[url]http://phys.org/news/2016-01-de-icing-concrete-roadway-safety-corporate.html[/url]

[quote]A 200-square-foot slab of seemingly ordinary concrete sits just outside the Peter Kiewit Institute as snowflakes begin parachuting toward Omaha on a frigid afternoon in late December.

The snow accumulates on the grass surrounding the slab and initially clings to the concrete, too. But as the minutes pass and the snow begins melting from only its surface, the slab reveals its secret: Like razors, stoves and guitars before it, this concrete has gone electric.
Its designer, UNL professor of civil engineering Chris Tuan, has added a pinch of steel shavings and a dash of carbon particles to a recipe that has literally been set in concrete for centuries. Though the newest ingredients constitute just 20 percent of Tuan's otherwise standard concrete mixture, they conduct enough electricity to melt ice and snow in the worst winter storms while remaining safe to the touch.

Tuan's research team is demonstrating the concrete's de-icing performance to the Federal Aviation Administration during a testing phase that runs through March 2016. If the FAA is satisfied with the results, Tuan said the administration will consider scaling up the tests by integrating the technology into the tarmac of a major U.S. airport.
[/quote]

Hints of Calculus in ancient Babylonian astronomy. Pretty neat-

Norm

[URL="http://gizmodo.com/this-babylonian-astronomy-text-changes-history-1755458324"]http://gizmodo.com/this-babylonian-astronomy-text-changes-history-1755458324[/URL]

[QUOTE=Dubslow;424095][url]http://phys.org/news/2016-01-de-icing-concrete-roadway-safety-corporate.html[/url]
[i]
Its designer, UNL professor of civil engineering Chris Tuan, has added a pinch of steel shavings and a dash of carbon particles to a recipe that has literally been set in concrete for centuries. Though the newest ingredients constitute just 20 percent of Tuan's otherwise standard concrete mixture, they conduct enough electricity to melt ice and snow in the worst winter storms while remaining safe to the touch.[/i][/QUOTE]

"Just" 20% very expensive ingredients? That is way more than "a pinch". Why not just run some current through the rebar already in all large-scale concrete pourings? You need just enough heat to conduct to the surface to keep it from dropping below freezing. If you want to concentrate the heat near the surface, just pass it through the shallowest layer of rebar. While existing non-conducting-oriented rebar tech may not be suitable for such current-loops, it would seem a fairly straightforward matter to adapt new designs to optimize for both strength and the proper conductive requirements.

[url=www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/health/how-skin-cancer-develops-melanoma-zebra-fish.html]A Single Cell Shines New Light on How Cancers Develop[/url] - NYT
[quote]It was just a tiny speck, a single cell that researchers had marked with a fluorescent green dye. But it was the very first cell of what would grow to be a melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Never before had researchers captured a cancer so early.

The cell was not a cancer yet. But its state was surprising: It was a cell that had reverted to an embryonic form, when it could have developed into any cell type. As it began to divide, cancer genes took over and the single primitive cell barreled forward into a massive tumor.

Those were the findings of Dr. Leonard Zon of Boston Children’s Hospital, Dr. Charles K. Kaufman, and their colleagues, in a study published Thursday in the journal Science that offers new insight into how cancers may develop. The researchers stumbled on that first cell of a melanoma when they set out to solve a puzzle that has baffled cancer investigators: Why do many cells that have cancer genes never turn cancerous?[/quote]
Cancer research seems to go through successive phases akin to other cultural fashions - pre-college/undergrad I seem to recall the big thing being the purported cancer-causing oncogenes ... in grad school (90s) big thing was tumor suppressor genes and apoptosis (programmed cell death) ... the role of the crestin gene described in the above piece makes it sound like a long-out-of-fashion oncogene, albeit a context-dependent one: active in early life and normally programmed tissue growth/differentiation = good, reactivated in old damaged cells which mistakenly 'revert to infancy' = bad.

