Fewer hailstorms but bigger hailstones: Climate change shifts Europe’s severe weather risks
▻https://phys.org/news/2025-09-hailstorms-bigger-hailstones-climate-shifts.html
Severe hail has a diameter of 2 cm, while a diameter of 5 cm or more is considered very large. Bigger hailstones cause more damage than smaller ones, and even a small increase in their size could outweigh any benefits from having fewer hailstorms overall.
L’intrication quantique n’est pas instantanée : Des scientifiques ont enfin mesuré la vitesse à laquelle se produit !
▻https://sciencepost.fr/intrication-quantique-nest-pas-instantanee-des-scientifiques-ont-enfin-m
L’idée que deux particules puissent s’influencer instantanément à des milliards de kilomètres de distance fascine autant qu’elle dérange. Et si ce lien mystérieux, connu sous le nom d’intrication quantique, n’était pas si immédiat qu’on le croyait ? C’est ce que révèle une expérience spectaculaire menée à l’Université technique de Vienne, qui pourrait bien bouleverser notre compréhension du temps, de l’espace… et de la réalité elle-même.
Qu’est-ce que l’intrication quantique ?
L’intrication quantique est sans doute l’un des phénomènes les plus mystérieux et fascinants de la physique. Pour comprendre ce que cela signifie, imaginez deux particules – par exemple, deux électrons – qui interagissent fortement pendant un certain temps, puis s’éloignent l’une de l’autre. Une fois cette interaction terminée, ces deux particules restent intriquées : elles partagent un état commun, comme si elles faisaient encore partie d’un tout, même séparées par des milliers de kilomètres.
Ce lien étrange a une conséquence spectaculaire : si vous mesurez une propriété de la première particule (comme sa polarisation ou son spin), vous connaissez instantanément celle de la seconde, sans même avoir besoin de la mesurer. Cela semble violer notre intuition selon laquelle l’information ne peut pas voyager plus vite que la lumière — d’où la célèbre expression d’Einstein, qui appelait cela une « action fantomatique à distance » (spooky action at a distance), car cela semblait presque magique.
Mais ce n’est pas de la magie : c’est la mécanique quantique. Et contrairement à une simple corrélation (comme deux gants dans une boîte, où connaître le droit vous révèle le gauche), ici, les propriétés ne sont pas définies à l’avance. Elles ne « prennent forme » qu’au moment de la mesure, ce qui rend l’effet d’autant plus déroutant.
Pendant longtemps, les scientifiques ont pensé que cette connexion entre particules intriquées se formait instantanément– comme un interrupteur qu’on actionne, sans délai. Mais en réalité, cela n’avait jamais été directement testé : on observait les effets de l’intrication, mais on ne savait pas combien de temps il fallait pour que ce lien quantique se crée entre deux particules. Était-ce vraiment immédiat ? Ou ce lien mettait-il, même à l’échelle microscopique, un tout petit peu de temps à s’installer ?
Une expérience aux frontières du temps
C’est ce défi vertigineux qu’ont relevé les chercheurs de la TU Wien, en Autriche. Dans leur expérience, décrite dans la prestigieuse revue Physical Review Letters, ils ont utilisé des impulsions laser ultra-brèves pour générer une intrication entre deux électrons dans un atome.
Le principe : en envoyant un éclair laser extrêmement intense et rapide sur un atome, un électron est expulsé, tandis qu’un second électron reste dans l’atome, mais passe à un état d’énergie plus élevé. Les deux électrons, bien que séparés, sont alors quantiquement liés.
Leur outil de mesure ? Le temps… à l’échelle de l’attoseconde, soit un milliardième de milliardième de seconde(0,000000000000000001 s). Grâce à deux faisceaux lasers distincts, les physiciens ont pu déterminer avec une précision inédite le moment où cette intrication se forme.
