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Wherever you have fluid, there you can also find vortex rings.

Now, scientists have found vortex rings somewhere fascinating — inside a tiny pillar made of a magnetic material, the gadolinium-cobalt intermetallic compound GdCo2.

If you’ve seen smoke rings, or bubble rings under water, you’ve seen vortex rings: doughnut-shaped vortices that form when fluid flows back on itself after being forced through a hole.

Circa 1997


Berkeley — An ultrasensitive, superfluid gyroscope developed by physicists at UC Berkeley has the potential to surpass today’s most sensitive devices for measuring absolute rotation or spin.

In a paper in this week’s issue of Nature, physics professor Richard Packard and his colleagues, graduate students Keith Schwab and Niels Bruckner, report a proof-of-principle demonstration of the new device.

Their prototype superfluid gyroscope already is quite sensitive and they believe its sensitivity will eventually surpass that of the ring laser gyroscope, a highly sensitive device used in advanced commercial aircraft inertial guidance systems. Packard’s immediate goal is to create a version with a sensitivity 10,000 times greater than the team has achieved to date.

Andrea Macdonald founder of ideaXme interviews Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries.

The EU Commission @European Commission.

The Commission helps to shape the EU’s overall strategy, proposes new EU laws and policies, monitors their implementation and manages the EU budget. It also plays a significant role in supporting international development and delivering aid.

Following the result of the European elections, and the mandate received from the European Council and the European Parliament, the Dr Ursula von der Leyen Commission put forward a set of ambitious goals for Europe’s future: climate neutrality by 2050; making the 2020s Europe’s Digital Decade; and making Europe stronger in the world with a more geopolitical approach.

They were coasting to the Moon when a ruptured oxygen tank derailed the mission.

50 years later, watch “Apollo 13: ‘Houston, We’ve Had a Problem’” to see how a tale of tragedy would turn into a tale of triumph: https://youtu.be/MdvoA-sjs0A

Thanks to Stephen Slater and Ben Feist/Apollo in Real Time (apolloinrealtime.org/13) for providing additional footage and audio. Thanks to Andy Saunders for providing additional enhanced images.

Researchers claim to have reversed ageing in mice. It has long been believed that if we understand the causes of ageing, it may be possible to reverse it. New work on mice shows that it is possible to cure vision loss caused by old age or injury. Researchers think that this effect may depend on rewinding the ‘biological clock’ which marks the age of cells, suggesting that the cells in the eye have been made functionally younger.

Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, free in your inbox every weekday: https://go.nature.com/371OcVF

Diseases caused by folded proteins in the body are all over the news every day, like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and COVID-19. And now, a Google model powered by artificial intelligence could map these folded proteins in more detail than ever before, allowing scientists to “unfold” proteins and better explore possible treatments.

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