This Week in Science

connor_in

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Jennifer Buscemi is the deepfake that should seriously frighten you

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I've gone down a black hole of the latest DeepFakes and this mashup of Steve Buscemi and Jennifer Lawrence is a sight to behold <a href="https://t.co/sWnU8SmAcz">pic.twitter.com/sWnU8SmAcz</a></p>— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikaelThalen/status/1090349932266094593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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IrishLion

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It's basically everyday guys learning to use software that's good enough to do what Hollywood does. They did it in "Star Wars: Rogue One" with Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin.

We can start worrying about serious disinformation campaigns once they figure out how to replicate voices more accurately lol
 

Old Man Mike

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All of that threatens to be more politics than science. The actual hurdles needed to be crossed (Ex. re-usable heavy lift vehicles, serious way-station in space --- maybe at both near-Earth and at Lagrangian Point distances, phenomenally clever biosphere sustainable systemics) make real students of these things roll their eyes at any short term schedules.

Beware the politicization of phony (unfunded) grandstanding. Since the decline of the real NASA after the 1970s, NASA leadership has recognized this political bullsh!t and played it clever as the fox --- ostensibly signing on to things (that they knew could not be done) to maintain popularity and funding for real do-able projects like the unmanned probes and the space telescopes.

If "private citizens" can make stupendous breakthroughs (the "Space Plane" is only the simplest), then maybe we could at least get started on serious space stations. Until those things go up and function dependably and with some true working room, all the rest of this is fantasy. Trump is just the latest in a group of politicians who have spewed this without funding it (W did near the end of his run as well.)
 

Circa

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AOC is OK with this as long as we use a high speed train for transportation and locate Amazon's new facility there.
<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/ki2ngt3CCo77Niwpd2" width="354" height="480" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/love-friendship-competition-ki2ngt3CCo77Niwpd2"
Wait. Is the non-competition part really capitalism with a twist....? We need robots to help end equality all together...
<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/5h7pVk6rosCbyArMFS" width="480" height="261" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/5h7pVk6rosCbyArMFS"
 
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connor_in

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World’s biggest airplane takes flight for the first time ever - Stratolaunch’s rocket-launching plane took off from Mojave, California early Saturday morning

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The world’s largest airplane takes flight! <a href="https://twitter.com/Stratolaunch?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Stratolaunch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NASASpaceflight</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/stratolaunch?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#stratolaunch</a> <a href="https://t.co/jmLs3mpztn">pic.twitter.com/jmLs3mpztn</a></p>— Jack Beyer (@thejackbeyer) <a href="https://twitter.com/thejackbeyer/status/1117067150169034752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 13, 2019</a></blockquote>
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GowerND11

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Anyone see about the shipment of blue ammonia to Japan from Saudi Arabia? Apparently it is burned producing 0 greenhouse gasses. Interesting stuff that I don't know enough about to see if it is really a "wonder fuel" or not.
 

Old Man Mike

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FWIW:
1. Ammonia is Ammonia. It is a nitrogen atom connected to three hydrogen atoms. It is very caustic and you need to take care in whatever use you put it to.
2. "Blue" is a nickname alerting you to how the particular batch was made. "Blue" means that the Ammonia was made by the process using "Blue" hydrogen. That in turn means that the hydrogen was made from some carbon-containing stock (usually Methane) but that the technology tried to capture all of the resultant CO2 so that none would be released.
"Green" ammonia is the nickname for producing it without any potential greenhouse gas at all. That would be done by using solar power as the energy source rather than methane burning for instance.
Old fashioned dirty ammonia would be formed using some carbon-containing burning source where the producers don't give a damm and just let the CO2 go into the air. This, for instance, is what Saudi Arabia and other producers always did.
3. Saudi wants to improve its reputation as a dirty fuels country and so has partnered with Japan (and others) to use its huge excess of methane oil well burn-off gas in a "blue" CO2 capture technology. Japan is stuck with a gigantic problem, being formerly a coal importer and then a nearly out of control nuke builder. It is desperate to get enough clean energy to get its economy back into world competitive shape.
4. In the larger picture, Ammonia is just a substitute for Hydrogen in anything you've heard about a 21st century "hydrogen economy." Ammonia is a little safer and easier to handle generally (although large amounts of ammonia can wipe out a small town almost as well as a chlorine gas rupture could --- it is a power-laden chemical not to be screwed with.) This gives energy planners pause as to how many citizens to trust using raw ammonia resources in their homes or vehicles for instance. Japan plans to use this firstly as a powerplant supplement (less than 1% of feedstock) and, apparently some transportation concepts. The Netherlands uses "green" ammonia in some technologies --- the end use technologies should be the same regardless of colored nickname.
5. Our country could produce huge amounts of either "color", but especially "blue" if we wanted to. Why? The don't give a sh!t frackers of North Dakota are flaring off so much "waste" methane that you can literally see it from space, brighter than the Twin Cities.

We've still got a LONG way to go. ... even in this country.
 

Bishop2b5

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The don't give a sh!t frackers of North Dakota are flaring off so much "waste" methane that you can literally see it from space, brighter than the Twin Cities.

