An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press: Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties that helped feed people around the world, died Saturday at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha, the Xinhua News agency reported. He was 90.

Yuan spent his life researching rice and was a household name in China, known by the nickname "Father of Hybrid Rice." Worldwide, a fifth of all rice now comes from species created by hybrid rice following Yuan's breakthrough discoveries, according to the website of the World Food Prize, which he won in 2004...

It was in the 1970s when Yuan achieved the breakthroughs that would make him a household name. He developed a hybrid strain of rice that recorded an annual yield 20% higher than existing varieties — meaning it could feed an extra 70 million people a year, according to Xinhua...

Yuan and his team worked with dozens of countries around the world to address issues of food security as well as malnutrition.

The space-news web site NASASpaceFlight writes: While organic compounds have been confirmed on the Martian surface and near-surface areas since 2018, new Earth-based experiments point to a potentially tantalizing series of signatures from Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument that could indicate the presence of organic salts at the rover's Gale Crater location. What's more, the new research from a team led by J. M. T. Lewis, an organic geochemist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, points to further potential evidence that organic salts might be prevalent across the Martian terrain. The hard part is conclusively detecting them.

For decades, scientists theorized that organic compounds were almost certainly to have been preserved to some detectable degree in the Martian surface environment. In 2018, Curiosity's instruments allowed Eigenbrode et al. to conclusively prove that they were in fact there. In turn, if organic compounds were present at one time, their by-products — organic salts — would still be around as well, even given the harsh radiation environment of Mars compared to Earth.

While organic compounds and organic salts can form from the presence of microbial life, they can also form from geologic processes. Though not confirmed, organic salts would be further evidence that organic matter once existed on Mars' surface, and, if they are still present, could support hypothetical microbial life on Mars today, as some life on Earth uses organic salt as food/energy.

"Decades of research have consistently shown that extroverts have a significant happiness edge over introverts," writes Harvard professor/PhD social scientist Arthur C. Brooks. Extroverts "report higher levels of general well-being as well as more frequent moments of joy."

"COVID-19, however, has given us extroverts our comeuppance..." Research published in March in the scientific journal PLOS One studied the impact of the pandemic on people with various personality characteristics. The authors found that mood worsened for extroverts but improved for introverts... In ordinary times, American introverts are like cats living in Dogland: underappreciated, uncomfortable, and slightly out of place. A side effect of shutting down the world was to turn it into Catland, at least for a little while. That gave the introverts a chance to lord their solitary comfort over the rest of us, for once...

But the temporary shift has also created a kind of social-science field experiment, highlighting all the ways in which introverts and extroverts can learn from each other. If we take the lessons to heart, we can all benefit...

Extroversion is highly rewarded in American society, and predicts a significant edge in earning power — on average, extroverts make about $12,000 more per year than introverts. Extroverts attain other advantages in the workplace as well, such as promotions to leadership positions and high performance evaluations. Some resent these patterns, and believe they show a lack of cultural depth. In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain lists the many advances made by introverts — from the theory of gravity to Google — and argues that admiring and rewarding extroversion is not just unfair, but hinders progress...

The pandemic's pause in life's rhythms has left society's dogs in a state of social withdrawal, explaining the current happiness inversion. But it also presents an opportunity for extroverts to cultivate more real friendships like introverts have... Beyond the specifics of introversion and extroversion, there is one important lesson in all this: Watching and learning from people very different from you is a great way to learn to be happier.

Each group can teach the other a lesson that can improve all of our well-being.
The article argues that while extroverts "should work on deep friendships, which introverts tend to have more of," introverts "should focus more on the future, like extroverts do."

"60 seconds of rocket burn, straight into space," Virgin Galactic tweeted today, sharing a video of their historic launch.

CNN reports: Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, carrying two pilots, soared into the upper atmosphere on its third mission to reach space Saturday morning. The success cues up Virgin Galactic to begin launching paying customers within the next year as the company works to finish its testing campaign at its new headquarters in New Mexico.

Spaceplane VSS Unity reached an altitude of 55.45 miles, according to the company. The U.S. government recognizes the 50-mile mark as the edge of space. The company tweeted Saturday morning that the spaceflight carried technology experiments for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program...

Saturday's flight comes after Virgin Galactic's last spaceflight attempt ended abruptly when the rocket engine that powers the space plane, called VSS Unity, failed to ignite, setting the company's testing schedule back by months. Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, has spent years pledging to take groups of customers on brief, scenic flights to suborbital space. But the company has faced a series of complications and delays, including a 2014 test flight crash that left one pilot dead.

