The Nobel Prize in physics for 2019 was awarded to three scientists on Tuesday for groundbreaking work on the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in it. From a report: Their discoveries have forever "transformed our ideas about the cosmos" and helped answer fundamental questions about existence, said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Half of the award went to James Peebles, a physicist with Princeton University, for developing a theoretical framework that traces the the history of the universe, from the Big Bang to present day. His contributions to the Big Bang model and other work led to insights that just 5% of the universe is known matter -- everything from stars to plants to humans -- and the remaining 95% is unknown dark matter and dark energy. "When I started working in this subject -- I can tell you the date, 1964 -- at the invitation of my mentor, Professor Robert Henry Dicke, I was very uneasy about going into this subject because the experimental observational basis was so modest. ... I just kept going," Peebles said during a news conference, according to Princeton University. "Which particular step did I take? I would be very hard-pressed to say. It's a life's work."

The other half was jointly awarded to Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist with the University of Geneva, and Didier Queloz, an astronomer with the University of Geneva and University of Cambridge, for the first discovery of a planet outside our solar system. In October 1995, the two scientists discovered the first exoplanet in the Milky Way, planet 51 Pegasi b. Since their initial discovery, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been found in our home galaxy, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Dave Knott writes: Two Americans and a British scientist won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discovering details of how the body's cells sense and react to low oxygen levels, providing a foothold for developing new treatments for anemia, cancer and other diseases. Drs. William G. Kaelin Jr., of Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Gregg L. Semenza, of Johns Hopkins University, and Peter J. Ratcliffe, at the Francis Crick Institute and Oxford University, won the prize. They "revealed the mechanism for one of life's most essential adaptive processes," the Nobel committee said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In a farm deep in the southern region of China lives a very big pig that's as heavy as a polar bear. The 500 kilogram, or 1,102 pound, animal is part of a herd that's being bred to become giant swine. At slaughter, some of the pigs can sell for more than 10,000 yuan ($1,399), over three times higher than the average monthly disposable income in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province where Pang Cong, the farm's owner, lives. While Pang's pigs may be an extreme example of the lengths farmers are going to fill China's swelling pork shortage problem, the idea that bigger is better has been spreading across the country, home to the world's most voracious consumers of the meat.

High pork prices in the northeastern province of Jilin is prompting farmers to raise pigs to reach an average weight of 175 kilograms to 200 kilograms, higher than the normal weight of 125 kilograms. They want to raise them "as big as possible,"said Zhao Hailin, a hog farmer in the region. The trend isn't limited to small farms either. Major protein producers in China, including Wens Foodstuffs Group Co, the country's top pig breeder, Cofco Meat Holdings Ltd. and Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group Co. say they are trying to increase the average weight of their pigs. Big farms are focusing on boosting the heft by at least 14%, said Lin Guofa, a senior analyst with consulting firm Bric Agriculture Group. The average weight of pigs at slaughter at some large-scale farms has climbed to as much as 140 kilograms, compared with about 110 kilograms normally, Lin said. That could boost profits by more than 30%, he said.

The Israeli food technology startup Aleph Farms has successfully cultured meat in space for the first time. The Guardian reports: Aleph Farms grew the meat on the International Space Station, 248 miles (399 km) away from any natural resources. Bovine cells were harvested on Earth and taken to space, where they were grown into small-scale muscle tissue using a 3D bioprinter. The method relies on mimicking a natural process of muscle-tissue regeneration occurring inside a cow's body. The experiment took place on September 26 on the Russian segment of the space station, and involved the assembly of small-scale muscle tissue in a 3D bioprinter under controlled microgravity conditions. In future the technique could be used to provide meat for people living on the space station.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Three Alabama hospitals have paid a ransomware demand to the criminals who waged a crippling malware attack that's forcing the hospitals to turn away all but the most critical patients, the Tuscaloosa News reported. As reported last Tuesday, ransomware shut down the hospitals' computer systems and prevented staff from following many normal procedures. Officials have been diverting non-critical patients to nearby hospitals and have warned that emergency patients may also be relocated once they are stabilized. An updated posted on Saturday said the diversion procedure remained in place. All three hospitals are part of the DCH health system in Alabama. Over the weekend, the Tuscaloosa News said DCH officials made a payment to the people responsible for the ransomware attack. The report didn't say how much officials paid. Saturday's statement from DCH officials said they have obtained a decryption key but didn't say how they obtained it. The statement read in part: "In collaboration with law enforcement and independent IT security experts, we have begun a methodical process of system restoration. We have been using our own DCH backup files to rebuild certain system components, and we have obtained a decryption key from the attacker to restore access to locked systems.

