Subsurface Water on Mars

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough check-up since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Physics connects seismic data to properties of rocks and sediments.

A new analysis of seismic data from NASA’s Mars InSight mission has uncovered a couple of big surprises.

The first surprise: the top 300 meters (1000 feet) of the subsurface beneath the landing site near the Martian equator contains little or no ice.

“We find that Mars’ crust is weak and porous. The sediments are not well-cemented. And there’s no ice or not much ice filling the pore spaces,” said geophysicist Vashan Wright of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. 

Wright and three co-authors published their analysis on August 9, 2022, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.“These findings don’t preclude that there could be grains of ice or small balls of ice that are not cementing other minerals together,” said Wright. “The question is how likely is ice to be present in that form?”

The second surprise contradicts a leading theory about what happened to the water on Mars. It is believed the red planet may have harbored oceans of water early in its history. Many experts suspected that much of that water became part of the minerals that make up underground cement.  READ MORE...

Follow me Lads

 

Controlling the Masses

I live in a conservative state so almost everyone around me is of the same conservative mentality...  and, I would suspect the same is true of those living in a liberal state.

However...  my basic foundation is liberal in that I am not really in favor of people owning guns and I believe that women have the ultimate right to decide how they want to treat their bodies as far as abortion is concerned.

BUT...  when it comes to fiscal responsibility, I believe that no one should be in debt, not individuals, not families, not the government, and certainly not business...  even though I do understand that almost all businesses use leverage to expand their companies.

Government should be small and provide only those services that are so stated in the constitution that they should provide...  and that's it!!!

• The US is well beyond that desire as we already have:
• public education
• public transportation
• public housing
• unemployment insurance
• welfare
• medicare
• social security

I don't believe that the wealthy should be responsible for paying for social programs for the rest of us...  although, I do believe that EVERYONE should pay their fair share of taxes and that no monies should be sheltered away from taxes in offshore bank accounts.

Our free market enterprise system will ALWAYS create winners and losers and the wealthy and the poor...  and, if our government does its job correctly, it will create a middle class between the two extremes... this is the way capitalism should work.

We will always have pockets of discontent in this country and we should not cater to their demands just because they bitch loudy.

Politicians should do what is right for the country, not for themselves or for their parties...  but that never happens in reality... and, that is why we have all the political fighting that is going on in this country today because the people are tired of all the bullshit.

At some point in time, our system will break down and the people will begin to fight themselves out of anger and frustration...  and, the only people that will be untouched by all of this are the WEALTHY...  who are the ones who orchestrated all this shit...

It is time that we voiced our concerns...

Flops

 

Oldest Known Ingredients for Metal

RESEARCHERS HAVE IDENTIFIED THE INGREDIENTS IN FORMULAE FOR METAL FROM THE OLDEST KNOWN TECHNICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA, THE KAOGONG JI.

The Kaogong ji, translated variously as the Record of Trades, Records of Examination of Craftsman, Book of Diverse Crafts or Artificers’ Record was written in China around the middle of the first millennium BC and is the oldest known technical encyclopaedia, detailing the methods used to make items such as swords and instruments, including six chemistry formulae for mixing bronze.

In a study published in the journal Antiquity, a team from the University of Oxford believe that they have identified Jin and Xi, previously thought to be copper and tin, two key components of bronze.

The study analysed the chemical composition of Chinese coins from the period the Kaogong ji was written, indicating that the coins were made by diluting copper with tin and lead to create the desired form of bronze by mixing two pre-prepared metal alloys: a copper-tin-lead alloy and a copper-lead alloy.

“These recipes were used in the largest bronze industry in Eurasia during this period,” said Dr Ruiliang Liu from the British Museum, “Attempts to reconstruct these processes have been made for more than a hundred years, but have failed.”

As well as shedding light on the enigmatic ancient recipe, this discovery also indicates ancient Chinese metallurgy was more complex than expected.  READ MORE...

Thirsty

 

Preventing Kidney Stones

Kidney stones illustration. Mayo Clinic researchers found that enriching diets with foods high in calcium and potassium may prevent recurrent symptomatic kidney stones.

Diets Higher in Calcium and Potassium May Help Prevent Recurrent Symptomatic Kidney Stones

Not only can kidney stones cause excruciating pain, but they also are associated with chronic kidney disease, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease. If you’ve experienced a kidney stone once, you have a 30% chance of having another kidney stone within five years.

Typically, doctors prescribe changes in diet to prevent recurrent symptomatic kidney stones. Unfortunately, there is little research available regarding dietary changes for those who have one incident of kidney stone formation versus those who have recurrent incidents.

Therefore, Mayo Clinic researchers designed a prospective study to investigate the impact of dietary changes. According to their results, enriching diets with foods high in calcium and potassium may prevent recurrent symptomatic kidney stones.