Nonetheless, Virgin Galactic has already sold tickets for $200,000 to $250,000 to more than 600 people.
The company said it also collected data "to be used for the final two verification reports that are required as part of the current FAA commercial reusable spacecraft operator's license." Virgin Galactic's CEO called it "a major step forward for both Virgin Galactic and human spaceflight in New Mexico. Space travel is a bold and adventurous endeavor, and I am incredibly proud of our talented team for making the dream of private space travel a reality."

In fact, this was the first ever spaceflight from Spaceport America, New Mexico, making it the third U.S. state to launch humans into space. New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham said proudly in the company's statement that "After so many years and so much hard work, New Mexico has finally reached the stars." To commemorate the moment, the flight carried New Mexico's traditional green chile seeds, and featured the Zia Sun Symbol from the state flag on the outside of the spaceship. "The crew experienced extraordinary views of the bright, blue-rimmed curvature of the earth against the blackness of space," reads the statement from Virgin Galactic, adding that New Mexico's White Sands National Park "sparkled brilliantly below."

And pilot-in-command CJ Sturckow now becomes the first person ever to have flown to space from three different states.

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: India's information technology (IT) ministry has written to all social media companies asking them to take down any content that refers to an "Indian variant" of the coronavirus, according to a letter issued on Friday which was seen by Reuters.

The World Health Organization said on May 11 that the coronavirus variant B.1.617, first identified in India last year, was being classified as a variant of global concern.

The Indian government a day later issued a statement saying media reports using the term "Indian Variant" were without any basis, saying the WHO had classified the variant as just B.1.617.

In a letter to social media companies on Friday, the IT ministry asked the companies to "remove all the content" that names or implies "Indian variant" of the coronavirus.

"This is completely FALSE. There is no such variant of Covid-19 scientifically cited as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO). WHO has not associated the term 'Indian Variant' with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in any of its reports," stated the letter, which is not public.

A senior Indian government source told Reuters the notice was issued to send a message "loud and clear" that such mentions of "Indian variant" spread miscommunication and hurt the country's image.

sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: On 27 June 1918, two young German soldiers—one age 18, the other 17—died in Berlin from a new influenza strain that had emerged earlier that year. Their lungs ended up in the collection of the Berlin Museum of Medical History, where they rested, fixed in formalin, for 100 years. Now, researchers have managed to sequence large parts of the virus that infected the two men, giving a glimpse into the early days of the most devastating pandemic of the 20th century. The partial genomes hold some tantalizing clues that the infamous flu strain may have adapted to humans between the pandemic's first and second waves.

The researchers also managed to sequence an entire genome of the pathogen from a young woman who died in Munich at an unknown time in 1918. It is only the third full genome of the virus that caused that pandemic and the first from outside North America, the authors write in a preprint posted on bioRxiv.

"It's absolutely fantastic work," says Hendrik Poinar, who runs an ancient DNA lab at McMaster University. "The researchers have made reviving RNA viruses from archival material an achievable goal. Not long ago this was, like much ancient DNA work, a fantasy."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: In a national effort to get through to horny but vaccine-hesitant Americans, the White House announced Friday that it is joining forces with dating apps to encourage people to get their COVID-19 vaccines so that they can go forth and fuck freely this summer. Vaccinated users on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and Badoo will have access to some premium features for free. OkCupid, Chispa, BLK, and Match are giving out a free "Boost" to those who've been vaccinated so that their profiles are more likely to be seen first. Plenty of Fish is also offering free credits to vaccinated members for its livestreaming feature.

The dating apps will add badges or stickers that users can include on their profile to indicate that they've been vaccinated, as well as filters so that you only swipe on fellow vaccinated people. There will also be in-app links to find your closest vaccination site. "People who display their vaccination status are 14% more likely to get a match," White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said at a press conference, citing research from OkCupid. "We have finally found the one thing that makes us all more attractive." The new features are expected to launch on the apps in the next few weeks.

mnemotronic writes: Igor Gamow, inventor of the "Gamow bag," a portable hyperbaric chamber for treatment of altitude or Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), has died. He is credited or co-credited with other inventions, including prosthetics for amputees. His career at the University of Colorado in Boulder was marred by accusations from multiple sources of sexual predation. He is one of only three tenured professors ever to be fired by CU Boulder since its founding in 1876.

