Physicists using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have created a new compound of plutonium (Pu) with an unexpected, pentavalent oxidation state — Pu (V). The new compound is solid and stable, and may represent a transient phase in radioactive waste repositories.
A new study out of the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands details the type of diet that was found to fuel the growth of healthy gut bacteria, particularly strains that have anti-inflammatory effects in the body. The results aren’t terribly surprising — that is to say, you’ll have to eat a healthy diet if you want a healthy gut. Among other things, the study found that high amounts of sugar and meat make things worse.
Researchers have found that giving your brain an electrical stimulation while you sleep can lead to quicker learning and improved memory. Future You’s episode 6 explores what this will mean in 2050.
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And yet, in the midst of the greatest computer security crisis in history, the US government, along with the governments of the UK and Australia, is attempting to undermine the only method that currently exists for reliably protecting the world’s information: encryption. Should they succeed in their quest to undermine encryption, our public infrastructure and private lives will be rendered permanently unsafe.
The US, UK and Australia are taking on Facebook in a bid to undermine the only method that protects our personal information.
• Edward Snowden is a US surveillance whistleblower.
Continue reading “Without encryption we will lose all privacy. This is our new battleground” »
Space scientists may have missed alien probes because they’re just too small.
That’s the bold claim from an astrophysicist who reckons we’ve been looking for extraterrestrial life the wrong way.
The argument is an attempt to explain the Fermi Paradox, a decades-old thought experiment.
Cells are the fundamental “building blocks” that make up living organisms. Yet, we don’t know exactly how cells were formed in the first place. We also don’t know what all the molecules that make up any natural cell do. Finally, we can’t yet put molecules together ourselves to make new synthetic cells.
Addressing the questions and challenges posed above requires significant collaboration and cooperation. The Build-a-Cell community welcomes all who wish to learn about and cooperate in the work of fully understanding and engineering a diversity of synthetic cells.
The future of biotechnology is in realizing fully understood, lineage agnostic organisms, beginning with single cells.
Quantum computers use the fundamentals of quantum mechanics to potentially speed up the process of solving complex computations. Suppose you need to perform the task of searching for a specific number in a phone book. A classical computer will search each line of the phone book until it finds a match. A quantum computer could search the entire phone book at the same time by assessing each line simultaneously and return a result much faster.
Such a system would give China the ability to rapidly and unpredictably access space with a reusable orbiter.
Researchers at Australia’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience are exploring new frontiers in healthcare and energy storage. Bec Crew reports.
A smartphone case made from artificial human-like skin responds to being pinched, tickled and stroked to add an extra layer of interactivity to the device.
