SPONSORED BY  | | | | May 29, 2024: Guinness's significant contribution to science, earplugs without the internal sounds, and the "doomsday glacier" is melting faster than scientists thought. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | NASA astronaut Alan Bean examines the robotic Surveyor 3 spacecraft during the Apollo 12 mission in 1969. Samples collected from Surveyor 3 showed severe sandblasting damage from moon dust lofted by the descending Apollo 12 lander. NASA | | | • Powered lunar landings may fling around four to 10 times more material than previously thought--posing a serious sandblasting hazard to cargo and crew on the moon. | 6 min read | | | • Ancient viral DNA sequences in the human genome play a role in susceptibility to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. | 3 min read | | | Guinness beer is famous for its dark color and velvety head of foam. But the Guinness brewery was also the birthplace of the t-test, one of the most important statistical techniques in all of science. When scientists declare their findings "statistically significant," they very often use a t-test to determine the probability that a particular result will occur. With two sets of data, for example, researchers can use a t-test to determine whether the datasets differ beyond what would be expected by random chance.
How it happened: Brewers at Guinness at the turn of the 20th century needed to assess the quality of small samples of hops. They did this by measuring the soft resin content in the hop plants, which controls their bitterness. William Sealy Gosset, head experimental brewer at Guinness created extensive tables of normally distributed hops soft resin content. Knowing the "normal" distribution of soft resin, the brewers could determine whether a sample was within the normal range or in the extremes, with only a 5 percent or less chance of occurring.
The legacy: Gosset published his t-test under the pseudonym "Student" because Guinness didn't want to tip off competitors to its research. Most textbooks still call his great achievement the "Student's t-test." It is one of the most widely-used statistical analyses in science, with applications in physics, social science, biomedical research and more. | | | Typical earplugs and hearing aids have an irritating "occlusion" effect, that makes the wearer's own voice and other bodily sounds, like chewing or breathing, seem booming. Now researchers have created a 3D-printed earplug that dampens these bothersome internal noises. Developers are calling their creation the "meta-earplug," and in preliminary tests nearly 85 percent of human testers reported fewer internal sounds in the new ear plug.
How it works: Typical earplugs block the outer ear and create a cavity between the outer ear and the eardrum. The low-frequency sound waves we routinely make by speaking, chewing and breathing get caught and amplified in that cavity. To solve the problem, researchers 3D-printed tiny interconnected cavities filled with energy-absorbing foam and attached them to a standard earbud-style insert. The low-frequency sound waves in the ear canal enter and bounce around the cavities rather than amplifying.
What the experts say: The technology could be used to improve hearing aids, which can also cause the occlusion effect and deter people from using them, says Dorothy Neave-DiToro, an associate professor of audiology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. | | | SPONSORED CONTENT BY THE DAILY UPSIDE | Looking for a way to stay on top of the world's latest business news? | Meet The Daily Upside, a free, no-BS newsletter from Wall Street insiders delivering actionable insights on the latest finance and investing news. Skip the clickbait and stay informed. Join over 1 million readers and try it for free today. | | | • An ongoing mpox (previously known as monkey pox) crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has now killed hundreds of children. In the past decade the U.S. let millions of doses of JYNNEOS—the mpox vaccine—expire rather than investing in vaccinating people in the DRC or Nigeria. Outbreaks anywhere can have global implications if the virus spreads, writes Joseph Osmundson, a clinical associate professor in the department of biology at New York University. | 5 min read | | | • AI-generated misinformation is going viral on social media. And most of it is coming from Google. | 404 Media | | | • As average temps heat up across the country, more and more schools need A.C. It could cost billions to install. | The Washington Post | | | A chemist during World War II invented super glue while trying to create a transparent gun site. In the 1950s, engineers invented a textured wallpaper--Bubble Wrap went on to become one of the most broadly-used packing materials. The Greek philosopher Plato wrote in his book "Republic" in 375 B.C that need is the true creator. This phrase would be subsequently translated and restated as "necessity is the mother of invention." When humans set out to solve practical problems, their creativity seems to surge. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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