[URL="http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/underwater-home-for-microsoft-data-center-is-pretty-cool/"]Underwater home for Microsoft data center is pretty cool, which is the point[/URL]
[QUOTE]Microsoft has tested a prototype of a self-contained data center that can operate hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean, eliminating one of the technology industry’s most expensive problems: the air conditioning bill.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]The research group has started designing an underwater system that will be three times as large. It will be built in collaboration with a yet-to-be-chosen developer of an ocean-based alternative-energy system.

The Microsoft engineers said they expected a new trial to begin next year, possibly near Florida or in Northern Europe, where there are extensive ocean energy projects under way.

The first prototype, affectionately named “Leona Philpot” — a character in Microsoft’s “Halo” video game series — has been returned, partly covered with barnacles, to the Redmond campus.

It is a large white steel tube, covered with heat exchangers, with its ends sealed by metal plates and large bolts. Inside is a single data center computing rack that was bathed in pressurized nitrogen to efficiently remove heat from computing chips while the system was tested on the ocean floor.

The idea for the underwater system came from a research paper written in 2014 by several Microsoft data-center employees, including one with experience on a Navy submarine.[/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.techtimes.com/articles/130909/20160205/pandemic-decimating-bee-populations-worldwide-is-man-made-and-driven-by-european-honeybees.htm[/URL]

[QUOTE]The situation is casting doubts on global bee populations in the future. The global bee pandemic carries major biodiversity and biosecurity impacts, which can affect human health and worldwide economies.[/QUOTE][SIZE=1][COLOR=White]We don't think "decimating" is the right word.[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[url=arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/there-was-a-massive-population-crash-in-europe-over-14500-years-ago/]There was a massive population crash in Europe over 14,500 years ago[/url] | Ars Technica

One small tech-term clarifier the article fails to make w.r.to the jargon-dense quoted snip:
[i]
"Although this model supports population continuity from pre- to post-LGM, the genetic bottleneck is consistent with the apparent loss of hg M in the post-LGM."
[/i]
'hg M' = haplogroup M, not meters of Mercury barometric pressure. :P

I find the thought of small pockets of our modern-human ancestors (well, at least for the pockets that survived) hunkering down in ice-walled 'climate refugia' fascinating. Will humans millennia from now be similarly speaking of refugia, not from cold but from heat?

I've been gone for much of the past five weeks so these have accumulated. I'm sorry if any of these have been posted by me or someone else:

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151229070713.htm"]Social, telepresence robots revealed by scientists[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151223130234.htm"]Mathematical model for animal stripes[/URL]

[URL="https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-scientists-dismiss-the-possibility-of-cold-fusion"]The Cold Fusion Horizon[/URL]

[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/04/periodic-tables-seventh-row-finally-filled-as-four-new-elements-are-added"]Periodic table's seventh row finally filled as four new elements are added[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2016/02/twitter-nerd-fight-reveals-a-long-bizarre-scientific-feud/"]Twitter Nerd-Fight Reveals a Long, Bizarre Scientific Feud[/URL]

[URL="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600721/better-brain-imaging-could-show-computers-a-smarter-way-to-learn/#/set/id/600722/"]Better Brain Imaging Could Show Computers a Smarter Way to Learn[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-relationship-between-life-purpose-and-risk-of-death/mental-healthcare"]Study shows connection between life purpose and risk of death[/URL]

[URL="http://www.livescience.com/53535-computer-reads-thoughts-instantaneously.html"]Mind-Reading Computer Instantly Decodes People's Thoughts[/URL]

[URL="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160203-saturn-ring-optical-illusion-opacity-space-science/#/"]Saturn’s Ring Puffs Itself Up With Optical Illusion[/URL]

[URL="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-the-first-time-scientists-win-approval-to-edit-human-embryo-genomes/"]For the First Time, Scientists Win Approval to Edit Human Embryo Genomes[/URL]

