Welcome to the Overnight News Digest - Saturday Science with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, eeff, annetteboardman, Besame, jck, Rise above the swamp and jeremybloom. Alumni editors include (but not limited to: Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
Tonight’s topics include:
- Green hydrogen power at home
- Who is responsible for climate change?
- James Webb telescope keeps its name
- Prostate cancer surgery cure
- Apple AirPods as hearing aids
- Exposing brain cells to psilocybin yields new brain research
- Floaters or sinkers? Ask gut bacteria
- Cobra loses bite contest with 8-year-old boy
- Biodegradable mushroom-derived electronics
- Slash carbon emissions while growing the economy
- Feed hemp to cows, get high on their milk?
The Brighter Side News
by JD Shavit
Novel technology can power your home for days using half the water needed to flush a toilet
Emission-free hydrogen could, one day, entirely replace fossil fuels - and a start up in Germany believes it has the key ingredient to make it accessible to all.
Born in a climate-change affected South Pacific Island, Vaitea Cowan believes deeply in green hydrogen technology. She co-founded Enapter more than three years ago.
"I wanted to replace all the diesel generators in New Caledonia and all the remote areas that didn't need to rely on dirty diesel, " she says.
"But then realising the potential for green hydrogen to replace fossil fuels, I wanted to be part of this change."
MIT Technology Review
by Casey Crownhart
These three charts show who is most to blame for climate change
Leaders at the annual UN climate conference are still in the thick of negotiations, working to plan a path forward to cut emissions, as well as to address climate impacts that are already occurring.
Part of this second goal includes discussions about establishing funding for “loss and damage” caused by climate change, which richer countries would pay to help poorer and more vulnerable nations. Developing countries have long urged such funding, but the issue was finally added to the official agenda for the first time this year at COP27 in Egypt.
Central to these negotiations is a question: Who is responsible for climate change? The issue is complicated, but a few pieces of data about current and past emissions can begin to answer it.
Wired
bt Ramon Skibba
NASA will not change the James M. Webb telescope’s name
JAMES WEBB LED NASA in the 1950s and 60s, during the Cold War–era “Lavender Scare,” when government agencies often enforced policies that discriminated against gay and lesbian federal workers. For that reason, astronomers and others have long called for NASA to change the name of the James Webb Space Telescope. Earlier this year, the space agency agreed to complete a full investigation into Webb’s suspected role in the treatment and firing of LGBTQ employees.
This afternoon, NASA released that long-awaited report by the agency’s chief historian Brian Odom. In an accompanying press release, NASA officials made clear that the agency will not change the telescope’s name, writing: “Based on the available evidence, the agency does not plan to change the name of the James Webb Space Telescope. However, the report illuminates that this period in federal policy—and in American history more broadly—was a dark chapter that does not reflect the agency’s values today.”
The Brighter Side News
by Emily Brown
Game-changing surgery can cure prostate cancer in one hour
Doctors in the UK hope that thousands of men with prostate cancer could be cured through an innovative hour-long operation.
The 'game-changing' treatment uses electrical currents to destroy difficult to reach tumours. The one-hour ‘Nanoknife’ operation has been described as ‘amazingly simple and quick’ by surgeons.
It uses a technique called irreversible electroporation to administer electrical pulses into the tumour, cutting open the membrane of the cells in a far less invasive manner than standard treatments, meaning there are fewer risks to surrounding organs and tissues.
Gizmodo.com
by Andrew Liszewski
Apple air pods can work as more affordable hearing aids, study finds
It’s estimated that by the year 2060, the number of Americans dealing with hearing loss will double, which is especially concerning because currently only about 25% of older adults who would benefit from a hearing aid actually have access to or are willing to use the expensive hardware. They’re not a perfect alternative, but a new study has found that Apple’s wireless earbuds can serve as a more affordable and accessible sound amplification device.
[…]
Over-the-counter hearing aids will hopefully help make these devices more accessible—at least in the United States—but based on the handful of companies who have already announced OTC sound amplification devices, these will potentially still cost well over $1,000. They also don’t address other issues that have hindered hearing aid adoption, including social stigmas with the devices being associated with older people.
NeuroscienceNews.com
by Allen Institute
Exposing Brain Tissue to Psilocybin Provides Insights Into Consciousness, Depression and Anxiety
If an epilepsy patient needs brain surgery, their brain surgeon often extracts a piece of tissue the size of a sugar cube from the outermost layer to access the regions responsible for the seizures. This excised lump is typically discarded as medical waste since it is far from the diseased site.
But to neuroscientists like Jonathan Ting, Ph.D., this brain nugget is “the most precious piece of matter in the universe.”
