Saúl Morales Rodriguéz – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Sat, 31 May 2025 10:13:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 New research determines the thermodynamic properties of the quark gluon plasma https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/new-research-determines-the-thermodynamic-properties-of-the-quark-gluon-plasma https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/new-research-determines-the-thermodynamic-properties-of-the-quark-gluon-plasma#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:13:03 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/new-research-determines-the-thermodynamic-properties-of-the-quark-gluon-plasma

Very soon after the Big Bang, the universe enjoyed a brief phase where quarks and gluons roamed freely, not yet joined up into hadrons such as protons, neutrons and mesons. This state, called a quark-gluon plasma, existed for a brief time until the temperature dropped to about 20 trillion Kelvin, after which this “hadronization” took place.

Now a research group from Italy has presented new calculations of the plasma’s equation of state that show how important the strong force was before the hadrons formed. Their work is published in Physical Review Letters.

The equation of state of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) represents the collective behavior of particles that experience the strong force—a gas of strongly interacting particles at equilibrium, with its numbers and net energy unchanging. It’s analogous to the well-known, simple equation of state of atoms in a gas, PV=nRT, but can’t be so simply summarized.

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From infinite past to future: Simulation tracks complete journey of gravitational wave through black hole spacetime https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/from-infinite-past-to-future-simulation-tracks-complete-journey-of-gravitational-wave-through-black-hole-spacetime https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/from-infinite-past-to-future-simulation-tracks-complete-journey-of-gravitational-wave-through-black-hole-spacetime#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:12:49 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/from-infinite-past-to-future-simulation-tracks-complete-journey-of-gravitational-wave-through-black-hole-spacetime

In a new Physical Review Letters study, researchers have successfully followed a gravitational wave’s complete journey from the infinite past to the infinite future as it encounters a black hole.

Reported by scientists from the University of Otago and the University of Canterbury, the study represents the first time anyone has captured the full cause-and-effect relationship of gravitational wave scattering in a single simulation.

The researchers are tackling the scattering problem in . In other words, they want to understand what happens to when they encounter massive objects (like black holes) and scatter off them.

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Atomic-level view of plant cell death enzyme offers path to safer crop protection https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/atomic-level-view-of-plant-cell-death-enzyme-offers-path-to-safer-crop-protection https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/atomic-level-view-of-plant-cell-death-enzyme-offers-path-to-safer-crop-protection#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:12:33 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/atomic-level-view-of-plant-cell-death-enzyme-offers-path-to-safer-crop-protection

In a discovery three decades in the making, scientists at Rutgers and Brookhaven National Laboratory have acquired detailed knowledge about the internal structures and mode of regulation for a specialized protein and are proceeding to develop tools that can capitalize on its ability to help plants combat a wide range of diseases.

The work, which exploits a natural process where plant cells die on purpose to help the host plant stay healthy, is expected to have wide applications in the agricultural sector, offering new ways to protect major food crops from a variety of devastating diseases, the scientists said.

In a study published in Nature Communications, a team led by Eric Lam at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Qun Liu at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York reported that advanced crystallography and computer modeling techniques have enabled them to obtain the best picture yet of a pivotal plant protease, a that cuts other proteins, known as metacaspase 9.

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Analytical model clarifies exciton dynamics to improve OLED efficiency and lifespan https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/analytical-model-clarifies-exciton-dynamics-to-improve-oled-efficiency-and-lifespan https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/analytical-model-clarifies-exciton-dynamics-to-improve-oled-efficiency-and-lifespan#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:12:13 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/analytical-model-clarifies-exciton-dynamics-to-improve-oled-efficiency-and-lifespan

Organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs, are a type of photoluminescence device that utilizes organic compounds to produce light. Compared to traditional LEDs, OLEDs have shown to be more efficient, can be built into super-thin and flexible materials, and have higher dynamic range in image quality. To further develop better OLEDs, researchers around the world work to understand the fundamental chemistry and physics behind the technology.

Now, researchers at Kyushu University have developed a new analytical model that details the kinetics of the exciton dynamics in OLED materials. The findings, published in Nature Communications, have the potential to enhance the lifetime of OLED devices, and accelerate the development of more advanced and efficient materials.

Fluorescence devices like OLEDs light up because of , or excitons. When you add energy into atoms, their electrons get excited and jump to a higher energy state. When they come back down to their regular energy state, they produce .

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3D genome mapping technology sheds light on how plants regulate photosynthesis https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/3d-genome-mapping-technology-sheds-light-on-how-plants-regulate-photosynthesis https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/3d-genome-mapping-technology-sheds-light-on-how-plants-regulate-photosynthesis#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:12:01 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/3d-genome-mapping-technology-sheds-light-on-how-plants-regulate-photosynthesis

Chinese researchers have developed a technology that sheds light on how the three-dimensional (3D) organization of plant genomes influences gene expression—especially in photosynthesis.