New submitter StellarThoughts writes: Scientists analyzed the second ever known interstellar object, a comet known as 2I/Borisov, and found some very unlikely results. Molecules of nickel and iron were being vaporized and drifting from the surface. Typically, nickel and iron vaporize when comets streak near the sun or aim directly for it, reaching temperatures exceeding 800 degrees Fahrenheit. And instead, this comet was a toasty -135 degrees F.

Comparing data with 20 other comets of varying chemical composition within the solar system, they spewed nickel and iron much like 2I/Borisov. Scientists have a few theories, including: "One possibility is that harsh ultraviolet light from the sun might break apart nickel-containing molecules in the comets." Scientists believe these traces were missed for so long because of the supposed unlikelihood of gaseous metals at such a low temperature.

Scientific research findings that are probably wrong gain far more attention than robust results, according to academics who suspect that the bar for publication may be lower for papers with grabbier conclusions. From a report: Studies in top science, psychology and economics journals that fail to hold up when others repeat them are cited, on average, more than 100 times as often in follow-up papers than work that stands the test of time. The finding -- which is itself not exempt from the need for scrutiny -- has led the authors to suspect that more interesting papers are waved through more easily by reviewers and journal editors and, once published, attract more attention.

[...] The study in Science Advances is the latest to highlight the "replication crisis" where results, mostly in social science and medicine, fail to hold up when other researchers try to repeat experiments. Following an influential paper in 2005 titled Why most published research findings are false, three major projects have found replication rates as low as 39% in psychology journals, 61% in economics journals, and 62% in social science studies published in the Nature and Science, two of the most prestigious journals in the world.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Does riding an electric bike to work count as exercise, and not just a mode of transportation? It can, if you ride right, according to a pragmatic new study comparing the physiological effects of e-bikes and standard road bicycles during a simulated commute. The study, which involved riders new to e-cycling, found that most could complete their commutes faster and with less effort on e-bikes than standard bicycles, while elevating their breathing and heart rates enough to get a meaningful workout. But the benefits varied and depended, to some extent, on how people's bikes were adjusted and how they adjusted to the bikes. The findings have particular relevance at the moment, as pandemic restrictions loosen and offices reopen, and many of us consider options other than packed trains to move ourselves from our homes to elsewhere.

So, for the new study, which was published in March in the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, researchers at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, decided to ask inexperienced cyclists to faux commute. To do so, they recruited 30 local men and women, aged 19 to 61, and invited them to the physiology lab to check their fitness levels, along with their current attitudes about e-bikes and commuting. Then, they equipped each volunteer with a standard road bike and an e-bike and asked them to commute on each bike at their preferred pace for three miles, a distance the scientists considered typical for bike commutes in America. The cyclists pedaled around a flat loop course, once on the road bikes and twice with the e-bike. On one of these rides, their bike was set to a low level of pedal assistance, and on the other, the oomph was upped until the motor sent more than 200 watts of power to the pedals. Throughout, the commuters wore timers, heart rate monitors and facial masks to measure their oxygen consumption.

Afterward, to no one's surprise, the scientists found that the motorized bikes were zippy. On e-bikes, at either assistance level, riders covered the three miles several minutes faster than on the standard bike -- about 11 or 12 minutes on an e-bike, on average, compared to about 14 minutes on a regular bike. They also reported that riding the e-bike felt easier. Even so, their heart rates and respiration generally rose enough for those commutes to qualify as moderate exercise, based on standard physiological benchmarks, the scientists decided, and should, over time, contribute to health and fitness. But the cyclists' results were not all uniform or constructive. A few riders' efforts, especially when they used the higher assistance setting on the e-bikes, were too physiologically mild to count as moderate exercise. Almost everyone also burned about 30 percent fewer calories while e-biking than road riding -- 344 to 422 calories, on average, on an e-bike, versus 505 calories on a regular bike -- which may be a consideration if someone is hoping to use bike commuting to help drop weight.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Much as a smoke detector gives only a vague idea of where a fire is, current methods to detect smuggled nuclear materials are slow and imprecise. But a new technique that images nuclear materials based on the neutrons and gamma rays they shed can locate these dangers in record time, scientists report. The new technique -- neutron-gamma emission tomography (NGET) detection -- relies on detectors that emit light when struck by either a neutron or a gamma ray and measure the time of arrival with nanosecond precision. Suppose two detectors sit face to face, separated by 1 meter or so, and that a nucleus decays and emits a neutron that hits one detector and a gamma ray that hits the other. The difference in the arrival times, when accounting for the detailed physics of the nuclear decay process, defines a fuzzy, somewhat spherical shell in space in which the nucleus could have been. Timing many neutron-gamma ray pairs with several detectors produces a set of probability shells that should intersect at a point -- the location of the source. The ability to pinpoint a source may offer a "paradigm shift" in nuclear safeguards, the researchers say. NGET detectors might also be shrunk to fit on a drone. That offers "a really fascinating possibility" of quickly mapping radiological contamination at disaster sites like Fukushima or Chernobyl, they say. The findings appear in the journal Science Advances.

