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Art Local

Hand drawn state maps

(https://lordofmaps.com/products/massachusetts)

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Current Events Health Humanity Science

The (in)accuracy of the foundations of psychology

“It’s possible around 50 percent of the published psychological literature fails upon retesting, but no one knows precisely the extent of the instability in the foundations of psychological science.”

(https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22360363/replication-crisis-psychological-science-accelerator)

Categories
Current Events Health Humanity

Pandemic Poverty in the US

(Credit: Urban Institute)

“Poverty in the US will be cut by 45% this year thanks to the massive government intervention during the pandemic, meaning 20 million fewer people are in poverty now than in 2018. The decline in poverty over the last three years is almost 3x the previous record drop.”

“The combined benefits have the largest impact on children, reducing their projected 2021 poverty rate 81 percent relative to what it would be without any benefits (from 30.1 percent to 5.6 percent).”

Source (https://www.urban.org/research/publication/2021-poverty-projections-assessing-impact-benefits-and-stimulus-measures)

Via (https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/issues/2021/07/30)

Categories
Current Events Science Space

Astrophysicists report first detection of light from behind a black hole

(Image credit: Dan Wilkins)

“Researchers observed bright flares of X-ray emissions, produced as gas falls into a supermassive black hole. The flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, short flashes of X-rays were seen – corresponding to the reflection of the flares from the far side of the disk, bent around the black hole by its strong gravitational field.”

“The strange discovery, detailed in a paper published July 28 in Nature, is the first direct observation of light from behind a black hole – a scenario that was predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity but never confirmed, until now.”

(https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2021/07/28/first-detection-ehind-black-hole/)

Categories
Current Events History Humanity Nature Science

Sponge-like fossil could be Earth’s earliest known animal

Crystalline tubes seen in rocks (left) might have been formed when the collagen-like skeleton of an 890-million-year-old sponge decayed and fossilized. Some modern sponges have internal scaffolding (right) that resembles the shapes in the rocks.
Credit: Elizabeth C. Turner

“Fossil discovered in northwestern Canada could rewrite the early history of animal life — but some palaeontologists are not convinced it’s real.”

“Most major groups of animals — including arthropods, molluscs and worms — first appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion, 541 million years ago. But according to a paper published today [28 July 2021] in Nature, sponge fossils from northwestern Canada could be 350 million years older, significantly pushing back the date of Earth’s earliest-known animals.”

“It’s such a big claim that you really have to eliminate all the other possibilities.”

(https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02066-9)

Categories
Art Nature

Denali

Via (https://reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/comments/orwq9s/just_minutes_before_sunset_ended_the_clouds/)

Categories
Current Events

US left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell new commander

The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.

(apnews.com/article/bagram-afghanistan-airfield-us-troops-f3614828364f567593251aaaa167e623)

Categories
Current Events Engineering

Lax Enforcement Let South Florida Towers Skirt Inspections for Years

The collapse of Champlain Towers South has prompted a review of hundreds of older high-rises. Some buildings ignored or delayed action on serious maintenance issues.

(www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/us/south-florida-condo-maintenance-violations.html)

Categories
Current Events Health Science

99% of COVID-19 deaths in U.S. involve unvaccinated people

The United States of America has registered over 605,000 deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic, the highest national toll so far in the world.

(globalnews.ca/news/8001754/u-s-covid-deaths-unvaccinated-people/)

Categories
Engineering Nature Science Tech

Cellular fluidics

“A technological platform has been developed in which millimetre-scale cubes are assembled into 3D structures that control capillary action — enabling programmable fluid flows and modelling of a range of fluidic processes.”

“In this platform, millimetre-scale cubes known as unit cells have internal architectures that draw up fluids through capillary action. The combined capillary action of stacked unit cells produces a vertical flow of fluid.

“The authors report that a tree-like structure built from the unit cells continuously delivers liquid from a reservoir to the tips of the branches, where the liquid evaporates — a process that mimics transpiration in natural trees.”

“The flow of liquid in natural structures, such as tree leaves or soil, depends on the arrangement of the components in those structures3. Cellular fluidics is therefore the perfect tool with which to mimic such liquid flow, because the unit cells can be arranged in the same way as can the building blocks of the natural structures.”

“…the authors derived a theoretical model that describes how strut diameter and the number of cells coupled together influence the overall capillary action of a cellular fluidics system.”

Article (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01708-2)

Paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03603-2)