Decades after stumbling upon a stunning coincidence, researchers are close to understanding the link between two seemingly unrelated geometric universes.
The DUNE collaboration has published their first scientific paper based on data collected with the ProtoDUNE single-phase detector located at CERN’s Neutrino Platform. The results show that the detector is performing with greater than 99% efficiency, making it not only the largest, but also the best-performing liquid-argon time projection chamber to date. Scientists now are using their findings to refine their experimental techniques and prepare for the construction of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, a next-generation neutrino experimental program hosted by the Department of Energy’s Fermilab in the United States.
“These first results are great news for us,” said DUNE co-spokesperson Stefan Söldner-Rembold, professor at the University of Manchester in the UK. “They show that the ProtoDUNE-SP detector works even better than anticipated. Now we are ready for the construction of the first components for the DUNE detector, which will feature detector modules based on this prototype, but 20 times larger.”
DUNE is an ambitious international experiment that will measure the properties of tiny fundamental particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are the most abundant matter particle in the universe, but because they rarely interact with other particles, they are incredibly difficult to study. There are at least three different types of neutrinos, and, every second, 65 billion of them pass through each square centimeter of Earth. As they travel, they do something peculiar: They change from one type to another. Scientists think that these neutrino oscillations — as well as oscillations involving antimatter neutrinos — could help answer some of the big questions in physics, such as the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. DUNE will also look for neutrinos from supernovae and search for rare subatomic processes such as proton decay.
Serena Corr looks at the science behind batteries, discusses why we are hunting for new ones and investigates what tools we use to pave this pathway to discovery.
Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/lZjqiR0czLo.
The hunt is on for the next generation of batteries that will power our electric vehicles and help our transition to a renewables-led future. Serena shows how researchers at the Faraday Institution are developing new chemistries and manufacturing processes to deliver safer, cheaper, and longer-lasting batteries and provide higher power or energy densities for electric vehicles.
Serena Corr is a Chair in Functional Materials and Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield. She works on next-generation battery materials and advanced characterisation techniques for nanomaterials.
This event was generously supported by The Faraday Institution.
This is something straight out of ‘Westworld.’ With a repurposed 3D printer and a container of gelatin, researchers turned an MRI scan of a human heart into a full-size analog. Squeeze it, and it’ll give like the real thing. Slice it open, and you’ll find chambers. The advance might eventually lead to fully-functioning 3D-printed hearts: https://wired.trib.al/7UZPU68
📽️: Eman Mirdamadi, Daniel Shiwarski, Joshua Tashman.
Exciting momentum!! — Home Depot Founder, Bernie Marcus (age 91), and the Adolph Coors Foundation (beer family), putting millions of $$$ into comprehensive integrative health and wellness — Good to see the trend!!
The Marcus Institute of Integrative Health was established in Philadelphia in 2017 by Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, and a multi-million $$$ grant from the Marcus Foundation (headed by it’s Chairman, Bernie Marcus, Co-Founder of The Home Depot) to expand the research, education and clinical care profile of Jefferson’s integrative medicine program, and to set the international standard of excellence in evidence-based, patient-centered integrative care.
The institute features a novel curriculum focusing on the clinical applications of integrative medicine with an emphasis on functional biochemistry, nutrient-based therapies, mind-body neuroscience, novel mechanisms of healing and emerging therapies.
At least humans can still say they are better at something… for now. 😃
What happens if you let a neural network loose on inventing names for monsters in Dungeons and Dragons? Well, it turns out it comes up with some rather ridiculous suggestions.
Research scientist Janelle Shane from Boulder, Colorado previously used a recurrent neural network to come up with some odd spell names for D&D, but this time around she turned her powers of hilarity towards creating new names for monsters.
“It turns out that in addition to spellbooks, Dungeons and Dragons also has monster manuals – books full of the names and descriptions of creatures that adventurers can encounter,” she wrote on her blog AI Weirdness.
This portable turbine uses water or wind to charge your devices and is ideal for campers, paddlers, filmmakers, and off-gridders around the world…
REST IN PEACE 🙏 Gen. Chuck Yeager, one of the U.S. Air Force’s most decorated test pilots and the first person to break the sound barrier, has died. He was 97.
Chuck Yeager was of the U.S. Air Force’s most decorated test pilots and was portrayed in the movie ‘The Right Stuff.’
Columbia team discovers 6-nanometer-long single-molecule circuit with enormous on/off ratio due to quantum interference; finding could enable faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient devices.
Researchers, led by Columbia Engineering Professor Latha Venkataraman, report today that they have discovered a new chemical design principle for exploiting destructive quantum interference. They used their approach to create a six-nanometer single-molecule switch where the on-state current is more than 10,000 times greater than the off-state current–the largest change in current achieved for a single-molecule circuit to date.
This new switch relies on a type of quantum interference that has not, up to now, been explored. The researchers used long molecules with a special central unit to enhance destructive quantum interference between different electronic energy levels. They demonstrated that their approach can be used to produce very stable and reproducible single-molecule switches at room temperature that can carry currents exceeding 0.1 microamps in the on-state. The length of the switch is similar to the size of the smallest computer chips currently on the market and its properties approach those of commercial switches. The study is published today in Nature Nanotechnology.