Verdict : pas si instantané
Contre toute attente, l’équipe a observé que l’intrication ne se produit pas immédiatement, mais nécessite un laps de temps mesurable, de l’ordre de 232 attosecondes dans certains cas. (....)
l’article en référence n’est pas accessible, au sens open source, mais aussi, j’imagine, difficilement accessible à la compréhension…
il est signé de sept auteurs dans des labos de quatre universités ; dans l’ordre, Shenzhen, Pékin, Vienne, Shanxi. Dans tous les articles qui le reprennent on ne parle ex
l’article en référence n’est pas accessible, au sens open source, mais aussi, j’imagine, difficilement accessible à la compréhension…
il est signé de sept auteurs dans des labos de quatre universités ; dans l’ordre, Shenzhen, Pékin, Vienne, Shanxi. Dans tous les articles qui le reprennent on ne parle que de celle de Vienne exclusivement…
Deux des auteurs, Prof. Joachim Burgdörfer et Prof. Iva Březinová, one of the authors of the current publication. tous les deux de Vienne, « expliquent » dans une revue accessible leurs travaux :
How fast is quantum entanglement ? Scientists investigate it at the attosecond scale
22/10/2024
▻https://phys.org/news/2024-10-fast-quantum-entanglement-scientists-attosecond.html
The electron itself does not know when it was ’born’
The research team has now been able to show, using a suitable measurement protocol that combines two different laser beams, that it is possible to achieve a situation in which the ’birth time’ of the electron flying away, i.e., the moment it left the atom, is related to the state of the electron that remains behind. These two properties are quantum entangled.
“This means that the birth time of the electron that flies away is not known in principle. You could say that the electron itself doesn’t know when it left the atom,” says Burgdörfer. “It is in a quantum-physical superposition of different states. It has left the atom at both an earlier and a later point in time.”
Which point in time it ’really’ was cannot be answered—the ’actual’ answer to this question simply does not exist in quantum physics. But the answer is quantum-physically linked to the—also undetermined—state of the electron remaining with the atom. If the remaining electron is in a state of higher energy, then the electron that flew away was more likely to have been torn out at an early point in time; if the remaining electron is in a state of lower energy, then the ’birth time’ of the free electron that flew away was likely later—on average around 232 attoseconds.
This is an almost unimaginably short period of time: an attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second. “However, these differences can not only be calculated, but also measured in experiments,” says Burgdörfer. “We are already in talks with research teams who want to prove such ultrafast entanglements.”
1 attoseconde = 10^-18 s
en 232 as, la lumière parcourt 7 10^-8 mètres, soit 0,07 µm
Study links climate change to rising arsenic levels in paddy rice, increasing health risks
▻https://phys.org/news/2025-04-links-climate-arsenic-paddy-rice.html
Le changement climatique a des effets dans tous les domaines. Il en est qui passent inaperçus, mais qui sont extrêmement dangereux. Avec la volonté de trump de ne plus faire de recherche sur les effets du changement climatique, on va plus encore perdre la trace de ces effets induits.
by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Climate change may significantly impact arsenic levels in paddy rice, a staple food for millions across Asia, reveals a new study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. The research shows that increased temperatures above 2°C, coupled with rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, lead to higher concentrations of inorganic arsenic (iAs) in rice, potentially raising lifetime health risks for populations in Asia by 2050.
Until now, the combined effects of rising CO2 and temperatures on arsenic accumulation in rice have not been studied in detail. The research, done in conjunction with colleagues at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is published in The Lancet Planetary Health.
“Our results suggest that this increase in arsenic levels could significantly elevate the incidence of heart disease, diabetes, and other non-cancer health effects,” said Lewis Ziska, Ph.D., Columbia Mailman School associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences.
“As rice is a dietary staple in many parts of the world, these changes could lead to a substantial rise in the global burden of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and other arsenic-related health issues.”
Ziska explained that the higher arsenic levels are likely due to climate-related changes in soil chemistry that favor arsenic that can more easily be absorbed into rice grain.
“From a health perspective, the toxicological effects of chronic iAs exposure are well established, and include cancers of the lung, bladder, and skin, as well as ischemic heart disease. Emerging evidence also suggests that arsenic exposure may be linked to diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes, neurodevelopmental issues, and immune system effects.”
In fact, “ingesting rice in regions like southern China and Southeast and South Asia is already a significant source of dietary arsenic and cancer risk,” said Ziska.
