Yay Nerds

Even in my ignorance, I think I can grok part of the concept - as much as my limited brain capacity allows me to do anyway. Especially the teleportation part.

Instead of thinking of it as COMMAND-X, and COMMAND-V, where you have to eliminate the subject from over there before you can reconstitute it over here, this quantum stuff says the subject could exist in two places at the same time (?)

Scientists Defy Physics, Basically Pull Energy Out of Thin Air

That’s not supposed to happen.

• A shelved theory appears to have new life in pulling energy from one location to another.
• Two experiments have now extracted energy and filled a vacuum.
• A fresh world of quantum energy science is opened with the new findings.

Energy teleportation sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but now, research shows that you can actually pull energy from nothing.

Using quantum mechanics, two different physics experiments prove it’s possible to conjure energy from an energy vacuum—essentially pulling energy out of thin air—by teleporting energy across microscopic distances, helping bolster a 2008 theory from Japanese physicist Masahiro Hotta, according to a new report from Quanta Magazine.

“This really does test it,” Seth Lloyd, a quantum physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and not a member of the research teams, tells Quanta. “You are actually teleporting. You are extracting energy.”

When Hotta debuted his theory more than a decade ago, it wasn’t met with much fanfare. Pulling energy from the quantum vacuum wasn’t considered a realistic equation. But every vacuum still had some sort of fluctuation in the quantum fields. And pulling energy from nearby into the vacuum, and then using that energy, was something in the realm of reality known as the teleportation concept, since produced twice by scientists from University of Waterloo and Stony Brook University.

Hotta’s 2008 research led him first to negative energy, which he believed wasn’t an independent action. He then researched the quantum vacuum, which he believed—based on calculations—could actually fluctuate within quantum fields, allowing energy to move between two areas.

In a more modern-day experimentation, the team at Waterloo found that when energy was spent in one place, it allowed another—in this case, an energy vacuum—to access energy. “It was very neat to see that with current technology it’s possible to observe the activation of energy,” Nayeli Rodriguez-Briones, now at the University of California, Berkeley, and part of one of the experiments, tells Quanta.

“This is real physics–not science fiction,” Hotta says.

Today's Nerdiness

The short explanation of The Fermi Paradox is that every civilization eventually builds their version of Amazon and destroys itself.

Nerds Rule

It's the rebound that gets ya.

Stay with it - the demonstration at the end is a pretty good payoff.

Bio-Engineering

Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging

Highlights

• Cellular responses to double-stranded DNA breaks erode the epigenetic landscape
• This loss of epigenetic information accelerates the hallmarks of aging
• These changes are reversible by epigenetic reprogramming
• By manipulating the epigenome, aging can be driven forward and backward

Summary

All living things experience an increase in entropy, manifested as a loss of genetic and epigenetic information.

In yeast, epigenetic information is lost over time due to the relocalization of chromatin-modifying proteins to DNA breaks, causing cells to lose their identity, a hallmark of yeast aging.

Using a system called “ICE” (inducible changes to the epigenome), we find that the act of faithful DNA repair advances aging at physiological, cognitive, and molecular levels, including erosion of the epigenetic landscape, cellular exdifferentiation, senescence, and advancement of the DNA methylation clock, which can be reversed by OSK-mediated rejuvenation.

These data are consistent with the information theory of aging, which states that a loss of epigenetic information is a reversible cause of aging.

PS) Cell Press is an all-science publisher of over 50 scientific journals across the life, physical, earth, and health sciences, both independently and in partnership with scientific societies. Many of Cell Press's journals are among the most reputable in their fields.

Nerds

I think I've got a pretty good handle on "Well ya gotta start somewhere', and Small Steps, and such like that there, but I'd rather have this thing playing the piano than making a fist and lifting weights, y'know?

Still - gotta love me some nerds.

@CloneRobotics -  Łukasz Koźlik - Poland

Today's Nerdy Thing

Humans were writing on walls 42,000 years ago

An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar

05 January 2023

Abstract
In at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens groups drew, painted and engraved non-figurative signs from at least ~42,000 BP (Before Present) and figurative images (notably animals) from at least 37,000 BP. Since their discovery ~150 years ago, the purpose or meaning of European Upper Palaeolithic non-figurative signs has eluded researchers. Despite this, specialists assume that they were notational in some way. Using a database of images spanning the European Upper Palaeolithic, we suggest how three of the most frequently occurring signs—the line <|>, the dot <•>, and the <Y>—functioned as units of communication. We demonstrate that when found in close association with images of animals the line <|> and dot <•> constitute numbers denoting months, and form constituent parts of a local phenological/meteorological calendar beginning in spring and recording time from this point in lunar months. We also demonstrate that the <Y> sign, one of the most frequently occurring signs in Palaeolithic non-figurative art, has the meaning <To Give Birth>. The position of the <Y> within a sequence of marks denotes month of parturition, an ordinal representation of number in contrast to the cardinal representation used in tallies. Our data indicate that the purpose of this system of associating animals with calendar information was to record and convey seasonal behavioural information about specific prey taxa in the geographical regions of concern. We suggest a specific way in which the pairing of numbers with animal subjects constituted a complete unit of meaning—a notational system combined with its subject—that provides us with a specific insight into what one set of notational marks means. It gives us our first specific reading of European Upper Palaeolithic communication, the first known writing in the history of Homo sapiens.