We have successfully completed a test decryption of multiple servers, and we are now executing a sequential plan to decrypt, test, and bring systems online one-by-one. This will be a deliberate progression that will prioritize primary operating systems and essential functions for emergency care. DCH has thousands of computer devices in its network, so this process will take time.

We cannot provide a specific timetable at this time, but our teams continue to work around the clock to restore normal hospital operations, as we incrementally bring system components back online across our medical centers. This will require a time-intensive process to complete, as we will continue testing and confirming secure operations as we go."

Eating meat doesn't have as big of an impact on the environment as you've been told. From a report: Eating meat is bad for the climate -- or at least that was one of the main conclusions highlighted in a flood of news reports based on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's August report, Climate Change and Land. Before you give up your animal protein of choice in an effort to save the planet, let's crunch some numbers to see just how much livestock raising and meat consumption contribute to U.S. emissions. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture is responsible for about 10 percent of America's total annual greenhouse gas emissions of 6.5 billion carbon dioxide equivalent metric tons. That breaks down to 302 million tons from nitrogen dioxide, largely in the form of fertilizer; 170 million tons from the methane expelled in ruminant livestock flatulence; 65 million tons from managing livestock manure; 60 million tons of direct emissions from farming; and 40 million tons from agriculture-related electricity use. Calculations focusing on agriculture ignore 90 percent of emissions that Americans contribute to the atmosphere.

Assuming every American adopts a vegan diet and all livestock raising ceases, that change would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by just 3.6 percent. In their 2017 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, agronomists Robin White and Mary Beth Hall reached a similar conclusion, calculating that the total elimination of animal husbandry would reduce U.S. emissions by 2.6 percent. How would going meat-free affect an individual American's emissions? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, meat consumption in 2019 added up to 220 pounds per capita. Multiplying by emissions per kilogram figures from the Environmental Working Group, a D.C.-based advocacy group generally opposed to crop biotechnology and conventional agriculture, that's the equivalent of 1.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person.

appedology.pk quotes Popular Mechanics: Warp drive is one of the many futuristic ideas proposed in Star Trek, allowing for faster-than-light travel across the galaxy. Einstein's Theory of Relativity prevents anything from moving faster than light. In 1994, a theoretical physicist proposed a workaround: creating a bubble within space-time that would twist distances, allowing anything within the bubble to travel long distances. Many think it makes theoretical sense, but is practically unworkable. An undergrad at the University of Alabama wants to restart the conversation, and he's focused on how much energy such a bubble would need...

"Mathematically, if you fulfill all the energy requirements, they can't prove that it doesn't work," he recently said at a standing-room only talk on the subject.... "People used to say, 'You're dealing in something that would be great, but it takes the mass of the entire universe to do it,'" Agnew said. "Now, we're down to where it is still an immense amount of energy and exotic matter is still a problem, but if we had that energy, we could do it."

After five to eight years of theoretical work, Agnew said, "it's been reduced by many, many orders of magnitude."

dryriver shared this article from NBC News' science blog Mach: Picture this: A hundred million years ago, an advanced civilization detects strange signatures of life on a blue-green planet not so far away from their home in the Milky Way. They try sending signals, but whatever's marching around on that unknown world isn't responding. So, the curious galactic explorers try something different. They send a robotic probe to a small, quiet space rock orbiting near the life-rich planet, just to keep an eye on things.

If a story like this played out at any moment in Earth's 4.5 billion-year history, it just might have left an archaeological record. At least, that's the hope behind a new proposal to check Earth's so-called co-orbitals for signs of advanced alien technology. Co-orbitals are space objects that orbit the sun at about the same distance that Earth does. "They're basically going around the sun at the same rate the Earth is, and they're very nearby," said James Benford, a physicist and independent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researcher who dreamed up the idea that aliens might have bugged Earth via these co-orbitals while he was at a conference in Houston last year. If he's right, the co-orbitals could be a way to detect alien activity that occurred before humans even evolved, much less turned their attention toward the stars.