By measuring the effects of rising temperatures and CO2 on 28 rice strains over 10 years in the field using FACE (Free-Air CO2 Enrichment) methodology, and combining advanced modeling techniques, the team estimated inorganic arsenic doses and health risks for seven Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
Health risks were calculated for cancer and non-cancer outcomes. Estimates of rice availability in 2021 by country, as reported in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) food balance sheets, were used as the starting point for estimating rice ingestion. The standard deviation of rice ingestion per kg bodyweight from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data was used to create a normal distribution for each country.
The study’s projections for 2050 suggest a sharp rise in lifetime cancer cases, particularly lung and bladder cancers. China is projected to see the highest number of cases, with an estimated 13.4 million cancers linked to rice-based arsenic exposure.
“Based on our findings, we believe there are several actions that could help reduce arsenic exposure in the future,” Ziska noted.
“These include efforts in plant breeding to minimize arsenic uptake, improved soil management in rice paddies, and better processing practices. Such measures, along with public health initiatives focused on consumer education and exposure monitoring, could play a critical role in mitigating the health impacts of climate change on rice consumption.”
“Our study underscores the urgent need for action to reduce arsenic exposure in rice, especially as climate change continues to affect global food security,” says Ziska.
More information: Impact of climate change on arsenic concentrations in paddy rice and the associated dietary health risks in Asia: an experimental and modelling study, The Lancet Planetary Health (2025).
Journal information: The Lancet Planetary Health
Gravity from entropy: A radical new approach to unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity
▻https://phys.org/news/2025-03-gravity-entropy-radical-approach-quantum.html
In a new study published in Physical Review D, Professor Ginestra Bianconi, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London, proposes a new framework that could revolutionize our understanding of gravity and its relationship with quantum mechanics.
The study, titled “Gravity from Entropy,” introduces a novel approach that derives gravity from quantum relative entropy, bridging the gap between two of the most fundamental yet seemingly incompatible theories in physics: quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity.
Gravity from entropy | Phys. Rev. D
▻https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.066001
Abstract
Gravity is derived from an entropic action coupling matter fields with geometry. The fundamental idea is to relate the metric of Lorentzian spacetime to a quantum operator, playing the role of an renormalizable effective density matrix and to describe the matter fields topologically, according to a Dirac-Kähler formalism, as the direct sum of a 0-form, a 1-form and a 2-form. While the geometry of spacetime is defined by its metric, the matter fields can be used to define an alternative metric, the metric induced by the matter fields, which geometrically describes the interplay between spacetime and matter. The proposed entropic action is the quantum relative entropy between the metric of spacetime and the metric induced by the matter fields. The modified Einstein equations obtained from this action reduce to the Einstein equations with zero cosmological constant in the regime of low coupling. By introducing the G-field, which acts as a set of Lagrangian multipliers, the proposed entropic action reduces to a dressed Einstein-Hilbert action with an emergent small and positive cosmological constant only dependent on the G-field. The obtained equations of modified gravity remain second order in the metric and in the G-field. A canonical quantization of this field theory could bring new insights into quantum gravity while further research might clarify the role that the G-field could have for dark matter.
AI-fabricated ’junk science’ floods Google scholar, researchers warn
AI-generated research is a threat, both in terms of society’s knowledge and public trust in science. This was the conclusion made by the researchers from the Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås, Sweden, that recently identified over a hundred suspected AI-generated articles in the Google Scholar search engine.
Their research reports that fake AI-generated scientific articles have flooded the search engine Google Scholar. The study’s findings of AI-fabricated junk science mean that fake science has been made available and can be spread widely and at a much lower cost for malicious actors. The work is published in the journal Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
This poses a danger to both society and the research community, according to Jutta Haider and Björn Ekström from the Swedish School of Library and Information Science, who are behind the study together with Kristofer Söderström at Lund University and Malte Rödl at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Increased risk of evidence hacking
One of the major concerns with AI-generated research is the increased risk of evidence hacking—that fake research can be used for strategic manipulation.
“The risk of what we call ’evidence hacking’ increases significantly when AI-generated research is spread in search engines. This can have tangible consequences as incorrect results can seep further into society and possibly also into more and more domains,” said Ekström, who holds a doctorate in Library and Information Science.
