In a laboratory set-up simulating the human stomach and intestine, researchers at the University of Amsterdam have explored the fate of plastic nanoparticles during gastrointestinal digestion. In their paper published in the October issue of Chemosphere, they report how a range of model plastic nanoparticles interact with digestive enzymes and form agglomerates.
The BASE experiment aims to answer this question by precisely measuring the properties of antiprotons, such as their intrinsic magnetic moment, and then comparing these measurements with those taken with protons. However, the precision the experiment can achieve is limited by its location.
“The accelerator equipment in the AD hall generates magnetic field fluctuations that limit how far we can push our precision measurements,” said BASE spokesperson Stefan Ulmer. “If we want to get an even deeper understanding of the fundamental properties of antiprotons, we need to move out.”
This is where BASE-STEP comes in. The goal is to trap antiprotons and then transfer them to a facility where scientists can study them with a greater precision. To be able to do this, they need a device that is small enough to be loaded onto a truck and can resist the bumps and vibrations that are inevitable during ground transport.
The future of therapeutic apheresis & transfusion medicine — dr. tina ipe, MD, MPH — CEO, regen med clinic.
Dr. Tina Ipe, MD, MPH is Chief Executive Officer at Regen Med Clinic (https://www.regenmed.vip/), a medical practice which provides multi-specialty infusions, cutting-edge treatments such as therapeutic apheresis (plasmapheresis and collections), as well as novel aesthetic treatments, for patients with a variety chronic illnesses.
Dr. Ipe is a board-certified physician and clinical researcher. Before entering private practice, she was Chief Medical Officer at the Oklahoma Blood Institute, Associate Medical Director at Houston Methodist Hospital, and Division Director at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). She is an expert in the fields of blood disorders, immunology, therapeutic apheresis, blood banking, and transfusion medicine. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters.
Image generated by Microsoft Designer Learn how you can use AI to add interactive charts to your chat experiences.
A recent breakthrough in frequency conversion has achieved substantial bandwidth, opening new possibilities for more efficient quantum information transfer and advanced integrated photonic systems.
Advancements in quantum information technology are enabling faster and more efficient data transfer. A major challenge, however, lies in transferring qubits—the fundamental units of quantum information—across different wavelengths while preserving their crucial properties, such as coherence and entanglement.
As reported in Advanced Photonics, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) recently made significant strides in this area by developing a novel method for broadband frequency conversion, a crucial step for future quantum networks.
A new camera system is making it possible for humans to see colors in the way animals do, opening up a vivid new perspective on the natural world.
Led by researcher Vera Vasas, who has spent years studying animal vision, this innovative project is changing how we understand what animals actually see.
In collaboration with colleagues from the Hanley Color Lab at George Mason University, Vasas has developed a tool that lets us experience the world through the eyes of different species.
How much light do we really need at night for urban traffic, life? are we more secure with more light? or have we put too much?
Street lights across the country, particularly in rural areas, may be replaced with cleaner alternatives to cut a £3bn bill.
Here we propose a novel protected erasure qubit, the Floquet fluxonium molecule (FFM). The FFM qubit exhibits (i) extremely long predicted logical coherence times and relatively long erasure lifetimes, (ii) a simple superconducting circuit structure, and (iii) high-fidelity single-qubit gates, which are much faster than the coherence timescale. Based on a Floquet-driven pair of inductively coupled fluxonium circuits [13–15], the FFM is a multi-DOF superconducting circuit with engineered, highly coherent quasieigenstates.
Our key technical contribution is a novel form of Floquet protection in a multi-DOF qubit, which strongly suppresses phase-flip errors, removing them at first and second order in the flux noise. The combination of drive and multi-DOF allows the low-lying eigenstates to be disjoint and delocalized with a nonvanishing energy gap. The second-order sweet spot has no analogue in the single-DOF circuits that have been studied thus far [16–18]; in fact, in single-DOF circuits there is a generic trade-off between bit-and phase-flip errors arising from the inability to keep two eigenstates simultaneously disjoint and flux delocalized using accessible circuit QED Hamiltonians [19].
The higher-order phase-flip insensitivity allow the predicted coherence time of the FFM qubit to significantly outperform other multi-DOF circuits. These include the following: the dual-rail erasure transmon, with experimentally achieved logical lifetimes of approximately ms and erasure lifetimes of approximately [12]; the dual-rail cavity, with logical lifetimes predicted [10] (achieved [11]) at approximately ms (3 ms), limited by cavity and ancilla dephasing, and erasure lifetimes of approximately in both cases; and the cold echo qubit, with predicted logical lifetime of ms with erasure rates unreported [8]. Theoretically, we find the FFM exhibits long bit-flip coherence times of approximately 50 ms while suppressing phase flips even further, along with a 500-erasure lifetime.
Inspired by the external skeleton of a spider, the robot leg is more flexible than conventional robots.
A small robot that resembles a spider’s leg has been developed by engineers at the University of Tartu. Inspired by nature, the fingernail-long leg is more flexible than conventional robots.
Its dexterous movements are expected to help people rescued from rubble and other danger zones in the future.
The robot leg modeled after the leg of a cucumber spider was created by researchers from the Institute of Technology of the University of Tartu and the Italian Institute of Technology. In the near future, it’s expected to move where humans cannot.
Recently, two independent research groups have shown that the brain codes for zero much as it does for other numbers, on a mental number line. But, one of the studies found, zero also holds a special status in the brain.
In recent years, research started to uncover how the human brain represents numbers, but no one examined how it handles zero. Now two independent studies, led by Nieder and Barnett, respectively, have shown that the brain codes for zero much as it does for other numbers, on a mental number line. But, one of the studies found, zero also holds a special status in the brain.
“The fact that [zero] represents nothing is a contradiction in itself,” said Carlo Semenza, a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of Padua in Italy who wasn’t involved in either study. “It looks like it is concrete because people put it on the number line — but then it doesn’t exist. … That is fascinating, absolutely fascinating.”
The new studies are the first to reveal what goes on in the brain when a person thinks about zero, and they bring up broader questions about how the mind handles absence — a pursuit that would have pleased Jean-Paul Sartre, the 20th-century existentialist who claimed that “nothingness carries being in its heart.”
