An exciting new innovation could have tremendous implications for the advancements of technology.

Materials scientists may be able to use “machine learning” to find and develop new materials, a much speedier process than the current one of using human trial-and-error and intuition, which has been made more difficult by increasing chemical complexities, according to a Los Alamos National Laboratory statement.

The researchers tried to combine machine learning with targeted experiments to massively increase the materials discovery process, and they used something called an “informatics-based adaptive design strategy” to do it.

The scientists were able to use a relatively small data set of well-controlled experiments to find these materials at a much faster rate. The machine-learning algorithm they used digitized the trial-and-error process, meaning it could take half the time to bring new materials to market.

“What we’ve done is show that, starting with a relatively small data set of well-controlled experiments, it is possible to iteratively guide subsequent experiments toward finding the material with the desired target,” Turab Lookman, a physicist and materials scientist in the Physics of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in the statement. “Finding new materials has traditionally been guided by intuition and trial and error,” said Lookman.”But with increasing chemical complexity, the combination possibilities become too large for trial-and-error approaches to be practical.”

He added: “The goal is to cut in half the time and cost of bringing materials to market. What we have demonstrated is a data-driven framework built on the foundations of machine learning and design that can lead to discovering new materials with targeted properties much faster than before.”

Back in 2013, a devastating wasting disease had hit the starfish population on the shores of the northern West Coast. However, baby starfish have stunned and excited researchers by making a massive comeback showing that many starfish survived the summer and winter of 2015, as reported in CS Monitor.

The study’s lead author, Bruce Menge, an Oregon State University marine biologist, was shocked at the sheer number of baby starfish turning up on the shores of California and Oregon and startled by their survival rate.

“The number of juveniles was off the charts — higher than we’d ever seen — as much as 300 times normal. It wasn’t a case of high settlement, or more sea stars being born. They just had an extraordinary survival rate into the juvenile stage.”

The original virus was a mystery to experts who found it to cause the limbs of the starfish to fall off and eventually disintegrate into slime and bones. They suspect that it was due to ecological changes caused by abnormally warm sea temperatures however, at the time that the virus broke out in Oregon, they were experiencing upwelling, where colder water was rising to the surface.

“It doesn’t mean necessarily that temperature is not involved, but it’s likely a much more complicated story.”

Although the virus has been detected in starfish as long as 70 years ago, it has had a devastating effect on the creatures in the last two years. Scientists are determined to find out more about the virus and what really triggers it before it attacks this new generation of starfish. They worry that the baby starfish will develop the virus as they enter adulthood.

“We’re kind of just waiting to see as we move into late spring and early summer of this year whether we have fresh outbreaks.”

 

The debate has continued about what exactly Pluto is since its 2006 official relegation from a planet to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union.

Now NASA’s New Horizons mission has thrown in more food for thought with new findings that reveal that Pluto may act more like a planet than experts thought. Observations in solar winds and the way in which they interact with atmospheres has led to the conclusion that Pluto acts in a new, unique way not ever observed before.

According to Discovery News, scientists believed that Pluto had a more comet-like interaction with solar winds however, new research has shown that Pluto’s synergy with solar winds are actually a lot more diverse, making Pluto unique in its own right acting neither comet-like or planet-like.

Solar wind is a large amount of charged particles that interacts with anything that stands in its path. The way it interacts with comets and planets (including dwarf planets) are all different with comets causing a slowing down of the solar winds and larger planets causing abrupt diversions.

What the team of researchers found was that Pluto’s interactions with the solar wind were neither that like a comet or a planet, leading to a conclusion that it is a special hybrid of the two.

Lead author of the study, Prof. David J. McComas of Princeton University, says that “this is a type of interaction we’ve never seen before anywhere in our solar system, the results are astonishing.”

The research also led to the discovery that Pluto’s atmosphere also contains neutral particles that are converted to charged ions and released back into space, much like that on Earth.

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, says, “these results speak to the power of exploration. Once again we’ve gone to a new kind of place and found ourselves discovering entirely new kinds of expressions in nature. Many people were surprised by Pluto’s complex geology and atmosphere. This paper shows there’s even more that’s surprising there, including its atmosphere-solar wind interaction.”

The study was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

 

 

Mount St. Helens last erupted 36 years ago, but a swarm of earthquakes underneath the volcano have raised concerns that another eruption may be inching ever closer.

The massive 1980 eruption killed 57 people and demolished 250 homes, making it easily the worst volcano-related disaster in United States history. Now, scientists have observed a swarm of tiny earthquakes underneath the mount since March. Scientists think that this indicates the volcano is recharging with magma, according to news reports.

