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A new analytical technique is able to provide hitherto unattainable insights into the extremely rapid dynamics of biomolecules. The team of developers, led by Abbas Ourmazd from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Robin Santra from DESY

Commonly abbreviated as DESY, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English German Electron Synchrotron) is a national research center in Germany that operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of matter. It is a member of the Helmholtz Association and operates at sites in Hamburg and Zeuthen.

Ohio-based startup Mantium has today announced closing $12.75 million in seed funding, as well as the launch of a cloud-based AI platform — which allows users to build with large language models.

The seed round, co-led by venture funds Drive Capital and Top Harvest, will be used to source for more talent, to add more features to Mantium’s AI platform and in driving awareness around what is achievable with large language models, especially across Africa, the firm’s CEO and co-founder Ryan Sevey told TechCrunch.

It is looking to expand its team of 33 which is currently spread across nine countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. Having a globally distributed team, Sevey said, helps in the generation of unique insights and varying problem-solving approaches around AI.

UC Berkeley physicist Norman Yao first described five years ago how to make a time crystal—a new form of matter whose patterns repeat in time instead of space. Unlike crystals of emerald or ruby, however, those time crystals existed for only a fraction of a second.

But the time has arrived for time crystals. Since Yao’s original proposal, new insights have led to the discovery that time crystals come in many different forms, each stabilized by its own distinct mechanism.

Using new quantum computing architectures, several labs have come close to creating a many-body localized version of a time crystal, which uses disorder to keep periodically-driven quantum qubits in a continual state of subharmonic jiggling—the qubits oscillate, but only every other period of the drive.

In a study published in Nucleic Acids Research, the team of cancer researcher Francis Rodier, an Université de Montréal professor, shows for the first time that cellular senescence, which occurs when aging cells stop dividing, is caused by irreversible damage to the genome rather than simply by telomere erosion.

This discovery goes against the scientific model most widely adopted in the last 15 years, which is based on one principle: telomeres, caps located at the ends of chromosomes whose purpose is to protect genetic information, erode with each cell division. When they get too short, they tell the cell to stop dividing, thus preventing damage to its DNA. Made dormant, the cell enters senescence.

For this model to be valid, the inactivation of a single should be sufficient to activate the senescence program. Rodier’s laboratory and many others had already observed that several dysfunctional telomeres were necessary.

Signup for your FREE trial to Wondrium here: http://ow.ly/NwIS30rNQ5m — Be sure to check out Sean Carroll’s series called, “Mysteries of modern physics: Time” — I highly recommend it!

A good definition of information in physics: “information contained in a physical system = the number of yes/no questions you need to get answered to fully specify the system.”

References:
Lee Smolin’s paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.09945
Prior video on entropy: https://youtu.be/T6CxT4AESCQ
Wave function collapse and time: https://youtu.be/wXJ9eQ7qTQk.

Chapters:
0:00 — Why is time one way but physical laws are not?
2:19 — What is Entropy? Disorder and information.
5:29 — Does entropy cause time?
7:12 — What is time? Recorded past vs future possibilities.
8:07 — Lee Smolin’s theory of time.
10:31 — Will time always flow forward? heat death & big freeze.
12:33 — Best online course on time.

Summary:
In quantum mechanics, it’s just as natural to go forward in time as going backwards. And if you look at a typical Feynman diagram, you can turn the diagram either way. Where does this transition from time symmetry at the quantum level, to time asymmetry at the macro level occur?

To understand its irreversibility, we have to look for other irreversible processes in nature to see if there is any correlation — such as in thermodynamics, Entropy.

By Jeremy Batterson 11-09-2021

The equivalent of cheap 100-inch binoculars will soon be possible. This memo is a quick update on seven rapidly converging technologies that augur well for astronomy enthusiasts of the near future. All these technologies already exist in either fully developed or nascent form, and all are being rapidly improved due to the gigantic global cell phone market and the retinal projection market that will soon replace it. Listed here are the multiple technologies, after which they are brought together into a single system.

1) Tracking.
2) Single-photon image sensing.
3) Large effective exit pupils via large sensors.
4) Long exposure non-photographic function.
5) Flat optics (metamaterials)
6) Off-axis function of flat optics.
7) Retinal projection.

1) TRACKING: this is already being widely used in so-called “go-to” telescopes, where the instrument will find any object and track it, so Earth’s rotation does not take the object viewed out of the field of vision. The viewer doesn’t have to find the object and doesn’t have to set up the clock drive to track it. Tracking is also partly used in image stabilization software for cameras and smart phones, to prevent motion blurring of images.

2) SINGLE-PHOTON IMAGE SENSORS, whether of the single-photon avalanching diode type, or the type developed by Dr. Fossum, will allow passive imaging in nearly totally dark environments, without the use of IR or other illumination. This new type of image sensor will replace the monochromatic analogue “night-vision” devices, allowing color imaging at higher resolution than they can produce. Unlike these current devices, such sensors will not be destroyed by being exposed to normal or high lighting. Effectively, these sensors increase the effective light-gathering power of a telescope by at least an order of magnitude, allowing small telescopes to see what observatory telescopes see now.

3) EXIT PUPIL: The pupil of the dark-adapted human eye is around 7mm, which means light exiting a telescope must not have a wider-cross axis than this, or a percent of the light captured by the objective lens or mirror will be lost. If the magnification of a system is lowered, to give brighter images, this is limited by this roadblock. This is a well-known problem for visual astronomers. Astro-photographers get around this by two tricks. The first is to use a photographic sensor wider than 7mm, allowing a larger exit pupil and thus brighter images. A 1-inch sensor or photographic plate, for example, already allows an image thirteen times brighter than what a 7mm human pupil can see.

4) LONG EXPOSURE: The other trick astro-photographers use is to keep the shutter of their cameras open for longer periods, thus capturing more light, and allowing a bright image of a faint object to build up over time. As a telescope tracks the stars–so that they appear motionless in the telescopic view–this can be done for hours. The Hubble Space Telescope took a 100 hour long-exposure photograph leading to the famous “deep field” of ultra-faint distant galaxies. An example of a visual use of the same principle is the Sionyx Pro camera, which keeps the shutter open for a fraction of a second. If the exposures are short enough, a video can be produced which appears brighter than what the unaided eye sees. Sionyx adds to this with its black-silicon sensors, which are better at retaining all light that hits them. For astronomy, where stellar objects do not move and do not cause blurring if they are tracked, longer exposures can be created, with the image rapidly brightening as the viewer watches. Unistellar’s eVscope and Vaonis’s Stellina telescope, already use this function, but without an eyepiece. Instead, their images are projected onto people’s cell phones or other viewing devices. However, most astronomers want to be able to see something directly with their eyes, which is a limiting point on such types of telescopes.