Ting, Associate Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a division of the Allen Institute, and his team receive brain tissue removed during surgery and willingly donated by patients to uncover the workings of living human brain cells. Ting and others at the Allen Institute for Brain Science aim to build a “periodic table” of brain cell types to categorize the brain by its cellular building blocks.
Understanding what happens at the cellular level can help scientists better understand the larger experiences in the mind, including learning, consciousness, and even psychedelic experiences.
NewScientist.com
by Alice Klein
We now know why some poos sink
Whether your poo floats or sinks depends on the types of bacteria in your gut and how much gas they produce, a new study suggests.
About 10 to 15 per cent of people consistently do poos that float in toilet water – so-called “floaters”, while the rest typically produce poos that sink to the bottom, or “sinkers”.
In 1972, Michael Levitt, a gastroenterologist at University of Minnesota Hospitals, and his student William Duane showed this was largely to do with the gas content of faeces, not fat content, as was previously assumed. They collected floaters from 13 people and found they all sank when the gas inside was removed by increased pressurisation, even if they had high fat content.
Their research was prompted by Duane revealing to Levitt that his poos always floated. “About 2 hours after our discussion, he passed a stool, we put it in a flask, pressurised the flask and watched the stool sink, demonstrating the stool floated because of its gas content,” says Levitt.
Levitt and Duane believed this gas must have come from gut bacteria that became incorporated in the faeces, because two floaters they tested contained high levels of methane gas, which is made by bacteria that ferment carbohydrates as they pass through the large intestine. However, they couldn’t tell for sure.
Live Science
by Harry Baker
Cobra bites boy, boy bites it back (the boy was fine, the snake wasn’t)
A venomous snake has died after being bitten by a small boy. No, you didn't read that wrong.
In a bizarre reversal of nature, an 8-year-old boy in India killed a cobra after biting it in retaliation. The child bit back at the dangerous animal after receiving a rare venom-free "dry bite" from the serpent, according to reports.
The boy, identified in reports as Deepak, was playing outside near his house in Pandarpadh, a village in the Jashpur district of Chhattisgarh state, when he encountered an unknown species of venomous cobra ("cobra" can refer to any snake in the Elapidae family, most of which have hoods). After coiling its body around Deepak's hand, the cobra bit Deepak, which left the young boy "in great pain," The New Indian Express(opens in new tab) reported.
NewAtlas.com
by Ben Coxworth
Mushroom-derived electronics designed to biodegrade when discarded
Among other things, mushrooms have been put forth as eco-friendly alternatives to leather and expanded foam packaging. According to a new study, they might also find use in biodegradable electronic devices.
The discovery of this novel use for mushrooms was made more or less accidentally Martin Kaltenbrunner, Doris Danninger and Roland Pruckner, all of whom are scientists at Austria's Johannes Kepler University Linz.
While investigating the use of mushrooms in applications such as building insulation, they noted that the reishi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum) has a particularly tough outer skin that protects the underlying pulpy tissue from pathogens and other types of fungi.
It was discovered that the skin can be easily removed and then dried, forming a "robust, flexible, and heat resistant" material that can withstand temperatures of up to 250 ºC (482 ºF). That said, when left in the proper environment, it completely biodegrades. With these properties in mind, it is hoped that the "MycelioTronic" material could one day serve as the substrate for printed circuit boards in flexible electronic devices.
Vox
by Sigal Samuel
How to slash carbon emissions while growing the economy, in one chart
There’s a common intuition that says we can either have a healthy climate, or a growing economy, but not both.
Economic activity, so long as it’s powered by fossil fuels — which still provides about 80 percent of the world’s energy — creates greenhouse gas emissions. So it seems to follow that if we want to emit fewer greenhouse gasses, we’re going to have to sacrifice some economic growth, even though raising average income levels is a key part of reducing poverty.
This creates a horrible dilemma, because fighting climate change and fighting poverty are both hugely important goals. As developing countries are making clear at the ongoing COP27 climate summit in Egypt, we really don’t want to shortchange either one.
Fortunately, we may not have to.
Science.org
by Jack Tamisiea
Hemp may get cows high, but will their milk do the same for you?
They were displaying the typical symptoms of being stoned: red eyes, wobbly gaits, and drowsy demeanors. But these weren’t people who had just frequented their local dispensary—they were cows.
In a new study, scientists report cattle that have eaten feed containing varying amounts of hemp seemed to get stoned like people do. The work may give regulators pause when considering whether the affordable, fast-growing crop is safe for livestock to eat. It also raises concerns about whether the active ingredient in marijuana can enter the human food supply through the milk of blazed bovines.
The behavioral effects documented in the new study are noteworthy, says Serkan Ates, an agronomist at Oregon State University, Corvallis, who has studied hemp consumption in cows, lambs, and chickens. “They found a much more profound effect on the animal’s behavior than what we’ve seen in any of our dairy-feeding studies.”
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