perestroika

Summary: a snake collector immunized himself on a rotating basis to lots of lethal snakes. I will not certify him as sane, since at some point he allowed snakes to directly bite himself and ended up in coma for several days (it was by accident). As a result of prolonged work with increasing doses and cyclically repeating venoms, he seems to have done human kind a considerable favour: it was possible to isolate venom antibodies from his blood which have broad and powerful effect and don't cause as much allergy as animal antibodies.

Study of the calls that bonobos use to communicate indicates that their vocal system shows both trivial and non-trivial compositionality, the latter previously thought to occur only in human languages.

(Note: since The Guardian messed up their link to the research paper, I'm providing it here: Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos.)

Summary: back in 2008, researchers found a big difference between the incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in Asian and "western" countries (even if situated in Asia). Incidence of the disease in "western" countries was several times higher. Additional data was pulled in to determine if the cause was genetic. People of Asian descent born in "western" countries had a comparably high risk, but people who had immigrated to "western" countries retained a lower risk. Thus, evidence pointed at society. The obvious candidate explanation was eating food that contains phytoestrogens from soy beans.

Finnish interview: over here.

English translation: over here on Riseup Share.

(For ease of reading, one can click "View in browser", it should display as a plain text file.)

Summary: a Finnish-language anarchist website published an interview with Ksusha, a member in the Solidarity Collectives network in Ukraine.

I found the interview informative of the situation they have, and wanted to share. However, Finnish is as good as encryption to most people, so I translated it to English.

Since I think Lemmy does not support posting long texts in post summaries or comments, I uploaded the translation to RiseUp Share.

I hope authors forgive that I've not contacted them to ask for permission, because I don't have their contacts, although eventually I must find a way to contact Solidarity Collectives on another matter. The interview in Finnish was also published in the magazine "Kapinatyöläinen" ("rebel worker"), issue 61.

A short summary: contrary to widespread opinion, the brain of a typical person is not sterile, but inhabited with microbes that have health effects.

In the article, researchers modeled the passage of the solar system through the galactic interstellar medium, components of which move at differing velocities and orbits.

They found that approximately 2-3 megayears ago, the solar system most likely entered a cloud of mainly cold hydrogen, and the density of the cloud was such that it should have considerably compressed the heliosphere (Sun's bubble of radiation and fields). Earth would have been outside the heliosphere either permanently or periodically. Currently the heliosphere ends far beyond the most distant planet, at approximately 130 Earth-Sun distances (astronomical units).

This would have greatly subdued the influence of solar wind on Earth, at the same time exposing the planet to interstellar cosmic rays. It is further speculated that studies which analyze Earth climate during the aforementioned period may benefit from accounting for this possibility.

Researchers sought confirmation for their model from geological records and found some, in the isotope content of iron and plutonium in sediments: iron 60 and plutonium 244 aren't produced by processes on Earth, so an influx would mean that solar wind no longer sufficed to beat back interstellar gas and dust (the latter containing radioisotopes from supernova explosions).

"By studying geological radioisotopes on Earth, we can learn about the past of the heliosphere. 60Fe is predominantly produced in supernova explosions and becomes trapped in interstellar dust grains. 60Fe has a half-life of 2.6 Myr, and 244Pu has a half-life of 80.7 Myr. 60Fe is not naturally produced on Earth, and so its presence is an indicator of supernova explosions within the last few (~10) million years. 244Pu is produced through the r-process that is thought to occur in neutron star mergers22. Evidence for the deposition of extraterrestrial 60Fe onto Earth has been found in deep-sea sediments and ferromanganese crusts between 1.7 and 3.2 Ma (refs. 23,24,25,26,27), in Antarctic snow [28] and in lunar samples [29]. The abundances were derived from new high-precision accelerator mass spectrometry measurements. The 244Pu/60Fe influx ratios are similar at ~2 Ma, and there is evidence of a second peak at ~7 Ma (refs. 23,24)."

Some Chinese researchers have found a new catalyst for electrochemically reducing CO2. Multiple such catalysts are known, but so far, only copper favours reaction products with a carbon chain of at least 2 carbons (e.g. ethanol).

The new catalyst requires a specific arrangement of tin atoms on tin disulphate substrate, seems to work in a solution of potassium hydrogen carbonate (read: low temperature) and is 80% specific to producing ethanol - a very practical chemical feedstock and fuel.

The new catalyst seems stable enough (97% activity after 100 hours). Reaction rates that I can interpret into "good" or "bad" aren't found - it could be slow to work. The original is paywalled, a more detailed article can be found at:

Carbon-Carbon Coupling on a Metal Non-metal Catalytic Pair

Overall, it's nice to see some research into breaking down CO2 for energy storage, but there is nothing practical (industrial) on that front yet, only lab work.