Introduction
Around 37,000 years ago humans transitioned from marking abstract images such as handprints, dots and rectangles on cave walls to drawing, painting and engraving figurative art. These images, whether created on rock surfaces in the open air, in caves, or carved and engraved onto portable materials, were almost exclusively of animals, mainly herbivorous prey critical to survival in the Pleistocene Eurasian steppes. In most cases it is easy to identify the species depicted, and often the characteristics they exhibit at particular times of year. In Lascaux around 21,500 years ago, body shapes and pelage details were used to convey information about the sequence of rutting of several prey species on the cave's walls, in what was essentially an ethological calendar (Aujoulat Reference Aujoulat2005), and elsewhere, indicators such as the presence of antlers and aggressive confrontations are widespread indicators that seasonality, particularly that relating to creation, was a major characteristic of the earliest figurative art, as one might expect for hunter-gatherers.

Alongside these images, sets of abstract marks, particularly sequences of vertical lines and dots, <Y> shapes and various other marks are common throughout the European Upper Palaeolithic, occurring either alone or adjacent to and superimposed upon animal depictions, as has long been recognized (e.g. Hayden Reference Hayden2021; Leroi-Gourhan Reference Leroi-Gourhan1966; Reference Leroi-Gourhan, Leroi-Gourhan and Allain1979). These may occur on rock walls, but were commonly engraved onto robust bones since at least the beginning of the European Upper Palaeolithic and African Late Stone Age, where it is obvious they served as artificial memory systems (AMS) or external memory systems (EMS) to coin the terms used in Palaeolithic archaeology and cognitive science respectively, exosomatic devices in which number sense is clearly evident (for definitions see d’Errico Reference d'Errico1989; Reference d'Errico1995a,Reference d'Erricob; d'Errico & Cacho Reference d'Errico and Cacho1994; d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Doyon and Colage2017; Hayden Reference Hayden2021). While the nature of accumulation of these is well known, and it is uncontroversial to assume that they mark information such as the passing of time and events within it, their specific meaning has remained elusive.

Our interest is with those non-figurative signs of the European Upper Palaeolithic associated with animal depictions, a relationship found with ~66 per cent of figurative images, according to Sauvet (Reference Sauvet1987). A variety of signs are associated with animal depictions, because of which it is sensible to assume that they had several meanings (Crellin Reference Crellin2020). This should be unsurprising, given that hunter-gatherers world-wide have used a wide range of recording, counting and communications systems involving subjects and numbers (e.g. de Smedt & de Cruz Reference de Smedt and de Cruz 2011; Overmann Reference Overmann 2013; Thornton Reference Thornton 2003).

We focus specifically on two clear and simple patterns: animals associated with sequences of dots/lines (assumed to function similarly here), and the branching <Y> sign in which a second line diverges from a first (Figs 1 & 2). Although these occur throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, the greater majority of known examples date to the Late Upper Palaeolithic, possibly suggesting their meaning changed over time or they became far more common aspects of depictions from the Mid Upper Palaeolithic (Gravettian) onwards. As the identification of the animal with which the signs are associated is unambiguous, we investigate the meaning of the dots/lines and <Y> sign in ethological context. We do this by testing ecologically grounded hypotheses about prey behaviour using a database of such depiction-associated sequences. We reason that investigating the numbers of signs associated with images and the position of <Y> within line/dot sequences provide useful indicators of their meaning, based on the uncontroversial assumption that dots/lines represent numbers. By simple reasoning, the association of a number with an unambiguous subject—a horse, for example—might provide the foundation of a notational system that we could potentially analyse for further meaning. We reveal a system that was stable over a wide geographical area and over a period of tens of thousands of years.

- more -

Today's Nerd Thing

"Basic Research' or "Pure Research" is when you think you may have a shot at doing something astounding, but you go about it in ways that could lead in a direction completely separate from what you had in mind - even if the notion is just a vague thing that keeps fading in and out of focus, or you're dead set on pushing the thing in one direction only, focused on the goal you started out with.

The point is: Research is good - fund the nerds.

