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Oct 8, 2019

Complex energies, quantum symmetries

Posted by in category: quantum physics

In a certain sense, physics is the study of the universe’s symmetries. Physicists strive to understand how systems and symmetries change under various transformations.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis realizes one of the first parity-time (PT) symmetric , allowing scientists to observe how that kind of symmetry—and the act of breaking of it—leads to previously unexplored phenomena. The work from the laboratory of Kater Murch, associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is published Oct. 7 in the journal Nature Physics.

Other experiments have demonstrated PT symmetry in such as coupled pendulums or optical devices, but this new work in Murch’s lab, along with experiments in China by Yang Wu et al., reported in Science this May, provides the first experimental realization of a PT-symmetric quantum system.

Oct 8, 2019

From ‘weirdo’ PhD stargazer to Nobel Physics laureate

Posted by in categories: physics, space

As a student astronomer scanning the skies with homemade instruments a quarter of a century ago, Didier Queloz spent months doubting the data that led him to an inescapable conclusion: he’d just discovered the first planet outside Earth’s solar system.

The Swiss scientist had spent much of his PhD research refining techniques to detect so-called exoplanets, which until one fateful night in October 1995 had previously only existed in the realm of science fiction.

Queloz and his colleague Michel Mayor, who on Tuesday were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their pioneering work, had already overcome a number of obstacles in their galaxy-wide search.

Oct 8, 2019

Scientists Discover Record Methane Emission in the Russian Arctic

Posted by in category: futurism

Methane bomb is ticking.


Researchers were able to see the greenhouse gas bubbling through the seawater.

Oct 8, 2019

Walmart has 1,500 data scientists and is hiring more amid a push to adopt artificial intelligence. The retailer’s chief data officer recently shared the 3 questions that guide all its AI projects

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Walmart has over 100,000 different machine learning or AI-based projects currently in production. The success rate, however, is still just 75 percent.

Oct 8, 2019

New drone and droid tech inches us closer to riding with an all-AI entourage

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

With a self-guiding drone hovering over your shoulder, a not-too-humanoid robot sidekick as your wingman, and a four-legged fetch ‘bot trotting along beside, the day when you can surround yourself with a whole gaggle of AI-powered helpers is already here … even if it’s still the wee hours of the early morning.

Whether by air, on wheels, or even on padded little robot paws, the technology that drives our mechanized helpers is reaching that autonomous point at which the droids are able to think for themselves as they carry out their limited missions. Sure, they’re not quite ready to cross platforms and begin communicating with one another just yet, but at least they all can communicate with you — which pretty much makes you the star character in your budding little electronic entourage.

Oct 8, 2019

Run top quark run

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Dive into the subatomic world, into the heart of protons or neutrons, and you’ll find elementary particles known as quarks. Measuring the mass of these quarks can be challenging, but new results from the CMS collaboration reveal for the first time how the mass of the top quark – the heaviest of six types of quarks – varies depending on the energy scale used to measure the particle.

The theory of quantum chromodynamics, a component of the Standard Model, predicts this energy-scale variation, known as running, for the masses of all quarks and for the strong force acting between them. Observing the running masses of quarks can therefore provide a way of testing quantum chromodynamics and the Standard Model.

Experiments at CERN and other laboratories have already measured the running masses of the bottom and charm quarks, the second and third heaviest quarks, and the results were in agreement with quantum chromodynamics. Now, the CMS collaboration has used data from high-energy proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider to chase out the running mass of the top quark.

Oct 8, 2019

Facebook’s AI uses schemas to teach robots to manipulate objects in less than 10 hours of training

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

In a new paper, Facebook researchers propose an AI technique that uses schemas to teach robots to manipulate objects in less than 10 hours of training.

Oct 8, 2019

Giant Molecules Exist in Two Places at Once in Unprecedented Quantum Experiment

Posted by in category: quantum physics

The new study demonstrates a bizarre quantum effect at never-before-seen scales.

Oct 8, 2019

Discover how scientists are developing a new gene therapy that could defeat age-related diseases and how you can help them do it!

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Check out: https://www.lifespan.io/mitomouse

Oct 8, 2019

An Interview with Dr. Amutha Boominathan

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

We recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Amutha Boominathan from the SENS Research Foundation, at the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2019 conference about her research on mitochondrial repair therapies, the value of animal models, and her views on the future of aging research.

Dr. Amutha Boominathan received both her MSc and her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Pune and the National Chemical Laboratory in India, respectively. She went on to do postdoctoral work in the U.S. relating to mitochondrial biogenesis at U. Penn and Rutgers University. She has extensively studied mechanisms of fusion and fission in mitochondria, Fe-S cluster biosynthesis, and protein import into mitochondria as part of her postdoctoral fellowship with the American Heart Association.

Currently, Amutha leads the MitoSENS program at SENS Research Foundation in Mountain view, California. Her research group is focusing on understanding mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations and restoring lost functionality as a result of these mutations by way of the allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes. Inherited mtDNA mutations can result in severe and debilitating diseases, such as NARP, Leigh’s syndrome and MELAS. Even in otherwise healthy individuals, mtDNA mutations accumulate with age. The MitoSENS team has already succeeded in stably expressing the ATP8 gene using their method and is looking forward to tackling each of the 13 mitochondrial protein genes in the coming years. Its goal is to develop safe and effective gene therapies for mitochondrial dysfunction.