Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 3964

Here is an important reason to stay in touch with friends and family: social isolation causes memory and learning deficits and other behavioral changes. Many brain studies have focused on the effects social deprivation has on neurons, but little is known about the consequences for the most abundant brain cell, the astrocyte.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine working with animal models report in the journal Neuron that during , become hyperactive, which in turn suppresses brain circuit function and memory formation. Importantly, inhibiting astrocyte hyperactivity reversed the cognitive deficits associated with .

“One thing we have learned during the COVID pandemic is that social isolation can influence cognitive functions, as previous studies suggested,” said co-first author, Yi-Ting Cheng, graduate student in Dr. Benjamin Deneen’s lab at Baylor. “This motivated co-first author Dr. Junsung Woo and me to further investigate the effects of social isolation in the brain, specifically in astrocytes.”

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In 2021, the fusion yield of 1.35 MJ was produced at NIF by using indirect drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF), indicating that indirect drive ICF has reached ignition. However, the driving radiation flux on capsule inside Hohlraums is still a puzzle in indirect drive ICF studies. The energy deficit at NIF is still neither well understood nor solved. In this paper, we proposed a scheme to determine the driving radiation flux on the capsule by using the combination of the shock wave technique and the reemitted radiation flux measurement. In this scheme, a witness sample is placed in the Hohlraum center as the surrogate of the capsule. The shock velocity in the witness sample is measured by a streaked optical pyrometer from one side, and the temporal reemitted radiation flux is measured by a space-resolved flat response x-ray detector. Then, the peak of the radiation flux is determined by the shock velocity, and the time behavior of the radiation flux is determined by the reemitted flux through the numerical simulation of radiation hydrodynamic code. The rules for designing the witness sample and an example of applying this scheme to determine the driving radiation flux on capsule inside the octahedral spherical Hohlraum are presented in detail.

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Measurements of the magnetic moment of the electron have achieved unprecedented accuracy, showing great potential for the search for physics beyond the standard model.

Despite its remarkable successes, the standard model of particle physics clearly isn’t complete—dark matter, dark energy, and the matter–antimatter asymmetry of the Universe are some of its most flagrant deficiencies. Experimenters thus eagerly search for anomalies that could provide hints on a theory that could complete or replace the standard model. The electron is a key player in this quest: its magnetic moment is both the most precisely measured elementary-particle property and the most accurately verified standard model prediction to date. New measurements by Gerald Gabrielse’s group at Northwestern University in Illinois [1] have determined the value of the electron’s magnetic moment 2.2 times more accurately than the previous best estimate, which was obtained in 2008 [2].

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Even more extraordinary, during a 2021 interview on CBS 60 Minutes, former Navy pilots David Fravor and Alex Dietrich provided a detailed description of their encounter with a UAP while conducting pre-deployment training with the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group in 2004. While flying their F/A-18F Super Hornet aircraft, they initially observed an area of roiling whitewater on the ocean surface below them. Hovering just above that was a “white Tic Tac looking” UAP. The whitewater may have indicated the presence of a larger UAP below, or that the UAP they were observing had recently emerged from the sea below it, indicating the occurrence of unidentified undersea phenomena (UUP).

The implications of these observations are profound. Society may be on the verge of answering one of the greatest questions regarding our existence — are we alone? Yet, the vast majority of established scientists across the globe have shown little interest, and this remains the case with the ocean science community.

How is it that these anomalous observations have not risen to the level of other science priorities, such as climate change? Simply put, stigma. The attention given by many non-scientific, fringe enthusiasts to the UAP arena has tainted the topic, repulsing those who rightly seek to maintain their scientific integrity and professional reputation. Additionally, the U.S. government thwarted objective analysis of UAPs out of a concern that adversaries would use them as a psychological warfare tool to sow mass hysteria and panic.

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Dr. Seol Seung-Kwon’s Smart 3D Printing Research Team at KERI and Professor Lim-Doo Jeong’s team at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) developed core technology for smart contact lenses that can implement augmented reality (AR)-based navigation, with a 3D printing process.

A smart contact lens is a product attached to the human eye like a normal lens that provides various information. Research on these lenses is currently focused mainly on diagnosing and treating health problems. Recently, Google and others are developing smart contact lenses for displays that can implement AR. Yet many obstacles to commercialization exist due to several technical challenges.

In implementing AR with smart contact lenses, electrochromic displays that can be driven with low power are necessary, and a “pure Prussian blue” color, with cost competitiveness and quick contrast and transition between colors, is attracting attention as the lens’ material. In the past, the color was coated on the in the form of a film using the electric plating method, which limited the production of advanced displays that can express various information (letters, numbers, images).

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That’s exactly what researchers in Germany set out to do, making use of “acoustic holograms” to form distinct 3D shapes out of particles suspended in water — all in “one shot,” said study lead author Kai Melde, a researcher from the Max Planck Institute, in a press release.

According to a study on the work, published last week in the journal Science Advances, the researchers were able to create a helix and a figure 8 out of silica gel beads, assembled biological cells into spherical clumps, and even provided a compelling concept for forming the shape of a dove in future experiments.

These acoustic holograms work by cleverly manipulating the pressure exerted by high frequency ultrasonic waves via the inexpensive use of a conventionally 3D-printed plate.

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