Lifeboat Foundation

The size and spin of black holes can reveal important information about how and where they formed, according to new research.

The study, led by scientists at Cardiff University, tests the idea that many of the black holes observed by astronomers have merged multiple times within densely populated environments containing millions of stars.

The work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Geophysicists at ETH Zurich are using models of the lower mantle to identify areas where earthquake waves behave differently than previously assumed. This indicates the presence of zones of rocks that are colder, or have a different composition, than the surrounding rocks. This finding challenges our current understanding of the Earth’s plate tectonics—and presents the researchers with a major mystery.

No one can see inside the Earth. Nor can anyone drill deep enough to take rock samples from the mantle, the layer between the Earth’s core and outermost, rigid layer, the lithosphere, or measure temperature and pressure there. That’s why geophysicists use indirect methods to see what’s going on deep beneath our feet.

For example, they use seismograms, or earthquake recordings, to determine the speed at which earthquake waves propagate. They then use this information to calculate the internal structure of the Earth. This is very similar to how doctors use ultrasound to image organs, muscles or veins inside the body without opening them up.

Evolution of the iodine cycle and the late stabilization of the Earth’s ozone layer https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.

If you like the smell of spring roses, the sounds of summer bird song, and the colors of fall foliage, you have the stabilization of the ozone layer to thank for it. Located in the stratosphere, where it shields Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, the ozone layer plays a key role in preserving the planet’s biodiversity.

Continue reading “Earth’s air war: Explaining the delayed rise of plants and animals on land” »

In a new study published in PLOS Computational Biology, an international research team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Cardiff University, and Google has reexamined Robert Axelrod’s groundbreaking work.

By simulating more than 195 strategies in thousands of tournaments, the study revealed that success in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma depends heavily on adaptation to diverse environments. Strategies that excelled in Axelrod’s controlled scenarios often failed when faced with a wider variety of opponents. Winning strategies are not only nice and reciprocal but also clever, slightly envious, and adaptable to the surrounding conditions.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma, a classic game in game theory, presents players with the choice to cooperate or defect. Mutual cooperation results in moderate rewards for both players, while unilateral defection yields a high reward for the defector and a significant loss for the cooperator. If both players defect, they receive less than they would through mutual cooperation. This tension between individual and collective benefit has made the game a model for decision-making in economics, politics, and biology.

When a spider is spinning its web, its silk starts out as liquid and quickly turns into a solid that is, pound for pound, sturdier than steel. They manage to create these impressive materials at room temperature with biodegradable and environmentally friendly polymers. Materials scientists at Carnegie Mellon are studying these processes to better understand the ways biological systems manipulate polymers, and how we can borrow their techniques to improve industrial plastic processing.

One unique quality of polymers is that their molecules can have different shapes or “architectures,” and these shapes can have a big impact on their material properties and recyclability. Polymer chains can form molecular strings, mesh-like networks, or even closed rings.

Continue reading “Ring-shaped polymers solidify into glass, offering sustainable material potential” »

A recent study from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research shows how interests can modulate language processing in children’s brains and paves the way for personalized brain research.

The paper, which appears in Imaging Neuroscience, was conducted in the lab of MIT professor and McGovern Institute investigator John Gabrieli, and led by senior author Anila D’Mello, a recent McGovern postdoc who is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas.

“Traditional studies give subjects identical stimuli to avoid confounding the results,” says Gabrieli, who is the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. “However, our research tailored stimuli to each child’s interest, eliciting stronger—and more consistent—activity patterns in the brain’s language regions across individuals.”

Depth degradation is a problem biologists know all too well: The deeper you look into a sample, the fuzzier the image becomes. A worm embryo or a piece of tissue may only be tens of microns thick, but the bending of light causes microscopy images to lose their sharpness as the instruments peer beyond the top layer.

To deal with this problem, microscopists add technology to existing microscopes to cancel out these distortions. But this technique, called adaptive optics, requires time, money, and expertise, making it available to relatively few biology labs.

Now, researchers at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus and collaborators have developed a way to make a similar correction, but without using adaptive optics, adding additional hardware, or taking more images. A team from the Shroff Lab has developed a new AI method that produces sharp microscopy images throughout a thick biological sample.

Researchers at Duke University have uncovered the molecular inner workings of a material that could underpin next-generation rechargeable batteries.

Unlike today’s popular lithium-ion batteries that feature a liquid interior, the lithium-based compound is a solid at operational temperatures. But despite its rigid interior structure, charged ions are still able to quickly travel through, making it a “super ionic” material. While researchers have been interested in this compound for some time, they have not known how lithium ions are able to pass through its solid crystalline structure so easily.

The new results answer many standing questions, showing surprising liquid-like behavior at the atomic level. With these insights in hand, as well as the machine learning models used to obtain them, researchers are set to explore similar recipes to solve many of the field’s long-standing challenges.

Numerous memory types for computing devices have emerged in recent years, aiming to overcome the limitations imposed by traditional random access memory (RAM). Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) is one such memory type which offers several advantages over conventional RAM, including its non-volatility, high speed, increased storage capacity and enhanced endurance.

Although remarkable improvements have been made to MRAM devices, reducing energy consumption during data writing remains a critical challenge.

A study published in Advanced Science by researchers from Osaka University proposes a new technology for MRAM devices with lower-energy data writing. The proposed technology enables an electric-field-based writing scheme with reduced energy consumption compared to the present current-based approach, potentially providing an alternative to traditional RAM.