The researchers behind the study have already seen that these problematic articles have spread to other parts of the research infrastructure on the web, in various archives, social media and the like. The spread is fast and Google Scholar makes the problematic articles visible. Even if the articles are withdrawn, there is a risk that they have already had time to spread and continue to do so.
In addition, AI-generated research causes problems for the already hard-pressed peer review system.
Places higher demands on information literacy
The fact that AI-generated research is spreading in search engine databases places higher demands on those who take part in research online.
“If we cannot trust that the research we read is genuine, we risk making decisions based on incorrect information. But as much as this is a question of scientific misconduct, it is a question of media and information literacy,” said Haider, Professor of Library and Information Science.
She points out that Google Scholar is not an academic database. The search engine is easy to use and fast yet lacks quality assurance procedures. That’s already a problem with regular Google results, but is even more problematic when it comes to making science accessible.
“People’s ability to decide which journals and publishers—for the most part—publish quality-reviewed research is important for finding and determining what constitutes reliable research and is of great importance for decision-making and opinion formation,” concluded Haider.
▻https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ai-fabricated-junk-science-google.html
#AI #IA #intelligence_artificielle #Google_scholar
ping @reka
AI predicts that most of the world will see temperatures rise to 3°C much faster than previously expected
▻https://phys.org/news/2024-12-ai-world-temperatures-3c-faster.html
Three leading climate scientists have combined insights from 10 global climate models and, with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), conclude that regional warming thresholds are likely to be reached faster than previously estimated.
Et c’est l’IA qui le dit. C’est que ça doit être vrai. (on va te me la désencercler à coup de grenades cette IA écoloterroriste, tu vas voir, on va régler le problème en moins de temps qu’il n’en faut pour que Darmanin attribue un appartement...)
Your morning coffee may be more than a half million years old
Arabica coffee beans harvested the previous year are stored at a coffee plantation in Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala, on May 22
▻https://phys.org/news/2024-04-morning-coffee-hundreds-thousands-years.html
Les scientifiques préviennent de nombreuses boucles de rétroactions climatiques dangereuses | Terra Projects
▻https://www.laterredufutur.com/accueil/les-scientifiques-previennent-de-nombreuses-boucles-de-retroactions-
Un nouveau rapport rédigé par une équipe internationale de chercheurs, dont des scientifiques de l’Université de l’État de l’Oregon (OSU), met en garde contre de nombreuses boucles de rétroaction climatique à risque et la nécessité d’agir tant au niveau de la recherche que des politiques. Publié dans la revue One Earth le 17 février 2023, le rapport indique qu’en raison notamment de l’amplification des rétroactions climatiques, « une réduction très rapide des émissions sera nécessaire pour limiter le réchauffement futur. »
Des chercheurs des États-Unis et d’Europe ont répertorié et décrit 41 boucles de rétroaction climatique qui ont des implications majeures sur les perspectives du changement climatique. Les boucles de rétroaction climatique sont des processus qui peuvent soit amplifier soit diminuer les effets de nos émissions de gaz à effet de serre, initiant une réaction en chaîne cyclique qui se répète sans cesse. Il existe de nombreuses rétroactions amplificatrices importantes qui accentuent le réchauffement. Au total, les chercheurs ont identifié 27 rétroactions amplificatrices, 7 rétroactions amortissantes et 7 rétroactions incertaines.
Source : ▻https://phys.org/news/2023-02-scientists-dangerous-feedback-loops-climate.html
D’autres articles en rapport avec les boucles de rétroaction climatiques (les liens figurent sur la page précédente) :
▻https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/climate_feedbacks
▻https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/climate_feedbacks_references
▻https://bigthink.com/the-present/the-environmental-costs-of-war
’Worthless’ forest carbon offsets risk exacerbating climate change
▻https://phys.org/news/2023-08-worthless-forest-carbon-offsets-exacerbating.html
In early 2023, the Guardian published an article suggesting that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets are worthless. […]. Verra, the largest certifier of these offset credits, said the claims were “absolutely incorrect” […].
The claims in the Guardian article rested heavily on analysis which had been published as a preprint (before peer review). Now the research has been fully peer-reviewed and is published in the journal Science. It shows unequivocally that many projects which have sold what are known as REDD+ (reducing emissions from #deforestation and degradation) credits have failed to reduce deforestation.
