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April 6, 2021 Archives
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
CONTEXT: Age of Stupid—Academic Journals Are Omitting the Titles of Cited Papers
I get it, the titles are too long. Still, omitting them takes all the joy out of the references section. pic.twitter.com/IeNHqTA1I9
— Matjaž Leonardis (@MatjazLeonardis) April 6, 2021
This makes citations almost worthless unless you want to look up every one to see what it's about. The “saving paper” argument is absurd in an age where the vast majority of publication is electronic and actual printed journals go for exorbitant prices. You almost wonder if academics don't want you to check the cited papers.
Posted at
19:54
CONTINUITY: Spacecraft Spin Stabilisation—from Explorer 1 to New Horizons
Posted at
19:46
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Vacuum Tube Computer — Adding Skip to the Instruction Register
The skip logic simply forces an instruction of all ones into the instruction register when the SKIP signal is asserted. This is done with four OR gates with cathode follower buffered outputs to drive the instruction register flip flops. The OR gates are built from semiconductor diodes, which is fair enough since “diode OR” has been used in electronic computer logic circuitry from the very beginning: ENIAC used 7200 “crystal diodes” (or “crystal rectifiers”) as they were called at the time.
Posted at
13:38
CONTINUITY: Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Flight Plans
If all goes well, Ingenuity will soon take the first aerial pictures of Mars using a 13 megapixel Sony cellphone camera. Mars-helicopter inventor Bob Balaram gives the full breakdown here: https://t.co/XTJhimgU5Z pic.twitter.com/qdrSbqezK5
— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell) April 5, 2021
Posted at
13:20
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: Photosynthesis from Infrared Emission by Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents
Green sulfur bacteria that can photosynthesize using only the infrared wavelengths emitted from a deep-sea hydrothermal
— ToughSF (@ToughSf) April 5, 2021
vent found at -2.39km: https://t.co/VJhojfwXJi
It bears repeating; we know less about the ocean floors than the surfaces of other planets. pic.twitter.com/rGkA2n5l7m
The paper is “An obligately photosynthetic bacterial anaerobefrom a deep-sea hydrothermal vent” [PDF]. Abstract:
The abundance of life on Earth is almost entirely due to biological photosynthesis, which depends on light energy. The source of light in natural habitats has heretofore been thought to be the sun, thus restricting photosynthesis to solar photic environments on the surface of the Earth. If photosynthesis could take place in geothermally illuminated environments, it would increase the diversity of photosynthetic habitats both on Earth and on other worlds that have been proposed to possibly harbor life. Green sulfur bacteria are anaerobes that require light for growth by the oxidation of sulfur compounds to reduce CO2 to organic carbon, and are capable of photosynthetic growth at extremely low light intensities. We describe the isolation and cultivation of a previously unknown green sulfur bacterial species from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent, where the only source of light is geothermal radiation that includes wavelengths absorbed by photosynthetic pigments of this organism.
Posted at
10:44