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hubie writes:The Central Valley of California makes up only 1% of U.S. farmland, but produces 40% of the nation's produce despite only receiving 5 to 10 inches (12 to 25 centimeters) of rainfall a year. That kind of productivity is due to massive pumping of groundwater for irrigation. After decades of pumping, parts of California are literally sinking and water is getting harder to get at (wells in the Tulare Basin have to be drilled a kilometer deep).Groundwater in this region comes from two sources that are separated by a dense layer of clay. The water on top of the clay resides in loose soil and this water gets replenished with rainfall and snowmelt runoff. The water below the clay is the aquifer and this is not replenished. A major problem is that nobody knows where the pumped water is being pulled from, nor how much of it remains.A research team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory came up with a new method to monitor changes between the two water sources.

upstart writes:Microplastics permeate seafood across southern Australia:

upstart writes:A new membrane material could make purification of gases significantly more efficient, potentially helping to reduce carbon emissions.:

upstart writes:Vintage Computer Festival East Is This Weekend:

upstart writes:'Jack Dorsey's First Tweet' NFT Went on Sale for $48M. It Ended With a Top Bid of Just $280:

upstart writes:Green eggs and scam: Cuckoo finch's long con may be up:

upstart writes:California eyes four-day workweek for larger firms:

takyon writes:NASA to roll back its mega rocket after failing to complete countdown test

upstart writes:Single-molecule experiments reveal force capability of artificial molecular motors:

upstart writes:China's 'space dream': A Long March to the Moon and beyond:

upstart writes:Apple store workers at Grand Central Terminal start collecting signatures to form a union:

takyon writes:Russian Government's New Semiconductor Plan: Local 28nm by 2030

upstart writes:Changing Vegetation a Key Driver of Global Temperatures Over Last 10,000 Years:

upstart writes:NASA Mars Perseverance Rover: Digging Into Drill Data:You probably think that the drill being employed on Perseverance Rover is bound to be special, but do you know just how clever it is? The problem that the drill has to balance is getting maximum life from the drill bit itself while achieving the job of collecting samples of rock and sediment.

upstart writes:New HYBRiD Technique for Making Tissue Transparent Could Speed the Study of Many Diseases:

owl writes:https://mark.engineer/2022/04/calculating-pi-digits-on-first-intel-microprocessor-intel-4004/

zafiro17 writes:https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/04/16/apple_m2_chips/Apple is seemingly testing four next-generation M2 processors on software developed by third-party app makers in at least nine Mac models that are likely to be upcoming laptops and desktops.Two years ago, the iGiant debuted its homegrown Arm-compatible M1 processor to power computers and iPads; the shift marked a departure from using x86 Intel silicon for its PCs. Instead of purchasing off-the-shelf processors, Apple – which was already designing its own mobile system-on-chips – wanted a custom design for its macOS products.Now it appears the M1's successor, the M2, is edging closer to launch, judging from developer logs leaked to Bloomberg that signal there is "widespread internal testing" of the chip family at Apple.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

zafiro17 writes:It's 2022 and most of us are glued to one internet device or another for 23 hours of the day. So where does your attention go? Software, for this discussion, can mean: apps installed on your laptop/desktop, operating systems, desktop environments/windowing applications, web software/software as a service, apps on a smartphone, etc. - broadly defined.Use this as an opportunity to spread some love for software that you find helpful, useful, efficient, or rewarding.Keep the conversation going.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

upstart writes:Remoticon 2021 // Rob Weinstein Builds An HP-35 From The Patent Up:

upstart writes:SUSE's New Linux Release Isn't for Your Desktop - FOSS Force:

zafiro17 writes:South Korea the big winner in a year of supply struggles and continued shortages

owl writes:https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/14/its-still-stupidly-ridiculously-difficult-to-buy-a-dumb-tv/

upstart writes:Driverless car appears to flee the scene after being pulled over by cops:

upstart writes:You're muted... or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen even when mic is off:

upstart writes:ACE Shuts Down Massive Pirate Site After Locating Owner in Remote Peru:

upstart writes:We've Heard Of Bricking A Hard Drive, But...:

upstart writes:NASA Hardware Techniques: Soldering Space Electronics Like It’s 1958:

upstart writes:Meta announces plans to monetize the Metaverse, and creators are not happy:

takyon writes:AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Review: 3D V-Cache Powers a New Gaming Champion