411 patients who had experienced first-time symptomatic kidney stones and a control group of 384 people participated in the study. Dietary factors were based on a questionnaire administered to the participants, all of whom were seen at Mayo Clinic in Rochester and Mayo Clinic in Florida between 2009 and 2018. 

The findings, which will be published today (August 1) in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, show that lower dietary calcium and potassium, as well as lower intake of fluids, caffeine, and phytate, are associated with higher odds of experiencing a first-time symptomatic kidney stone.  READ MORE...

Jumping

 

Life at Jezero Crater

As for any consensus among scientists that signs of past or present life have been seen by Perseverance, once again, don't wait for a slam dunk observation.

Depiction shows Jezero Crater — the landing locale of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover — as it might have appeared billions of years ago when it was perhaps a life-sustaining lake. An inlet and outlet are also visible on either side of the lake. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Since its wheels-down landing in February of last year, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has been busily at work, on the prowl steering itself across the Jezero Crater landscape.


A key duty of the robot is to search for signs of ancient microbial life. The Mars machinery is industriously gathering up samples of Martian rock and soil that could help tease out an answer concerning the past habitability of the Red Planet.


Perseverance is on a roll, a collectible outing to stash core samples in sealed tubes that are to eventually find their way to Earth via the Mars Sample Return program.

But how tough is it to spot and sample potential past life on Mars? Perhaps the rover already has? Then there's the question of whether we need the samples back on Earth to find signs of past life, or can Perseverance, on-location, detect past or even present life with its suite of instruments?


Above all, just how hard might it be to have a consensus among scientists that, yes, signs of life, be it past or present has been observed by the rover? What's a slam dunk finding look like?  READ MORE...

Ninja Master

 

You Only Live Once

Only living once is a Christian philosophy in that all other lives will be lived in heaven or hell...  if either one of them actually exists...  which is doubtful...  however, the human race does have a creator, it is just not the creator that is spoken about in The Bible.

There is a poem that my mother liked that addressed this subject of only living once...

I burn my candle at both ends

it may not last the night

but ah my friends

and woe my foes

it gives a pretty light...  Edna St. Vincent Millay

For those of us who are in our 60s, 70s, & 80s and who have lived life as if we only had one life to live, we tend to regret that decision later in life because the means do not justify the ends...  and we hate looking back, saying I wished that I had not of done that...  but, it is always too late when one looks back...

So, what does YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE mean?

It means appreciate the life that you have been given and be thankful every day that you have been given that life...

And, believe me you can appreciate life without drugs and/or alcohol to take the edge off...

• the beauty of a sunset
• the beauty of a sunrise
• the mesmerizing quality of oceans waves coming into the shoreline
• the flight of seagulls
• the majesty of an eagle in flight
• the playfulness of a kitten
• a mother feeding her baby
• the colors of fall leaves
• the smell of magnolia flower

Instead, we think we need money and more money and even more money...  and, we use this money to purchase large homes, expensive vehicles, expensive clothes, go to expensive restaurants, and take expensive vacations...  and, in so doing, we too are only living once...  and, making the most of it...  how pitiful are we?  Rhetorical question...

With that attitude we

NEVER HAVE ENOUGH MONEY

NEVER HAVE ENOUGH TIME

Gambling With Our Money

Countries that have adopted and enacted socialist ideas and policies to various degrees, and have seen success in improving their societies by doing so, are Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.

So...  one cannot say that Socialism is bad for a country because the evidence above would contradict  that statement.

However, let's look at these countries and ask a couple of questions:

1. Do any of the countries have great militaries?
2. Do any of the countries have great economies?
3. Do any of these countries have great technology?
4. Are any of these countries exploring outer space?
5. Do any of the countries help other countries with their wars and/or natural disasters?
6. Are any of the countries Global Leaders?
7. Do any of these countries have the same freedoms as the US has?
8. Do any of these countries have the quality of life that the US has?

We must understand that life has tradeoffs and in this case, socialistic countries do no have the resources or the financial support to become super powers...  and, it is this super power status that puts the US in a position to lead the world.

We claim that we can have both providing our wealthy Americans are willing to pay their fair share in taxes...  BUT THEY ARE NOT...  and have their money sheltered in tax free accounts off shore...  typically in the Grand Caymans.

If going GREEN weakens our economy to the point that China becomes a greater economic and military power, we will regret that decisions for generations...  many of these democratic progressives do not think that will happen...  but they are assuming that the money will be there from taxes...

This is a huge gamble...  and, could be a huge mistake...

Disco Kittens

sc

 

Understanding Color Perception

A new study corrects an important error in the 3D mathematical space developed by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger and others, and used by scientists and industry for more than 100 years to describe how your eye distinguishes one color from another. 

The research has the potential to boost scientific data visualizations, improve TVs and recalibrate the textile and paint industries.

"The assumed shape of color space requires a paradigm shift," said Roxana Bujack, a computer scientist with a background in mathematics who creates scientific visualizations at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Bujack is lead author of the paper by a Los Alamos team in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the mathematics of color perception.

