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The Kerguelen Plateau And Formation Of Continents

The Kerguelen Plateau And Formation Of Continents

How did the continents form? It's a complex question, and no firm answers will be coming soon, but the oceanic plateau of the Kerguelen Islands may provide part of the answer, according to a new paper. From a geological point of view, it is the Earth's outermost layer that distinguishes the continents from the oceans: oceanic crust, which is relatively thin, is mainly made up of basalts, resulting from the melting of the Earth's underlying mantle, whereas continental crust, which is thicker and of granitic composition, is derived from magmas that evolved at depth before solidifying.

The Science Reason Businesses Should Provide Free Trials

The Science Reason Businesses Should Provide Free Trials

Netflix is the big name in streaming, virtually everyone who has any interest in digital shows has heard of them, but they still give you a free trial.No matter your size, and even if it's an existing customer, it makes good business sense, finds a new paper.

There Could Be 6 Billion Planets Like Ours In Just This Galaxy

There Could Be 6 Billion Planets Like Ours In Just This Galaxy

How big is the universe? No one really knows, but since we are in just one Orion spur of the arm of Sagittarius in one galaxy, and there are an unknown number of galaxies, it's big. So big our galaxy alone could have 6,000,000,000 planets like ours, according to a new estimate.To be a potential planet like Earth, the new model estimating the number of planets like ours must be rocky, roughly Earth-sized and orbiting Sol-like (G-type) stars. It also has to orbit in the habitable zones of its star, which is the range of distances from a star in which a rocky planet could host liquid water  on its surface.

Cholesterol Is Rising In Asian Countries, Dropping In The West

Cholesterol Is Rising In Asian Countries, Dropping In The West

A few decades ago, Asian diets were regarded as superior because lower incomes meant they ate less meat - and those who were tested had less cholesterol, a substance found in the blood that the body uses to build healthy cells, but which can lead to a build-up in blood vessels. Cholesterol has been correlated to a risk factor for a risk factor for heart attacks.

A Sun Clock For 2020 - It Can Predict Solar Cycle Activity With Surprising Precision

A Sun Clock For 2020 - It Can Predict Solar Cycle Activity With Surprising Precision

The math used to analyze cyclic phenomena like the ebb and flow of ocean tides has been applied to Sol, the star we orbit. While it can't do anything to flatten its irregularities, or the impacts it has on communications, temperature, and weather, the "Sun clock" created by scholars shows it starts and stops on a much more precise schedule than can be discerned by observations plotted linearly over time.

QIH: Mice Don't Hibernate, But Now They Can - And What That May Mean For Human Space Travel

QIH: Mice Don't Hibernate, But Now They Can - And What That May Mean For Human Space Travel

Humans do not hibernate, but in science-fiction films long-distance travel often involves "suspended animation" where muscular atrophy, starvation, and oxygen deprivation don't occur. Mice don't hibernate either but they just did in experiments. Mice are obviously not little people, that is why claims involving mice are in the exploratory camp, but animals models are often a waypoint on the path to humans.

Batrachopus Grandis: Crocodille Ancestor Walked On Two Feet

Batrachopus Grandis: Crocodille Ancestor Walked On Two Feet

Well-preserved footprints from the Lower Cretaceous Jinju Formation of South Korea, 110 million years ago, show that an ancestor of modern-day crocodiles, named Batrachopus grandis, walked on two feet.Palaeontologists knew that some crocodiles from the "age of dinosaurs" were more adapted to life on land than their modern relatives but those were smaller creatures, about three feet long with footprints showing they walked on all fours. Batrachopus grandis was instead 12 feet in size and bipedal. It is more like a Gorn from the television show "Star Trek" than what we think of as a crocodile.

FMRI Images Are Just Pretty Pictures

FMRI Images Are Just Pretty Pictures

Ten years ago science journalists talked about functional MRI (fMRI) scans all of the time. Because if a part of the brain lit up when someone did, said, or read something, it went into a paper. Few asked who was doing the interpreting, how legitimate the scale was, and if it had any scientific relevance. We got media claims that fMRI would predict behavior and the resulting media attention caused scholars to rush to produce even more fMRI papers.

Cover Crops Lead To Better Decomposition Rates And Increased Mineralization

Cover Crops Lead To Better Decomposition Rates And Increased Mineralization

Cover crops are touted for their soil and water quality related benefits. A new paper found that incorporating cover crops with tillage results in increased cover crop decomposition rates and increased mineralization of nutrients from cover crop biomass.
Other studies have reported mixed results for corn-soybean grain yields when planted after cover crops.

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, Dark Energy, And Cosmic Expansion

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations, Dark Energy, And Cosmic Expansion

A new paper uses a combination of cosmic voids – large expanding bubbles of space containing very few galaxies – and the faint imprint of sound waves in the very early Universe, known as baryon acoustic oscillations, that can be seen in the distribution of galaxies, to show how large structures in the distribution of galaxies in the Universe can provide the most precise tests of dark energy and cosmic expansion yet.

The Purell Of The Future May Be A Handheld UV Light Device

The Purell Of The Future May Be A Handheld UV Light Device

Though "energy medicine" and "oxygenated herbs" promoted by CNN's Chris Cuomo are woo, one notion ridiculed by journalists has merit; using light to disinfect areas and kill coronavirus.Though chemicals are most common, they are not always practical or portable. Ultraviolet radiation in the 200 to 300 nanometer range will destroy the virus, it just requires UV radiation sources that emit sufficiently high doses of UV light. Current devices are things like expensive mercury-containing gas discharge lamps, which require high power, have a relatively short lifetime, and are bulky.