In the 1800s, private companies and government institutions in the "industrialized nations" funded all kinds of research, one of which was the work of an English guy named JJ Thompson.

In 1897, Mr Thompson proved the existence of a little item called "the electron", using a gizmo called a cathode ray tube, put together by a guy named William Crookes, from a few ideas he got from other guys (and gals too, I think, tho they don't get much of a mention, but that's a different rant).

Anyway, so then we had this thing - this invisible thing - called the electron and nobody had a fucking clue what to do with it.

But, people being people, and naturally curious enough never to leave well enough alone, all kinds of folks kept at it and before long, bingo bango - Smart Phones.

And this - 2 megajoules in, and 3 megajoules out - this is a big fuckin' deal.

(starts at 18:50, after the politicians weigh in):

I fuckin' love me some nerds

Today's Nerdy Thing

The guys who wrote the bible did their best to piece it together, and figure it out, and put it into a form that people back then could understand. We have to remember, even the smartest guys on the planet still didn't know where the sun went at night.

Of course over time - and I'll bet dollars-to-dingleberries on this - the politicians (aka that era's clergy) knew they could influence or outright control the rubes' behavior by embellishing the tale and claiming to know what a wrathful god would visit upon them if they didn't do what the politicians/clergy told them to do. But that's a different rant.

Here's an update on something from years ago.

Joe Hanson:

Today's Über Nerd

(pay wall)

Nobel in medicine awarded to Svante Pääbo for discoveries on human evolution

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist whose work on ancient DNA helped change our understanding of human origins.

Pääbo, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led groundbreaking work to sequence the genome of long-extinct Neanderthals from 40,000-year-old bone fragments. It was a “seemingly impossible task,” said Anna Wedell, a member of the Nobel committee.

The work was transformative, showing that Neanderthals mixed with prehistoric humans after they migrated out of Africa, and the vestiges of those interactions live on today in the genomes of present-day people. Pääbo’s efforts laid the foundation of a new field of science that uses ancient DNA as a new stream of information to probe human evolution.

Pääbo, 67, learned he had won the prize in a midmorning phone call from the Nobel committee.

“He was overwhelmed. He was speechless, very happy,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly. “He was incredibly thrilled about this award.”As a young scientist, Pääbo focused on understanding how adenoviruses interacted with the immune system. But he retained an interest in human origins, and worked on isolating DNA from Egyptian mummies as a side project.

At the time, the ancient DNA field was “kind of a joke,” full of incredible claims that would turn out to be incorrect as scientists tried to recover DNA from dinosaurs, said John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

“It was Svante, who came along and made this into a science,” Hawks said.

For decades, Pääbo chipped away at the difficult task of analyzing ancient DNA, devising ways to overcome the technical challenges of working with samples that degrade over time and are easily contaminated. He worked largely on DNA from extinct animals, but always with the goal of bringing the techniques he was developing to modern humans’ extinct, big-brained relatives, Neanderthals.

Once he had developed those methods, he brought together a large consortium of scientists and built the relationships necessary to obtain the ancient bone fragments needed to take on the monumental task of trying to decipher the genome of Neanderthals.

That work disrupted the prevailing view of human origins. Homo sapiens originated in Africa about 300,000 years ago, but they emerged into a world filled with other hominid species — and mixed with them as they migrated.

Pääbo and colleagues showed that Neanderthals, extinct for 30,000 years, live on in our DNA. As modern humans migrated outside of Africa, they mixed with Neanderthals, making up about 1 to 2 percent of the genomes of non-African people today. From a finger bone found in a cave in the Altai Mountains in Russia, he discovered a new species of early hominid, the Denisovans.

This genetic inheritance is relevant for understanding aspects of human health today. A version of a gene that gives people an advantage at high altitude that is common among people living in Tibet today has Denisovan origins. Some genes that influence how present-day people’s immune systems respond to infections are inherited from Neanderthals.

“These are profound things that happened to human biology, and we need to know about it — it is an important part of the inheritance,” said David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. “It’s changed our biology and the history of everybody. We all know we are all mixed.”

Reich said the prize was a thrilling recognition for a scientist he considers a close friend and collaborator — and for a burgeoning field of science that has transformed science’s view of the human species.

Reich was a key part of the consortium that helped determine that Neanderthals had mixed with humans, and said that when he joined the project, he — like many in the field — expected to find little evidence of mixing between Neanderthals and humans.

“When we saw the first evidence that it had occurred … it was surprising and unexpected, and I thought it was likely to be an error of our analysis — and I spent a lot of time trying to make it go away,” Reich said.

Ultimately, multiple lines of evidence supported the conclusion.

