Friday, March 18
Survival Skills
Aside from the improved taste, smell, and appearance, purifying water removes contaminants like waterborne arsenic, endocrine disrupters, selenium, and manganese. Drinking purified tap water is also better for the environment, as it helps to reduce pollution from plastic bottles, as well as environmental costs. Long-term consumption of bacteria-laced water could also cause health issues such as cancer, nervous system effects, and gastrointestinal illnesses.
What Are Some Methods To Purify Water?
There are a wide variety of options for purifying water. Some cost next to nothing, and others require a little bit more dough. Here are some of our favorites:
Filtration
This process involves taking those solid particles from water and removing them via a filter medium. Think of it as straining the particles from water, similar to straining water from pasta with a colander. Filtration shines when it comes to removing tiny compounds like pesticides, and it’s considered very affordable since most of the water is retained during the purification process. Examples of this type of method include ion exchange, mechanical, and absorption filters.
This process involves taking those solid particles from water and removing them via a filter medium. Think of it as straining the particles from water, similar to straining water from pasta with a colander. Filtration shines when it comes to removing tiny compounds like pesticides, and it’s considered very affordable since most of the water is retained during the purification process. Examples of this type of method include ion exchange, mechanical, and absorption filters.
Chlorination
Chlorine has been around for a while, and it’s pretty effective against parasites and microorganisms. Chlorine tablets are typically used, but be sure to contact your doctor first if you have a thyroid condition. Tablets should also be used in heated water so they dissolve better. To purchase one of these water purification products, check out your local hardware store or an online giant like Amazon.
Chlorine has been around for a while, and it’s pretty effective against parasites and microorganisms. Chlorine tablets are typically used, but be sure to contact your doctor first if you have a thyroid condition. Tablets should also be used in heated water so they dissolve better. To purchase one of these water purification products, check out your local hardware store or an online giant like Amazon.
Boiling
This is by far the cheapest method for purifying water and all you need is a heat source and a metal vessel, like a teapot. You have to wait for the water to reach a rolling boil and then cool down before you drink it, but this is a great way to purify water from almost any source when no other option is available. READ MORE...
This is by far the cheapest method for purifying water and all you need is a heat source and a metal vessel, like a teapot. You have to wait for the water to reach a rolling boil and then cool down before you drink it, but this is a great way to purify water from almost any source when no other option is available. READ MORE...
Thursday, March 17
My Daily Journey
The Hindu religion/philosophy revolves around four basic principles... the first is that god exists... the second is that all human beings are divine... the third is that there is a unity of existence... and the fourth is a religious harmony...
In short ->> God has created divine humans and in so doing has also created an environment of unity and harmony with all living things.
Christians believe in god but only see god as divine even though we were created in his image... because of our sins for which jesus died, we cannot be divine. Christians see our environment as something that was created for us and are not concerned with there being any unity or harmony unless it is with god.
This fundamental difference puts us in a position where we do not value life the same as Hindus because we see our purpose has serving god and not necessarily living in harmony and unity with one another.
perhaps Christians can learn a lesson here...
For the hindus there is a concept called karma... which is basically the theory that for every cause there is an effect or for every effect there must have been a cause to generate it...
While Christians have this in common with the hindus we don't live our lives based upon this concept... in fact, we rarely think about it outside of a medical context.
However, we are beginning the understand the concept of unintended consequences which is a result of cause and effect but from the standpoint that the effects were never anticipated... when perhaps they should have been.
A good example of this is the defund the police movement.
Hindus believe that there is a spark of god inside everyone's soul...
But what is the soul?
Is the soul the essence of the human being that which separates s/he from all other living creatures?
Hindus live a life that revolves around their philosophies of life whereas those who live in the USA live a life of conveniences...
The Width of an Atom
There’s been no greater act of magic in technology than the sleight of hand performed by Moore’s Law. Electronic components that once fit in your palm have long gone atomic, vanishing from our world to take up residence in the quantum realm.
But we’re now brushing the bitter limits of this trend. In a paper published in Nature this week, scientists at Tsinghua University in Shanghai wrote that they’ve built a graphene transistor gate with a length of 0.34 nanometers (nm)—or roughly the size of a single carbon atom.
