Science…

Would you like noise with that? At 1230, peak eclipse.

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Nighty night!

Disgustingly clear shots at https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/02/super-blue-blood-moon-live-stream/

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Nice shot DJ :vulcan_salute:

Miracously, the clouds parted , blood moon, eclipse and then the brilliance of the stars.

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As Doe said… “BOMBER Moon!!”

It’s a portent I tell’s ya… It’s a SIGN!!!

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I reminded my wife that Furious Junior was conceived on a night with a blood moon. She laughed at me and went to sleep.

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Perfect for Desktop Background.

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New blood test detects Alzheimer’s disease up to 20 years before symptoms begin

By Leonie Mellor and Tim Swanston
4-5 minutes

The world’s first accurate blood test for Alzheimer’s disease has been developed by a team of scientists from Australia and Japan, with the test able to detect the presence of the disease up to 20 years before symptoms begin.

The blood test identifies biological markers in blood plasma that show the build-up of the protein amyloid-beta — one of the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

Professor Colin Masters from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health has been working on Alzheimer’s disease for 30 years.

Professor Masters said the blood test would make diagnosis easier, cheaper and more broadly available than the current invasive and expensive options.

"The performance of the blood test is so good, it has accuracy of approximately 90 per cent," Professor Masters said.

It would be used to accurately screen people suitable for clinical trials.

But would people want to know years out that they will one day suffer from Alzheimer’s disease?

“Most people probably wouldn’t want to have this test unless there’s a specific therapy, but many others would take the view that they want to plan ahead by five or 10 years,” Professor Masters said.

“If the test is negative, there’s a 95 per cent chance that you’re not going to develop Alzheimer’s within the foreseeable future — that means within 10 or 15 years.”

But Professor Masters stressed it was still early days.

“Always in this type of medical science research, it’s always good to have a diagnosis first and then a treatment follows,” he said.

“Once you can diagnose the condition accurately and specifically, then it makes it so much easier to work on developing a specific therapy.”

’A very difficult journey’

Brisbane-based CSIRO scientist James Doecke, who was also involved in the research, said blood had been consistently collected from the two groups of people every 18 months since 2006.

“It’s been a very difficult journey,” Dr Doecke said.

"A lot of labs around the world have designed an assay [laboratory test] and tried to find the protein in the blood that we can test easily that will be correlated with the disease, and nobody’s come up until now with something this strong.

“Previously we’ve only been 80 per cent accurate and now we’re greater than 90 [per cent] — what it means is that we can better direct our clinical trials to the right population.”

Wayne Griffin, 63, from Gordon Park on Brisbane’s northside, has been living with Alzheimer’s disease for more than five years.

Mr Griffin said he discovered he had Alzheimer’s disease when his memory and motor skills started failing him.

"It just sort of showed up when I just couldn’t really be some sort of person … sit down to have a proper conversation," Mr Griffin said.

“I think the biggest challenge was myself.”

Mr Griffin said he just enjoyed an afternoon matinee of Mamma Mia and was delighted that it brought back memories of he and his sister in their heyday.

“If I just get a little bit of dancing … I get more settled really,” he said.

The results have been published in the scientific journal Nature.

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He’s clearly forgotten his rules of grammar.

“Of he and his sister”?

Puh-lease.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42969020

SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy a few hours ago - booster pods successfully landed back. Video comm was lost so we don’t know if the third booster made it back to the drone ship (yet).

Still a few more hours to to confirm if the upper stage of the rocket will successfully get into trajectory to Mars.


I wish the dash said “take that Kyrie”

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I’m a fan of the Boston Dynamics ■■■ we’re all going to die videos, but ‘can push down on a lever’ isn’t very scary.

when you’re bunkered down in your bedroom hiding from your Boston Dynamics dog who has inexplicably gone on heat and you see the door handle slowly turning… then “can push down on a lever” may get a bit scary for ya

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Unless it’s, you know…a doorknob.
Nah, can hunt you through the tundra was way more impressive.

Can’t all these things be defeated by some engineer walking in from the side of the shot and kicking it over?

Sorry for the late answer, but no.
Hence my ‘other video was scarier’ post.

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Banana peel no longer disposable with skins you can eat

Renee Cluff,

A Japanese company has created a banana that you do not need to peel before eating.

The Mongee banana (pronounced ‘mon-gay’ and meaning ‘amazing’) has an edible skin which is said to taste like a vegetable and have a lettuce-like texture.

It has been a labour of love for 68-year-old Setsuzo Tanaka from Okayama Prefecture who has spent the past 40 years perfecting the technique for growing them.

Banana seedlings are frozen, then thawed and replanted, which his company, D&T Farm, calls the “freeze-thaw awakening” method.

“Banana growing cells are slowly cooled down to -60 degrees Celsius and thawed to bring out the vitality of the original plant,” company spokesman Tetsuya Tanaka said.

According to D&T Farm, the process makes the plants grow rapidly, cutting the typical two-year cultivation process down to six months.

The bananas mature quickly, leading to thin, pliable — and edible — skins.

Roots in the past

Mongee bananas were developed from the Gros Michel variety, which was probably what your grandparents or great grandparents ate as children.

It was the main variety in global circulation from the early 1900s until the 1950s, when plantations in Central America were wiped out by fusarium wilt which became more commonly known as Panama disease.

A newer strain of the soil-borne fungus, Panama TR4, is now affecting Australian Cavendish banana crops.

Setsuzo Tanaka’s desire to cultivate tropical Gros Michel bananas in the cold climate of Japan was driven by his own memories of eating them as a child when they were classed as a luxury food.

“A simple hope of eating a lot of bananas became a challenge for research,” Mr Tanaka said.

"He developed it as a hobby.

“The reason why banana peel can be eaten is Gros Michel varieties are relatively thin-skinned, compared with imported bananas to Japan.”

Safe and sweet

The company is against genetic modification and the Mongee banana plants are not treated with any chemicals, which allows the skin to be eaten safely.

“We do not use chemical fertiliser and there are no natural enemies of banana in Japan, so it is non-pesticide cultivation,” Mr Tanaka said.

The fruit itself is extremely sweet, with sugar content recently measured at 25.8 grams per 100 grams.

In comparison, Cavendish bananas, which are today’s main commercial variety, have about 18 grams of sugar per 100 grams.

According to Mr Tanaka, eating both the fruit and the skin provides extra nutrients.

“Banana peel can contain vitamin B6 and magnesium and is rich in tryptophan and there is also potassium, polyphenol, but there are many water soluble vitamins, zinc in particular,” he said.

The bananas are now being sold at a Japanese department store for $7 each, expensive because it is grown from seed with only about 10 pieces of fruit available each week.

The company has plans for expansion, initially throughout Japan, where 99 per cent of bananas are currently imported.

Mr Tanaka said global exports were also in the business plan.

“I would like to disseminate bananas without agricultural chemicals to the world.”

You read it here first: zinc is now a vitamin.