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Blog – Page 30

The bundle of magnets at the heart of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) is the star of the show.

Its magnets will produce the highest magnetic field of any large spherical torus, allowing for near steady-state conditions. They are critical to the design of NSTX-U. When it begins operating, it will be essential in determining whether spherical tokamaks, which are smaller and more compact than traditional doughnut-shaped tokamaks, could provide a more efficient and cost-effective model for a fusion pilot plant.

The 19-foot toroidal field (TF) magnet carries up to 4 million amps of electric current to stabilize and confine the superhot plasma in fusion experiments. It will eventually connect to 12 TF coils on the outside of the vacuum vessel. Wrapped around it like a slinky is the ohmic heating (OH) coil, a 4-kilovolt magnet that induces an , which drives an electric current into the vessel and helps to heat the plasma.

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Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from outer space that strike Earth’s atmosphere, generating showers of secondary particles, such as muons, that can reach the planet’s surface. In recent years, ground-based experiments have detected more cosmic muons than current theoretical models predict, a discrepancy known as the muon puzzle.

Underground experiments offer good conditions for the detection of cosmic muons, because the rock or soil above the experiments absorbs the other shower components. They could therefore help to solve the muon puzzle. One example is ALICE at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Designed to study the products of heavy-ion collisions, ALICE is also well-suited for detecting cosmic muons thanks to its location in a cavern 52 meters underground, shielded by 28 meters of overburden rock and an additional 1 meter of magnet yoke.

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Turbulence in nature refers to the complex, time-dependent, and spatially varying fluctuations that develop in fluids such as water, air, and plasma. It is a universal phenomenon that appears across a vast range of scales and systems—from atmospheric and oceanic currents on Earth, to interstellar gas in stars and galaxies, and even within jet engines and blood flow in human arteries.

Turbulence is not merely chaotic; rather, it consists of an evolving hierarchy of interacting vortices, which may organize into large-scale structures or produce coherent flow patterns over time.

In nuclear fusion plasmas, plays a crucial role in regulating the confinement of thermal energy and the mixing of fuel particles, thereby directly impacting the performance of fusion reactors. Unlike simple fluid turbulence, plasma turbulence involves the simultaneous evolution of multiple physical fields, such as density, temperature, magnetic fields, and electric currents.

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Researchers from the University of Rochester and University of California, Santa Barbara, engineered a laser device smaller than a penny that they say could power everything from the LiDAR systems used in self-driving vehicles to gravitational wave detection, one of the most delicate experiments in existence to observe and understand our universe.

Laser-based measurement techniques, known as optical metrology, can be used to study the physical properties of objects and materials. But current optical metrology requires bulky and expensive equipment to achieve delicate laser-wave control, creating a bottleneck for deploying streamlined, cost-effective systems.

The new chip-scale laser, described in a paper published in Light: Science & Applications, can conduct extremely fast and accurate measurements by very precisely changing its color across a broad spectrum of light at very fast rates—about 10 quintillion times per second.

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Bismuth, a puzzling material in quantum research, has now revealed a surprising twist. Kobe University scientists discovered that its surface properties can obscure its true nature, challenging a foundational assumption in topological material science. For nearly two decades, scientists have puzz

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The emerging field of neurosymbolic AI could solve these issues, while also reducing the enormous amounts of data required for training LLMs. So what is neurosymbolic AI and how does it work?

LLMs work using a technique called deep learning, where they are given vast amounts of text data and use advanced statistics to infer patterns that determine what the next word or phrase in any given response should be. Each model—along with all the patterns it has learned—is stored in arrays of powerful computers in large data centers known as neural networks.

LLMs can appear to reason using a process called chain-of-thought, where they generate multi-step responses that mimic how humans might logically arrive at a conclusion, based on patterns seen in the training data.

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People who follow a MIND diet, even if started later in life, were significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or related forms of dementia, according to new research.

The MIND diet stands for “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay” and combines many elements of the Mediterranean diet and DASH (“Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension”). It emphasizes brain-healthy foods like leafy greens, berries, nuts and olive oil.

The study, being presented Monday at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting, analyzed data from nearly 93,000 U.S. adults aged 45 to 75 starting in the 1990s.

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Objective To improve early diagnosis of patients who have basilar artery occlusion (BAO) and to provide evidence for treatment decisions based on clinical characteristics, treatment strategies, and prognostic outcomes of cases of bilateral hearing loss as a prodromal symptom.

Methods We conducted a retrospective analysis of six patients who had BAO with an initial symptom of hearing loss. This analysis encompassed demographic data, clinical symptoms, examination findings, treatment approaches, and prognostic outcomes.

Results Six patients (mean age 62±16.5 years) presented with bilateral sudden hearing loss and were diagnosed with proximal BAO. All had subtle initial symptoms, leading to diagnostic delays (mean 13 ± 5.4 hours). Five underwent endovascular treatment (EVT), and all patients required rescue balloon angioplasty because of underlying atherosclerotic stenosis.

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