The gate, a chip component that switches transistors on and off, is a critical measure of transistor size. Previous research had already pushed gate lengths to one nanometer and below. By scaling gate lengths down to the size of single atoms, the latest work sets a new mark that’ll be hard to beat. “In the future, it will be almost impossible for people to make a gate length smaller than 0.34 nm,” the paper’s senior author Tian-Ling Ren told IEEE Spectrum. “This could be the last node for Moore’s Law.”
Etching a 2D Sandwich
Transistors have a few core components: the source, the drain, the channel, and the gate. Electrical current flows from the source, through the channel, past the gate, and into the drain. The gate switches this current on or off depending on the voltage applied to it.
Recent advances in extreme transistor gate miniaturization rely on some fascinating materials. In 2016, for example, researchers used carbon nanotubes—which are single-atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders—and a 2D material called molybdenum disulfide to achieve a gate length of one nanometer. Silicon is a better semiconductor, as electrical currents encounter more resistance in molybdenum disulfide, but when gate lengths dip below five nanometers, electrons leak across the gates in silicon transistors. Molybdenum disulfide’s natural resistance prevents this leakage at the tiniest scales.
Building on this prior work, the researchers in the most recent study also chose molybdenum disulfide for their channel material and a carbon-based gate. But instead of carbon nanotubes, which are a nanometer across, they looked to go smaller. Unroll a nanotube and you get a sheet made of carbon atoms called graphene. Graphene has all kinds of interesting properties, one of which is excellent conductivity. The width and length of a graphene sheet are, of course, bigger than a nanotube—but the edge is a single carbon atom thick. The team cleverly exploited this property. READ MORE...
Transistors have a few core components: the source, the drain, the channel, and the gate. Electrical current flows from the source, through the channel, past the gate, and into the drain. The gate switches this current on or off depending on the voltage applied to it.
Recent advances in extreme transistor gate miniaturization rely on some fascinating materials. In 2016, for example, researchers used carbon nanotubes—which are single-atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders—and a 2D material called molybdenum disulfide to achieve a gate length of one nanometer. Silicon is a better semiconductor, as electrical currents encounter more resistance in molybdenum disulfide, but when gate lengths dip below five nanometers, electrons leak across the gates in silicon transistors. Molybdenum disulfide’s natural resistance prevents this leakage at the tiniest scales.
Building on this prior work, the researchers in the most recent study also chose molybdenum disulfide for their channel material and a carbon-based gate. But instead of carbon nanotubes, which are a nanometer across, they looked to go smaller. Unroll a nanotube and you get a sheet made of carbon atoms called graphene. Graphene has all kinds of interesting properties, one of which is excellent conductivity. The width and length of a graphene sheet are, of course, bigger than a nanotube—but the edge is a single carbon atom thick. The team cleverly exploited this property. READ MORE...
Tasmanian Tiger
The University of Melbourne is establishing a world-class research lab for de-extinction and marsupial conservation science thanks to a $5 million philanthropic gift.
The gift will be used to establish the Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research (TIGRR) Lab, led by Professor Andrew Pask, which will develop technologies that could achieve de-extinction of the thylacine (commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger), and provide crucial tools for threatened species conservation.
“Thanks to this generous funding we’re at a turning point where we can develop the technologies to potentially bring back a species from extinction and help safeguard other marsupials on the brink of disappearing,” Professor Pask, from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne said.
“Our research proposes nine key steps to de-extinction of the thylacine. One of our biggest breakthroughs was sequencing the thylacine genome, providing a complete blueprint on how to essentially build a thylacine.”
“The funding will allow our lab to move forward and focus on three key areas: improving our understanding of the thylacine genome; developing techniques to use marsupial stem cells to make an embryo; and then successfully transferring the embryo into a host surrogate uterus, such as a dunnart or Tasmanian devil,” Professor Pask said.
