When materials become just one atom thick, melting no longer follows the familiar rules. Instead of jumping straight from solid to liquid, an unusual in-between state emerges, where atomic positions loosen like a liquid but still keep some solid-like order. Scientists at the University of Vienna have now captured this elusive “hexatic” phase in real time by filming an ultra-thin silver iodide crystal as it melted inside a protective graphene sandwich.
NASA is announcing the availability of its newest supercomputer, Athena, an advanced system designed to support a new generation of missions and research projects. The newest member of the agency’s High-End Computing Capability project expands the resources available to help scientists and engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in space, aeronautics, and science.
Housed in the agency’s Modular Supercomputing Facility at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, Athena delivers more computing power than any other NASA system, surpassing the capabilities of its predecessors, Aitken and Pleiades, in power and efficiency. The new system, which was rolled out in January to existing users after a beta testing period, delivers over 20 petaflops of peak performance – a measurement of the number of calculations it can make per second – while reducing the agency’s supercomputing utility costs.
“Exploration has always driven NASA to the edge of what’s computationally possible,” said Kevin Murphy, chief science data officer and lead for the agency’s High-End Computing Capability portfolio at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now with Athena, NASA will expand its efforts to provide tailored computing resources that meet the evolving needs of its missions.”
A groundbreaking new radio image reveals the Milky Way in more detail than ever before, using low-frequency radio “colors” to map the galaxy’s hidden structures. The image is sharper, deeper, and wider than anything previously released, uncovering both star-forming regions and the remains of ancient stellar explosions. Scientists can now better distinguish where stars are being born versus where they’ve met dramatic ends. The discovery opens powerful new ways to study the life cycle of stars and the shape of our galaxy.
One would think that a US$99,000 telescope requires specialist training and a thick instruction manual. But the new Hyperia from French company Vaonis flips that assumption on its head. It’s powerful enough for professional observatories yet runs entirely from a simple smartphone app.
Vaonis has been bringing astrophotography to the masses for years now. The company has stripped away the complexity, allowing anyone to snap spectacular images of galaxies and nebulae hundreds of light-years away without wrestling with multi-component setups requiring serious technical chops – all wrapped in Vaonis’s trademark minimalist design.
The Hyperia started as a custom build for the Palais de la Découverte in Paris, which needed a next-gen digital observatory. After wrapping up the installation, Vaonis saw the bigger picture and decided to sell the system commercially.
From the article:
Nipah virus outbreaks have been associated with a high death rate in the past, with fatality levels reported between 40 and 75 per cent depending on the outbreak and the viral strain involved.
The virus has been documented in Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, with Bangladesh recording the highest number of 341 cases and 241 deaths, according to the International Society for Infectious Disease.
Airports across parts of Asia have begun tightening health surveillance and travel screening after an outbreak of Nipah virus in an Indian state.
Thailand, Nepal and Taiwan are among the countries and territories that have stepped up precautionary measures after five Nipah virus cases were confirmed in India’s West Bengal.
Nipah is a zoonotic disease that mainly spreads to humans from infected pigs and bats, but can also be passed on through close person-to-person contact.
Natural patterns are rarely perfect. We couple classical Turing patterns in chemical gradients to cell motion via diffusiophoresis, showing that this interplay naturally yields textured and multiscale patterns. The patterns are dependent on parameters such as cell size distribution, Péclet number, volume fraction, and cell-cell interactions. These insights bridge idealized theory with real systems and point to routes for programmable materials, surfaces, and soft robotics.
Facebook admitted something that should have been front-page news.
In an FTC antitrust filing, Meta revealed that only 7% of time on Instagram and 17% on Facebook is spent actually socializing with friends and family.
The rest?
Algorithmically selected content. Short-form video. Engagement optimized by AI.
This wasn’t a philosophical confession. It was a legal one. But it quietly confirms what many of us have felt for years:
What we still call “social networks” are not social.
They are attention machines.
The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon where high expectations lead to improved performance. It’s named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he created and begged the gods to bring it to life. The term was coined by social psychologist Robert Rosenthal, who studied the impact of teacher expectations on student performance. The effect suggests that people work harder to meet the expectations of others.#:~:text=Evidence%20of%20the%20Pygmalion%20Effect:%20Rosenthal%20Effect., Harvard%20University%20conducted%20an%20experiment%20on%20the.
“We See What We Expect”
