Space Mysteries: A fast radio burst was detected from within our galaxy for the first time. We may be closer to uncovering its origin.
Circa 2020
According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the universe is constantly dividing and taking you with it – so would you recognise your other selves if you met them?
Adding absorbent nanoparticles to polymer membranes simplifies desalination.
University of California, Berkeley, chemists have discovered a way to simplify the removal of toxic metals. like mercury and boron. during desalination to produce clean water, while at the same time potentially capturing valuable metals, such as gold.
Desalination — the removal of salt — is only one step in the process of producing drinkable water, or water for agriculture or industry, from ocean or waste water. Either before or after the removal of salt, the water often has to be treated to remove boron, which is toxic to plants, and heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, which are toxic to humans. Often, the process leaves behind a toxic brine that can be difficult to dispose of.
Experiment opens up field for new physics, say Fermilab, UChicago scientists.
The news that muons have a little extra wiggle in their step sent word buzzing around the world this spring.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DQg_fxHv7MY
World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab opens Cyber Polygon 2021 with a warning: “A lack of cybersecurity has become a clear and immediate danger to our society worldwide.”
Giving the welcoming remarks at Cyber Polygon for the second year in a row, Schwab spoke at length about the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) desire to tackle cybersecurity by bringing together a closer merger of corporations, small businesses, and governments.
Transportable tiny homes are complex operations, to say the least. Designing them to be sustainable makes building them that much more of an intricate process. First Light Studio, a New Zealand-based architecture group built their own tiny home with help from a local company Build Tiny, Ohariu, checking all of the above boxes. Built to be net-zero through several sustainable features and compact enough to meet all NZTA regulations for mobile homes.
Ohariu was built by First Light Studio and Build Tiny from a client’s brief calling for, “a refined tramping lodge on wheels.” That’s code for hiking, for all us Americans. Since the tiny home would primarily be used for hiking trips and traveling throughout the outdoors, Ohariu was built to be adaptable and versatile above all else. Inside, the living spaces are described by the architects at First Light Studio as being, “more a large and very detailed piece of furniture than a traditional house build, the fit-out [focusing] on the things that are important and necessary.”
Catering to the necessities and casual family pastimes, the tiny home is doused in modular and multifunctional design that’s surrounded by creamy poplar plywood walls and silvery fittings that add a touch of refinement to an otherwise bare interior. Each furniture piece inside Ohariu doubles as storage to maintain an open, clutter-free interior where the tiny home’s family would bond over pastimes like cooking, playing card games, and enjoying the surrounding landscape. Featuring a chef’s kitchen, Ohariu comes with plenty of prep space for cooking and integrates tilt-up tabletops to make even more for when there’s company. Outside, Ohariu is coated in a stealthy ebony corrugate to match its lightweight mobility, supported by aluminum joinery, lights, and utilities that were given the same ebony finish. Ohariu’s roof is asymmetrical with six solar panels lined up on its longer side and a mezzanine bedroom cozying up beneath its sloped short side.
Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from the UK have managed to create a stable giant vortex in interacting polariton condensates, addressing a known challenge in quantized fluid dynamics. The findings open possibilities in creating uniquely structured coherent light sources and exploring many-body physics under unique extreme conditions. The paper was published in the journal Nature Communications.
In fluid dynamics, a vortex is a region where a fluid revolves around a point (2D) or a line (3D); you’ve clearly seen one in your sink or may have felt one in the form of turbulence while flying. The quantum world also has vortices: the flow of a quantum fluid can create a zone where the particles revolve persistently around some point. The prototypical signature of such quantum vortices is their singular phase at the core of the vortex.
Skoltech Professors Natalia Berloff and Pavlos Lagoudakis and colleagues studied vortices created by polaritons – odd hybrid quantum particles that are half-light (photon) and half-matter (electrons) – forming a quantum fluid under the right conditions. They were looking for a way to create vortices in these polariton fluids with high values of angular momentum (i.e., getting them to rotate fast). These vortices, also known as giant vortices, are generally very hard to obtain as they tend to break apart into many smaller vortices with low angular momentum in other systems.
A team of physicists, including the University of Warwick, have proved that a subatomic particle can switch into its antiparticle alter-ego and back again, in a new discovery just revealed last week.
