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Blog – Page 34

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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The venous system maintains the health of our brains by removing deoxygenated blood and other waste products, but its complexity and variability have made scientific study difficult. Now, a UC Berkeley-led team of researchers has developed an innovative MRI technique that may expand our understanding of this critical system.

In a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers demonstrate how their new imaging method, Displacement Spectrum (DiSpect) MRI, maps blood flows “in reverse” to reveal the source of blood in the ’s veins. This approach could help answer long-standing questions about brain physiology as well as provide a safer, more efficient way to diagnose disease.

Like some current MRI methods, DiSpect uses the water in our blood as a tracing agent to map perfusion, or blood flow, in the brain. The water’s hydrogen atoms possess a quantum mechanical property called spin and can be magnetized when exposed to a magnetic field, like an MRI scanner. But what makes DiSpect unique is its ability to track the “memory” of these nuclear spins, allowing it to map blood flow back to its source.

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