"Our research shows that the current mathematical model of how the eye perceives color differences is incorrect. That model was suggested by Bernhard Riemann and developed by Hermann von Helmholtz and Erwin Schrödinger—all giants in mathematics and physics—and proving one of them wrong is pretty much the dream of a scientist," said Bujack.

Modeling human color perception enables automation of image processing, computer graphics and visualization tasks.

"Our original idea was to develop algorithms to automatically improve color maps for data visualization, to make them easier to understand and interpret," Bujack said. 

So the team was surprised when they discovered they were the first to determine that the longstanding application of Riemannian geometry, which allows generalizing straight lines to curved surfaces, didn't work.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Superconductors That Transform Technology

Could let computers work at warp speed, save energy, and even make trains fly?

Scientists have used DNA to overcome a nearly insurmountable obstacle to engineering materials that will revolutionize electronics. Published in the journal Science on July 28, the work was performed by researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their collaborators.

One possible outcome of these engineered materials could be superconductors, which have zero electrical resistance, allowing electrons to flow unimpeded. That means that, unlike current means of electrical transmission, they don’t lose energy and don’t create heat. 

Development of a superconductor that could be used widely at normal pressures and room temperature – instead of at extremely high or low temperatures, as is now possible – could lead to many technological wonders. These include hyper-fast computers, shrinking the size of electronic devices, allowing high-speed trains to float on magnets and slash energy use, and many more.

One such superconductor was first proposed by Stanford physicist William A. Little more than 50 years ago. Scientists have spent decades trying to make it work. However, even after validating the feasibility of his idea, they were left with a challenge that appeared impossible to overcome. Until now.

Edward H. Egelman, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, has been a leader in the field of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), and he and Leticia Beltran, a graduate student in his lab, used cryo-EM imaging for this seemingly impossible project. “It demonstrates,” he said, “that the cryo-EM technique has great potential in materials research.”  READ MORE...

Jumping Dog

 

End of Manual Transmissions

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.

I drive a stick shift. It’s a pain, sometimes. Clutching and shifting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wears you out. My wife can’t drive my car, which limits our transit options. And when I’m at the wheel, I can’t hold a cold, delicious slushie in one hand, at least not safely. 

But despite the inconvenience, I love a manual transmission. I love the feeling that I am operating my car, not just driving it. That’s why I’ve driven stick shifts for the past 20 years.

That streak may soon be over. When it comes time to replace my current car, I probably won’t be able to get another like it. In 2000, more than 15 percent of new and used cars sold by the auto retailer CarMax came with stick shifts; by 2020, that figure had dropped to 2.4 percent. Among the hundreds of new car models for sale in the United States this year, only about 30 can be purchased with a manual transmission. 

Electric cars, which now account for more than 5 percent of car sales, don’t even have gearboxes. There are rumors that Mercedes-Benz plans to retire manuals entirely by the end of next year, all around the world, in a decision driven partly by electrification; 

Volkswagen is said to be dropping its own by 2030, and other brands are sure to follow. Stick shifts have long been a niche market in the U.S. Soon they’ll be extinct.We can’t say we weren’t warned. For years, the stick’s decline has been publicly lamented. 

Car and Driver ran a “Save the Manuals” campaign in 2010, insisting that drivers who “learned to operate the entire car” would enjoy driving more and do it better. A #SaveTheManual hashtag followed. Shifting gears yourself isn’t just a source of pleasure, its advocates have said, or a way to hone your driving. 

A manual car is also less likely to be stolen if fewer people know how to drive it. It’s cheaper to buy (or at least it used to be), and it once had lower operation and maintenance costs. 

You can push-start a manual if the battery dies, so you’re less likely to get stuck somewhere; and you can use the stick more easily for engine braking, which can reduce wear and make descending hills easier and safer.  READ MORE...

Fish School

 

Age of Problems

 

Yesterday, I saw my physical therapist for my left hip area because my Orthopedic surgeon thinks I may have bursitis...  my first visit to the therapist confirmed the bursitis diagnosis and for two days, I had heat, massage, and a couple of exercises.  But, yesterday, the therapist discovered that my left hip area and leg were not moving properly so he performed stretching movements that were not as pleasant as the other stuff that was done to me...  in fact, it HURT...  and, I don't hurt easily.

He told me that I probably walked when I should not have walked...  when I was limping and my leg compensated by tightening up...  and then the tightening up allowed bursitis to enter...  viola...  therapy.

I feel like a car that is 10 years old and when one part of the motor is fixed or replaced another part craps out on you...

So, back problems lead to hip problems that will probably lead to knee problems that will cause shoulder problems to develop because I am walking with a cane.

What is interesting here is that my Orthopedic NP sent me for one day of therapy only but the way she wrote the prescription, it was up to the therapist as to how long the therapy should last...  and insurance is good with that...  go figure?