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The odd, wavy pattern that results from viewing certain phone or computer screens through polarized glasses has led researchers to take a step toward thinner, lighter-weight lenses. Called moiré, the pattern is made by laying one material with opaque and translucent parts at an angle over another material of similar contrast.

A team of researchers from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, TUAT, in Japan have demonstrated that moiré metalenses—tiny, patterned lenses composed of artificial ‘meta’ atoms—can tune along a wider range than previously seen. They published their results on November 23 in Optics Express.

“Metalenses have attracted a lot of interest because they are so thin and lightweight, and could be used in ultra-compact imaging systems, like future smart phones, virtual reality goggles, drones or microbots,” said paper author Kentaro Iwami, associate professor in the TUAT Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering.

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After the tweet by David Sinclair just recently regarding a study looking at dietary restriction and the circadian clock, and the way it may impact longevity and health, I decided to have a bit of a deeper look.

Join me as I dive a little deeper, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to keep up with all the latest releases.

I am looking at the recent study, highlighted in a tweet by David Sinclair.

Continue reading “Zeitgeber Circadian Rhythm” | >

Third party data collection — whatever the motivation — has the potential to blur the lines between data privacy and complete identification.

By Shireen Gupta

In March 2020, it was revealed that the Zoom iOS app was sending user data to Facebook unbeknownst to the user. The transaction conspired in a manner where Zoom had implemented the ‘login from Facebook’ button on its iOS app, subsequently involving the Facebook Software Development Kit (SDK) in its iOS platform. The implementation of this feature allowed Facebook to access and extract users’ data from Zoom’s platform. Zoom apologised for this incident, claiming that it did not know of such implications while developing the app, further stating that it had rectified its mistake and fixed the app to remove the Facebook SDK.

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Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a new type of adhesive that could lead to a different form of 3D printing.

Magnetocuring

The new process, called “magnetocuring”, overcomes several problems associated with existing export adhesives. Typical adhesives we see today involve mixing two chemicals, or exposure to heat, light or air.

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Venezuela’s government is planning to move to a fully digital economy as hyperinflation has made worthless bolivar notes practically disappear, and dollarization expands through the local financial system.

The U.S. dollar has operated as an escape valve for Venezuela amid U.S. sanctions and collapsing oil revenues, President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised interview with Telesur on Friday. He said 18.6% of all commercial transactions are in dollars, while 77.3% are carried out in bolivars with debit cards. Only 3.4% are paid with bolivar notes.

“They have a war against our physical currency. We are moving this year to a more profound digital economy, in expansion. I’ve set the goal of an economy that’s 100% digital,” Maduro said, adding that physical money will eventually disappear.

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Discovery of liquid glass sheds light on the old scientific problem of the glass transition: An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Konstanz has uncovered a new state of matter, liquid glass, with previously unknown structural elements—new insights into the nature of glass and its transitions.

While glass is a truly ubiquitous material that we use on a daily basis, it also represents a major scientific conundrum. Contrary to what one might expect, the true nature of glass remains something of a mystery, with scientific inquiry into its chemical and physical properties still underway. In chemistry and physics, the term glass itself is a mutable concept: It includes the substance we know as window glass, but it may also refer to a range of other materials with properties that can be explained by reference to glass-like behavior, including, for instance, metals, plastics, proteins, and even biological cells.

While it may give the impression, glass is anything but conventionally solid. Typically, when a material transitions from a liquid to a the molecules line up to form a crystal pattern. In glass, this does not happen. Instead, the molecules are effectively frozen in place before crystallization happens. This strange and disordered state is characteristic of glasses across different systems and scientists are still trying to understand how exactly this metastable state forms.

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