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Scientists have verified that a method to look for cellular life on Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter, just might work. The technique could be put to the test in the 2030s, when NASA’s Europa Clipper probe is due to make multiple flybys over the Jovian moon.

The technique involves analyzing grains of ice that scientists expect one of the instruments on Europa Clipper — known as the Surface Dust Analyzer, or SUDA — to pick up as it flies through plumes of frozen water rising up from Europa’s surface.

“It’s astonishing how the analysis of these tiny ice grains may tell us whether or not there is life on an icy moon. At least we now know that SUDA has these capabilities,” University of Washington planetary scientist Fabian Klenner told GeekWire in an email. Klenner is the lead author of a research paper about the process, published today in the open-access journal Science Advances.

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Researchers working in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula have uncovered evidence showing how Middle Stone Age humans survived in the wake of the eruption of Toba, one of the largest supervolcanoes in history, some 74,000 years ago.

Modern humans dispersed from Africa multiple times, but the event that led to global expansion occurred less than 100,000 years ago. Some researchers hypothesize that dispersals were restricted to “green corridors” formed during humid intervals when food was abundant and human populations expanded in lockstep with their environments.

But a new study in Nature led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin suggests that humans also may have dispersed during arid intervals along “blue highways” created by seasonal rivers. Researchers also found stone tools that represent the oldest evidence of archery.

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A recent study by scientists from the University of California, Irvine and Los Alamos National Laboratory, published in Nature Communications, reveals a breakthrough method for transforming everyday materials, such as glass, into materials scientists can use to make quantum computers.

“The materials we made are substances that exhibit unique electrical or quantum properties because of their specific atomic shapes or structures,” said Luis A. Jauregui, professor of physics & astronomy at UCI and lead author of the new paper. “Imagine if we could transform glass, typically considered an insulating material, and convert it into efficient conductors akin to copper. That’s what we’ve done.”

Conventional computers use silicon as a conductor, but silicon has limits. Quantum computers stand to help bypass these limits, and methods like those described in the new study will help quantum computers become an everyday reality.

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Nuclear fusion by inertial confinement has seen some dramatic progress in the past year years. After their big headlines in 2022, the National Ignition Facility has managed to pretty reliably reproduce ignition, and more recently, First Light Fusion collaborated with Sandia Labs on a remarkable experiment.

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Summary: Researchers propose a new approach to determine when consciousness emerges in infancy. Their suggestion, based on identifying markers of consciousness in adults and tracking when these markers appear in babies’ development, offers a potential pathway to understand this long-standing question.

The approach includes looking for specific behaviors or brain activation patterns known to correlate with consciousness in adults and then finding when these begin in infants. By identifying and grouping a broad range of markers present in early and late development, the researchers aim to pinpoint the emergence of consciousness more accurately. This method could provide insights into the complex process of becoming conscious, despite challenges like the inability of infants to communicate their experiences.

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