IngPeaceProject.com

Live Science: Surgeons transplant pig’s heart into dying human patient in a first, NASA’s Perseverance rover is clogged up with pebbles, & more, and PBS News, NBC News

Live Science: Surgeons transplant pig’s heart into dying human patient in a first, NASA’s Perseverance rover is clogged up with pebbles, & more, and PBS News, NBC News

Live Science:  <livescience@smartbrief.com> January 14, 2022

NASA’s Perseverance rover is clogged up with pebbles

TOP SCIENCE NEWS
Curvature of space-time measured using ‘atomic fountain’

(R. Hurt/Caltech-JPL)

In 1797, English scientist Henry Cavendish measured the strength of gravity with a contraption made of lead spheres, wooden rods and wire. In the 21st century, scientists are doing something very similar with rather more sophisticated tools: atoms.

Full Story: Live Science (1/14)

AMAZING EARTH
Striking satellite photo captures Mount Vesuvius peering through a hole in the clouds

(Joshua Stevens/Landsat/NASA Earth Observatory)

One of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes, Mount Vesuvius, appears to “peer up” into the sky through an eerily circular hole in the clouds in this striking satellite image.

The Operational Land Imager onboard the Landsat-8 satellite snapped the photo, which was released Jan. 10 by NASA’s Earth Observatory. The volcano’s summit caldera — a large bowl-like depression that forms when a volcano erupts and collapses — is clearly visible in the new image, as well as a section of large mountainous ridge to the north, which is a remnant of Mount Somma — an ancient volcano that once stood in the same spot as Mount Vesuvius, before the newer volcano’s cone grew from it’s center.

Full Story: Live Science (1/14)

Earth inhales and exhales carbon in mesmerizing animation

(Markus Reichstein /Creative Commons license)

The Earth seems to inhale and exhale in a new animation that shows how carbon is taken up and released as the seasons change.

The animated continents seem to deflate during summertimes, indicating times and places where vegetation is growing and plants are sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. When it’s winter, the continents seem to inflate, indicating that vegetation is dying off and carbon is being released.

Full Story: Live Science (1/13)

LIFE’S LITTLE MYSTERIES
How are stalactites and stalagmites formed?

(Getty)

Stalactites and stalagmites decorate caves the world over. Stalactites hang down from the ceiling, while stalagmites rise up from the ground. They grow incredibly slowly, and some are so ancient that they predate modern humans, Live Science previously reported.

These tooth-like rock formations grow when dripping water comes into contact with the cave air, according to the National Park Service website. The water carries dissolved minerals, picked up on its journey from Earth’s surface. As it passes through the cave, it leaves tiny traces of those minerals behind, building each stalactite drip by drip.

Full Story: Live Science (1/14)

SPACE EXPLORATION
NASA’s Perseverance rover is clogged up with pebbles

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

A small pile of pebbles is clogging up the Perseverance Mars rover’s operations.

The rover, which is collecting rock samples for eventual return to Earth, began to struggle on Dec. 29, after extracting a core from a rock the mission team nicknamed “Issole.” According to a NASA blog, the problem occurred in the device that transfers the drill bit and sample out of the rover’s drill arm and into a carousel inside the rover’s chassis for storage. During the transfer, sensors within the rover recorded a higher-than-normal amount of friction at an unexpected point in the process.

Full Story: Live Science (1/13)

YOUR HEALTH
The virus behind ‘mono’ might trigger multiple sclerosis in some

(Kateryna Kon via Shutterstock)

Multiple sclerosis — an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord — may emerge after infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).

An estimated 90% to 95% of people catch EBV, also called human herpesvirus 4, by the time they reach adulthood, according to the clinical resource UpToDate. In children, the virus typically causes an asymptomatic or very mild infection, but in teens and young adults, EBV can cause infectious mononucleosis, better known as “mono.” Despite EBV being a commonly-caught virus, there’s evidence to suggest that infections with the virus are a risk factor for multiple sclerosis, a far less common condition.

Full Story: Live Science (1/13)

CURIOUS CREATURES
These birds have been singing the same songs for literally a million years

(JayHendry/Getty Images)

A million years ago, the soundtrack of the “sky island” mountains of East Africa may have been very similar to what it is today. That’s because a group of tiny, colorful birds has been singing the exact same tunes for more than 500,000 years — and maybe as long as 1 million years, according to a new study.

Sunbirds in the family Nectariniidae are colorful, tiny, nectar-feeding birds that resemble hummingbirds and are common throughout Africa and Asia. They are the “little jewels that appear before you,” senior author Rauri Bowie, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator in the school’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, said in a statement.

