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Simulations suggest Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere will last only another billion years

A pair of researchers from Toho University and NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science has found evidence, via simulation, that Earth will lose its oxygen-rich atmosphere in approximately 1 billion years. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Kazumi Ozaki and Christopher Reinhard...
Source: phys.org

IEA says global CO2 emissions rising again after nearly 6% fall last year

"Global carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 5.8% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed economic activity, but they rebounded at the end of the year and are on course to rise further, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday." Whilst economic growth is sought to reduce national deficits following...
Source: reuters.com

Ghana kicks off coronavirus vaccination campaign with COVAX shots

"Ghana began its coronavirus vaccination drive on Tuesday with 600,000 AstraZeneca doses it received from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing facility aimed at providing shots to developing nations to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic." Great to see Ghana in the news and reading about the ITU nurses getting...
Source: reuters.com

UK rollout data on AstraZeneca shot should guide other countries: vaccine chief

Natural experiments can be a really useful source of data. "Data from Britain's vaccine rollout on the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 shot in older people should help other countries reassess their use of it, the head of the university's vaccine research group said on Tuesday."
Source: reuters.com

Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030

"The Swedish firm is to phase out all models with internal combustion engines over the next few years."
Source: bbc.com

A Psychologist's Journey to Treating Phobias with VR - VR for Health

VRforHealth invites you to learn about the work of Howard Gurr, licensed psychologist in New York State, and his journey toward the use of Virtual Reality Therapy in helping patients overcome phobias and anxieties and assist in the enhancement of mindfulness. Since the pandemic, Howard practices VR therapy...
Source: vrforhealth.com

The Namib Desert bears a scar from a meteorite impact.

"In the vastness of one of the world’s oldest deserts lies a relatively recent geologic feature: the Roter Kamm crater (“red comb” or “red crest/ridge” in German). An astronaut onboard the International Space Station photographed the crater while orbiting over the Namib Desert. It is approximately...
Source: nasa.gov

Is the UK destined to be the next life science hub?

Jason Shafrin explores the question in The Economist about the role of British science in the pandemic and the future of the UK life sciences activity. "With good data, efficient regulation, an international collection of talent, R&D funds focused on the health care, the UK could see big gains...
Source: healthcare-economist.com

The Technology Behind Cinematic Photos

There has been some work by teams at Google looking at analysing images to extract their 3D features. They launched a new feature called 'cinematic photos' and this blog posted by Per Karlsson and Lucy Yu, Software Engineers, of Google Research tries to explain how it works. "Looking at photos from...
Source: googleblog.com

Rocket Report Cornwall

Cornwall says “LOL, no” to space tourism. "If we're being blunt about it ... One council member, John Fitter, was more explicit, saying, 'If we were to entertain this, it would be quite ridiculous and send out the wrong message to those people in Cornwall who could possibly be suffering on below...
Source: arstechnica.com

Bird believed extinct for 170 years spotted in Borneo

A team of researchers from Indonesia and Singapore has found evidence of the continued existence of a bird long thought extinct. In their paper published in the journal BirdingASIA, the team describes the history of the bird, why it was thought to be extinct and how it was found in Borneo.
Source: phys.org

Most brain activity is "background noise"

"Most brain activity is "background noise" and that's upending our understanding of consciousness." This complexity view of the mind is not new but this article explains it quite clearly.
Source: salon.com

Why Are COVID-19 Case Numbers Dropping?

"We don’t know. That part is easy. Also easy is that case numbers really are falling — it’s not just reduced testing — and it’s happening pretty much everywhere. Urban areas and rural. Red states and blue. Places with broad vaccine rollouts and those with hardly any. North and South America,...
Source: jwatch.org

Ancient Northland swamp kauri solves 42,000 year old mystery

NZ Herald: Ancient Northland swamp kauri shows breakdown of Earth's magnetic field 42,000 years ago. "For the first time ever, we have been able to precisely date the timing and environmental impacts of the last magnetic pole switch," Chris Turney, a professor at UNSW Science and co-lead author of the...
Source: nzherald.co.nz

Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii

When in Rome ... or Pompeii. "Eat like a first-century Roman, using recent archaeological discoveries as your guide." "In consideration of some of this evidence, if we were to hypothesize that what we’ve read in the Latin literary record about “boiled meat,” “broth and chunks of meat,” and...
Source: atlasobscura.com

Eeek! or E484K mutation and the coronavirus pandemic

Rupert Beale · Eeek! · LRB 19 February 2021: "Uncontrolled spread – as we knew it would – led to an even greater wave of infections, hospitalisations and deaths than last spring. Children were sent to school for one day before the necessary ‘lockdown’ was reimposed. The impulse to keep schools...
Source: lrb.co.uk

AI uses "ugly duckling" technique to spot melanoma with high accuracy

"Artificial intelligence is starting to combine with smartphone technology in ways that could have profound impacts on the way we monitor health, from tracking blood volume changes in diabetics to detecting concussions by filming the eyes." "Using the technology to spot melanoma in its early stages is...
Source: newatlas.com

Using the right tools for the job

Since this blog has been up I've fiddled with some text analysis stuff by analysing the text and making recommendations for similar blog entries. Did it all in PHP and MySQL just to understand how the algorithms work. Eventually it started to take about 5 hours to: tokenise and stemming the textcalculate...

Dreadful user experience can be expensive.

"Citibank just got a $500 million lesson in the importance of UI design: Citibank was trying to make $7.8M in interest payments. It sent $900M instead." The screenshot is from court records where the judge ruled against Citibank who had wanted to get their money back. The lesson is to always include...
Source: arstechnica.com

A Convolutional Neural Network architecture for the recognition of cutaneous manifestations of COVID-19

To our best knowledge, this is the first machine learning-based study for automated detection of COVID-19 based on skin images and may provide a useful decision support tool for physicians to optimize contact-free COVID-19 triage, differential diagnosis of skin lesions and patient care. Mathur J, Chouhan...
Source: nih.gov