Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 10

As the world races to build the first commercial nuclear fusion plant, engineers from the University of Surrey have made a breakthrough in understanding how welded components behave inside the extreme conditions of a reactor—offering critical insights for designing safer and longer-lasting fusion energy systems.

Working in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), the National Physical Laboratory, and global supplier of scientific instruments for nanoengineering TESCAN, researchers have developed and used an advanced microscopic method to map hidden weaknesses locked inside welded metals during manufacturing that can compromise components and reduce their lifespan.

The research, published in the Journal of Materials Research and Technology, details how they examined P91 steel—a very strong and heat-resistant metal candidate for future plants. Researchers applied an advanced imaging technique using a plasma-focused ion beam and digital image correlation (PFIB-DIC) to map in ultra-narrow weld zones that were previously too small to study with conventional methods.

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Crystals—from sugar and table salt to snowflakes and diamonds—don’t always grow in a straightforward way. New York University researchers have captured this journey from amorphous blob to orderly structures in a new study published in Nature Communications.

In exploring how crystals form, the researchers also came across an unusual, rod-shaped crystal that hadn’t been identified before, naming it “Zangenite” for the NYU graduate student who discovered it.

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New research has revealed the fundamental mechanisms that limit the performance of copper catalysts—critical components in artificial photosynthesis that transform carbon dioxide and water into valuable fuels and chemicals.

In a study co-led by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, researchers have used sophisticated X-ray techniques to directly observe how change during the .

By applying small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS)—a technique traditionally used to study soft materials like polymers—to this catalyst system, the team gained unprecedented insights into catalyst degradation that has puzzled scientists for decades.

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Researchers have demonstrated a new quantum sensing technique that widely surpasses conventional methods, potentially accelerating advances in fields ranging from medical imaging to foundational physics research, as shown in a study published in Nature Communications.

For decades, the performance of quantum sensors has been limited by decoherence, which is unpredictable behavior caused by environmental noise.

“Decoherence causes the state of a quantum system to become randomly scrambled, erasing any quantum sensing signal,” said Eli Levenson-Falk, senior author of the study, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

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A consortium of researchers with multidisciplinary skills, coordinated by INRAE and including the CNRS, the Université Paris-Saclay and Inserm, has identified a molecule capable of “disarming” pathogenic bacteria in the face of the immune system, without any negative effects on the host microbiota, promising a new strategy to combat antibiotic resistance.

These results, already patented and recently published in Nature Communications, are leading to the development of new drugs.

Antibiotic resistance is a major public health issue. According to the WHO, 5 million people die every year worldwide as a result of . This could become the leading cause of death by 2050.

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Durham University has contributed to new international research that critically assesses the intricate relationship between urban digitization and sustainability, focusing on the significant environmental impact of data centers.

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For years, Florida Tech’s Catherine Talbot, an assistant professor of psychology, has worked to understand the sociality of male rhesus monkeys and how low-social monkeys can serve as a model for humans with autism. Her most recent findings show that replenishing a deficient hormone, vasopressin, helped the monkeys become more social without increasing their aggression—a discovery that could change autism treatment.

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that one in 36 children in the United States is affected by autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That’s an increase from one in 44 children reported in 2018. Two FDA-approved treatments currently exist, Talbot said, but they only address associated symptoms, not the root of ASD. The boost in both prevalence and awareness of the disorder prompts the following question: What is the cause?

Some are naturally low-social, meaning they demonstrate poor social cognitive skills, while others are highly social. Their individual variation in sociality is comparable to how human sociality varies, ranging from people we consider social butterflies to those who are not interested in social interactions, similar to some people diagnosed with ASD, Talbot said. Her goal has been to understand how variations in biology and behavior influence social cognition.

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