Coronavirus infections continue to plummet across the U.S. From a report: The U.S. averaged about 30,000 cases per day over the past week. The progress is happening remarkably fast, and across the board. It was just last week that average daily cases dropped below 40,000, for the first time in months. This week's figures are a 20% improvement over last week. 39 states saw their caseloads improve over the past week. Alabama showed an increase in new cases, although the state had some unusual reporting glitches this week. Technically, cases also increased in Washington, D.C., but it's no cause for alarm: The District has fewer new cases per day (about 48, on average) than any state.

After 17 years underground, the Brood X periodical cicadas are slowly emerging in 15 states across the East Coast and Midwest. From a report: They'll shed their skins and spend four to six weeks mating before the females lay eggs and they all die. But some of them are getting wilder in their short lives above ground. A fungus called Massospora, which can produce compounds of cathinone -- an amphetamine -- infects a small number of them and makes them lose control. The fungus takes over their bodies, causing them to lose their lower abdomen and genitals. And it pushes their mating into hyperdrive.

"This is stranger than fiction," Matt Kasson, an associate professor of forest pathology and mycology at West Virginia University, tells NPR's All Things Considered. "To have something that's being manipulated by a fungus, to be hypersexual and to have prolonged stamina and just mate like crazy." Kasson, who has been studying Massospora for about five years, says just before the cicadas rise from the ground, the spores of the fungus start to infect the bug. Once it's above ground and starts to shed its skin to become an adult, its butt falls off. Then a "white plug of fungus" starts to grow in its place.

A giant slab of ice bigger than the Spanish island of Majorca has sheared off from the frozen edge of Antarctica into the Weddell Sea, becoming the largest iceberg afloat in the world, the European Space Agency said on Wednesday. From a report: The newly calved berg, designated A-76 by scientists, was spotted in recent satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the space agency said in a statement posted on its website with a photo of the enormous, oblong ice sheet. Its surface area spans 4,320 square km (1,668 square miles) and measures 175 km (106 miles) long by 25 km (15 miles) wide. By comparison, Spain's tourist island of Majorca in the Mediterranean occupies 3,640 square km (1,405 square miles). The U.S. state of Rhode Island is smaller still, with a land mass of just 2,678 square km (1,034 square miles). The enormity of A-76, which broke away from Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf, ranks as the largest existing iceberg on the planet, surpassing the now second-place A-23A, about 3,380 square km (1,305 square miles) in size and also floating in the Weddell Sea.

China has released the first photographs taken by its Zhurong rover, which touched down on Mars late on May 14 as part of the country's Tianwen-1 mission. Space.com reports: The China National Space Administration (CNSA), which runs the mission, has released two Mars photographs taken by the rover: one in color and one in black and white. Both images show parts of the rover and its lander against a backdrop of Utopia Planitia, the expansive northern plain that Zhurong will explore during its mission.

The color image shows a view looking to the rear of Zhurong from a navigation camera above the rover's main deck. Solar arrays are visible, as are some surface rocks and features. The black and white image is from an obstacle avoidance camera at the front of the rover. It was captured with a wide-angle lens that also revealed a view of the Mars horizon in the distance, as well as two subsurface radar instruments on the rover itself. In addition to the photos from the surface, CNSA also released two short videos of the orbiter and Zhurong rover's landing capsule separating during Friday's maneuver. Both videos come from cameras on the orbiter and show the capsule pulling away.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Among humans, laughter can signify a lot of different things, from intimacy to discomfort. Among animals, however, laughter usually communicates something along the lines of "this is playtime -- I'm not actually going for your throat." According to new research from the University of California, Los Angeles, there are likely at least 65 different creatures, including humans, that make these vocalizations. They're most commonly found in primates, but they have also been noted in distant relatives like birds. It's not clear whether this is because laughter has arisen several times over the course of evolution or if it's more widespread and we just haven't noticed.

