Ignition in a Fusion Experiment

A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars: heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse together to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy as a by-product. Once the hydrogen plasma "ignites", the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating.

Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity.

If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible. No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of.  READ MORE...

Fawn

 

Hot Moose

 

Never Do This When Mowing Your Yard

A GARDENING expert has revealed the biggest mistakes you can do when mowing the lawn - and one could even encourage the growth of weeds and moss.

With the UK having experienced a sizzling hot Spanish summer and a few heatwaves with temperatures reaching 40.3C, it might be tempting to mow the dry grass to achieve a more neat-looking garden.

However, a gardening expert has warned fellow enthusiasts to resist the temptation to give your lawn a trim during ''dry spells''.

Speaking to The Express, Kate Turner, a gardening expert from Miracle-Gro, revealed the most common mistakes and the ''worst thing to do'' when it comes to mowing.

“The most important thing is, if you’re mowing, raise your mower blades so they’re up high.

“Also, if we’ve got dry spells like we’ve got at the moment, I’d stop mowing.

“Lift your mower blades up. The worst thing you can do is scalp your lawn because it looks horrible.

“That encourages weeds and moss to grow in your lawn.

“And don’t leave it for months and then give it a really good mow.

“Have a regular mowing routine and that just helps it thicken up.”  READ MORE...

Water Trucking

 

Stimulating Hair Growth

A team at the University of California, Irvine, has identified a signaling molecule that 

potently stimulates hair growth.

SCUBE3 has been found to be a potential therapeutic option for treating androgenetic alopecia.

A signaling molecule known as SCUBE3, which was discovered by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, has the potential to cure androgenetic alopecia, a prevalent type of hair loss in both women and men.

The research, which was recently published in the journal Developmental Cell, uncovered the precise mechanism by which the dermal papilla cells, specialized signal-producing fibroblasts found at the bottom of each hair follicle, encourage new development. Although the critical role dermal papilla cells play in regulating hair growth is widely established, the genetic basis of the activating chemicals involved is little understood.

“At different times during the hair follicle life cycle, the very same dermal papilla cells can send signals that either keep follicles dormant or trigger new hair growth,” said Maksim Plikus, Ph.D., UCI professor of developmental & cell biology and the study’s corresponding author.

“We revealed that the SCUBE3 signaling molecule, which dermal papilla cells produce naturally, is the messenger used to ‘tell’ the neighboring hair stem cells to start dividing, which heralds the onset of new hair growth.”


For mice and humans to effectively develop hair, the dermal papilla cells must produce activating chemicals. Dermal papilla cells malfunction in people with androgenetic alopecia, drastically lowering the typically plentiful activating chemicals. 

For this study, a mouse model with excessive hair and hyperactivated dermal papilla cells was created. This model will help researchers learn more about the regulation of hair growth.  READ MORE...

Away We Go

 

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

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