Mike, why do they burn off the methane from wells instead of collecting it for use? Is it just that cost prohibitive or is there little use for the methane or what? I've seen the vents with the methane flames, and that's a LOT of energy being burned and tossed away. Seems there should be some better use for the methane.
 

Old Man Mike

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They are making huge wads of profits as is, and the Methane released has always been just flared at oil fields as a luxurious waste. It takes an entirely added process to build in the methane liquifiers (to my knowledge.) The bottomline-oriented people just say why bother? Saudi is only doing this (they've been flaring everything for decades) to try to claim that they are not evil profiteers and have an Earth conscience.

This is standard historical heavy industry practice. Make the primary for sale product; if something else falls in your lap, OK, grab it (this happened with the various heavier oil fractions); otherwise let the fluids of nature (air and water) try to safely disperse it. No added waste removal red ink to the budget.

Neanderthal Business Motto: The Solution to Pollution is Dilution.
 

Cackalacky2.0

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Check out <a href="https://twitter.com/NASAPersevere?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NASAPersevere</a>’s twin on Earth, OPTIMISM. It's used to test hardware & software before commands get sent to Perseverance on Mars. Join us for an IG live on Oct. 7 in the 9am PT hour (~noon ET, ~1600 UTC). We'll be taking your Qs. <a href="https://t.co/8ggahZu2b1">https://t.co/8ggahZu2b1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CountdownToMars?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CountdownToMars</a> <a href="https://t.co/nQPoEOWqye">pic.twitter.com/nQPoEOWqye</a></p>— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1313589615979196417?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 6, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Look at this BAMF. Its huge.
 

Old Man Mike

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Someone better versed should interpret this, but it seems that it shows a typical immunological response scaled to the severity of the infection. That should be good news for so-called "herd immunity" ultimately. My intuition reading this is that if one is generally healthy our base immune response is properly geared to handle this virus even if there are rough patches to deal with. The really bad stuff then would be "limited" to those whose system was already compromised in some form, or whose lifestyle was that of a moron.

In all, this seems to be precisely in line with what the medical community has suspected.
 

Bishop2b5

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Someone better versed should interpret this, but it seems that it shows a typical immunological response scaled to the severity of the infection. That should be good news for so-called "herd immunity" ultimately. My intuition reading this is that if one is generally healthy our base immune response is properly geared to handle this virus even if there are rough patches to deal with. The really bad stuff then would be "limited" to those whose system was already compromised in some form, or whose lifestyle was that of a moron.

In all, this seems to be precisely in line with what the medical community has suspected.

This is essentially correct. There have been several young people who didn't appear to have any underlying issues that have not handled the virus well, though. Not really sure what's going on there. I have a good friend who's 64, diabetic, has heart issues, and is quite overweight who tested positive a few weeks ago. He said he felt tired and run down for the duration and felt pretty crappy like the flu for a few days, but that was it. He's already back at work. There's some randomness to all of it, or at least some other things going on that we don't fully understand yet.
 

Legacy

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What caught my eye was the sentence in the Abstract:
Last, we showed that IL-6 and C-reactive protein serum concentrations were higher in patients who were hospitalized for longer, supporting the recent observations that IL-6 and C-reactive protein could be used as markers for COVID-19 severity.

One might think then that Interleukin-6 inhibitors would play a role in reducing the inflammatory reaction in those patients. Those have shown benefit in Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which is one of the problems with Covid.

Cytokine Balance in the Lungs of Patients with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

If I remember correctly, the Seattle med centers in the article above were testing them in Covid trials.

So far, they have not been proven to be of benefit in hospitalized Covid patients and are not recommended. NIH Treatment Guidelines below.

Interleukin-6 Inhibitors
 

Cackalacky2.0

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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/10/europe/viking-site-radar-norway-scli-intl-scn/index.html

201110054948-restricted-01-viking-site-discovered-using-radar-scli-intl-exlarge-169.jpg
 

Cackalacky2.0

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309767/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf#!po=0.793651
....so scientists have brought a 30,000 yo plant “back to life”

Whole, fertile plants of Silene stenophylla Ledeb. (Caryophyllaceae) have been uniquely regenerated from maternal, immature fruit tissue of Late Pleistocene age using in vitro tissue culture and clonal micropropagation. The fruits were excavated in northeastern Siberia from fossil squirrel burrows buried at a depth of 38 m in undisturbed and never thawed Late Pleistocene permafrost sediments with a temperature of −7 °C. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating showed fruits to be 31,800 ± 300 y old.
 

IrishLion

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"This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground."

That is in-fucking-sane.

There are intelligent aliens out there. Space is too big and too old for us to be the only intelligent lifeforms.
 

BleedBlueGold

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"This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground."

That is in-fucking-sane.

There are intelligent aliens out there. Space is too big and too old for us to be the only intelligent lifeforms.

I don't understand any of this, but I love it.
 

Cackalacky2.0

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"This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground."

That is in-fucking-sane.

There are intelligent aliens out there. Space is too big and too old for us to be the only intelligent lifeforms.
The gravitational lensing is so cool
 

NorthDakota

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"This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground."

That is in-fucking-sane.

There are intelligent aliens out there. Space is too big and too old for us to be the only intelligent lifeforms.
We will encounter the Covenant on Harvest in like 400 years I believe. Time to start building our fleet.
 
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