Source :
Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation | Science
▻https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade3535
Archaeologists refute claims that a comet destroyed Hopewell culture
▻https://phys.org/news/2023-08-archaeologists-refute-comet-destroyed-hopewell.html
In February 2022, the journal Scientific Reports published a paper with the claim that a comet exploded over what is now Cincinnati around 1,500 years ago, raining fire over the area and destroying villages and farm fields, supposedly resulting in the rapid decline of the ancient Indigenous Hopewell culture.
Research led by University of Cincinnati archaeologist Dr. Kenneth Tankersley claimed “evidence of a cosmic airburst at 11 Hopewell archaeological sites in three states stretching across the Ohio River Valley.” His evidence included the presence of meteorites, iron and silica-rich microspherules claimed to be from meteorites, and spikes in iridium and platinum—all supposedly associated with burned charcoal-rich Hopewell habitations.
Dr. Kevin C. Nolan, director and senior archaeologist of the Applied Anthropology Laboratories at Ball State University, along with eleven other scholars with varied expertise—including several specialists in the Hopewell culture and the Smithsonian Institution’s Curator of Meteorites—have reviewed that evidence and found it to be wholly inadequate to support such an extraordinary claim.
The results of their review are published as a response in issue 13 of Scientific Reports, published August 9. Dr. Nolan had worked with very few of the other researchers prior, but they all came together through this effort to set the record straight on Dr. Tankersley’s questionable research.
“There is no evidence for catastrophically burned habitations at any of the 11 Hopewell sites studied by Tankersley’s team,” Dr. Nolan said. "The burned surfaces identified by the University of Cincinnati researchers are either localized episodes of burning for ceremonial purposes, such as cremating the honored dead, or are not even burned surfaces at all.
“Whatever meteorites are present at these sites were collected by ancient Indigenous peoples—probably from various locations—and brought to these Hopewell sites to be crafted into ceremonial regalia,” he continued. “The iron and silica-rich microspherules do not have the chemical composition typical of meteorites, and so are natural products of local soil chemistry.”
Further evidence discovered by Dr. Nolan and his team indicates that the available radiocarbon dates for all the Hopewell sites claimed to have been destroyed by the effects of a comet airburst do not come close to being the same age.
“There is no evidence of any catastrophic comet airburst,” Dr. Nolan concluded. "And there is no evidence of any supposed decline in the Hopewell culture that supposedly followed in the wake of the devastation caused by the alleged airburst.
“Many features of the Hopewell culture, including the construction of monumental earthworks and the accumulation of unusual raw materials obtained from places as distant as the Gulf Coast and the Rocky Mountains, did cease by around 400 CE. But there was no decline in local populations, so these cultural shifts simply reflect changes in the social and religious fabric of these Indigenous societies that, for a time, had knitted them together.”
Dr. Nolan said the numerous instances of possibly intentional data manipulations to support the comet impact are even more troubling than the myriad errors in interpreting the evidence, and the research response clearly details those.
De multiples effondrements d’écosystèmes pourraient se produire avant 2050...
▻https://ricochets.cc/De-multiples-effondrements-d-ecosystemes-pourraient-se-produire-avant-2050
Le réchauffement climatique et les destructions écologiques produits par la civilisation industrielle (Etats, capitalisme, techno-industrie, extractivisme...) semblent s’accélérer. Des scientifiques voient par exemple l’accélération des la fonte des glaces et davantage d’événements « météo » extrêmes. Une étude scientifique affirme que les « stress » cumulés pourraient produire des effondrements en cascade d’écosystèmes bien avant 2050, bien plus tôt que l’horizon 2100 souvent mis en avant dans les discours (...) #Les_Articles
/ #La_civilisation,_la_civilisation_industrielle, Catastrophes climatiques et destructions (...)