Full Story: Live Science (1/14)

Live Science:  <livescience@smartbrief.com> January 11, 2022

Rare ‘bionic’ armor discovered in 2,500-year-old China burial

TOP SCIENCE NEWS
Surgeons transplant pig’s heart into dying human patient in a first

(University of Maryland Medical Center)

Doctors have transplanted the heart from a genetically modified pig into the chest of a man from Maryland in a last-ditch effort to save his life. The first-of-its-kind surgery is being hailed as a major step forward in the decades-long effort to successfully transplant animal organs into humans.

Although it’s been tried before — one of the earliest subjects, known as Baby Fae, survived 21 days with a baboon’s heart in 1984, according to Time — the practice has fallen into disuse because the animal organs are usually quickly rejected by their human host.

But doctors say this new transplant is a breakthrough because the donor pig had undergone gene-editing to remove a specific type of sugar from its cells that’s thought to be responsible for previous organ rejections in patients.

Full Story: Live Science (1/11)

HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY
Rare ‘bionic’ armor discovered in 2,500-year-old China burial

(Dongliang Xu/Turfan Museum)

About 2,500 years ago, a man in northwest China was buried with armor made of more than 5,000 leather scales, a military garment fashioned so intricately, its design looks like the overlapping scales of a fish, a new study finds.

The armor, which resembles an apron-like waistcoat, could be donned quickly without the help of another person. “It is a light, highly efficient one-size-fits-all defensive garment for soldiers of a mass army,” said study lead researcher Patrick Wertmann, a researcher at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich.

Full Story: Live Science (1/11)

Hungry badger accidentally unearths hundreds of ancient Roman coins in Spain

(Shutterstock)

A hungry badger searching for food seems to have uncovered what turned out to be hundreds of Roman coins in a Spanish cave, according to a new study.

Archaeologists first discovered several coins laying on the ground at the entrance to a small cave in the woodlands outside Grado in northern Spain in April 2021. The researchers suspect that the coins were unearthed by a European badger (Meles meles) from a nearby den after a heavy storm dumped several feet of snow on the ground, making it harder for animals to find food. The hungry badger probably ventured into the cave looking for something to eat but came across the coins instead.

Full Story: Live Science (1/11)

Remains of a man and dog trying to escape ancient tsunami found on Aegean coast

(Vasif ?aho?lu)

Roughly 3,600 years ago, the massive Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea blew its top, unleashing massive tsunamis. Now, archaeologists in western Turkey have unearthed the bones of a young man and a dog killed by one of those tsunamis.

It’s the first time that any victims of the ancient eruption have been found in their archaeological context, and it’s the northernmost evidence found of the tsunamis that followed it.

Full Story: Live Science (1/10)

Enormous sea dragon fossil from 180 million years ago discovered in England

(Courtesy of Anglian Water)

The remains of a monstrous, 33-foot-long (10 meters) “sea dragon” that swam in the seas when dinosaurs were alive some 180 million years ago have been unearthed on a nature reserve in England. The behemoth is the biggest and most complete fossil of its kind ever discovered in the U.K.

“It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history,” excavation leader Dean Lomax, a paleontologist and visiting scientist at the University of Manchester, said in a statement.

Though many such ichthyosaurs have been found in the U.K., none have been as large as the current discovery.

Full Story: Live Science (1/10)

LIFE’S LITTLE MYSTERIES
How do energy saving light bulbs work?

(Getty Images)

Energy saving light bulbs were invented as a greener alternative to traditional bulbs, needing 90% less electricity to produce the same light, according to the Centre of Sustainable Energy. But how do they do it?

As bright ideas go, it’s almost impossible to overstate the impact the humble light bulb has had on human civilization. Before Thomas Edison had the original ‘light bulb moment’ and patented his invention all the way back in 1879 people were literally living in the dark ages, according to the Franklin Institute. People depended on oil or gas lamps and candles to light their rooms and streets, and when the sun went down the world would look much duller than it does today.

Full Story: Live Science (1/11)

ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
‘Diamond rain’ on Uranus and Neptune seems likely

(Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune don’t get nearly enough press; all the attention goes to their larger siblings, mighty Jupiter and magnificent Saturn.

At first glance, Uranus and Neptune are just bland, boring balls of uninteresting molecules. But hiding beneath the outer layers of those worlds, there may be something spectacular: a constant rain of diamonds.

Full Story: Live Science (1/11)

Scientists watched a star explode in real time for the first time ever

(W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko)

Astronomers have watched a giant star blow up in a fiery supernova for the first time ever — and the spectacle was even more explosive than the researchers anticipated.