The thylacine, a unique marsupial carnivore also known as the Tasmanian wolf, was once widespread in Australia but was confined to the island of Tasmania by the time Europeans arrived in the 18th century. It was soon hunted to extinction by colonists, with the last known animal dying in captivity in 1936. READ MORE...
“The funding will allow our lab to move forward and focus on three key areas: improving our understanding of the thylacine genome; developing techniques to use marsupial stem cells to make an embryo; and then successfully transferring the embryo into a host surrogate uterus, such as a dunnart or Tasmanian devil,” Professor Pask said.
The thylacine, a unique marsupial carnivore also known as the Tasmanian wolf, was once widespread in Australia but was confined to the island of Tasmania by the time Europeans arrived in the 18th century. It was soon hunted to extinction by colonists, with the last known animal dying in captivity in 1936. READ MORE...
Wanr A Speedier Chromebook?
Do a web search for "how to install Chrome OS on a laptop" or anything like that and you likely discovered that it can't be done... at least, not the same way that you're able to install the latest Windows OS or a version of Linux. Google's Chrome OS isn't available for consumers to install, but you can get the next best thing: Neverware's CloudReady Chromium OS.
CloudReady looks and feels nearly identical to Chrome OS, but it can be installed on nearly any laptop or desktop, whether Windows or Mac. And although Neverware has paid versions for enterprise and education users, its Home Edition is free for personal use. You don't get tech support, and it can't be managed with the Google Admin console, but again: free.
Google acquired Neverware in December 2020, and in February 2022 it announced the first public fruits of that acquisition: Chrome OS Flex, a more robust version of CloudReady that's still free for home use. A stable release of Chrome OS Flex is expected to roll out in the second quarter of 2022. At that time, computers already running CloudReady will automatically update to Chrome OS Flex. Until then, you can download and use an early version, though the company cautioned that you should expect bugs while it's improving the system.
However, the current version of CloudReady Home Edition is still available. It was incredibly helpful to me during the pandemic's early days, converting an old HP netbook that could barely function under the weight of Windows 10 into a Chromebook capable enough for schoolwork online through Google Classroom and other services. READ MORE...
Wednesday, March 16
Off The Cuff
So... who is this Volodymyr Zelenskyy dude anyway? some sort of modern-day Churchill they say... I saw and heard his speech this morning and I didn't think he was no Churchill...
But... I also don't like the way he and his country are being treated by the damn Russians either... I think we ought to go in there and kick some RUSKY ASS...
Then again... maybe I'm just being mean... like my ole man was...
Life is too short to have some sociopath from Russia try to take away our freedoms simply because he thinks that he can. It kinda pisses me off that NATO and the UN are too chicken-shit to do anything about this... and it also seems like our own Biden administration is a little chicken-shit as well...
I'm all for going green but not when it screws up our own economy and the hard-working men like myself or like I used to be, have to frigging pay twice what we used to pay for gasoline... it also annoys the hell out of me that when my little honey goes to the market, the shelves are a little empty and she comes home a ballin' because she can't find what she needs to make what she promised me for dinner...
Well... that shit kinda makes me mad and I end up drinking more than I should drink... and then I got this frigging headache the next day that won't go away...
Life is just too sweet to have to live like this.
Congress needs to help out this little fellow from Ukraine and we need to show the rest of the world that we will defend any country... any country in this world... when another country tries to take away their freedoms...
That shit just ain't right no matter how the media tries to spin it...
Just a Few More Points
Do we really think that Russia wants to take the world into another world war?
Bullies are only bullies when the advantage is on their side... and, right now Russia has the support of China which is great but I am not sure if China wants to face the economics of a world war.
Therefore, I think the EU and NATO (along with the USA and Canada) should call Putin's bluff and send MIGS, weapons, bullets, weapons, and whatever else Ukraine needs to push Russia back into their own country.
I also think that the USA should tell the Green People to temporarily kiss their asses and turn on every oil and natural gas faucet that we have and flood the market with supply to lower prices and let our economy rebuild itself.
Then, we can and should set up a plan that would gradually move us into a NO FOSSIL FUEL environment rather than trying to jump into as if we were smoking cigarettes and wanted to go COLD TURKEY.
