Lifeboat Foundation

Have you ever placed the palm of your left hand on the back of your right hand in such a way that all fingers point in the same direction? If you have, then you probably know that your left thumb will not touch its right counterpart. Neither rotations nor translations nor their combinations can turn a left hand into a right hand and vice versa. This feature is called chirality.

A team of physicists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has successfully demonstrated the inverse Mpemba effect at the quantum level using single trapped ions. In their study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group demonstrated the effect by trapping a strontium-88 ion coupled to an external thermal bath.

A global collaboration involving University of Manchester scientists has discovered a gene whose variants potentially cause neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in hundreds of thousands of people across the world.

The findings of the University of Oxford led study, published in Nature, are an exciting first step towards the development of future treatments for the disorders which have devastating impacts on learning, behavior, speech, and movement.

While most NDDs are thought to be genetic and caused by changes to DNA, to date around 60% of individuals with the conditions do not know the specific DNA change that causes their disorder.

We evaluate the top-bottom interference contribution to the fully inclusive Higgs production cross section at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Although bottom-quark-mass effects are power suppressed, the accuracy of state-of-the-art theory predictions makes an exact determination of this effect indispensable. The total effect of the interference at 13 TeV is −1.99_-0.15^+0.30 pb, while the pure mathcalO(alpha_s^4)$ correction is 0.43 pb. With this result, we address one of the leading theory uncertainties of the cross section.

Superconductivity is a fascinating phenomenon, which allows a material to sustain an electrical current without any loss. This collective quantum behavior of matter only appears in certain conductors at temperatures far below ambient.

“This shows that you need the water there in order to form these materials,” said Dr. Anthony Feldman. “But it needs to be cold, near-freezing mean annual temperature conditions in order to preserve the amorphous material in the soils.”

What was ancient Mars like? Was it warmer and wetter than it is today or cold and icy like present day Mars? This is what a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment hopes to address as a team of researchers comprised of NASA scientists and academics investigated whether past climates on Mars mirrored today’s climate or were much warmer and had liquid water. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the climate history of Mars and whether it had the necessary conditions to support life as we know it.

For the study, the researchers analyzed X-ray data of soil material, which the researchers refer to as “X-ray amorphous material”, obtained from NASA’s Curiosity rover in Gale Crater on Mars and compared it to similar material at sites on Earth located in Newfoundland, California, and Nevada using the same X-ray methods employed by the Curiosity rover.

Continue reading “Similarities Between Mars Soils and Newfoundland’s Subarctic Climate” »

Militaries have for years tinkered with armed drones, robo-dogs, mechanical mules and more.

A study investigating the effect of sleep on brain performance has found a link between an individual’s preference for morning or evening activity and their brain function, suggesting that self-declared “night owls” generally tend to have higher cognitive scores.

Researchers at Imperial College London looked at data from more than 26,000 people to find out how different aspects of sleep—including duration, patterns, and quality—affected mental sharpness and overall cognitive ability.

Using data from the extensive UK Biobank database, they analyzed information on U.K. adults who had completed a number of cognitive tests—including whether people described themselves as a “morning person” or an “evening person,” referring to which time of the day they felt more alert and productive.

We often contemplate cyborgs, people enhanced by machines, but what would a civilization built upon cybernetics be like?

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Continue reading “Cyborg Civilizations” »