Lifeboat Foundation

With a gravitational field so strong that not even light can escape its grip, black holes are probably the most interesting and bizarre objects in the universe.

Due to their extreme properties, a theoretical description of these celestial bodies is impossible within the framework of Newton’s classical theory of gravity. It requires the use of general relativity, the theory proposed by Einstein in 1915, which treats gravitational fields as deformations in the fabric of space-time.

Black holes are usually formed from the collapse of massive stars during their final stage of evolution. Therefore, when a black hole is born, its mass does not exceed a few dozen solar masses.

By using a special combination of laser beams as a very fast stirrer, RIKEN physicists have created multiple vortices in a quantum photonic system and tracked their evolution. This system could be used to explore exotic new physics related to the emergence of quantum states from vortex matter. The research is published in the journal Nano Letters.

In principle, if you were to swim in a pool filled with a superfluid, a single stroke would be all you need to swim an infinite number of laps. That’s because, unlike normal fluids like water, superfluids have no resistance to motion below a certain velocity.

Superfluids also behave weirdly when stirred. “If you stir a bucket of water, you typically get just one big vortex,” explains Michael Fraser of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science. “But when you rotate a superfluid, you initially create one vortex. And when you rotate it faster, you get progressively more and more vortices of precisely the same size.”

The Four Realms of Existence by Joseph LeDoux and Consciousness by John Parrington tell us a lot about human cognition, brain structure and evolution – but most of all they demonstrate how far this most tricky of quests still has to go.

By Susan Blackmore

Investigators from the laboratory of Ali Shilatifard, Ph.D., the Robert Francis Furchgott Professor and chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, have discovered a new repeat gene cluster sequence that is exclusively expressed in humans and non-human primates.

The discovery, detailed in a study published in Science Advances, is a breakthrough for human genome biology and has wide-ranging implications for future research in transcriptional regulation, human evolution, and the study of repetitive DNA sequences, according to the authors.

Continue reading “New human gene cluster sequence discovered” »

Richard Cytowic, a pioneering researcher who returned synesthesia to mainstream science, traces the historical evolution of our understanding of the phenomenon.

A research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed an analysis service platform called CRISPRimmunity, which was an interactive web server for identifying important molecular events related to CRISPR and regulators of genome editing systems. The study is published in Nucleic Acids Research.

The new CRISPRimmunity platform was designed for integrated analysis and prediction of CRISPR-Cas and anti-CRISPR systems. It includes customized databases with annotations for known anti-CRISPR proteins, anti-CRISPR-associated proteins, class II CRISPR-Cas systems, CRISPR array types, HTH structural domains and mobile genetic elements. These resources allow the study of molecular events in the co-evolution of CRISPR-Cas and anti-CRISPR systems.

To improve prediction accuracy, the researchers used strategies such as homology analysis, association analysis and self-targeting in prophage regions to predict anti-CRISPR proteins. When tested on data from 99 experimentally validated Acrs and 676 non-Acrs, CRISPRimmunity achieved an accuracy of 0.997 for anti-CRISPR protein prediction.

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a large-scale structure that consists of at least 20 massive galaxies. The structure, dubbed “Cosmic Vine,” has a size of about 13 million physical light years. The finding was detailed in a paper published Nov. 8 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Massive and dense structures of galaxies are perceived as progenitors of galaxy clusters—the most massive gravitationally-bound systems in the universe. Therefore, detecting new structures of this type and investigating them in detail is fundamental for our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.

Now, a group of astronomers led by Shuowen Jin of the Technical University of Denmark, has detected a new object of this type—a large vine-like structure, hence its name Cosmic Vine. The structure was revealed at a redshift of 3.44, in the Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field observed with JWST. The observations were complemented by data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

Japan, a country known for its rich history and technological prowess, is moving towards a more equitable evolution. Join us as we explore the compelling journey of women in science and technology, breaking barriers, unlocking innovation, and potentially steering japan toward a brighter, more inclusive future.

A recent study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters discusses how new data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has identified the second-and fourth-farthest and oldest galaxies in the universe, which are located approximately 33 billion light years from Earth and part of Abell 2744, also known as Pandora’s Cluster. The reason the galaxies are estimated to be 33 billion light years from Earth is due to the expansion of the universe, but astronomers hypothesize the two were first formed approximately 330 million years after the Big Bang, which is incredibly young in cosmic terms.

The two galaxies are named UNCOVER z-12 and UNCOVER z-13 since they were discovered by the JWST UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization) team. This study was conducted by an international team of more than two dozen researchers, who refer to the two galaxies as appearing like a peanut and fluffy ball, and this study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of the first galaxies after the Big Bang.

“Very little is known about the early universe, and the only way to learn about that time and to test our theories of early galaxy formation and growth is with these very distant galaxies,” said Dr. Bingjie Wang, who is a postdoctoral scholar in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and lead author of the study. “Prior to our analysis, we knew of only three galaxies confirmed at around this extreme distance. Studying these new galaxies and their properties has revealed the diversity of galaxies in the early universe and how much there is to be learned from them.”