Lifeboat Foundation

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek explores the secrets of the cosmos. Read previous columns here.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs particle. Now we can see it in perspective.

To understand its significance, imagine an ocean planet where intelligent fish evolve and start to make theories of how things move. They do experiments and deduce equations but it is a messy hodgepodge, because the fish, taking their ever-present environment for granted, think of their ocean as “empty space.” After decades of work, though, some realize that by postulating that “empty space” is a medium—ocean—that has mass and motion of its own, you can account for everything using simple, elegant laws (namely, Newton’s laws). Next, the fish start to wonder what their hypothetical ocean is made of. They boil some ocean, do some sophisticated spectroscopy, and ultimately identify water molecules. Imagined beauty guided them to concrete truth.

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When we are shown two options, our eyes tend to flick from one to the other and back again several times as we deliberate on the pros and cons of each.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US have found that the speed with which our eyes dart between options gives away our true preference and predicts the ultimate decision we will make.

This quick eye movement – called a saccade – is what allows you to read; your focus travels abruptly from word to word, fixating briefly on some words before moving on to construct meaning from a block of text.

Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023.

MIT neuroscientists have published a key new insight on how working memory functions, in a study published in PLOS Computational Biology.

The researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory compared measurements of brain cell activity in an animal performing a working memory task with the output of various computer models representing two theories on the underlying mechanism for holding information in mind.

The results favored the newer theory that a network of neurons stores information by making short-lived changes in the connections, or synapses, between them, rather than the traditional theory that memory is maintained by neurons remaining persistently active.

At first, Professor Wolf Reik couldn’t quite believe the data. The experiment had involved an attempt to “rejuvenate” skin cells taken from a 53-year-old volunteer.

The results were better than anybody had expected: having been bathed in a cocktail of proteins, the cells now looked and behaved like those from somebody in their early twenties.

As different measurements of “biological age” confirmed the findings, the molecular biologist’s scepticism gave way to excitement. “I was falling off my chair three times over,” Reik said.

Orally administered collagen peptides could contribute to antiaging by replacing the degraded extracellular matrix proteins caused by photoaging. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of low-molecular-weight collagen peptides for treating photoaged and dry skin. In this randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, double-blinded trial, we randomly assigned study participants (n = 100) to either the test product group or placebo group at a 1:1 ratio for 12 weeks. The wrinkle scale score, eye wrinkle volume, roughness parameters, such as the average maximum height of the wrinkle (Rz), arithmetic average within the total measuring length of the wrinkle (Ra), maximum profile valley depth of the wrinkle (Rv), and skin hydration, transepidermal water loss (TEWL), overall elasticity (R2), and ratio of elastic recovery to total deformation (R7) were evaluated at baseline, 6 weeks, and 12 weeks. Safety assessments with serial blood tests were also conducted. Efficacy assessments of data from 84 participants were conducted as the per-protocol analysis. After 12 weeks, the 10-grade crow’s feet photo scale score, eye wrinkle volume, skin roughness parameters (Rz, Ra, and Rv), skin elasticity (R2 and R7), skin hydration, and TEWL were significantly improved in the test product group compared to the placebo group. There were no adverse events or abnormalities according to laboratory analysis associated with using the test material during the study period. This study showed that the oral supplementation of low-molecular-weight collagen peptides could improve the wrinkles, elasticity, hydration, and barrier integrity of photoaged facial skin. This clinical study was registered with the Korean Clinical Research Information Service and International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (No: KCT0006500).

Keywords: clinical study; collagen peptide; photoaging; wrinkles.

Medium-range weather forecasts play a crucial role in agriculture, construction, travel and other industries. They also bring practical value to people’s daily lives, enabling us to plan outings and keeping us safe from extreme weather events. Traditional numerical weather prediction (NWP)-based forecasting…

Year 2021 viable fusion reactor in a z pinch device which is compact enough to fit in a van or airplane ✈️ 😀

The fusion Z-pinch experiment (FuZE) is a sheared-flow stabilized Z-pinch designed to study the effects of flow stabilization on deuterium plasmas with densities and temperatures high enough to drive nuclear fusion reactions. Results from FuZE show high pinch currents and neutron emission durations thousands of times longer than instability growth times. While these results are consistent with thermonuclear neutron emission, energetically resolved neutron measurements are a stronger constraint on the origin of the fusion production. This stems from the strong anisotropy in energy created in beam-target fusion, compared to the relatively isotropic emission in thermonuclear fusion. In dense Z-pinch plasmas, a potential and undesirable cause of beam-target fusion reactions is the presence of fast-growing, “sausage” instabilities. This work introduces a new method for characterizing beam instabilities by recording individual neutron interactions in plastic scintillator detectors positioned at two different angles around the device chamber. Histograms of the pulse-integral spectra from the two locations are compared using detailed Monte Carlo simulations. These models infer the deuteron beam energy based on differences in the measured neutron spectra at the two angles, thereby discriminating beam-target from thermonuclear production. An analysis of neutron emission profiles from FuZE precludes the presence of deuteron beams with energies greater than 4.65 keV with a statistical uncertainty of 4.15 keV and a systematic uncertainty of 0.53 keV. This analysis demonstrates that axial, beam-target fusion reactions are not the dominant source of neutron emission from FuZE. These data are promising for scaling FuZE up to fusion reactor conditions.

The authors would like to thank Bob Geer and Daniel Behne for technical assistance, as well as Amanda Youmans, Christopher Cooper, and Clément Goyon for advice and discussions. The authors would also like to thank Phil Kerr and Vladimir Mozin for the use of their Thermo Fisher P385 neutron generator, which was important in verifying the ability to measure neutron energy shifts via the pulse integral technique. The information, data, or work presented herein was funded in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E), U.S. Department of Energy, under Award Nos. DE-AR-0000571, 18/CJ000/05/05, and DE-AR-0001160. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344 and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. U.