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Jan 12, 2021

Scientists investigate phages that can kill the world’s leading superbug, Acinetobacter baumannii

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A major risk of being hospitalised is catching a bacterial infection.

Hospitals, especially areas including intensive care units and surgical wards, are teeming with bacteria, some of which are resistant to —they are infamously known as ‘superbugs’.

Superbug infections are difficult and expensive to treat, and can often lead to dire consequences for the patient.

Jan 12, 2021

General Motors unveils EV van as part of new commercial business unit

Posted by in categories: business, transportation

The EV600 van will be the first vehicle under a new commercial business unit within GM called BrightDrop.

Jan 12, 2021

New quantum particle may have been accidentally discovered

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Basically speaking, metals conduct electricity and insulators don’t. On the molecular level, that comes down to how freely electrons can move through the materials – in metals, electrons are very mobile, while insulators obviously have high resistance that prevents them moving much.

As a side effect of this, metals can exhibit a phenomenon known as quantum oscillations. When exposed to a magnetic field at very low temperatures, electrons can shift into a quantum state that causes the material’s resistivity to oscillate. This doesn’t happen in insulators, however, since their electrons don’t move very well.

Jan 12, 2021

A controversial trial to bring the dead back to life plans a restart

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Circa 2017 o.o


The trial plans to inject stem cells into the spinal cords of people declared clinically brain dead, with the ultimate goal of restarting brain activity.

Jan 12, 2021

The 8th Continent: Slovak designer wins top prize for ocean station prototype that removes plastic from the sea

Posted by in category: materials

The model is conceived to tackle the Great Pacific garbage patch — an island of plastic about 3 times the size of France.

Jan 12, 2021

Deconstructing Schrödinger’s Cat – Solving the Paradox

Posted by in categories: information science, particle physics, quantum physics

The French theoretical physicist Franck Laloë presents a modification of Schrödinger’s famous equation that ensures that all measured states are unique, helping to solve the problem that is neatly encompassed in the Schördinger’s cat paradox.

The paradox of Schrödinger’s cat – the feline that is, famously, both alive and dead until its box is opened – is the most widely known example of a recurrent problem in quantum mechanics: its dynamics seems to predict that macroscopic objects (like cats) can, sometimes, exist simultaneously in more than one completely distinct state. Many physicists have tried to solve this paradox over the years, but no approach has been universally accepted. Now, however, theoretical physicist Franck Laloë from Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (ENS-Université PSL) in Paris has proposed a new interpretation that could explain many features of the paradox. He sets out a model of this possible theory in a new paper in EPJ D.

One approach to solving this problem involves adding a small, random extra term to the Schrödinger equation, which allows the quantum state vector to ‘collapse’, ensuring that – as is observed in the macroscopic universe – the outcome of each measurement is unique. Laloë’s theory combines this interpretation with another from de Broglie and Bohm and relates the origins of the quantum collapse to the universal gravitational field. This approach can be applied equally to all objects, quantum and macroscopic: that is, to cats as much as to atoms.

Jan 12, 2021

The realization of a single-quantum-dot heat valve

Posted by in categories: computing, nanotechnology, quantum physics

While many research teams worldwide are trying to develop highly performing quantum computers, some are working on tools to control the flow of heat inside of them. Just like conventional computers, in fact, quantum computers can heat up significantly as they are operating, which can ultimately damage both the devices and their surroundings.

A team of researchers at University Grenoble Alpes in France and Centre of Excellence—Quantum Technology in Finland has recently developed a single-quantum-dot heat valve, a that can help to control the flow of heat in single-quantum-dot junctions. This heat valve, presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could help to prevent quantum computers from overheating.

“With the miniaturization of electronic components handling of excess heat at nanoscales has become an increasingly important issue to be addressed,” Nicola Lo Gullo, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “This is especially true when one wants to preserve the quantum nature of a device; the increase in temperature does typically result in the degradation of the quantum properties. The recent realization of a photonic heat-valve by another research group ultimately inspired us to create a heat valve based on a solid-state quantum dot.”

Jan 12, 2021

Scientists ‘program’ living bacteria to store data

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Researchers have come up with a way to electronically write data into the DNA of living bacteria, a storage option unlikely to go obsolete any time soon.


New method enables electronic conversion of data into DNA.

Jan 12, 2021

Father of the Web Tim Berners-Lee prepares ‘do-over’

Posted by in categories: computing, internet

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who was knighted for inventing the internet navigation system known as the World Wide Web, wants to re-make cyberspace once again.


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Jan 12, 2021

The new ‘gold rush’ for green lithium

Posted by in categories: climatology, computing, mobile phones, solar power, sustainability

All the clean technologies that we need to combat climate change – whether that’s wind turbines, solar panels or batteries, they’re all really, really mineral intensive.


Cornwall, 1864. A hot spring is discovered nearly 450m (1485ft) below ground in the Wheal Clifford, a copper mine just outside the mining town of Redruth. Glass bottles are immersed to their necks in its bubbling waters, carefully sealed and sent off for testing. The result is the discovery of so great a quantity of lithium – eight or 10 times as much per gallon as had been found in any hot spring previously analysed – that scientists suspect “it may prove of great commercial value”.

But 19th-Century England had little need for the element, and this 50C (122F) lithium-rich water continued steaming away in the dark for more than 150 years.

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