can "Jurrasic Park" old strains of Black Death?

Seriously, an interesting discovery. I wonder what we will figure out about pathogen evolution with more examples like this.

[Wondering Beard]

Quantum physicists say time travelers don’t have to worry about the butterfly effect


"What if I told you all your favorite time-travel films and books were actually created by big tech in order to wrest control of the time-travel industry from the proletariat?"


"Per a press release from the lab, one of the study’s coauthors, theoretical physicist Nikolai Sinitsyn, said:
On a quantum computer, there is no problem simulating opposite-in-time evolution, or simulating running a process backwards into the past. So we can actually see what happens with a complex quantum world if we travel back in time, add small damage, and return. We found that our world survives, which means there’s no butterfly effect in quantum mechanics."

[blues]

Quantum physicists say time travelers don’t have to worry about the butterfly effect


"What if I told you all your favorite time-travel films and books were actually created by big tech in order to wrest control of the time-travel industry from the proletariat?"


"Per a press release from the lab, one of the study’s coauthors, theoretical physicist Nikolai Sinitsyn, said:
On a quantum computer, there is no problem simulating opposite-in-time evolution, or simulating running a process backwards into the past. So we can actually see what happens with a complex quantum world if we travel back in time, add small damage, and return. We found that our world survives, which means there’s no butterfly effect in quantum mechanics."

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

Yogi Berra

[5pins]

I was going to post something about the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment but then I found this.

Dad who lost his penis to horrific blood infection becomes first man in the world to have a new one built on his arm

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/122725...s-grow-on-arm/

Malcolm, a mechanic, is desperate for his £50,000 NHS-funded appendage — which he has nicknamed “Jimmy” — to be finally transferred to where it should be.

[Baldanders]

https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org/...8-casimir.html

This seems like might have all sorts of uses at the mirco/nano level.

[Clusterfrack]

https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org/...8-casimir.html

This seems like might have all sorts of uses at the mirco/nano level.

The physics is really cool, but I'm not seeing how this is different in application from van der Waals forces, already controlled and utilized in atomic force microscopy and the surface force apparatus.

[peterb]

(Cool video of razor slicing a hair)

Cutting-Edge Research Shows How Hair Dulls Razor Blades

A steel razor blade can get dull surprisingly quickly when cutting something as soft as hair, and now researchers have gotten their first up-close look at how a close shave actually damages an everyday disposable razor.

This leading-edge research, described in the journal Science, used a scanning electron microscope to peer at a razor as it sliced through strands of hair.

It found that, under the right conditions, a hair can produce tiny chips in the blade. That was unexpected, says Cemal Cem Tasan, a professor of metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"We know that blades fail after a number of uses. And, you know, you sort of take it for granted, you feel that it is normal," Tasan says. But given that the steel used for razors is extremely hard, he points out, it's not clear why this should be so.

"For me, personally, it was both a scientific curiosity, of 'What's going on?' and also aiming to solve an important engineering problem," Tasan says.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/89857...s-razor-blades

[5pins]

(Cool video of razor slicing a hair)

Cutting-Edge Research Shows How Hair Dulls Razor Blades

A steel razor blade can get dull surprisingly quickly when cutting something as soft as hair, and now researchers have gotten their first up-close look at how a close shave actually damages an everyday disposable razor.

This leading-edge research, described in the journal Science, used a scanning electron microscope to peer at a razor as it sliced through strands of hair.

It found that, under the right conditions, a hair can produce tiny chips in the blade. That was unexpected, says Cemal Cem Tasan, a professor of metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"We know that blades fail after a number of uses. And, you know, you sort of take it for granted, you feel that it is normal," Tasan says. But given that the steel used for razors is extremely hard, he points out, it's not clear why this should be so.

"For me, personally, it was both a scientific curiosity, of 'What's going on?' and also aiming to solve an important engineering problem," Tasan says.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/89857...s-razor-blades

Shouldn't that be cutting-edge research?