Lifeboat Foundation

In a new study, astronomers report novel evidence regarding the limits of planet formation, finding that after a certain point, planets larger than Earth have difficulty forming near low-metallicity stars.

Using the sun as a baseline, astronomers can measure when a star formed by determining its metallicity, or the level of heavy elements present within it. Metal-rich stars or nebulas formed relatively recently, while metal-poor objects were likely present during the early universe.

Previous studies found a weak connection between metallicity rates and planet formation, noting that as a star’s metallicity goes down, so, too, does planet formation for certain planet populations, like sub-Saturns or sub-Neptunes.

Drugs for the K-Ras oncogene inspire an approach for targeting the GTPases, a family of enzymes whose dysfunction can lead to Parkinson’s and many other diseases.

UCSF scientists have discovered how to target a class of molecular switches called GTPases that are involved in a myriad of diseases from Parkinson’s to cancer and have long been thought to be “undruggable.”

Because of their slippery exteriors, the GTPases have remained largely out of reach of modern drug discovery, with the exception of the notorious cancer-causing GTPase called K-Ras.

Entanglement is the essential resource that enables quantum information and processing tasks. Historically, sources of entangled light were developed as experimental tools to test the foundations of quantum mechanics. In this study, we make an extreme version of such a source, where the entangled photons are separated in energy by 5 orders of magnitude, to engineer a quantum interconnect between light and superconducting microwave devices.

Our entanglement source is an integrated chip-scale device with a specially designed acoustic transducer, whose vibrations can simultaneously modulate the frequency of an optical cavity and generate an oscillating voltage in a superconducting electrical resonator. We operate this transducer at cryogenic temperatures to maintain the acoustic and electrical components of the device close to their quantum ground state and excite it with laser pulses to generate entangled pairs. We measure statistical correlations between the optical and microwave emission to verify entanglement.

Our work demonstrates a fundamental prerequisite for a quantum information processing architecture in which room-temperature optical communication links may be used to network superconducting quantum-bit processors in distant cryogenic setups.

We may be looking for Martian life in the wrong places. The Viking life detection experiments might have inadvertently killed indigenous Martian life by applying too much water. Instead we should “follow the salt” to find life on Mars! See my blog on BigThink (with link to Nature Astronomy paper), Weblink through my webpage:

Posted on Big Think.

The foundation hopes to prevent extinctions, and obtain the necessary biological material to safeguard genetic diversity.

Already backed by a confirmed $50 million in funding, its goal is to halt the extinction crisis through three key conservation focus points.

Continue reading “Colossal Biosciences Launches $50 Million Foundation To Halt Extinction Crisis” »

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Scientists just released the first comprehensive survey of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the most dangerous earthquake-producing fault in the US.

Physicists have observed the Zel’dovich effect in an electromagnetic system – something that was thought to be incredibly difficult to do until now. This observation, in a simplified induction generator, suggests that the effect could in fact be quite fundamental in nature.

In 1971, the Russian physicist Yakov Zel’dovich predicted that electromagnetic waves scattered by a rotating metallic cylinder should be amplified by gaining mechanical rotational energy from the cylinder. The effect, explains Marion Cromb of the University of Southampton, works as follows: waves with angular momentum – or twist – that would usually be absorbed by an object, instead become amplified by that object. However, this amplification only occurs if a specific condition is met: namely, that the object is rotating at an angular velocity that’s higher than the frequency of the incoming waves divided by the wave angular momentum number. In this specific electromagnetic experiment, this number was 1, due to spin angular momentum, but it can be larger.

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A prototype described as the world’s strongest functional structural battery has been unveiled by researchers in Sweden.

By 2023, Asp’s team had improved on this approach with a second-generation structural battery that used the same constituents, but employed an improved manufacturing method. This time, the team used an infusion technique to ensure the resin was distributed more evenly throughout the carbon fibre network.

In this incarnation, the team enhanced the battery’s negative electrode by using ultra-thin spread tow carbon fibre, where the fibres are spread into thin sheets. This approach improved both the mechanical strength and the electrical conductivity of the battery. At that stage, however, the mechanical strength of the battery was still limited by the LFP positive electrode.

Continue reading “Structural battery is world’s strongest, say researchers” »