To be clear, even SETI researchers who like the idea of checking out Earth's co-orbitals acknowledge that it's a long shot... "How likely is it that alien probe would be on one of these co-orbitals, obviously extremely unlikely," said Paul Davies, a physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University who was not involved in Benford's new paper on the idea, published Sept. 20 in The Astronomical Journal. "But if it costs very little to go take a look, why not? Even if we don't find E.T., we might find something of interest...." Seeking signs of intelligent extraterrestrials close to Earth is informative even if the search comes up empty, Benford said. That no one's heard or seen any extraterrestrial signals in 50 years or so doesn't mean much, given the mind-boggling time span of Earth's history. A lack of evidence spanning hundreds, millions or even billions of years would be much more convincing.

"If we don't find anything, that means no one has come to look at the life of Earth for over billions of years," Benford said. "That is a big surprise, a stunning thing."
The search has already begun. In April China's space agency announced plans to send a probe to Earth's nearest co-orbital.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this news from the University of Illinois at Urbana, where researchers have made a surprising new discovery in a well-studied bioactive molecule: The molecule, which inserts itself into DNA to prevent replication, was once explored as a potential anti-cancer agent... "While examining these pharmaceutical molecules, we noticed that their molecular structures looked much like the organic semiconductors..." said chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Ying Diao.

These molecules, called DNA topoisomerase inhibitors, are flat and contain neatly stacked columns of electrically conductive molecular rings -- features that make a good semiconductor. Distinct from a typical semiconductor, these molecular columns are linked together by hydrogen bonds that can move charges from column to column, forming bridges that transform the entire molecular assembly into a semiconductor -- something rarely seen before this study, the researchers said. "These molecules can interact with biological material with high specificity, making them good candidates for use in biosensors," Diao said. "They are also easily printable but will require new solvents because they are chemically different than other organic semiconductors. The fabrication infrastructure is already in place...." Organic semiconductors are responsible for things like flexible electronics and transparent solar cells, but researchers are working to expand their use in biomedicine and devices that require interaction between electrically active molecules and biological molecules...

The team printed and tested the semiconductors and acknowledge that their efficiency and performance need improvement. Diao said the real excitement regarding this advance will come from the possibility of discovering similar molecules. "We envision partnering with researchers in machine learning who can train computers to spot the unique characteristics of these molecules," Diao said. "They can mine the vast pharmaceutical databases available today in search of molecules with similar, or maybe even better semiconducting properties."

The first all electric X-plane, the X-57 Mod II, has arrived at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California and is now ready to undergo some rigorous testing. Engadget reports: X-planes are the aircraft the agency uses to test and evaluate new technologies -- NASA plans to put this plane's electric propulsion system through testing, with the intention of sharing "valuable lessons learned along the way" in order "to inform the growing electric aircraft market." NASA will begin by conducting ground tests on the Mod II to prepare for the project's next phases, which will include taxi and, eventually, flight tests. It's not entirely clear when those will take place, but the Mod III and IV configurations of the plane will have wings unlike the current iteration. When a flight test does happen, it will make history as the first crewed X-plane in two decades. X-57 Project Manager Tom Rigney said: "The X-57 Mod II aircraft delivery to NASA is a significant event, marking the beginning of a new phase in this exciting electric X-plane project. With the aircraft in our possession, the X-57 team will soon conduct extensive ground testing of the integrated electric propulsion system to ensure the aircraft is airworthy. We plan to rapidly share valuable lessons learned along the way as we progress toward flight testing, helping to inform the growing electric aircraft market."

Dave Knott writes: A Montreal legal firm has requested authorization to launch a class-action lawsuit against Epic Games, makers of the widely-popular video game Fortnite. The legal notice, filed on behalf of two minors, likens the effect of the game to cocaine, saying it releases the chemical dopamine to the brain of vulnerable young people who can become dependent on playing. Much of the suit is based on a 2015 Quebec Superior Court ruling that determined tobacco companies didn't warn their customers about the dangers of smoking. Jean-Philippe Caron, a lawyer at Calex, said the firm was contacted by several parents whose kids had become addicted to the game.

Last year, the World Health Organization classified addiction to video games as a disease. It defined the disorder as "a pattern of gaming behavior characterized by impaired control over gaming, increased priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences." According to Caron, Fortnite was designed by psychologists to make it more addictive. "They knew that their game was very attractive, yet they did not divulge the risks to the population. It's a little like tobacco."