The list of "laughing" animals is mostly made up of primates, but there are a few other mammals on the list, such as the degu -- whose laugh is described as purring or grumbling -- and the killer whale. There are even three birds on the list, such as the kea parrot, which uses play vocalizations discovered in 2017. According to [Sasha Winkler, a PhD student in UCLA's anthropology department], there have been other surveys of the primates who laugh, but little work has been done outside that group. "To my knowledge, no one has gone through and tried to see a comprehensive look of all the vocalizations during play across all mammals, and we even found some birds," she said. Winkler told Ars that understanding animal laughter could help us understand the origins of human laughter. Laughter in humans plays several other functions beyond play, such as indicating membership in a group. The findings appear in the journal Bioacoustics.

Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., one of the world's biggest grain traders, is injecting carbon dioxide released by its corn plants underground, using commercial-scale technology that's the first of its kind. BNN Bloomberg reports: The company just completed a project with the University of Illinois proving that its methods to capture carbon are safe, according to a Wednesday release. That will aid its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% against a 2019 baseline. In the project, ADM used wells to pump carbon dioxide 6,500 feet underground. The site was able to accept and store 1 million metric tons over three years. That's equivalent to annual emissions from about 1.2 million passenger cars, according to the release. The corn plant in Decatur, Illinois, where the emissions originated from processes the grain into starches and sweeteners, among other products. ADM has another well set to operate until 2022 that could store 5.5 million metric tons of the gas. Together, the two projects have already stored 3.4 million tons.

sciencehabit writes: Using an observatory on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, astronomers have spotted the highest energy light ever, gamma ray photons up to 1.4 petaelectronvolts (PeV). They have traced these extreme photons back to a dozen of their likely sources: powerful factories in the Milky Way Galaxy that accelerate charged particles called cosmic rays. The results are challenging theorists' understanding of what these factories are and how they generate such high-energy light. "The findings are extremely important and impressive," says Petra Huentemeyer, an astrophysicist at Michigan Technological University and spokesperson for a rival gamma ray telescope, the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory (HAWC) in Mexico. "It's a giant leap toward finally understanding the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays."

Discovered more than 100 years ago, cosmic rays are charged particles, including protons and other atomic nuclei, that have been accelerated nearly to the speed of light. Their sources are poorly understood because interstellar magnetic fields bend them on their path to Earth. However, as cosmic rays rocket away from their sources, they also emit photons, usually about one-tenth as energetic as the cosmic rays themselves, that follow a straight path to Earth. Although Earth's atmosphere blocks this gamma ray light, when the photons slam into air molecules, they create showers of secondary particles and faint blue Cherenkov light that astronomers can look for. China's Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) aims to catch the air showers associated with the highest energy gamma rays, which in turn correspond to the highest energy cosmic rays.

Scientists monitoring the ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine have seen a surge in fission reactions in an inaccessible chamber within the complex. They are now investigating whether the problem will stabilise or require a dangerous and difficult intervention to prevent a runaway nuclear reaction. From a report: The explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 brought down walls and sealed off many rooms and corridors. Tonnes of fissile material from the interior of a reactor were strewn throughout the facility and the heat it generated melted sand from the reactor walls with concrete and steel to form lava-like and intensely radioactive substances that oozed into lower floors. One chamber, known as subreactor room 305/2, is thought to contain large amounts of this material, but it is inaccessible and hasn't been seen by human or robotic eyes since the disaster.

Now, researchers have seen a spike in neutron emissions from the room, with levels increasing around 40 per cent since the start of 2016. This points to a growing nuclear fission reaction, so researchers are trying to determine if this surge will fizzle out, as previous spikes in other parts of the ruins have done, or whether they will need to find a way to access the room and intervene. Neil Hyatt at the University of Sheffield, UK, who studies nuclear waste disposal, likens the situation to "embers in a barbecue pit" and says "it's a reminder to us that it's not a problem solved, it's a problem stabilised."

One suggestion for why this is happening is that a new structure placed over the ruined reactor in 2016 is causing the plant to dry out. When uranium or plutonium fuel decay radioactively, they emit neutrons, which can promote a fission reaction if the neutrons are captured by another radioactive nuclei. However, large amounts of water slow these neutrons down, preventing them from being captured. The original shelter, which was hurriedly constructed over the reactor in the months following the accident, was riddled with holes that allowed rainwater and birds inside. If the rainwater was helping to suppress reactions in room 305/2, its absence due to the new structure could mean there is no longer enough water in the room to sufficiently slow neutrons down.