Before Pääbo’s contributions, scientists were limited to studying ancient bones and artifacts to understand human ancestors. His work has established a new field of science, paleogenomics, that uses ancient DNA analysis to probe questions about prehistoric questions.

While Pääbo’s scientific work has been transformative, some wondered whether it would win a Nobel, often considered science’s highest honor, because it wasn’t an obvious fit to the categories. In science, Nobels are awarded to medicine or physiology, physics and chemistry.

Hawks, however, argues that understanding human ancestry and evolution is a direct window into understanding deep questions about health and disease. Ancient DNA opened the window to asking deep questions about ancient humans and their relatives that would otherwise be inaccessible.

“This isn’t just a strange thing about our evolution that we’re learning — it’s relevant to our health,” Hawks said. “It matters because our ancestry is what is affecting our health, and when you uncover the genes that we inherited from these distant ancestors that matter to our health, you’re going to open a new window into understanding human disease.”

And it turns out the guy's a legacy, but I won't hold that against him - looks like he's earned it.

Forty years earlier, Pääbo’s father, Sune Bergström, won a Nobel Prize.

They Did It

They were off by about 17 meters.

Shooting a BB at a boxcar from almost 7 million miles away, they missed dead center by just 50 feet.

Out-fucking-standing.

Today's ÜberNerds

⚠️

This is a test - this is only a test.

Had this been an actual emergency,

you would've been advised to sit down,

put your head between your knees,

and kiss your ass goodbye.

Cuz maybe this works

and maybe it doesn't.

The DART spacecraft should impact with Dimorphos,

a small asteroid orbiting the larger Didymos asteroid,

on September 26, 2022, about 7 million miles from Earth -

nowhere near close enough to harm our planet.

"Defense is great, but you do need to score points."

I think it's gonna work. I have great confidence in these folks. And once they've got Proof Of Concept, they'll tweak it so it'll be useful in a variety of scenarios.

All we have to do keep assholes like Vlad Putin from blowing everything up, so the nerds can keep the asteroids from blowing everything up.

I love it when we all work together.

Nerd Love

There's no such thing as "empty space".

Dr Becky - University of Warwick

Today's Nerds

Score a big one for the nerds.

New images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Region 3324 of the Carina Nebula

Stephen's Quintet

You might recognize this one from

"It's A Wonderful Life"

Wouldn't it be nice if we could get a bit more of this kind of beauty and human achievement, and a lot less of the kinda shit people do to each other with guns and petty ambitions.

Go Nerds

Technology (along with some pretty fucked up policy) got us into this mess, and technology (along with policy that just has to be a little less fucked up) will have to help us get out of it.

TED-Ed - Tierney Thys and Christian Sardet

LEAF BRANCH COMPOST CUTINASIS

Today In Nerd Things

Go places and see things. It might surprise you how doing that makes you less inclined to fuck with people.

The King Nerd

Carl Sagan - "...this combustible mixture of ignorance and power..."

Today's Nerdy Thing

I'll keep saying it - I love me some excitable nerds.

Dr Becky (Rebeccah Smethurst, PhD) - a little amped up about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

Today Is Not Today

Dreadful news, fellow nerd fans - it's come to me attention that this is not actually Pi Day.

The first seven digits in pi are 3.141592.

So there hasn't been a real Pi Day since March 14, 1592.

But, at least here in USAmerica Inc, where every day is a holiday because we're so extremely excellent at rationalizing our way to "reasons" for Carnal Celebrations and Special-Today-Only-Sales-Events, we'll go ahead and truncate the thing and pretend history isn't history, and do a little online drunk shopping. It's just who we are, y'know?

Sorry about all that - carry on.

Today's Nerd Stuff

May the fake lord bless you and keep you, you glorious nerds.

There's always a pretty good argument to be made against spending so much money on things like space exploration when there are so many pressing needs here on the ground. But these projects can actually make us focus our attention more on cooperative endeavors, and make us a little less intent on blowing each other up.

They can also make us more cognizant of our shared humanity, and the need to support crazy ideas like education as a way of lifting people out of the cycle of ignorance poverty and crime, because if we want civilization to continue, we need more folks concentrating on building things up instead of burning them down.

Making this amazing science-y thing work necessitates the development of new materials and new techniques, and that means that some of the engineering itself has to be invented &/or discovered as they go.

We won't know right away how the world will benefit from all of this, but we're bound to see some really astounding new things for everyday use in the not-too-distant future - assuming of course, we don't let our politics fuck it all up for us.

🤞🏻

Ed Note: Just the part about figuring out Lagrange Point 2 - I had no idea such things even exist. "Like little parking spots in space". Thank you, nerds.

The James Webb Telescope:

Today's Super Nerd

Katherine Johnson - Aug 26, 1918 - Feb 24, 2020