AnonTechie writes:

upstart writes:US warns of govt hackers targeting industrial control systems:

upstart writes:Google to invest $9.5B in US offices and data centers this year:

upstart writes:Titanosaur nesting spot found in Brazil:

upstart writes:James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operating temperature:

AnonTechie writes:

upstart writes:Wikipedia community votes to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations:

ElizabethGreene writes:From Becky Ferreira at Vice:Scientists believe they have identified the oldest fossils on Earth, dating back at least 3.75 billion years and possibly even 4.2 billion years, in rocks found at a remote location in northern Québec, Canada, according to a new study.If the structures in these rocks are biological in origin, it would push the timeline of life on our planet back by 300 million years at a minimum, and could potentially show that the earliest known organisms are barely younger than Earth itself.These presumed microbial fossils were originally collected by Dominic Papineau, an associate professor in geochemistry and astrobiology at University College London, during a 2008 expedition to Québec's Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt, a formation that contains some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Papineau and his colleagues reported their discovery in a 2017 paper published in Nature, which sparked a debate over whether the tubes and filaments preserved in the rocks were a result of biological or geological processes.[...] In the wake of skepticism about the claims of their 2017 study, Papineau and his colleagues employed a host of new techniques to clarify the nature of the mysterious structures in the Canadian rock.[...] "We don't have any DNA, of course, that survived these geological timescales, with the heat and pressure that the rock has suffered," Papineau said. "But what we can say, on the basis of morphology, is that these microfossils resemble those that are made by the modern microbacterium called Mariprofundus ferrooxydans."Journal Reference:

hubie writes:Images of Zelenskyy show the physical toll that trauma and stress can have on the body:

Just Say No To 666 writes:

upstart writes:Vivo announces its first folding phone:

upstart writes:From CODA to Hawkeye, the surge of sign languages on screen is a sign of better things to come for the Deaf community:

upstart writes:Dead Sunspot Explosion Spits Plasma Toward Earth:

hubie writes:Etsy is an American e-commerce company that allows small businesses or individuals to set up online storefronts, particularly those who make handmade or custom goods. They want to be the marketplace for "unique and creative goods." They claim to host 5.3 million sellers, but this week thousands of those sellers are closing their storefronts for a week to protest some recently imposed changes.

hubie writes:Professor theorises electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms could be similar to human language

hubie writes:NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.

hubie writes:China is planning its first satellite mission to search the Milky Way for exoplanets orbiting stars just like the Sun. The mission goal is to find the first Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star just like the Sun. Such a planet, called an Earth 2.0, would have the right conditions for liquid water and have the potential to harbor life. Although more than 5000 exoplanets were found with NASA's Kepler telescope before it ran out of fuel in 2018, none fit the definition of an Earth 2.0.Exoplanets are found by looking for stellar brightnesses to dim as a planet passes in front. An Earth 2.0 candidate would have an orbital period of about a year and would thus pass in front of its star once a year. You want about three passes to get a decent determination of the oribit, so you need to be observing the same stars for more than three years. The Kepler mission suffered a failure early in its mission that prevented staring at the same spot for long periods of time, so it wasn't possible to determine precise orbits for the explanets it discovered. This new mission will search the same patch of sky with more telescopes gather more data to allow orbits to be calculated.

upstart writes:The Senate bill that has Big Tech scared:

upstart writes:Huge Impact May Be Why The Moon's Near And Far Sides Differ So Much:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

upstart writes:World's first LED lights developed from rice husks: