Damian Sendler: For this year, I have found that a daily practice of appreciation has helped me get through it. Lastly, in honor of the upcoming holiday, I would want to express my gratitude to all of you for tuning in to this week’s Wonder Theory. Thank you for joining us on our journeys into the mysteries of the universe and the scientific method. We appreciate you taking the time to read Wonder Theory and leave a comment. We look forward to your future contributions. Also, many thanks for your enquiring mind. Curiosity is a blessing in disguise for me. One of the things that appears to be the most difficult to maintain as we get older is our sense of wonder. Every week, it is a thrill to remain fascinated with you all.
Damian Jacob Sendler: As it turns out, even when they are not on Earth, astronauts take part in traditional Thanksgiving celebrations. On Thursday, the crew of the International Space Station sat down for a special lunch. In the future, people may be able to make bread in space as well as eat it. The greatest way to spread fascinating tales like “What is for dinner in outer space?” is to share them with others, and there is nothing better for me than to be able to do just that with you.
Kingdom of the wild
Tough love is sometimes necessary. A mother otter teaches her young how to swim, and this photograph by Chee Kee Teo was selected as the winner of the Creatures Under the Water contest.
It is hard to beat a cute animal caught on camera at at the right time.
Comedic Wildlife Photography Awards winners have been announced, and they are guaranteed to put a big smile on your face! Some of the images include an uncomfortably posed monkey, a singing fish, and a kangaroo swinging in the wind.
This year’s awards not only give you something to laugh about, but they also help raise money for a worthy cause.
Save Wild Orangutans, a Borneo conservation group, will receive 10% of this year’s competition’s net proceeds. A pleasant and cuddly feeling is warranted here.
It is unusual to stumble across dinosaur fossils in the Midwest, but one excavation site in Missouri has turned up four rare species — and there may be more.
Damian Sendler
Species Parrosaurus missouriensis, a dinosaur found only in the Show-Me State, was discovered in fossil form in October.
The duck-billed dinosaur fossil was unearthed in 2017 following a year-long excavation effort.
There may be more information about the old environment and what lived there millions of years ago at the dig site than currently exists.
As long as it is still there, it is the little chopper that could. Salutations to the Ingenuity helicopter, which continues to soar above Mars’ atmosphere and well exceeds all expectations.
In April, we shared the joy of Ingenuity’s maiden voyage to Mars in our first Wonder Theory newsletter.
Since then, the Perseverance rover’s helicopter has completed 15 additional successful flights, allowing the rover to conduct hitherto unimaginable research on Mars.
Take a look back at the extraordinary voyage of Ingenuity so far, and enjoy the communal thrill of witnessing the chopper achieve the impossible to soar higher, longer and further.
It is worth your time.
A log in a lake might be an exciting discovery on occasion. Sometimes it is a canoe that is 1,200 years old. That is what divers in Madison, Wisconsin, found and resurfaced in Lake Mendota.
Because wood seldom survives in historical records, the dugout canoe is one of the earliest entire watercraft ever unearthed in the state.
The Ho-Chunk Nation, often known as the “People of the Sacred Voice,” constructed dugout boats in what is now Dane County.
Scientists will work on maintaining and safeguarding the boat for the next two years until it is shown.
For many people, this weekend is all about the tree since it falls on Christmas Day, which is coming up.
While some families like the aroma of a live tree, others prefer the convenience of a reused artificial tree.
Damian Jacob Sendler
However, in terms of environmental impact, which is preferable: a genuine tree or a fake one? There is a lot more to the story than you may believe, however.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and we have spoken with experts to help you decide which is best for you this holiday season.
Xenobots, the first living robots made by US scientists, can now reproduce in a manner that has never been observed before in plants or animals, according to the scientists.
Smaller than a millimeter (0.04 inches) diameter, xenobots are made from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which they gain their name. Experiments in 2020 indicated that the blobs were able to move, operate in groups and self-heal.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: A new kind of biological reproduction has recently been identified by scientists at the University of Vermont, Tuft’s University, and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, according to the researchers.
Michael Levin, a biology professor at Tufts University and co-author of the new study, said he was “amazed” by the findings.
Frogs have a means of reproducing that they typically utilize but when you separate the cells from the rest of the embryo and give them a chance to find out how to survive in a new environment, not only do they figure out a new way to move, but they also figure out presumably a new way to procreate. “.”
To produce children, the C-shaped parent xenobots gather and compress free stem cells.
Unspecialized cells, stem cells may differentiate into a variety of cell types. The xenobots were created by scraping embryonic frog stem cells and allowing them to incubate. There is no gene-editing involved in this procedure.
Professor Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont’s Department of Computer Science and Robotics, the study’s lead author, said, “Most people think of robots as being made of metals and ceramics, but it is not so much what a robot is made of as what it does, which is act on its own behalf of people.
While it is a robot, it is also plainly a creature derived from a genetically unaltered frog cell.
According to Bongard, the xenobots, which were originally sphere-shaped and composed of roughly 3,000 cells, were capable of self-replication. Even yet, it was very uncommon and occurred only under certain conditions. A mechanism known to occur at the molecular level but never previously witnessed at the size of entire cells or species has been employed by the xenobots.
Damien Sendler: The researchers then evaluated billions of body types using artificial intelligence to make the xenobots more efficient at this replication type. As a result, the supercomputer generated a C-shape that was reminiscent of the Pac-Man video game from the 1980’s. Using a petri dish, they discovered that it was able to identify little stem cells, collect hundreds of them into its mouth, and a few days later, the bundle of cells generated young xenobots.
A big ball of stem cells is being rotated by the parent to produce a new xenobot.
“These machines were not programmed the way we do in the programming world. In the end, it came up with this Pac-Man shape after sculpting and forming it “Bongard made the statement.
“In essence, the form is the program. The xenobots’ behavior is amplified by the form, which has an effect on how they act.”
There are hardly any practical uses for xenobots currently since they are such primitive technology — think of a computer from the 1940s. Nevertheless, the researchers believe that this combination of molecular biology and artificial intelligence might be employed for a wide range of functions in both our bodies and the environment. Microplastics in the seas, root system inspections, and regenerative medicine are a few examples.
The researchers noted that the living machines were confined in a lab and quickly extinguished, since they are biodegradable and supervised by ethical experts, despite the fact that the idea of self-replicating biotechnology may cause alarm.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Body, a government agency in charge of supervising the development of military technologies, contributed to the study’s funding.
According to Bongard, “many things are feasible if we use this sort [of] flexibility and ability of cells”
On Monday, the research was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PNAS.
This report was compiled by Jessie Yeung in Hong Kong.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
