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In nationwide projections, elderly and Black adults are most at risk for cardiovascular death due to extreme heat, finds a new study. Cardiovascular deaths from extreme heat in the U.S. may more than double by the middle of the century. Without reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, that number could even triple, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation.

“Climate change and its many manifestations will play an increasingly important role on the health of communities around the world in the coming decades,” said lead study author Sameed Khatana, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a staff cardiologist at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, both in Philadelphia. “Climate change is also a health equity issue as it will impact certain individuals and populations to a disproportionate degree and may exacerbate preexisting health disparities in the U.S.”

How much and how quickly greenhouse gas emissions increase in the next decades will determine the health impacts of extreme heat. More aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have the potential to reduce the number of people who may experience the adverse health effects of extreme heat, according to Khatana.

Evolutionary biology offers warnings, and tips, for surviving the advent of artificial intelligence.

A new theoretical approach allows the alteration of α-RuCl₃’s magnetic properties through quantum fluctuations in an optical cavity, providing a laser-free avenue for material manipulation.

Researchers in Germany and the USA have produced the first theoretical demonstration that the magnetic state of an atomically thin material, α-RuCl_3, can be controlled solely by placing it into an optical cavity. Crucially, the cavity vacuum fluctuations alone are sufficient to change the material’s magnetic order from a zigzag antiferromagnet into a ferromagnet. The team’s work has been published in the scientific journal npj Computational Materials.

Advancements in Material Physics.

Oh yea? I just learned the steps to copperhead road so… whatever.

Light is something in our world that we are very familiar with, and yet it can still throw some incredible curveballs when you look at it in detail. A newly discovered one comes from a pretty well-established phenomenon: what happens when light passes through an interface? That could be glass, water, or something completely different. The solution for that has long been established, but scientists have now found something weird going on in the middle.

As light goes through an interface, its speed changes. The solution for the behavior of light on one side of the interface or the other is the well-established standard wave equation. They can be linked with no problem (a piecewise continuous solution) but this still doesn’t explain what happens at the interface itself. There, the wave should experience an acceleration that is not accounted for by the current solution.

Continue reading “Solution To Complex Light Problem Shows That Time Can Only Go Forward” »

The rise in capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has led to the view that these systems might soon be conscious. However, we might be underestimating the neurobiological mechanisms underlying human consciousness.

Modern AI systems are capable of many amazing behaviors. For instance, when one uses systems like ChatGPT, the responses are (sometimes) quite human-like and intelligent. When we, humans, are interacting with ChatGPT, we consciously perceive the text the language model generates, just as you are currently consciously perceiving this text here.

The question is whether the language model also perceives our text when we prompt it. Or is it just a zombie, working based on clever pattern-matching algorithms? Based on the text it generates, it is easy to be swayed that the system might be conscious.

Nigerian oil and gas regulator protests innocence after FBI says $50,000 in funds stolen from a wind turbine provider ended up in his account.

Oneka.

Out of the total water available on the planet, just about three percent is fresh water that can be used. The rest is salty sea water unsuitable for drinking or industrial usage, and desalination plants have helped put this water to some use.

Researchers with the Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDs) Center at Georgia State have identified important new methods for accurately identifying possible biomarkers in adolescent brains that can reliably predict cognitive developments and psychiatric issues.

A new study, published in Nature Mental Health, represents the first large-scale analysis of its kind in which researchers analyzed functional network connectivity (FNC) across scans and identified associations with a diverse range of health measures in children. Researchers believe that inferences about early cognitive and psychiatric behaviors in children may be made using these intra-subject variabilities as a useful biomarker.

Researchers studied four scans from more than 9,000 subjects ages 9 to 11.

The widespread use of electronic devices to interact with others and access the internet has increased the need for highly performing communication technologies that can transmit data faster and more efficiently. Increasing the data transmission rate of devices without adversely impacting their energy efficiency, however, is a challenging task.

Researchers at University of Southampton in the UK recently developed a promising new transmitter based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology and silicon photonics. This transmitter, introduced in Nature Electronics, was found to achieve remarkable data transmission rates while consuming minimal energy.

“The integration of silicon photonics with electronics is essential for producing practical systems for numerous applications,” David J. Thomson, one of the authors of the paper, told Tech Xplore.