A new study found that certain fungi can settle in the pancreas, where they spur the growth of tumors. From a report: By now, you've probably heard that your body is teeming with bacteria. Some 100 trillion of them live on your skin, in your mouth and in the coils of your intestines. Some protect against infections and help you digest food, while others can make you seriously ill. Fungi, viruses and protozoa call your body their home, too. Your fungal residents are less numerous than your bacteria by orders of magnitude, but as researchers are learning, these overlooked organisms play an important physiological role -- and when their numbers get out of whack, they can modify your immune system and even influence the development of cancer.

A new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that fungi can make their way deep into the pancreas, which sits behind your stomach and secretes digestive enzymes into your small intestine. In mice and human patients with pancreatic cancer, the fungi proliferate 3,000-fold compared to healthy tissue -- and one fungus in particular may make pancreatic tumors grow bigger. Researchers were surprised by the presence of fungi in the typical pancreas and immense increase in their numbers in disease. "The pancreas was considered a sterile organ until a couple years ago," said Dr. George Miller, a surgical oncologist at the New York University School of Medicine who led the study. But recent research from Dr. Miller's lab and others had indicated that some microorganisms, such as bacteria, could sneak past a muscle called the sphincter of Oddi, which separates the pancreas from the rest of the gut. Perhaps fungi could also colonize the pancreas the same way.

A man has been able to move all four of his paralyzed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit, French researchers report. From a report: Thibault, 30, said taking his first steps in the suit felt like being the "first man on the Moon." His movements, particularly walking, are far from perfect and the robo-suit is being used only in the lab. But researchers say the approach could one day improve patients' quality of life. Thibault had surgery to place two implants on the surface of the brain, covering the parts of the brain that control movement.

Sixty-four electrodes on each implant read the brain activity and beam the instructions to a nearby computer. Sophisticated computer software reads the brainwaves and turns them into instructions for controlling the exoskeleton. Thibault has to be strapped into the exoskeleton. And he can control each of the arms, maneuvering them in three-dimensional space.

Intel and Brown University have started work on a DARPA-backed Intelligent Spine Interface project that would use AI to restore movement and bladder control for those with serious spinal cord injuries. Engadget reports: The two-year effort will have scientists capture motor and sensory signals from the spinal cord, while surgeons will implant electrodes on both ends of an injury to create an "intelligent bypass." From there, neural networks running on Intel tools will (hopefully) learn how to communicate motor commands through the bypass and restore functions lost to severed nerves. The initial interface will use external computing hardware to interpret spine signals. In the long term, the collaborators would like a wholly implanted system to make the connection.

Scientists have detected new types of organic compounds in the plumes that have been erupting from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Space.com reports: NASA's Cassini spacecraft collected invaluable data and images of Saturn and its moons over the approximately 20 years that the mission took place. While the mission ended on Sept. 15, 2017, with the craft diving toward the planet in a "Grand Finale," scientists continue to study the wealth of data that they gathered during the mission. In one new study, scientists looked at the material that Enceladus ejects from its core using hydrothermal vents. The material mixes with water in the moon's subsurface ocean and is then emitted as water vapor and icy grains.

In studying these ejections, the team found organic molecules that are condensed onto these grains and which contain oxygen and nitrogen. This comes after the first discovery of organics on the moon in 2018. Similar compounds on Earth take part in the chemical reactions that form amino acids, which are the organic compounds that combine to form proteins and are essential to life as we know it. On Earth, energy, or heat, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor helps to fuel these amino acid-producing reactions. With these findings, scientists have suggested that perhaps something similar is happening on Enceladus and the hydrothermal vents under its subsurface ocean are aiding in the creation of amino acids on the moon. "If the conditions are right, these molecules coming from the deep ocean of Enceladus could be on the same reaction pathway as we see here on Earth. We don't yet know if amino acids are needed for life beyond Earth, but finding the molecules that form amino acids is an important piece of the puzzle," Nozair Khawaja, who led the research team from the Free University of Berlin, said in a statement.

On Tuesday, NASA posted several sonifications of data captured on Mars by InSight, a robotic lander that touched down on the red planet last year. From a report: InSight is the first mission ever to record "marsquakes" the Martian equivalent of earthquakes, which it detects with an instrument called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), made by the French space agency. SEIS has now heard about 100 weird tremors rippling through the interior of Mars, 21 of which have been identified as likely marsquakes. For instance, here's an audio representation of a magnitude 3.7 marsquake detected on May 22, 2019, which was SEIS' 173th "sol" (the word for a Martian day) of operation. NASA dialed the seismic frequencies recorded by SEIS up to a range that can be heard by the human ear, but you may still need headphones to get the full experience. The quake sounds a bit like the kind of ambient bass-heavy hum you might expect to play during a tense scene in a movie thriller.

