19 D-shaped magnetic coils that will make up the core of ITER now arrived in France, to begin construction of the tokamak.
Daedalus could have learned a thing or two from a team of physicists in the UK and Switzerland.
Taking principles from fractal geometry and the strategic game of chess, they have created what they say is the most fiendishly difficult maze ever devised.
Led by physicist Felix Flicker of the University of Bristol in the UK, the group has generated routes called Hamiltonian cycles in patterns known as Ammann-Beenker tilings, producing complex fractal mazes that, they say, describe an exotic form of matter known as quasicrystals.
Adenosine-to-inosine editing is a form of RNA modification observed in the human brain transcriptome. Here the authors question the accuracy of utilizing postmortem samples to reflect the RNA biology of living brains. This is due to significant differences in adenosine-to-inosine editing between living and postmortem brain tissues, with most sites exhibiting higher editing levels postmortem.
Or maybe just something Wallace and Gromit might jam onto a rocket for a second Grand Day Out.
Francesco Cagnetta, Leonardo Petrini, Umberto M. Tomasini, Alessandro Favero, and Matthieu Wyart Institute of Physics EPFL, Institute of Electrical Eng.
A hierarchical model of high-dimensional data reveals how deep neural networks leverage their multiple layers to reduce the data dimensionality and learn from a finite set of examples.
In the Mpemba effect, a warm liquid freezes faster than a cold one. Three studies investigate quantum versions of this effect, challenging our understanding of quantum thermodynamics.
Under certain conditions, warm water can freeze faster than cold water. This phenomenon was named the Mpemba effect after Erasto Mpemba, a Tanzanian high schooler who described the effect in the 1960s [1]. The phenomenon has sparked intense debates for more than two millennia and continues to do so [2]. Similar processes, in which a system relaxes to equilibrium more quickly if it is initially further away from equilibrium, are being intensely explored in the microscopic world. Now three research teams provide distinct perspectives on quantum versions of Mpemba-like effects, emphasizing the impact of strong interparticle correlations, minuscule quantum fluctuations, and initial conditions on these relaxation processes [3– 5]. The teams’ findings advance quantum thermodynamics and have potential implications for technologies, ranging from information processors to engines, powered by quantum resources.
In top-down strategies, physicists use observations of macroscopic (classical) phenomena to infer fundamental microscopic (quantum) processes; in bottom-up strategies, they use studies of those fundamental processes to predict classical phenomena. Historically, studies of the Mpemba effect began with empirical observations and ad hoc assumptions about the microscopic world. Despite descriptions of the effect by Aristotle and Descartes, and modern attention from Mpemba, the phenomenon has not influenced the field of thermodynamics. The Mpemba effect is complex, lacks a precise definition, and has reproducibility issues. As a result, experimental observations and explanations have been debated for decades without consensus, making the effect often seem like just a curiosity.
Increased atmospheric moisture may alter critical weather patterns over Africa, making it more difficult for the predecessors of many Atlantic hurricanes to form, according to a new study published this month. The work is published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.
The research team, led by scientists from the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), used an innovative model that allows for higher-resolution simulations of hurricane formation than ever before. This allowed researchers to study the effects of increased regional moisture over Africa, which is the birthplace of weather systems that later produce hurricanes over the Atlantic.
Past research has suggested that warmer ocean water and a moister atmosphere could cause hurricanes to become more intense with greater amounts of rainfall. But how atmospheric moisture, which is predicted to increase in a warming climate, may be impacting hurricane formation itself has not been studied in detail until now.
In humankind’s ever-ticking pursuit of perfection, scientists have developed an atomic clock that is more precise and accurate than any clock previously created. The new clock was built by researchers at JILA, a joint institution of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Enabling pinpoint navigation in the vast expanse of space as well as searches for new particles, this clock is the latest to transcend mere timekeeping. With their increased precision, these next-generation timekeepers could reveal hidden underground mineral deposits and test fundamental theories such as general relativity with unprecedented rigor.
For atomic-clock architects, it’s not just about building a better clock; it’s about unraveling the secrets of the universe and paving the way for technologies that will shape our world for generations to come.
