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Reverse Aging Revolution

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is crashing through a hailstorm of dust as it hurtles towards the sun at awe-inspiring speed.

The probe’s team members found that high-speed impacts with dust particles are not only more common than expected, they’re making tiny plumes of superhot plasma on the surface of the craft, according to an announcement for a new study.

The probe’s main mission goals are to measure the electric and magnetic fields near the sun and learn more about the solar wind—the stream of particles coming off of the sun, says David Malaspina, a space plasma physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Malaspina led the study, which the team will present at a conference this week.

Departure is now scheduled for no earlier than Monday (Feb. 5)

The physicists found that if electron transport alone is taken into account, the cuprates’ Lorenz number – their ratio of thermal conductivity to electrical conductivity divided by temperature – approaches the value predicted by the Wiedemann-Franz law. The team suggest that other factors, such as lattice vibrations (or phonons), which are not included in the Hubbard model, could be responsible for discrepancies observed in experiments on strongly correlated materials that make it appear as if the law does not apply. Their results could help physicists interpret these experimental observations and could ultimately lead to a better understanding of how strongly correlated systems might be employed in applications such as data processing and quantum computing.

The team now plans to build on the result by exploring other transport channels such as thermal Hall effects. “This will deepen our understanding of transport theories in strongly correlated materials,” Wang tells Physics World.

The present study is published in Science.

An idea derived from string theory suggests that dark matter is hiding in a (relatively) large extra dimension. The theory makes testable predictions that physicists are investigating now.

A team of University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists has developed the first 3D-printed brain tissue that can grow and function like typical brain tissue.

It’s an achievement with important implications for scientists studying the brain and working on treatments for a broad range of neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

“This could be a hugely powerful model to help us understand how brain cells and parts of the brain communicate in humans,” says Su-Chun Zhang, professor of neuroscience and neurology at UW–Madison’s Waisman Center. “It could change the way we look at stem cell biology, neuroscience, and the pathogenesis of many neurological and psychiatric disorders.”

Washington state is experiencing its first known outbreak of a potentially deadly fungus, according to public health officials.

Four patients in the last month have tested positive for Candida auris, or C. auris, Public Health — Seattle & King County said in a release.

The first case occurred in a patient who had recently been admitted to Kindred Hospital Seattle, which was identified through a proactive screening program.

In a significant advancement for next-generation semiconductors, a collaborative research team has made groundbreaking discoveries in the field of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors.

Their findings, published in Nano Letters, shed light on the generation and control of trions, providing valuable insights into the optical properties of these materials.

2D semiconductors, known for their exceptional light characteristics per unit volume with high flexibility due to their atomic layer thickness, hold immense potential for applications in areas such as advanced flexible devices, nano photonics, and solar cells.