Scientists have renamed 27 human genes to stop Microsoft Excel misreading them as dates. The changes have been underway for the past year but have been formally announced as new guidelines published by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee. Scientist are overjoyed but annoyed Microsoft didn’t make the changes itself.
By day, Carl Greninger is a Microsoft IT manager. By night, he’s a fusioneer who inspires students to master fusion science
A fossil called Tanystropheus was first described in 1852, and it’s been puzzling scientists ever since. At one point, paleontologists thought it was a flying pterosaur, like a pterodactyl, and that its long, hollow bones were phalanges in the finger that supported the wing. Later on, they figured out that those were elongated neck bones, and that it was a twenty-foot-long reptile with a ten-foot neck: three times as long as its torso. Scientists still weren’t sure if it lived on land or in the water, and they didn’t know if smaller specimens were juveniles or a completely different species—until now. By CT-scanning the fossils’ crushed skulls and digitally reassembling them, researchers found evidence that the animals were water-dwelling, and by examining the growth rings in bones, determined that the big and little Tanystropheus were separate species that could live alongside each other without competing because they hunted different prey.
“I’ve been studying Tanystropheus for over thirty years, so it’s extremely satisfying to see these creatures demystified,” says Olivier Rieppel, a paleontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago and one of the authors of a new paper in Current Biology detailing the discovery.
Tanystropheus lived 242 million years ago, during the middle Triassic. On land, dinosaurs were just starting to emerge, and the sea was ruled by giant reptiles. For a long time, though, scientists weren’t sure whether Tanystropheus lived on land or in the water. Its bizarre body didn’t make things clear one way or the other.
Max’s human handler said the dog was “invaluable” in finding the mom and 1-year-old, who were missing for two days.
By Tim Binnall
Residents of a coastal community in England were left scratching their heads and holding their noses after the massive and odorous remains of a mystery creature washed ashore. The creepy carcass was reportedly first discovered last Wednesday on a beach in the town of Ainsdale. Witnesses who dared to venture close enough to the creature to get a good look at it were baffled by the beast and could not identify what it may have been.
Continue reading “Video: ‘Mystery Creature’ Washes Ashore in England” »
“Oxygen tanks are not allowed in the battlefield because they risk exploding and are therefore considered too dangerous,” he said. “However, we have seen that in wars that Israel has fought, the complications related to the evacuation of injured soldiers without the possibility of providing them with oxygen in the meantime has caused several fatalities.”
The group started to work on a solution that would not only eliminate the dangers related to traditional oxygen tanks, but would also make it easier for the oxygen to be carried around.
The result is a device about 45×18 centimeters in size that produces oxygen without the need of a thermo-dynamic process.
The iThrone solves the thorny problem of how to bring toilet tech to the billions of people still using latrines or outhouses.
A report from Google’s Project Zero also looks at 2019 zero-day statistics and draws some interesting conclusions.
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