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In physics, weak microwave signals can be amplified with minimal added noise. For instance, artificial quantum systems based on superconducting circuits can amplify and detect single microwave patterns, although at millikelvin temperatures. Researchers can use natural quantum systems for low-noise microwave amplification via stimulated emission effects; however, they generate a higher noise at functionalities greater than 1 Kelvin.

In this new work, published in the journal Science Advances, Alexander Sherman and a team of scientists in chemistry at the Technical-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, used electron spins in diamond as a quantum microwave amplifier to function with quantum-limited internal noise above liquid nitrogen temperatures. The team reported details of the amplifier’s design, gain, bandwidth, saturation power and noise to facilitate hitherto unavailable applications in quantum science, engineering and physics.

Researchers discovered a new daily rhythm in a kind of synapse that dampens brain activity using a mouse model. These neural connections, known as inhibitory synapses, are rebalanced as we sleep to allow us to consolidate new information into lasting memories. The results, which were published in the journal PLOS Biology, may help explain how subtle synaptic changes improve memory in humans. Researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, led the study.

“Inhibition is important for every aspect of brain function. But for over two decades, most sleep studies have focused on understanding excitatory synapses,” said Dr. Wei Lu, senior investigator at NINDS. “This is a timely study to try to understand how sleep and wakefulness regulate the plasticity of inhibitory synapses.”

Kunwei Wu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lu’s lab, investigated what occurs at inhibitory synapses in mice during sleep and wakefulness. Electrical recordings from neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation, revealed a previously unknown pattern of activity. During wakefulness, steady “tonic” inhibitory activity increased but fast “phasic” inhibition decreased. They also discovered a far larger activity-dependent enhancement of inhibitory electrical responses in awake mouse neurons, suggesting that wakefulness, rather than sleep, might strengthen these synapses to a greater extent.

This Video Explains SMALL NUCLEOLAR RNA (snoRNA).

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Facebook VR leader — and Doom creator — John Carmack has quit his advisory position at the company now known as Meta, and took to the social network to unsparingly explain his departure.

In a Facebook post, Carmack publicly shared his resignation email, which he said he decided to post after it had been partially leaked to the press.

“This is the end of my decade in VR,” the gaming pioneer’s note began. “I have mixed feelings.”

On Dec. 19, 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, Ronald E. Evans, and Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt, the first trained geologist to travel to the Moon, successfully ended their 13-day Moon landing mission with a splashdown in their Command Module (CM) America in the Pacific Ocean.

A few weeks ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) quietly unveiled a new high-speed missile program called Gambit. The program is meant to leverage a novel method of propulsion that could have far-reaching implications not just in terms of weapons development, but for high-speed aircraft and even in how the Navy’s warships are powered.

This propulsion system, known as a rotation detonation engine (RDE), has the potential to be lighter than existing jet engines while offering a significant boost in power output, range, and fuel efficiency.

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Two weeks before his death, famed scientist Stephen Hawking published a research article predicting parallel universes and along with the end of our own.

Hawking and co-author Thomas Hertog published their results in “A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation,” outlining how scientists may also be able to discover other universes using spaceships. According to Hertog, Hawking completed the work on his deathbed, leaving a legacy worthy of the Nobel Prize.

“He has often been nominated for the Nobel and should have won it. Now he never can,” he told the Sunday Times.

For decades, physicists have been hunting for a quantum-gravity model that would unify quantum physics, the laws that govern the very small, and gravity. One major obstacle has been the difficulty in testing the predictions of candidate models experimentally. But some of the models predict an effect that can be probed in the lab: a very small violation of a fundamental quantum tenet called the Pauli exclusion principle, which determines, for instance, how electrons are arranged in atoms.

A project carried out at the INFN underground laboratories under the Gran Sasso mountains in Italy, has been searching for signs of radiation produced by such a violation in the form of atomic transitions forbidden by the Pauli exclusion principle.

In two papers appearing in the journals Physical Review Letters (published on September 19, 2022) and Physical Review D (accepted for publication on December 7, 2022) the team reports that no evidence of violation has been found, thus far, ruling out some quantum-gravity models.

Quantum telepathy, laser-based time crystals, a glow from empty space and an “unreal” universe—these are the most awesome (and awfully hard to understand) results from the subatomic realm we encountered in 2022.