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What if scientists could develop an opioid-based painkiller that is not addictive and has limited side effects?

That is possible based on new findings by an international team of scientists that included contributions from top researchers at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience.

The international team captured the crystal structure of the kappa opioid receptor—critical for providing pain relief—in action on the surface of human brain cells. The researchers also made another important discovery: a new opioid-based compound that, unlike current opioids, activates only the kappa opioid receptor, raising hopes that they may develop a painkiller that has no risk of addiction and, therefore, none of the devastating consequences and side effects that accompany it.

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A team from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Australia have demonstrated how to rigorously test if pairs of photons — particles of light — display Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”, even under adverse conditions that mimic those outside the lab.

They demonstrated that the effect, also known as , can still be verified even when many of the photons are lost by absorption or scattering as they travel from source to destination through an optical fiber channel. The experimental study and techniques are published in the journal Science Advances.

Quantum nonlocality is important in the development of new global information networks, which will have transmission security guaranteed by the laws of physics. These are the networks where powerful quantum computers can be linked.

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Call it whatever you like—a blue red moon, a purple moon, a blood moon—but the moon will be a special sight on Jan. 31.

Three separate celestial events will occur simultaneously that night, resulting in what some are calling a super blue blood eclipse. The astronomical rarity hasn’t happened for more than 150 years.

A super moon, like the one visible on New Year’s Day, is the term for when a full moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit, appearing bigger and brighter than normal.

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We’re used to dealing with three physical dimensions and one extra dimension of time as we move through the Universe, but two teams of scientists have shown that a fourth spatial dimension could reach beyond the limits of up and down, left and right, and forwards and backwards.

As you might expect given this is bending the laws of physics, the experiments involved are partly theoretical and very complex, and touch on our old friend quantum mechanics.

By placing together two specially designed 2D setups, two separate teams of researchers — one in Europe and one in the US — were able to catch a glimpse of this fourth spatial dimension through what’s known as the quantum Hall effect, a certain way of restricting and measuring electrons.

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They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but humans can judge whether another person is sick by looking at a photo for just a few seconds.

That may not sound remarkable — until you consider that the sick people in the photos were in the very early stages of illnesses. They were participants in a scientific experiment and had agreed to be infected with a bacterium that would cause an inflammatory response. Their portraits were taken just two hours after infection.

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