To my knowledge, this is the second time a sample is returned from an asteroid to Earth - only preceded by Hayabusa-2 fetching a sample from asteroid Ryugu. The capsule has been found and the sample stabilized with nitrogen. Fetching the sample required 7 years, studying it will require a bit of time too.

It is too early to speculate whether interesting discoveries will follow, but Bennu is considered to be an interesting asteroid - likely not a break-up product, but something that represents the original composition of the solar system.

Bennu is also considered a hazardous space object, ranked high on the Palermo scale of impact risk and kinetic yield, so knowing what it's made of can be practically worthwhile.

More information here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSIRIS-REx

The inverse vaccine, described in Nature Biomedical Engineering, takes advantage of how the liver naturally marks molecules from broken-down cells with “do not attack” flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die by natural processes.

PME researchers coupled an antigen — a molecule being attacked by the immune system— with a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell that the liver would recognize as friend, rather than foe. The team showed how the vaccine could successfully stop the autoimmune reaction associated with a multiple-sclerosis-like disease.

Most people would typically think than smelling a scent (unless it's a powerful poison or medicament) won't change much in a person's health... but apparently, a variation in the scent environment has effect on the human brain, especially if the person is already old and their senses are degrading. It has also been observed that viral infections damaging a person's olfactory nerves result in changes to the brain - with less input, the neural networks involved with scent tend to atrophy. Coinidentally, some neural networks involved with scent recognition are also involved with memory.

Prios studies already support the idea that training one's sense of smell helps older people avoid cognitive deterioration. This study brings highly significant statistical results and adds one bit - wakefulness is not required to benefit. Apparently, the stimulation a person receives from feeling different scents bypasses sleep (or maybe, even improves the quality of sleep).

Long story made short: apparently, the previous administration didn't really try (since it was Bolsonaro's, I am not surprised). EU import controls and financial interventions have also helped:

He believes the slowdown is due to a combination of factors: the resumption of embargoes and other protection activities by the government, improved technical analysis that reveal where problems are occurring more quickly and in more detail, greater involvement by banks to deny credit to landowners involved in clearing trees, and also wariness among farmers generated by the European Union’s new laws on deforestation-free trade. It may be no coincidence that deforestation has not fallen as impressively in the cerrado savanna, which is not yet covered by the EU’s controls.

Superconductivity is a condition of matter where resistance to electrical current disappears.

The first superconductors needed cooling to near the absolute zero. The next generation worked at temperatures of liquid nitrogen. A room-temperature atmospheric-pressure superconductor is a highly sought after material (e.g. it would expand possibilities to hande plasma for fusion research and make MRI machines easier to build).

A substance named LK-99 has recently caused interest in the research community. Its a copper-enriched lead apatite, typically made by reacting lead sulphate with copper phosphide. It is speculated to be superconductive at room temperature.

It is also thought that interesting properties are not inherent to the substance, but a particular kind of crystal lattice which this subtance obtains - if produced in certain ways.

The name LK-99 refers to Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim, and the number refers to 1999, when these Korean researchers first stumbled upon it.

Studies back then were interrupted. They weren't certain of its properties and it was hard to make repeatably. When a researcher named Tong-Shik Choi died in 2017, he requested in his will that research into LK-99 be continued. The resources were found and his request was granted.

Then, other factors intervened, among them COVID. The first article was rejected by Nature because an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. An article in Arxiv (not peer reviewed) at the end of July 2023 drew international attention, however.

Many persons and teams started attempting to replicate the experimental results. The process is still half way through, but considerable progress has been made.

• Beijing University, school of material science + Beihang university: the experiment was made, but the effect could not be reproduced (they obtained a paramagnetic semiconductor of little interest)

• Huazhong University, center for crystalline materials and micro/nanodevices: they obtained a diamagnetic crystal with interesting properties (repelled by a ferromagnet regardless of orientation, a property which a superconductor must have, but which is also shared by non-superconductive diamagnets)

• National Physics Laboratory of India: failed to replicate the effect

• Professor Sun Yue, South-Eastern University of China: got a weak diamagnetic crystal

• Iris Alexandra (from Russia, plant physiologist): with an alternative production method, obtained a tiny but strongly diamagnetic crystal

• Sinéad Griffin (Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, from the US): published an article, attempting to theoretically explain how superconductivity might arise in the substance, explanatory tweet here

• Junwen Lai (Shenyang National Material Science Laboratory, China): published an article about the electron structure of the substance, without opinion regarding superconductivity, with the opinion that gold doping would be better than copper doping

So, strong evidence is absent until now - we may have much merriness about nothing. There is a bunch of hypothesis and enough material to fit on a fingertip. :)

Background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99