#Catastrophes_climatiques_et_destructions_écologiques
▻https://phys.org/news/2023-06-ecological-doom-loops-ecosystem-collapses-sooner.html
▻https://www.terrestres.org/2023/07/17/la-niche-climatique-humaine
New research shows climate change will increase impacts of volcanic eruptions
▻https://phys.org/news/2023-06-climate-impacts-volcanic-eruptions.html
“Sea level rise, glacial melting, aquifer depletion, and mountain erosion can all affect the likelihood and frequency of volcanic eruptions,” he said. “With the increasing seriousness of climate impacts on society, the search for ’geoengineering’ solutions will make it more likely that countries will consider volcano-mimicking interventions—like an injection of aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the Earth’s surface. Volcano scientists will need to advise policymakers on the details of how such events would likely evolve.”
Opinion : The US will send depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine—despite military, health and environmental effects
▻https://phys.org/news/2023-06-opinion-depleted-uranium-munitions-ukrainedespite.html
The Biden administration has agreed to provide Ukraine with depleted uranium shells to equip M1A1 Abrams tanks that the U.S. is sending there. Britain has already delivered tanks to Ukraine equipped with depleted-uranium shells.
DU munitions, developed in the 1970s, are not nuclear weapons and do not produce a nuclear explosion. But soldiers or civilians can be exposed to the uranium, either in combat or afterward. Health physicist Kathryn Higley explains what depleted uranium is and what’s known about potential health and environmental risks.
Une bonne façon d’empêcher les Russes d’exploiter les terres Ukrainiennes ça. Très malin. De grands stratèges les occidentaux.
La rupture du barrage a pollué la zone inondée avec un cocktail d’hydrocarbure digne de l’atmosphère d’une exoplanète.
Des 2 cotés de la ligne de fronts des milliers de mines ont été disséminées. Mais il ne faudrait surtout pas s’illusionner : on peut encore faire pire !
Si il reste des stocks d’obus à uranium appauvri non utilisés en Irak (ou plus probablement re-cantinés depuis...) dans les entrepôts de l’US Army, l’occasion est trop belle de s’en débarrasser avant la date de péremption afin de pouvoir procéder au renouvellement sans avoir à se farcir le recyclage.
Anne Morelli « Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre » Editions Labor, 2001 :
L’OTAN confirmera également, en mars 2000, avoir utilisé 31 000 obus à uranium appauvri lors de la guerre contre la Yougoslavie mais rappellera que cette arme, soupçonnée de provoquer des malformations chez les enfants à naître, des décès et des problèmes de stérilité n’étaient prohibée au moment de son utilisation par aucune convention internationale
Manifestement ça a vachement évolué depuis...
War tourists fighting on a virtual front, since Ukraine-Russia war
▻https://phys.org/news/2023-02-war-tourists-virtual-front-ukraine-russia.html
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, a new group of “war tourists” has emerged—those who are fighting on a virtual front.
A new study from the University of Portsmouth has found that war tourism, which typically used to be people traveling to past or present war zones, is now also an online phenomenon.
Pénis et léopards : découverte de la plus ancienne sculpture narrative du monde | Slate.fr
▻https://www.slate.fr/story/237581/penis-leopards-decouverte-ancienne-sculpture-narrative-monde-histoire-turquie-
Ce serait la première histoire sculptée. En tout cas, la plus ancienne que l’on ait à ce jour trouvé. Voici la superbe découverte que viennent tout juste de faire des archéologues travaillant sur les fouilles de Sayburç, dans le sud-est de la Turquie.
Le site en question était habité au néolithique, il y a environ 11.000 ans, aux prémices de la sédentarisation de l’homme, rapporte le média scientifique Phys.org. Les fouilles sont encore loin d’être terminées, mais elles ont déjà révélé plusieurs sculptures remarquables, racontant une histoire vieille de plusieurs millénaires.
Dans ce qui aurait été une grande salle communale jonchée de bancs, les archéologues ont mis à jour deux grands panneaux représentant des personnages divers, interagissant avec des animaux dangereux. On y voit notamment un homme, phallus en main, face à des léopards qui tenteraient, semble-t-il, de l’entourer. Sur le second panneau, un autre homme muni cette fois-ci d’un hochet, affronte un serpent et un taureau.
Première scène narrative
Des œuvres d’art similaires, et parfois bien plus anciennes, on en a déjà trouvées tout un tas me direz-vous. Sauf que cette fois-ci, c’est légèrement différent. Ici, les figures communiquent entre elles et forment une scène narrative, un véritable récit ancien.