My mother always used to say that you catch more flies with honey than with fly paper...
Quantum Mechanics and Free Will
Credit: francescoch/Getty Images
A conjecture called superdeterminism, outlined decades ago, is a response to several peculiarities of quantum mechanics: the apparent randomness of quantum events; their apparent dependence on human observation, or measurement; and the apparent ability of a measurement in one place to determine, instantly, the outcome of a measurement elsewhere, an effect called nonlocality.
Einstein, who derided nonlocality as “spooky action at a distance,” insisted that quantum mechanics must be incomplete; there must be hidden variables that the theory overlooks. Superdeterminism is a radical hidden-variables theory proposed by physicist John Bell. He is renowned for a 1964 theorem, now named after him, that dramatically exposes the nonlocality of quantum mechanics.
Bell said in a BBC interview in 1985 that the puzzle of nonlocality vanishes if you assume that “the world is superdeterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined.”
In a recent video, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, whose work I admire, notes that superdeterminism eliminates the apparent randomness of quantum mechanics. “In quantum mechanics,” she explains, “we can only predict probabilities for measurement outcomes, rather than the measurement outcomes themselves. The outcomes are not determined, so quantum mechanics is indeterministic. Superdeterminism returns us to determinism.”
“The reason we can’t predict the outcome of a quantum measurement,” she explains, “is that we are missing information,” that is, hidden variables. Superdeterminism, she notes, gets rid of the measurement problem and nonlocality as well as randomness. Hidden variables determine in advance how physicists carry out the experiments; physicists might think they are choosing one option over another, but they aren’t. Hossenfelder calls free will “logically incoherent nonsense.”
Hossenfelder predicts that physicists might be able to confirm superdeterminism experimentally. “At some point,” she says, “it’ll just become obvious that measurement outcomes are actually much more predictable than quantum mechanics says. Indeed, maybe someone already has the data, they just haven’t analyzed it the right way.” Hossenfelder defends superdeterminism in more detail in a technical paper written with physicist Tim Palmer.
A conjecture called superdeterminism, outlined decades ago, is a response to several peculiarities of quantum mechanics: the apparent randomness of quantum events; their apparent dependence on human observation, or measurement; and the apparent ability of a measurement in one place to determine, instantly, the outcome of a measurement elsewhere, an effect called nonlocality.
Einstein, who derided nonlocality as “spooky action at a distance,” insisted that quantum mechanics must be incomplete; there must be hidden variables that the theory overlooks. Superdeterminism is a radical hidden-variables theory proposed by physicist John Bell. He is renowned for a 1964 theorem, now named after him, that dramatically exposes the nonlocality of quantum mechanics.
Bell said in a BBC interview in 1985 that the puzzle of nonlocality vanishes if you assume that “the world is superdeterministic, with not just inanimate nature running on behind-the-scenes clockwork, but with our behavior, including our belief that we are free to choose to do one experiment rather than another, absolutely predetermined.”
In a recent video, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, whose work I admire, notes that superdeterminism eliminates the apparent randomness of quantum mechanics. “In quantum mechanics,” she explains, “we can only predict probabilities for measurement outcomes, rather than the measurement outcomes themselves. The outcomes are not determined, so quantum mechanics is indeterministic. Superdeterminism returns us to determinism.”
“The reason we can’t predict the outcome of a quantum measurement,” she explains, “is that we are missing information,” that is, hidden variables. Superdeterminism, she notes, gets rid of the measurement problem and nonlocality as well as randomness. Hidden variables determine in advance how physicists carry out the experiments; physicists might think they are choosing one option over another, but they aren’t. Hossenfelder calls free will “logically incoherent nonsense.”
Hossenfelder predicts that physicists might be able to confirm superdeterminism experimentally. “At some point,” she says, “it’ll just become obvious that measurement outcomes are actually much more predictable than quantum mechanics says. Indeed, maybe someone already has the data, they just haven’t analyzed it the right way.” Hossenfelder defends superdeterminism in more detail in a technical paper written with physicist Tim Palmer.
TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
The Structure of a Janus Kinase
When a cytokine (green) binds to receptors (teal), two parts of the Janus kinase protein (pink) come together, activating it to send signals inside a cell. In some cancers, mutations in the kinase lock it together, keeping it abnormally active. Credit: Eric Smith/Chris Garcia/Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The breakthrough came on molecular biologist Christopher Garcia’s birthday.
For more than 20 years, his team and others around the world had been chasing an elusive quarry – the 3D structure of a crucial signaling protein in cells. In late 2021, his electron microscope images of the molecule started to come into focus. On December 8, postdoc Naotaka Tsutsumi and graduate student Caleb Glassman sent him an email with a startlingly clear picture of the protein latched on to a key receptor. “I was sitting in a meeting, and I realized we had it,” recalls Garcia, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University. “I immediately left the meeting and ran back to the lab.”
Glassman, who had just moved to Boston for a Harvard postdoc, canceled his planned backcountry trip, and rushed back to Stanford. “I wanted to finish what Naotaka and I had started,” he explains. Then the three researchers worked around the clock to nail the complete structure of the protein, known as a Janus kinase, and beat competing labs to the discovery. “It was a big horse race between many great groups worldwide, and we were sprinting towards the finish line,” Garcia says. On December 26, they rushed a manuscript to the journal Science, which published the work on March 10, 2022.
Garcia’s team has nabbed not just the full structure of a vitally important signaling molecule, but also the mechanism for how these kinases work, which had been “a fundamental question in biology,” says John O’Shea, an immunologist at the National Institutes of Health who helped to develop one of the first drugs to block Janus kinase function and was not involved with the new research. Because the proteins can go awry in disease, the results could lead to new and better drugs against certain cancers. “It’s amazing work,” O’Shea says.
Chipping away
Janus kinases are one of the communication whizzes of the animal kingdom. They take signals that come from outside cells and pass the info along to molecules inside. Scientists have known for years that malfunctioning Janus kinases can cause disease. Some mutations that impair Janus kinases can severely curtail the body’s ability to fight off infection, causing a condition virtually identical to “bubble boy disease.” And when genetic glitches and exaggerated signals rev up the kinases too much, the result can be blood cancers like leukemia, and allergic or autoimmune diseases. TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
For more than 20 years, his team and others around the world had been chasing an elusive quarry – the 3D structure of a crucial signaling protein in cells. In late 2021, his electron microscope images of the molecule started to come into focus. On December 8, postdoc Naotaka Tsutsumi and graduate student Caleb Glassman sent him an email with a startlingly clear picture of the protein latched on to a key receptor. “I was sitting in a meeting, and I realized we had it,” recalls Garcia, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University. “I immediately left the meeting and ran back to the lab.”
Glassman, who had just moved to Boston for a Harvard postdoc, canceled his planned backcountry trip, and rushed back to Stanford. “I wanted to finish what Naotaka and I had started,” he explains. Then the three researchers worked around the clock to nail the complete structure of the protein, known as a Janus kinase, and beat competing labs to the discovery. “It was a big horse race between many great groups worldwide, and we were sprinting towards the finish line,” Garcia says. On December 26, they rushed a manuscript to the journal Science, which published the work on March 10, 2022.
Garcia’s team has nabbed not just the full structure of a vitally important signaling molecule, but also the mechanism for how these kinases work, which had been “a fundamental question in biology,” says John O’Shea, an immunologist at the National Institutes of Health who helped to develop one of the first drugs to block Janus kinase function and was not involved with the new research. Because the proteins can go awry in disease, the results could lead to new and better drugs against certain cancers. “It’s amazing work,” O’Shea says.
Chipping away
Janus kinases are one of the communication whizzes of the animal kingdom. They take signals that come from outside cells and pass the info along to molecules inside. Scientists have known for years that malfunctioning Janus kinases can cause disease. Some mutations that impair Janus kinases can severely curtail the body’s ability to fight off infection, causing a condition virtually identical to “bubble boy disease.” And when genetic glitches and exaggerated signals rev up the kinases too much, the result can be blood cancers like leukemia, and allergic or autoimmune diseases. TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
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