Lifeboat Foundation

“Suppose you knew everything there was to know about a water molecule—the chemical formula, the bond angle, etc.,” says Joseph Thywissen, a professor in the Department of Physics and a member of the Centre for Quantum Information & Quantum Control at the University of Toronto.

“You might know everything about the molecule, but still not know there are waves on the ocean, much less how to surf them,” he says. “That’s because when you put a bunch of molecules together, they behave in a way you probably cannot anticipate.”

Thywissen is describing the concept in physics known as emergence: the relationship between the behavior and characteristics of individual particles and large numbers of those particles. He and his collaborators have taken a first step in understanding this transition from “one-to-many” particles by studying not one, not many, but two isolated, interacting particles, in this case potassium atoms.

Electric vehicles, powered by macroscopic electric motors, are increasingly prevalent on our streets and highways. These quiet and eco-friendly machines got their start nearly 200 years ago when physicists took the first tiny steps to bring electric motors into the world.

Now a multidisciplinary team led by Northwestern University has made an electric motor you can’t see with the naked eye: an electric motor on the molecular scale.

This early work—a motor that can convert electrical energy into unidirectional motion at the molecular level —has implications for materials science and particularly medicine, where the electric molecular motor could team up with biomolecular motors in the human body.

China publishes data on solar atmosphere captured by space-based solar camera.

For the first time, scientists have performed an iconic physics experiment with a positron — the antimatter counterpart of an electron, one of the fundamental particles.

Not only did they get some truly interesting results, but this achievement could become the first step towards potentially revolutionary discoveries.

The experiment — an antimatter version of the famous double-slit setup — was carried out by researchers from Switzerland and Italy in order to lay the groundwork for a novel line of super-sensitive experiments that might help solve a mystery concerning the Universe’s two domains of matter.

A prototype house called BioHome3D has been developed by researchers using 3D printing technology. It is made of a mix of wood waste and bio-resins.

How do you connect with nature?
Sophia explores the relationship between art, nature, and existence while perceiving her environment using an adaptive-style-transfer neural network.

#AdaptiveStyleTransfer #NeuralNetworks #perception #robotics #imagerecognition #computervision #MachineLearning #art.

Continue reading “Sophia the Robot: A Stream of Consciousness About Nature” »

A comet zooming towards the inner solar system could soon be visible to the naked eye if current astronomical predictions turn out to be true.

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)—an astronomical survey conducted by the Palomar Observatory in California—on March 2, 2022.

Comets are astronomical objects made up of frozen gases, dust and rock that orbit the sun. Sometimes referred to as cosmic snowballs, these objects are blasted with increasing amounts of radiation as they approach our star releasing gases and debris.

Some parents see “sleep training” as the key to a good night’s rest. Others argue that it’s distressing for babies. What do scientists say about its risks and benefits?

More than 30 years ago, findings from the Harvard Medical Practice Study (HMPS) helped bring public awareness to the problem of patient safety. Since the publication of the HMPS results, new strategies for preventing specific types of adverse events have been put into place, but it has been challenging to measure the impact on patient care.

To better understand what progress has been made in the last few decades, a team from Boston area hospitals conducted the SafeCare Study, which evaluated 11 hospitals in the region.

Led by investigators from Mass General Brigham and sponsored by CRICO, the medical professional liability insurer for the Harvard medical community and its affiliated organizations, the study provides an estimate of adverse events in the inpatient environment, shedding light on the progress of two decades of work focused on improving patient safety and highlighting the need for continued improvement. Results are published in The New England Journal of Medicine.