Scientists began watching the doomed star — a red supergiant named SN 2020tlf and located about 120 million light-years from Earth — more than 100 days before its final, violent collapse, according to a new study published Jan. 6 in the Astrophysical Journal. During that lead-up, the researchers saw the star erupt with bright flashes of light as great globs of gas exploded out of the star’s surface.

Full Story: Live Science (1/10)

Live Science:  <livescience@smartbrief.com> January 7, 2022

Rare and fragile fossils found at a secret site in Australia’s ‘dead heart’

TOP SCIENCE NEWS
Bizarre cloud of gas is one of the longest structures in the Milky Way

(ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO & T. Müller/J. Syed/MPIA)

Astronomers have discovered what may be the longest structure in the Milky Way: an unusual cloud of hydrogen.

The gigantic structure, which is more than 3,900 light-years long and around 150 light-years wide, is located roughly 55,000 light-years away from the solar system, according to a statement by researchers. (Previously, the largest known clouds of gas in the Milky Way were thought to be about 800 light-years across.) The team named the lengthy cloud “Maggie,” which is short for the Magdalena River, the longest river in Colombia.

Full Story: Live Science (1/7)

COVID-19
Rapid tests may not detect omicron early in infection

(PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

Rapid antigen tests for COVID-19 may not reliably detect the omicron variant during the first few days of infection, even when a person is shedding the virus in high enough quantities to be contagious, preliminary evidence hints.

For the new study, posted Wednesday (Jan. 5) to the preprint database medRxiv, researchers looked at 30 people from five different workplaces in New York and California, all of whom tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in December 2021.

Full Story: Live Science (1/6)

HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY
Rare and fragile fossils found at a secret site in Australia’s ‘dead heart’

(Michael Frese)

Buried in Australia’s so-called dead heart, a trove of exceptional fossils, including those of trapdoor spiders, giant cicadas, tiny fish and a feather from an ancient bird, reveal a unique snapshot of a time when rainforests carpeted the now mostly-arid continent.

Paleontologists discovered the fossil treasure-trove, known as a Lagerstätte (“storage site” in German) in New South Wales, in a region so arid that British geologist John Walter Gregory famously dubbed it the “dead heart of Australia” over 100 years ago. The Lagerstätte’s location on private land was kept secret to protect it from illegal fossil collectors, while scientists excavated the remains of plants and animals that lived there sometime between 16 million and 11 million years ago.

Full Story: Live Science (1/7)

AMAZING EARTH
Weird structures near Earth’s core may be scars from a primordial interplanetary collision

(Tim Bertelink, CC 4.0)

A group of mysterious, ultradense structures just outside Earth’s core may be the remnants of an ancient interplanetary collision, new research suggests.

These strange structures are known as ultralow-velocity zones (ULVZs), because seismic waves generated by earthquakes travel about 50% more slowly through these zones than through the surrounding mantle. That means the ULVZs are also much denser than the rest of the mantle, and possibly made of heavier elements.

Full Story: Live Science (1/7)

MATH & PHYSICS
China’s $1 trillion ‘artificial sun’ fusion reactor just got five times hotter than the sun

(VCG via Getty Images)

China’s “artificial sun” has set a new world record after superheating a loop of plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun for more than 17 minutes, state media reported.

The EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) nuclear fusion reactor maintained a temperature of 158 million degrees Fahrenheit (70 million degrees Celsius) for 1,056 seconds, according to the Xinhua News Agency. The achievement brings scientists a small yet significant step closer to the creation of a source of near-unlimited clean energy.

Full Story: Live Science (1/6)

Nuclear-powered US submarine collided with a hidden underwater mountain, Navy reveals

(Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine that ran aground in the South China Sea last month collided with an uncharted seamount, according to a U.S. Navy investigation.

The USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine, collided with an unknown object in international waters on Oct. 2, causing minor to moderate injuries to 11 crewmembers, NPR reported. The damaged submarine surfaced and made it to a port in Guam unassisted. The Navy hasn’t disclosed the full extent of the damage, and all the Navy said about the incident at the time was that “it was not another submarine” that had collided with the vessel, The Associated Press reported.

Full Story: Live Science (1/6)

YOUR HEALTH

U.K.’s first human case of H5N1 avian flu detected in man with pet ducks

(Wagner Lessa / EyeEm via Getty Images)

A 79-year-old man named Alan Gosling, who kept pet ducks at his home in Devon, England, recently became the first U.K. resident to catch the H5N1 strain of bird flu, DevonLive reported.