However, that is not an indication at Mount St. Helens that an eruption is imminent. Magma recharges can happen for many years without an eruption, and scientists haven’t seen the kind of ground inflation or shallow tremors that usually indicate a volcano is about to erupt.

Mount St. Helens is located in the Cascade Mountains, a comfortable 55 miles from Portland and 95 miles from Seattle. Scientists believe it has had four major explosive eruptions in the last 500 years, with the 1980 eruption being the most famous one. The USGS has monitored Mount St. Helens ever since, and scientists have used it to come to a better understanding on how volcanoes operate.

“On March 16, 1980, the first sign of activity at Mount St. Helens occurred as a series of small earthquakes,” the USGS said in a statement on the 1980 eruption. “On March 27, after hundreds of additional earthquakes, the volcano produced its first eruption in over 100 years. Steam explosions blasted a 60- to 75-m (200- to 250-ft) wide crater through the volcano’s summit ice cap and covered the snow-clad southeast sector with dark ash.

“Within a week the crater had grown to about 400 m (1,300 ft) in diameter and two giant crack systems crossed the entire summit area,” it continued. “From the start of the eruption, the bulge grew outward—nearly horizontally—at consistent rates of about 2 m (6.5 ft) per day. Such dramatic deformation of the volcano was strong evidence that molten rock (magma) had risen high into the volcano. In fact, beneath the surficial bulge was a cryptodome that had intruded into the volcano’s edifice, but had yet to erupt on the surface.”

Back in 2014, scientists found a new fossil that they thought resembled a hammerhead shark, and they thought it likely foraged across the ocean floor, dining on small crustaceans and other small prey.  But a new fossil recently found is causing the researchers to do a double-take, according to National Geographic.

A 243-million-year-old fossil of a species named Atopodentatus unicus, which is Latin for “unique peculiar teeth,” has been discovered in the Yunnan Province of southwestern China, and the new research says not only was the species not a fish, but it probably fed on algae.  This would make this species the first marine reptile that was a vegetarian.

Nick Fraser, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Scotland, said they “were blown away by this.”

The researchers on the original fossil thought it looked like many other marine reptiles of the period, but they were fascinated by its mouth, in particular the hundreds of tightly packed teeth it contained.  The first fossil skull was slightly disfigured, sort of like the down-turned snout of a flamingo, leading the team to think the creature must have used it to dig out small prey from the ocean floor.

Fraser said, “The animal described in 2014 was based on one specimen, which was pretty complete to be honest.  But the skull was a bit mashed up, particularly on the front end, and it was difficult to see how it all went together. The original authors obviously did the best they could.”

The new skull led the scientists to surmise this reptile was using its large front teeth to loosen algae from the ocean floor and then filter it through the dense rows of teeth, trapping the vegetation while releasing the water.

Paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt, of Virginia Polytechnic University, likened the reptile to an “underwater lawn mower,” adding, “There is absolutely nothing like it alive today.”

The animal lived about six million years after the Permian extinction, one of the largest mass die-offs in the history of the world, killing almost 95 percent of all marine life.  The scientists say the explosion of life after that period may help explain why we are seeing features in fossil remains designed to take advantage of new types of food sources.

Fraser continues, “We are finding new species all the time, and once we have got a few more under our belt, we might be able to start putting together a little bit more about the ecosystem and how the whole thing interacts.  There is huge potential for so much more to be done, and this is possibly just the tip of the iceberg.”

An incredible discovery in China could forever change how we understand the history of human evolution.

A “mother lode” of fossils in China first discovered in the 1990s of a small monkey-like creature that was 10 million years older than apes in Africa suggests that our ape ancestors may have rafted across the sea to Africa many eons ago, according to a University of Kansas statement.

Previously, scientists had thought that primates had evolved in Africa over millions of years ago into man before starting to cross continents and oceans to our present locations. But this discovery seems to indicate that a species of monkey evolved in Asia and then sailed across the sea to Africa, and then went extinct in Asia due to climate change. Scientists think they may have rafted across on trees, as monkeys aren’t good swimmers.

The discovery would rewrite our understanding of how apes evolved into humans and then subsequently spread across the world.

“At the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, because of the rearrangement of Earth’s major tectonic plates, you had a rapid drop in temperature and humidity,” K. Christopher Beard, senior curator at the University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute and co-author of the report, said in the statement. “Primates like it warm and wet, so they faced hard times around the world — to the extent that they went extinct in North America and Europe. Of course, primates somehow survived in Africa and Southern Asia, because we’re still around to talk about it.”

