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Blog – Page 771

Scientists have discovered a protein that can directly halt DNA damage. Better yet, a new study shows it appears to be ‘plug and play’, theoretically able to slot into any organism, making it a promising candidate for a cancer vaccine.

DNA damage response protein C (DdrC) was found in a hardy little bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans. DdrC seems to be very effective at detecting DNA damage, putting a stop to it and alerting the cell to start the repair process.

But DdrC’s best feature might be that it’s pretty self-contained, doing its job without the help of other proteins.

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The wave dimension is crucial. Without the time-binding wave of consciousness established by actual entities remembering their past instant(s), experiencing, choosing, and acting in their present instants, and anticipating and then passing their inheritance on to their future instant(s), it would not be possible to begin a sentence and then go on to complete it in a way that has meaning. It would not be possible to interact with ourselves or other people in a way that has meaning. We couldn’t begin, continue, and complete a meal. We would forget where we were and what we were doing. We couldn’t begin, continue, and complete a walk. We would forget where we were and what we were doing. We couldn’t undertake any complex task and remember what we were doing. We certainly couldn’t drive a car or even cross a street.

If we pay attention to our own consciousnesses closely, we find that, as each moment of our experience transpires, we take in sensations from outside in the world and inside in our bodies and then we layer feelings and thoughts and images on top of these sensations to form a moment of experience with some coherence and meaning. And this moment of experience passes its sensations and feelings and thoughts and images on to the next moment of experience with some relative coherence.

Now, with an untrained mind, our sensations and feelings and thoughts and images kind of jump around outside of our control. But with a relatively trained mind, we can focus in a way that allows us to maintain a constant stream of sensations and feelings and thoughts and images and choose what we want to focus that stream on in an expansion of our consciousnesses. That is the gift of mindfulness and meditation. Using Whitehead’s language, we can say that we can work to shift our mental prehensions to embrace a different and more powerful form or idea of what it is to be human.

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We revise the dynamics of interacting vector-like dark energy, a theoretical framework proposed to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe. By investigating the interaction between vector-like dark energy and dark matter, we analyze its effects on the cosmic expansion history and the thermodynamics of the accelerating universe. Our results demonstrate that the presence of interaction significantly influences the evolution of vector-like dark energy, leading to distinct features in its equation of state and energy density. We compare our findings with observational data and highlight the importance of considering interactions in future cosmological studies.

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A novel method utilising genes in our body to perform long-sequence DNA recombination and editing, called the RNA bridge, has been discovered and reported by genetic engineers. ThePrint #̦PureScience, Sandhya Ramesh explains the findings and implications.

Sources and further reading:

- Bridge RNAs direct programmable recombination of target and donor DNA https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

- Structural mechanism of bridge RNA-guided recombination https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

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New James Webb Space Telescope observations may have done with one of the longest-standing tensions in cosmology.

For almost a decade, astronomers have been struggling with a nagging mismatch between two different ways of determining the Hubble constant — a measure of the current expansion rate of the universe. This mismatch, known as the Hubble tension, has led to claims that new physics might be needed to solve the issue. (Read about the “constant controversy” in the June 2019 issue of Sky & Telescope.)

But a detailed analysis of a new set of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations now suggests that the problem may not exist. “As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” says Wendy Freedman (University of Chicago), “and I don’t see extraordinary evidence.”

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Researchers at Leibniz University Hannover have developed a technology for transmitting entangled photons through optical fibers, which could enable the integration of quantum and conventional internet, promising enhanced security and efficient use of existing infrastructure.

A team of four researchers from the Institute of Photonics at Leibniz University Hannover has developed an innovative transmitter-receiver system for transmitting entangled photons via optical fiber.

This breakthrough could enable the next generation of telecommunications technology, the quantum Internet, to be routed via optical fibers. The quantum Internet promises eavesdropping-proof encryption methods that even future quantum computers cannot decrypt, ensuring the security of critical infrastructure.

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Popular Summary.

Remote entanglement is crucial for quantum computing, sensing, and communication. Traditional methods for entanglement generation often depend on direct interactions between quantum bits (qubits) or the exchange of entangled photons. In this study, we demonstrate an alternative approach, where we create and preserve entanglement between two noninteracting qubits through dissipation into a shared waveguide.

While dissipation is typically viewed as detrimental, tailored dissipation can be harnessed to drive a system into complex quantum states while actively protecting it from decoherence. This approach, known as autonomous stabilization, has been previously used to create entanglement. However, entanglement stabilization has been confined to short distances due to the challenge of engineering shared dissipation between remote sites. Our experiment overcomes this challenge by employing an open waveguide as a one-dimensional photonic bath. We demonstrate that, under appropriate conditions, the interference of photons emitted into a waveguide from two qubits can stabilize them in an entangled stationary state when the qubits are strongly driven. Crucially, we can reconstruct the entangled state despite significant waveguide-induced dissipation by measuring the emitted photons. Our demonstration is made possible by precise control over qubit frequencies and efficient qubit-waveguide interfaces in superconducting circuits.

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Eminent physicists assemble to discuss quantum enigmas.

John von Neumann, John Wheeler, Hans Bethe, Robert Serber, Robert Marshak, Abraham Pais, J. Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, and Richard Feynman at the Shelter Island Conference of 1947:

https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla%3A310818…

The first Shelter Island Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics was held from June 2–4, 1947 at the Ram’s Head Inn in Shelter Island, New York. Shelter Island was the first major opportunity since Pearl Harbor and the Manhattan Project for the leaders of the American physics community to gather after the war. As Julian Schwinger would later recall, “It was the first time that people who had all this physics pent up in them for five years could talk to each other without somebody peering over their shoulders and saying, ‘Is this cleared?’”

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