A flock of more than 100 ducks lived outside on Gosling’s property in Buckfastleigh, and after feeding the animals for some time, Gosling brought 20 of the ducks into his home to keep as pets. In December 2021, a few of the ducks in the outdoor flock fell ill, Gosling noticed.

Full Story: Live Science (1/7)

ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
The sun used to have rings like Saturn

(Andrea Isella/Rice University)

Before Earth and the other planets in our solar system existed, the sun may have been surrounded by giant rings of dust similar to Saturn’s, according to a new study.

Those rings of dust may have prevented Earth from growing into a “super-Earth” — a type of planet that is about twice the size of Earth and up to 10 times its mass, according to NASA. Astronomers have discovered super-Earths orbiting about 30% of sun-like stars in our galaxy.

Full Story: Live Science (1/7)

‘Cosmic wildfires’ burn bright in new photo of the Flame Nebula

(ESO/Th. Stanke & ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)

A fiery new photograph of the Flame Nebula depicts the emissions from brand-new stars, burning through space like cosmic wildfires.

These wildfires don’t actually burn hot — the orange and yellow regions captured in this image are actually only a few tens of degrees warmer than absolute zero, the point at which the movement of atoms and other fundamental particles freezes, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO). But the emissions are revealing. By pointing the SuperCam instrument aboard the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment in the Chilean desert at this region, researchers were able to discover a brand-new nebula and explore two dusty interstellar clouds, Messier 78 and NGC 2071.

Full Story: Live Science (1/7)

 

 

CURIOUS CREATURES
Wild video shows goldfish ‘driving’ a water-filled car in weird experiment

(Shachar Givon, Matan Samina, Prof. Ohad Ben Shahar, Prof. Ronen Segev/BGU)

Fish may not need bicycles, but they seem to like cars.

A supremely weird new video shows a goldfish driving a water-filled, motorized “car” from one end of a room to another, bobbing and weaving to avoid obstacles along the way. Scientists performed the odd experiment to better understand how goldfish navigate terrestrial environments.

Full Story: Live Science (1/6)

 

PBS NewsHour full episode, Jan. 14, 2022

Jan 14, 2022  PBS NewsHour

Friday on the NewsHour, health systems buckle under the latest surge of hospitalizations from COVID-19 as schools struggle to keep the virus at bay. Also, millions of Kenyans face hunger and ethnic conflict exacerbated by the global climate crisis, and David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart consider the push in Congress for voting rights and the Supreme Court’s decision on vaccine mandates. WATCH TODAY’S SEGMENTS: News Wrap: Ukraine blames Russia for sweeping cyberattack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHN4J… Health systems buckle under surge of COVID hospitalizations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKZlI… How Boston’s sky-high COVID count impacts teachers, staff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ggr… Djokovic battles with Australia after violating COVID rules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=403GF… Brooks and Capehart on voting rights, partisanship https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxRqv… Deadly drought in Kenya creates humanitarian crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnp5t… Immersive Van Gogh exhibits paint new experiences with art https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq4lf… Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv32Zm5NLrs

Nightly News Full Broadcast – Jan. 14

Jan 14, 2022  NBC News

Millions across the U.S. are under winter weather alerts, inside a Pittsburgh children’s hospital overwhelmed by Covid cases, and bodycam video shows dramatic rescues from Colorado wildfire. 00:00 Intro 01:44 Millions in U.S. under winter weather alerts 03:48 Inside children’s hospital overwhelmed by Covid cases 06:30 Novak Djokovic facing deportation, again 08:08 U.S. warning Russia may be prepping Ukraine invasion 09:05 Trump set for first rally of 2022 11:34 Bodycam video from Colorado wildfire 13:10 Covid testing company investigation 15:33 Critics blame China for Mekong River environmental disaster 19:16 Chicago’s oldest hot dog stand’s special community connection » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews NBC News Digital is a collection of innovative and powerful news brands that deliver compelling, diverse and engaging news stories. NBC News Digital features NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, TODAY.com, Nightly News, Meet the Press, Dateline, and the existing apps and digital extensions of these respective properties. We deliver the best in breaking news, live video coverage, original journalism and segments from your favorite NBC News Shows. Connect with NBC News Online! NBC News App: https://smart.link/5d0cd9df61b80 Breaking News Alerts: https://link.nbcnews.com/join/5cj/bre… Visit NBCNews.Com: http://nbcnews.to/ReadNBC Find NBC News on Facebook: http://nbcnews.to/LikeNBC Follow NBC News on Twitter: http://nbcnews.to/FollowNBC #NightlyNews #NBCNews #FullBroadcast

Go to the top

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.