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Polygenic scores (PGS) are metrics used to estimate the genetic predisposition of people to developing specific mental health conditions, personality traits or diseases. In recent years, these metrics have often been used to investigate the intricate connections between genes and environmental factors.

Researchers at the JJ Peters VA Medical Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and other institutes recently carried out a study aimed at determining whether neuropsychiatric polygenic scores could predict the professional categories that individuals belong to. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that these scores weakly predict the professional category that people belong to.

“Neuropsychiatric disorders are both common and highly heritable, yet they remain heavily stigmatized,” Georgios Voloudakis, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.

Our data-driven world demands more—more capacity, more efficiency, more computing power. To meet society’s insatiable need for electronic speed, physicists have been pushing the burgeoning field of spintronics.

Traditional electronics use the charge of electrons to encode, store and transmit information. Spintronic devices utilize both the charge and spin-orientation of electrons. By assigning a value to electron spin (up=0 and down=1), spintronic devices offer ultra-fast, energy-efficient platforms.

To develop viable spintronics, physicists must understand the quantum properties within materials. One property, known as spin-torque, is crucial for the electrical manipulation of magnetization that’s required for the next generation of storage and processing technologies.

A research team from the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) has discovered another piece in the puzzle of the formation of the moon and water on Earth. The prevailing theory had been that the moon was the result of a collision between early Earth and the protoplanet Theia. New measurements indicate that the moon formed from material ejected from the Earth’s mantle with little contribution from Theia.

In addition, the findings support the idea that water could have reached Earth early in its development and may not have been added by late impacts. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers analyzed oxygen isotopes from 14 samples from the moon and carried out 191 measurements on minerals from Earth. Isotopes are varieties of the same element that differ only in the weight of their nucleus. The team used an improved version of laser fluorination, a method in which oxygen is released from rock using a laser.

Observing the effects of special relativity doesn’t necessarily require objects moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. In fact, length contraction in special relativity explains how electromagnets work. A magnetic field is just an electric field seen from a different frame of reference.

So, when an electron moves in the electric field of another electron, this special relativistic effect results in the moving electron interacting with a magnetic field, and hence with the electron’s spin angular momentum.

Continue reading “Relativistic spin-orbit coupling may lead to unconventional superconductivity type” »

An international team of chemists has successfully created methylenedistibiranes, which are three-membered rings that have two antimony atoms and one carbon atom. In their paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the group describes how they were able to make the rings using just a three-step process.

Methylenedistibiranes are generally used as intermediaries due to their ability to promote selective nucleophilic substitution, resulting in the creation of diantimonyl anions. Chemists have been wanting to be able to create them because it is difficult to use natural elements due to orbital overlap. The achievement by the team is noteworthy because making similar rings with heavier pnictogen elements like antimony and bismuth has proven to be challenging due to changes in orbital overlap trends and energies.

To create the three-membered rings, the research team first synthesized diazadistiboylidenes using [3+2]-cycloaddition between distibene and diazoolefins, which are five-membered rings that have dual antimony, nitrogen and carbon atoms. The resulting stiboylidene served as an intermediary to promote the substitution of a species with bonds formed during donation of electron pairs. The researchers note that it was a surprise to them that the reaction worked as well as it did, since there are few examples of small ring formation with more than one antimony atom.

Artificial intelligence (AI) once seemed like a fantastical construct of science fiction, enabling characters to deploy spacecraft to neighboring galaxies with a casual command. Humanoid AIs even served as companions to otherwise lonely characters. Now, in the very real 21st century, AI is becoming part of everyday life, with tools like chatbots available and useful for everyday tasks like answering questions, improving writing, and solving mathematical equations.

AI does, however, have the potential to revolutionize scientific research —in ways that can feel like science fiction but are within reach.

At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists are already using AI to automate experiments and discover new materials. They’re even designing an AI scientific companion that communicates in ordinary language and helps conduct experiments. Kevin Yager, the Electronic Nanomaterials Group leader at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), has articulated an overarching vision for the role of AI in scientific research.

Pulsed laser deposition is used for the heteroepitaxial growth of methylammonium lead iodide (CH3NH3PbI3) thin films on a KCl substrate at room temperature. Experimental and computational results confirm cubic phase stabilization by tensile epitaxial strain in the CH3NH3PbI3 thin films.

Researchers have pioneered the use of parallel computing on graphics cards to simulate acoustic turbulence. This type of simulation, which previously required a supercomputer, can now be performed on a standard personal computer. The discovery will make weather forecasting models more accurate while enabling the use of turbulence theory in various fields of physics, such as astrophysics, to calculate the trajectories and propagation speeds of acoustic waves in the universe. The research was published in Physical Review Letters.

Turbulence is the complex chaotic behavior of fluids, gases or nonlinear waves in various physical systems. For example, turbulence at the ocean surface can be caused by wind or wind-drift currents, while turbulence of laser radiation in optics occurs as light is scattered by lenses. Turbulence can also occur in sound waves that propagate chaotically in certain media, such as superfluid helium.

In the 1970s, Soviet scientists proposed that turbulence occurs when sound waves deviate from equilibrium and reach large amplitudes. The theory of wave turbulence applies to many other wave systems, including magnetohydrodynamic waves in the ionospheres of stars and giant planets, and perhaps even gravitational waves in the early universe. Until recently, however, it has been nearly impossible to predict the propagation patterns of nonlinear (i.e., chaotically moving) acoustic and other waves because of the high computational complexity involved.

For the first time ever, scientists have used a technique called “quantum squeezing” to improve the gas sensing performance of devices known as optical frequency comb lasers. These ultra-precise sensors are like fingerprint scanners for molecules of gas. Scientists have used them to spot methane leaks in the air above oil and gas operations and signs of COVID-19 infections in breath samples from humans.

Now, in a series of lab experiments, researchers have laid out a path for making those kinds of measurements even more sensitive and faster—doubling the speed of frequency comb detectors. The work is a collaboration between Scott Diddams at CU Boulder Boulder and Jérôme Genest at Université Laval in Canada.

“Say you were in a situation where you needed to detect minute quantities of a dangerous gas leak in a factory setting,” said Diddams, professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. “Requiring only 10 minutes versus 20 minutes can make a big difference in keeping people safe.”