[URL="http://blogs.plos.org/neuro/2016/01/25/beyond-the-neuron-emerging-roles-of-glial-cells-in-neuroscience/"]Beyond the neuron: Emerging roles of glial cells in neuroscience[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/27/scientists-reveal-multifractal-structure-of-finnegans-wake-james-joyce?CMP=share_btn_tw"]Scientists find evidence of mathematical structures in classic books[/URL]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2016-01-bigger-brains-smarter-carnivores.html"]Do bigger brains make smarter carnivores?[/URL]

[URL="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/546301/will-machines-eliminate-us/"]Will Machines Eliminate Us?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2016/01/microsoft-neural-net-shows-deep-learning-can-get-way-deeper/"]Microsoft Neural Net Shows Deep Learning Can Get Way Deeper[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160120201224.htm"]Memory capacity of brain is 10 times more than previously thought[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nature.com/news/why-boredom-is-anything-but-boring-1.19140"]Why boredom is anything but boring[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/why-spider-man-cant-exist-geckos-are-size-limit-for-sticking-to-walls"]Why Spider-Man can’t exist: Geckos are ‘size limit’ for sticking to walls[/URL]

[URL="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/2165379e-b4b2-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.html#slide0"]The great British curry crisis[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/using-brain-chemistry-to-raise-pain-threshold/education"]Pain and the brain: Examining differences in coping mechanisms[/URL]

[URL="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/evolution-of-eyes-text"]Inside the Eye: Nature’s Most Exquisite Creation[/URL]

[URL="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/why-creativity-is-a-numbers-game/"]Why Creativity Is a Numbers Game[/URL]

[URL="http://news.mit.edu/2016/shared-behavior-microbes-electrons-0105"]Study reveals shared behavior of microbes and electrons[/URL]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2016-01-d-threatens-patent.html"]How 3-D printing threatens our patent system[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wfs.org/blogs/len-rosen/gizmos-gadgets-one-step-closer-star-treks-holodeck"]Gizmos & Gadgets: One Step Closer to Star Trek's Holodeck[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/despite-studys-conclusion-random-acts-of-joy-are-good-for-you/education"]Despite study’s conclusion, random acts of joy are good for you[/URL]

[URL="https://upvoted.com/2016/01/05/how-a-college-intern-created-microsoft-solitaire-possibly-the-most-played-computer-game-ever/"]How a College Intern Created Microsoft Solitaire, Possibly the Most Played Computer Game Ever[/URL]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2016-01-scientists-blue-green-clays-bacteria.html"]Scientists discover how blue and green clays kill bacteria[/URL]

[QUOTE=rogue;425777]
[URL="https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-scientists-dismiss-the-possibility-of-cold-fusion"]The Cold Fusion Horizon[/URL]
[/QUOTE]

Huh.

[quote]So, as a matter of sociology, it is easy to see why Rossi gets little serious attention; why an interview with Darden associates him with scientific chicanery; and why, I hope, some of you are having doubts about me for writing on the subject in a way that indicates that I am prepared to consider it seriously. (If so, hold that attitude. I want to explain why I take it to reflect a pathology in our present version of the scientific method. My task will be easier if you are still suffering from the symptoms.)[/quote]

Thanks, lots of good stuff there.

Re. cold fusion, the article fails to mention late Nobelist Julian Schwinger's work in the possible particle-physics mechanisms which could produce cold fusion. Wikipedia discusses, and a quick web search will turn up additional links aplenty. Long story short, Schwinger felt so ill-treated by the physics community over this that he resigned from the APS in protest, noting that "the pressure for conformity is enormous."

Re. the exquisite eye, they must mean the octopus eye, since mammalian eyes are well-known to 'have got off on the wrong foot' in their long evolutionary elaboration, causing their retinas to be flipped inside out, necessitating an ugly hack to allow the nerve bundle leading to the brain to get out in the form of the well-known defect known as the blind spot. The octopodean lineage, OTOH, did things properly, similarly high-quality visual acuity but no blind spot. (IOW, a little humility might be apropos on our part here.)

[QUOTE]
For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.
[/QUOTE]Press release: [URL]https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211[/URL]