Lifeboat Foundation

The process that powers much of life on Earth, photosynthesis, is so finely tuned that just one photon is enough to kick it off.

Scientists have long suspected that photosynthesis must be sensitive to individual photons, or particles of light, because despite the way it dominates our days, the sun’s light is surprisingly sparse at the level of individual plant cells. But only now, with the help of quantum physics, have researchers been able to watch a single packet of light begin the process in an experiment described on June 14 in the journal Nature.

“It makes sense that photosynthesis only requires a single photon, but to actually be able to measure that … is really groundbreaking,” says Sara Massey, a physical chemist at Southwestern University in Texas, who was not involved with the new research. “Being able to actually see that hands-on with the data from these experiments is very valuable.”

It has almost been 20 years since the establishment of the field of two-dimensional (2D) materials with the discovery of unique properties of graphene, a single, atomically thin layer of graphite. The significance of graphene and its one-of-a-kind properties was recognized as early as 2010 when the Nobel prize in physics was awarded to A. Geim and K. Novoselov for their work on graphene. However, graphene has been around for a while, though researchers simply did not realize what it was, or how special it is (often, it was considered annoying dirt on nice, clean surfaces of metals REF). Some scientists even dismissed the idea that 2D materials could exist in our three-dimensional world.

Today, things are different. 2D materials are one of the most exciting and fascinating subjects of study for researchers from many disciplines, including physics, chemistry and engineering. 2D materials are not only interesting from a scientific point of view, they are also extremely interesting for industrial and technological applications, such as touchscreens and batteries.

We are also getting very good at discovering and preparing new 2D materials, and the list of known and available 2D materials is rapidly expanding. The 2D materials family is getting very large and graphene is not alone anymore. Instead, it now has a lot of 2D relatives with different properties and vastly diverse applications, predicted or already achieved.

Any Asimov fans in the house?

Chatgpt and other generative ais graded.

Through better sensing, Yuhan Hu hopes to bring robots and humans closer together.

Eager to use generative artificial intelligence to save effort and time, most consumers trust content created by such tools, including ChatGPT.

The CEO can’t imagine life without artificial intelligence—even if it’s the last thing invented by humankind.

Raptor Lake Refresh processors are supposedly set to arrive in October, so we’ve not got long to wait — with Meteor Lake laptop chips also due in Q4.

Nima Majlesi, director of Medical Toxicology at Staten Island University Hospital, also not part of the research, said the new study is “fascinating, and the more research that can be done on neurodegenerative diseases such as [Alzheimer’s disease], the more answers that can then be obtained for the betterment of everyone’s health.”

“There has never been any doubt that excessive alcohol use and recurrent intoxication [are] unhealthy in the medical community. There has occasionally been some doubt on whether a small amount of alcohol use daily can have health benefits. Even in patients not at risk for [Alzheimer’s disease], excessive alcohol use and recurrent intoxication [have] many detrimental effects on human health.” — Dr. Nima Majlesi

However, Dr. Majlesi cautioned that “in this study, they exposed mice to ethanol vapors, which is not the typical route for human consumption.”

The SATRIA broadband relay station will boost internet connectivity across the vast Indonesian archipelago.