Scientists are reporting they have recorded over 130 small earthquakes below the surface of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, but they say that doesn’t necessarily mean the active volcano is preparing for an eruption.

In a statement, cited on CNN.com, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said there was “absolutely no sign” of a pending eruption, but the agency added the information they were collecting means the volcano is still very active and “very much alive.”

The volcano, located about 95 miles south of Seattle, and 55 miles northeast of Portland, OR, famously erupted almost 36 years ago, on May 18, 1980.  The massive explosion took over 1,000 feet off the top of the mountain and spread hot ash across the northwest.  The eruption ignited numerous forest fires and caused flooding from the melting of the snow caps, and resulted in 57 people losing their lives.

Since that eruption, the mountain has been one of the most closely monitored active volcanoes on the planet.

The recent quake outbreak has scientists mildly concerned, not because of the magnitude of the earthquakes, but the increasing frequency.  Over the last six weeks, according to the USGS, the mountain has averaged nearly 40 located earthquakes each week.

The agency says the collection of the volcano’s magma is re-pressurizing, and that process may go on for many years before leading to another eruption.  The USGS noted there have been similar patterns of small earthquakes since the 1980 eruption, notably in the 1990s, and again in 2013 and 2014.

The earthquakes are small, with the largest registering only at 1.3, and most of them being 0.5 or below.  The quakes are occurring anywhere from 1.2 to four miles below the surface of the mountain, and since they are so small and happening at such depths in the ground, they cannot be felt at the surface.

The scientists stress they have not found any anomalous gasses, and no signs of magma collection and inflation that would indicate an eruption is about to occur.  Still, they say the volcano is in the process of re-charging.

An amazing 35 tonnes of dead fish floated into a lake in China’s Hainan Island this week sparking a massive clear up by almost 100 sanitation workers.

It is unknown how they got to Hongcheng lake situated in Haikou City but it is thought they were caught in a tidal surge that pushed the corpses up into an estuary and subsequently caught up in a pumping system that deposited them into the lake as reported by USA Today.

The clear up was thought to be done quickly so as to prevent locals from taking them and selling them on at local food markets. The fish corpses were taken to nearby incineration units and landfill sites where they were disposed of.

The reason for the mass death is thought to be down to changes in salinity levels in the water. The fish in question were a type of saltwater herring that are unable to thrive in the freshwater according to Chinese researchers. However, despite the Chinese researchers’ statements, local people are sceptical and believe that it could be down to pollution levels since this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Last year, a commercial fish farm in Guangdong province experienced nearly 1000 tonnes of dead fish after the lake was polluted with cyanide from a nearby chemical plant explosion, but the Marine and Fisheries Agency in Haikou City remain adamant that this isn’t the case in Hainan.

The researchers are working on measures to prevent freshwater and saltwater zones from easily overlapping in the hope to protect freshwater and saltwater fish from swimming into their respective uninhabitable areas.

 

 

 

 

 

2006 was the last time Mercury was seen transiting the sun’s surface from Earth and now we are able to see this amazing occurrence again on Sunday May 9.

The transit itself will take 7.5 hours and only happens around 13 times each century reports CBS News. The reason witnessing this event is so uncommon is because of the lining up of Mercury and Earth with the sun which doesn’t happen often due to the far-off planet’s 7 degree incline. This year’s event will be number three of fourteen in the twenty-first century.

With weather permitting, the transit can be witnessed through telescopes using special solar filters and shouldn’t be attempted to see with the naked eye, however, NASA will be streaming a live video so everyone can watch the event as it happens. The Mercury transit will be appearing as a black dot tracking the surface of the sun between 7:12 am and 2:42 pm (EST).

The next Mercury transit isn’t set to take place until November 11 2019 but won’t be as clear to see as Sunday’s show. The next spectacular and clear event won’t occur until May 7 2049.

For centuries Mercury transits were used by astronomers to estimate the planet’s size and distance between the earth and the sun, according to NASA. The first person to ever observe it was French astronomer Pierre Gassendi who saw it through a telescope in 1631 almost twenty years after the telescope was invented.

These days, powerful telescopes like NASA’s Kelper space telescope are able to capture other transits outside of our solar system. Transits can provide a lot of information for astronomers including the composition of exoplanet atmospheres by studying the amount of starlight that passes through them during a transit.

image credit: Press Association