BBC Wrote:These air sacs, also seen in modern birds, were extensions of the lung, and it is likely they "helped fuel an efficient breathing system while also making the skeleton lighter", the University of Southampton said.
Parts of its skeleton must have been rather delicate.
It is likely that the Vectaerovenator lived in an area just north of where its remains were found, with the carcass having washed out into the shallow sea nearby.

Paul Farrell, from Ryde Wrote:I was walking along the beach, kicking stones and came across what looked like a bone from a dinosaur.

Let's see if we get more exciting scientific news in the near future!

The Guardian Wrote:Using images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Paul Hayne, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, and colleagues mapped the distribution of smaller craters and areas of rough ground, and calculated that approximately 40,000 km2 of the lunar surface has the capacity to trap water. Although this still only represents 0.15% of the lunar surface, their existence may also reduce the risk of conflict between moon-faring nations.

The Guardian Wrote:Casey Honniball at Nasa’s ASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US, and colleagues have detected a chemical signature that is unambiguously H2O, by measuring the wavelengths of sunlight reflecting off the moon’s surface.

Professor Paul Hyne Wrote:With billions of potential water reservoirs scattered over the polar regions, the focus should be shifted away from the handful of well-known large craters and towards the multitude of potential landing sites our study reveals.

The Guardian Wrote:Harvesting it from dark, steep-walled craters where the temperature rarely climbs above -230C – which is where the bulk of any frozen water was assumed to lie – would be a perilous undertaking.

New York Post Wrote:A group of British nerds claim to have created a mind-blowing invisibility shield to “surprise friends” and “avoid enemies”.

The shield is essentially a flat panel that magically hides whoever ducks behind it.

Even more impressive is the fact the device doesn’t need any power.

It cleverly works by deflecting light around people using a “precision engineered lens array,” creators Invisibility Shield Co say.

But it’s not completely perfect — you don’t get a clear picture of the scene behind the subject, instead it creates more of a blur.

So far, they’ve made 25 fully functional invisibility shields.

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Inventors have also said that the clothes you wear can impact the shield’s effectiveness.

Quote:A 7.6 magnitude earthquake that rattled Mexico on Monday sent shockwaves that triggered a "desert tsunami" in a cave system 1,500 miles away in Death Valley National Park in Nevada, officials said.

The quake rocked Mexico's central Pacific coast, killing at least one person. About 22 minutes after the quake struck, the tremors caused 4-foot-high waves to slosh in Devils Hole, the National Park Service (NPS) said.

Devils Hole is a partially water-filled limestone cave in Nye County, Nevada, and is hundreds of feet deep, according to the NPS.

It is home to the endangered Devils Hole pupfish, which depend on algae that grow on a shallow, sunlit shelf as a food source.

Officials described the "surprising quirk of geology" as a "desert tsunami," but said it is properly known as a "seiche." A seiche is a standing wave in an enclosed body of water.

The waves stirred the rocks and sediment on the shallow shelf and removed most of the algae growth, limiting the amount of food available to the pupfish in the short term, the NPS said.
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Officials said the Devils Hole pupfish population has been steadily growing, with 175 fish living in Devils Hole in March, compared to just 35 nine years ago.

Quote:Geomagnetic fields recorded in 21 archaeological destruction layers throughout Israel reconstructed by Israeli researchers have verified accounts related in the Hebrew Bible of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) led the team that used the data to develop a reliable new scientific tool for archaeological dating. The tool reconstructed the direction and/or intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants.

Findings indicate, for example, that the army of Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus, was responsible for the destruction of several cities – Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit and Horvat Tevet, in addition to Gath of the Philistines. Other geomagnetic findings show that sites in southern Judah were destroyed by the Edomites, who took advantage of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians.
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The researchers said geophysicists – who aim at understanding the mechanism of Earth’s magnetic field – track changes in this field that occurred throughout history. To this end, they used archaeological findings containing magnetic minerals that, when heated or burned, record the magnetic field at the time of the fire.

Thus, in a 2020 study, researchers reconstructed the magnetic field as it was on the 9th of Av, 586 BCE, which is recognized as the Hebrew date of the destruction of the First Temple and the City of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army.

One example given by the researchers is the destruction of Gath of the Philistines (identified today as Tel Tzafit in the Judean foothills) by Hazael. Various dating methods have placed this event at around 830 BCE, but they were unable to verify that Hazael was also responsible for the destruction of Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit and Horvat Tevet. The new study, identifying full statistical synchronization between the magnetic fields recorded at all of these four sites at the time of destruction, makes a very strong case for their destruction during the same campaign.

Quote:Volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples was believed to be a key element that led to the unique durability of ancient structures and kept them standing as modern concrete crumbled to the ground.

But a report released Friday discovered that it is not necessarily the ingredients that attributed to the strength of the Roman’s concrete but the mixing process.

Quote:Scientists in a MIT, Harvard University study found that Romans actually relied on a process called "hot mixing" to whip up their hyper durable concrete.

"The benefits of hot mixing are twofold," MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic told MIT News. "First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form.

"Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction," he added.

Quote:Masic was first alerted to the concept after noticing millimeter-small bright white minerals in the ancient concrete.

The outlet said these deposits, described as "lime clasts" and not found in concrete today, were once chalked up to poor mixing practices.
...
Masic and his team discovered that the white specs were actually calcium carbonate that had been formed after the mixture, which include quicklime, reached an "extreme temperature."

His team then ran a series of tests using modern and ancient techniques with and without quicklime.

The team are now working to commercialize the ancient practices for modern use.

Dr. Xiaodong Song of Peking University Wrote:We see strong evidence that the inner core has been rotating faster than the surface.  Now it is gradually mov[ing] in the opposite direction.

Quote:Is “Judgment Day” here?

Hong Kong scientists bridged the gap between sci-fi and real life after creating a robot that can transform from solid to liquid like a real-life T-1000 robot from “Terminator 2.” A study detailing the cybernetic shapeshifter was published last month in the journal Matter.

“Giving robots the ability to switch between liquid and solid states endows them with more functionality,” said Chengfeng Pan, an engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who spearheaded the groundbreaking study, said in a statement.

Quote:The robot, dubbed “magnetoactive phase transitional matter (MPTM),” was reportedly created to combine the structural integrity and strength of traditional robots with the flexibility of their soft counterpart, Smithsonian magazine reported.
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MPTM was inspired by the sea cucumber, a marine invertebrate that can “can very rapidly and reversibly change their stiffness,” according to senior author and mechanical engineer Carmel Majidi of Carnegie Mellon University.
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Researchers created the robot out of a metal called gallium — which has a low melting point of about 86 degrees Fahrenheit. They then infused it with magnetic particles, which allow scientists to control how they melt or move.

“The magnetic particles here have two roles,” explained Majidi. “One is that they make the material responsive to an alternating magnetic field, so you can, through induction, heat up the material and cause the phase change.”

He added, “But the magnetic particles also give the robots mobility and the ability to move in response to the magnetic field.”

After melting like mercury, the material then immediately reverts back to its original solid form via ambient cooling.

An accompanying video shows the MPTM liquefying to escape a cage before glomming back together, again much like the iconic jailbreak scene from “Terminator 2.” Other feats included jumping up to 20 times its body length, scaling walls, and even soldering a circuit board, Smithsonian mag reported.