Shotgun shares a report from Popular Mechanics: [S]cientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have found a pairing of minerals that surpasses other precious metal materials when it comes to producing hydrogen. Testing a molybdenum-phosphide (MoP) catalyst with wastewater in a small reactor called a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC), scientists found that the MoP worked better than platinum. The most frequently used method of producing hydrogen is known as electrolysis. Bringing together chemicals called electrolytes with electricity, a catalyst triggers a reaction that creates hydrogen. Platinum is currently the best of these catalysts, although its high price is a big drawback. If platinum could be discarded, that could bring hydrogen production costs down rapidly. And that's not all. The MoP catalyst excelled at working with another abundant source: seawater.

Using an MEC, the team was able to combine the electrolysis technique with hydrogen fermentation, a low-yield process that consumes less energy. Unable to afford expensive platinum catalysts, the team needed something that could reduce production costs to approximately $2 per kilogram of hydrogen. With a strong microscope, the team discovered that the catalyst assembled into a mixture of two distinct crystal phases: MoP and MoP2. With slightly different atomic structures, they produced different reactions. MoP2 released hydrogen atoms from water molecules, while MoP was able to convert hydrogen atoms into hydrogen gas molecules. It was a welcome surprise. Would a hydrogen generator be a partial solution to the energy storage story for solar and wind?

jimminy_cricket quotes a report from the BBC: The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years. The calved block covers 1,636 sq km in area -- a little smaller than Scotland's Isle of Skye -- and is called D28. The scale of the berg means it will have to be monitored and tracked because it could in future pose a hazard to shipping. Not since the early 1960s has Amery calved a bigger iceberg. That was a whopping 9,000 sq km in area. Amery is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica, and is a key drainage channel for the east of the continent. D28 is calculated to be about 210 meters thick and contains some 315 billion tons of ice.

In 2017, astronomers discovered a peculiar object in the solar system called 'Oumuamua that was somehow ejected into our solar system from some chain of unfortunate events. "Now, astronomers have hypothesized that something like 'Oumuamua can come from a still-forming system, and a population of giant planets can have just the right gravitational effects to spread pieces of debris across the galaxy," according to the Live Science article written by astrophysicist Paul Sutter. From a report: The dull shaped object is only a few hundred feet long and very thin. It has a very dull red color. Live Science noted older solar systems don't eject enough raw material to saturate the galaxy. But young solar systems are different. Particularly, those with Neptune-like planets, on the edge of a solar system with reservoirs of comets around it. Enough interaction with the debris field and a Neptune-like planet could send objects like Oumuamua flying out into interstellar space. But Sutter cautions this is strictly a hypothesis. "The more we watch the skies, the more interstellar interlopers we are sure to find," he wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration is moving to begin collecting DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of people booked into federal immigration custody each year for entry into a national criminal database, an immense expansion of the use of technology to enforce the nation's immigration laws. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday that the Justice Department was developing a federal regulation that would give immigration officers the authority to collect DNA in detention facilities that are holding more than 40,000 people.

The move would constitute a major expansion of the use of a database maintained by the F.B.I., which has been limited mainly to genetic data collected from people who have been arrested, charged or convicted in connection with serious crimes. Immigrant and privacy advocates said the move raised privacy concerns for an already vulnerable population that could face profiling or discrimination as a result of their personal data being shared among law enforcement authorities. The new rules would allow the government to collect DNA from children, as well as those who seek asylum at legal ports of entry and have not broken the law. They warned that United States citizens, who are sometimes accidentally booked into immigration custody, could also be forced to hand over their private genetic information. Homeland security officials said the new initiative was permitted under the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005. "Up until now, immigrant detainees have been exempt from the law, they said, because of an agreement between Eric H. Holder Jr. and Janet Napolitano, who served as attorney general and homeland security secretary, respectively, under President Barack Obama," reports The New York Times.

The new program "would provide a comprehensive DNA profile of individuals who are tested, as opposed to the more narrow test that was used only to determine parentage," the report says. "And unlike the testing under the pilot program, the results would be shared with other law enforcement agencies."