The research, which was led by Prof. Xiao Jun at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with BGI Research, is published in Science Advances.

The innovative method not only provides a more precise tool for understanding the intricate 3D interactions between genes, but also highlights the critical role of long-range chromatin interactions in .

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Custom-designed polymers open new path to electrochemical separations for sustainable drug manufacturing https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/custom-designed-polymers-open-new-path-to-electrochemical-separations-for-sustainable-drug-manufacturing https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/custom-designed-polymers-open-new-path-to-electrochemical-separations-for-sustainable-drug-manufacturing#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:11:37 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/custom-designed-polymers-open-new-path-to-electrochemical-separations-for-sustainable-drug-manufacturing

Enantiomers, or molecule pairs that are mirror images of each other, make up more than half of FDA-approved drugs in use today, including those used in treatments for cancer, neurologic diseases and arthritis. Separating enantiomers is critical for drug manufacturing because the effect of each molecule in the pair can be very different—for example, one enantiomer might cure a headache while its mirror-image could cause a headache.

Faster and more accurate separations would help with the overall drug discovery and screening process, but by their very nature, enantiomers—which have identical compositions and only differ by not being superimposable (think left hand and right hand)—are notoriously difficult to separate.

An effort by a group of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to find an efficient, sustainable way to perform these critical enantiomer separations is the focus of a new study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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Virtual model of a Venusian pancake dome shows it likely formed due to elastic lithosphere and dense lava https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/virtual-model-of-a-venusian-pancake-dome-shows-it-likely-formed-due-to-elastic-lithosphere-and-dense-lava https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/virtual-model-of-a-venusian-pancake-dome-shows-it-likely-formed-due-to-elastic-lithosphere-and-dense-lava#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:11:22 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/virtual-model-of-a-venusian-pancake-dome-shows-it-likely-formed-due-to-elastic-lithosphere-and-dense-lava

A trio of scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Université de Lyon, and Arizona State University, respectively, has found that a likely reason flat pancake-like volcanoes form on Venus’ surface is the planet has an elastic lithosphere and volcanoes that emit dense lava.

In their paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, M. E. Borrelli, C. Michaut, and J. G. O’Rourke describe how they used data collected by NASA’s Magellan mission in the 1990s, to simulate how one such flat-topped could have come about and what they learned by doing so.

Planetary scientists have been wondering for many years how the oddly shaped volcanic domes came to exist on the surface of Venus. With their flat shapes and steep sides, they are unlike any volcanoes seen on Earth—they look much more like pancakes than cones. To learn more, the research trio took a unique approach. They attempted to simulate how just one of them might have come about.

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Exploiting the full potential of multiferroic materials for magnetic memory devices https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/exploiting-the-full-potential-of-multiferroic-materials-for-magnetic-memory-devices https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/exploiting-the-full-potential-of-multiferroic-materials-for-magnetic-memory-devices#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:11:06 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/exploiting-the-full-potential-of-multiferroic-materials-for-magnetic-memory-devices

As the digital world demands greater data storage and faster access times, magnetic memory technologies have emerged as a promising frontier. However, conventional magnetic memory devices have an inherent limitation: they use electric currents to generate the magnetic fields necessary to reverse their stored magnetization, leading to energy losses in the form of heat.

This inefficiency has pushed researchers to explore approaches that could further reduce in magnetic memories while maintaining or even enhancing their performance.

Multiferroic materials, which exhibit both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties, have long been considered potential game changers for next-generation memory devices.

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Blink, Predict, Smash: MIT’s 42 MPH Ping Pong Bot Is Freakishly Fast https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/blink-predict-smash-mits-42-mph-ping-pong-bot-is-freakishly-fast https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/blink-predict-smash-mits-42-mph-ping-pong-bot-is-freakishly-fast#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:10:37 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/blink-predict-smash-mits-42-mph-ping-pong-bot-is-freakishly-fast

Ping pong gets a robotic upgrade as MIT builds a bot that plays fast, smart, and nearly like a pro.

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What Makes Someone a Narcissist? Scientists Just Found a Big Clue https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/what-makes-someone-a-narcissist-scientists-just-found-a-big-clue https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/what-makes-someone-a-narcissist-scientists-just-found-a-big-clue#respond Sat, 31 May 2025 10:10:25 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/05/what-makes-someone-a-narcissist-scientists-just-found-a-big-clue

Narcissism has become the armchair diagnosis of the decade. Social media is awash with people flinging the label around. Everyone’s ex seems to be a narcissist, some of our parents are under suspicion, and that office villain? They definitely tick the box, too.

The accuracy of these rampant diagnoses warrants scepticism. But the reality is narcissists do exist. At its extreme, narcissism is a rare mental health diagnosis, known as narcissistic personality disorder. But narcissism also describes a cluster of personality traits, which we all display to varying degrees.

For those of us who have been in close quarters with someone high in narcissistic traits, we rarely walk away unscathed. And we may be left with lingering questions. For example, what made them this way?

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