Les deux panneaux sont en effet juxtaposés horizontalement, de sorte qu’ils puissent être vus de manière progressive, à l’image d’une histoire que l’on raconte. « Ces figures gravées ensemble pour dépeindre un récit sont les premiers exemples connus d’une telle scène holistique », explique dans la revue Antiquity l’archéologue Dr. Eylem Özdoğan, de l’Université d’Istanbul.
Avec ses bancs et ses espaces, la pièce commune actuellement fouillée sur le site pourrait avoir été comme une sorte de salle de cinéma, un théâtre où l’on peut voir et découvrir les personnages mythiques de cette communauté néolithique alors en pleine mutation.
11,000-year-old carving may be earliest narrative scene
▻https://phys.org/news/2022-12-year-old-earliest-narrative-scene.html
The discovery, reported by Dr. Özdoğan in the journal Antiquity, was made during excavations at Sayburç which began in 2021. The site is located beneath a modern village in the Şanlıurfa Province of Turkey.
The excavations revealed the site was inhabited during the Neolithic, in the 9th millennium BC. This period saw an important transition, with people shifting from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming and living in long-term settlements like Sayburç.
Archaeologists uncovered several residential buildings as well as a large communal structure. This may have served as a place for special gatherings, with benches lining the walls. The narrative images were found carved into the back rests of some of these benches.
The fountain of life: Water droplets hold the secret ingredient for building life
▻https://phys.org/news/2022-10-fountain-life-droplets-secret-ingredient.html
Purdue University chemists have uncovered a mechanism for peptide-forming reactions to occur in water—something that has puzzled scientists for decades.
“This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,” said Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science."This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water. This is a dramatic discovery."
The world’s most unwanted plants help trees make more fruit
▻https://phys.org/news/2022-02-world-unwanted-trees-fruit.html
Under the guidance of FIU professors Suzanne Koptur and Krishnaswamy Jayachandran, Kleiman compared mango trees at a local farm in Homestead, Florida. One plot of trees had weeds growing around them. The other plot was maintained and weed-free.
The pollinators preferred the trees with the weeds. In turn, the trees benefitted and produced more mangos. In fact, there were between 100 to 236 mangos on the trees with weeds, compared to between 38 to 48 on the trees without weeds.
Kleiman points out findings apply to mango trees, but also to all of the roughly 80 percent of flowering plants of Earth, including fruit trees and all flowering vegetable plants like tomatoes, beans, eggplants and squash. She also hopes this information can help farmers save time and money, as well as reduce the use of chemical pesticides.
#agriculture #mauvaises_herbes #permaculture #fruitiers #pollinisateurs
Study challenges evolutionary theory that DNA mutations are random
▻https://phys.org/news/2022-01-evolutionary-theory-dna-mutations-random.html
The findings add a surprising twist to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection because it reveals that the plant has evolved to protect its genes from mutation to ensure survival.
“The plant has evolved a way to protect its most important places from mutation,” Weigel said. “This is exciting because we could even use these discoveries to think about how to protect human genes from mutation.”
COVID gets airborne: Team models delta virus inside an aerosol for the first time
▻https://phys.org/news/2021-11-covid-airborne-team-delta-virus.html
Visualization of delta #SARS-CoV-2 in a respiratory #aerosol, where the virus is depicted in purple with the studded spike proteins in cyan. Mucins are red, albumin proteins green, and the deep lung fluid lipids in ocher. Credit: UC San Diego’s Abigail Dommer, the Amaro Lab, and the research team
French scientist recognized for rapid DNA sequencing technique key in COVID fight
▻https://phys.org/news/2021-09-french-scientist-rapid-dna-sequencing.html
After studying at the University of Strasbourg and completing postdoctoral fellowships in Canada and in France, Mayer tested his idea for the first time in Geneva, in the research center of a pharmaceutical company where he then worked.
Two key patents were filed in April 1997.
The technology was later acquired by a start-up founded by Balasubramanian and Klenerman, two British scientists working on the same problem.
Their company was eventually bought by the US genetic research company Illumina, the global leader in genetic sequencing, […]
Mayer does not own the property rights to the sequencing method, so he doesn’t share in the profits.