“This new result shows for the first time that charm mesons can oscillate between the two states.”
An extraordinarily precise measurement made by UK researchers using the LHCb experiment at CERN has provided the first evidence that charm mesons can change into their antiparticle and back again.
Using CRISPR-Cas9, the researchers subsequently removed the one copy of the Ndn gene from the 15q dup mouse model to generate mice with a normalized genomic copy number for this gene (15q dupΔNdn mouse). Using this model, they demonstrated that the abnormalities observed in 15q dup mice (abnormal spine turnover rate and decreased inhibitory synaptic input) could be ameliorated.
A research group including Kobe University’s Professor TAKUMI Toru (also a Senior Visiting Scientist at RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research) and Assistant Professor TAMADA Kota, both of the Physiology Division in the Graduate School of Medicine, has revealed a causal gene (Necdin, NDN) in autism model mice that have the chromosomal abnormality called copy number variation.
The researchers hope to illuminate the NDN gene’s molecular mechanism in order to contribute towards the creation of new treatment strategies for developmental disorders including autism.
As someone with a passionate interest in longevity, transhumanism and biological immortality — I am naturally both excited and optimistic that medical technology will continue to advance in my lifetime — hopefully to the point where humanity has cured or at least greatly mitigated the signs & symptoms of most diseases as well as disabilities, radically expanded human biological lifespan regardless of age, and created a more dignified existence for all as a result of rapid breakthroughs in robotics, AI, automation, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology — which I hope in turn will largely eradicate poverty, disease, food & shelter insecurity, natural resource scarcity, environmental degradation and income inequality. I know that some of my likeminded friends are far more skeptical that we will ever see outright cures or significant mitigations for major diseases and disabilities — much less radical life extension or perhaps biological immortality in human beings — which are widely available on a commercial basis. They cite their belief that pharmaceutical giants, a plethora of not for profit organizations (i.e., American Cancer Society), and many other allegedly “self-interested parties” supposedly allied with government regulatory bodies — apparently do not want to see diseases or disabilities cured or lifespan significantly extended — EVER — as this would prevent them from earning untold sums selling treatments and supports for such things on a regular ongoing basis (i.e., chemo drugs for cancer, statins for cardiovascular disease, inhaled/oral steroids for lung disease, renal replacement therapy for kidney disease, mobile supports for spinal cord injuries, ect.) They believe that too much money would be at stake, too many jobs on the line and the entire “pharma-medical-academic industrial complex” supposedly at great risk, if actual cures or significant mitigations ever saw the light of day. Some of these friends even cite their belief that fully autonomous, accident proof, self-driving cars will most likely never occur — as it would supposed put the entire auto insurance industry at existential risk as well as deprive law enforcement agencies of a key source of reliable revenue (issuing speeding tickets) This one makes me giggle! 🤭 My friends also believe that radical life extension in human beings — much less biological immortality — would apparently upset the proverbial apple cart — where the “powers that be” are concerned — in terms of everything from the highly lucrative profits which are derived from pharmaceutical sales, old age homes, life and health insurance plans, personal financial services and all of the sales of key products and services associated with the aging process — to macroeconomic considerations such as the long term viability of government entitlement programmes. They believe that government regulatory authorities allegedly working at the behest of the aforementioned self-interested parties will always seek to delay, disrupt or even derail ANY and ALL significant progress into cures/mitigations for disease/disabilities, radical human life extension and/or human biological immortality. Apparently, new biotech start ups which do advance the aforementioned things are allegedly “always aggressively bought out by monopoly capital — with their cures and advances indefinitely suppressed” I personally tend to be more on the positive and optimistic side where these things are concerned — but perhaps these rather pessimistic arguments do have some validity — minus the implied conspiracy theory aspect. Do you think human beings will ever be “allowed” to truly be free from illnesses and disabilities? Will we ever be “permitted” to radically expand our lifespans or even become biologically immortal at some point? Please discuss.
I have already taken a few courses for a master’s in physics at the University of Antwerp and I want to complete it there. In a bachelor’s degree you get a basis of knowledge in physics and quantum physics, but it gets more detailed in a master’s.
The main reason I chose to study physics is because my end goal is to achieve immortality. One of the areas that is important in the study of immortality is physics, but as of yet, there is no mapped out path to achieve it.
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