Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 8532

Am Nat. 2017 Nov;190:694–706. doi: 10.1086÷693854. Epub 2017 Sep 5.

Biological invasions offer interesting situations for observing how novel interactions between closely related, formerly allopatric species may trigger phenotypic evolution in situ. Assuming that successful invaders are usually filtered to be competitively dominant, invasive and native species may follow different trajectories. Natives may evolve traits that minimize the negative impact of competition, while trait shifts in invasives should mostly reflect expansion dynamics, through selection for colonization ability and transiently enhanced mutation load at the colonization front. These ideas were tested through a large-scale common-garden experiment measuring life-history traits in two closely related snail species, one invasive and one native, co-occurring in a network of freshwater ponds in Guadeloupe. We looked for evidence of recent evolution by comparing uninvaded or recently invaded sites with long-invaded ones.

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Circa 2012

Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever or a device that opens new dimensions into quantum phenomena such as emergence and entanglement.

Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe. This is the “wow” factor behind a device known as a “space-time crystal,” a four-dimensional crystal that has periodic structure in time as well as space. However, there are also practical and important scientific reasons for constructing a space-time crystal. With such a 4D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective means by which to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles, the so-called many-body problem of physics. A space-time crystal could also be used to study phenomena in the quantum world, such as entanglement, in which an action on one particle impacts another particle even if the two particles are separated by vast distances.

A space-time crystal, however, has only existed as a concept in the minds of theoretical scientists with no serious idea as to how to actually build one – until now. An international team of scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has proposed the experimental design of a space-time crystal based on an electric-field ion trap and the Coulomb repulsion of particles that carry the same electrical charge.

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Terahertz radiation is used for security checks at airports, for medical examinations and also for quality checks in industry. However, radiation in the terahertz range is extremely difficult to generate. Scientists at TU Wien have now succeeded in developing a terahertz radiation source that breaks several records: it is extremely efficient, and its spectrum is very broad—it generates different wavelengths from the entire terahertz range. This opens up the possibility of creating short radiation pulses with extremely high radiation intensity. The new terahertz technology has now been presented in the journal Nature Communications.

The “Terahertz Gap” Between Lasers and Antennas

“Terahertz has very useful properties,” says Claudia Gollner from the Institute of Photonics at TU Wien. “It can easily penetrate many materials, but unlike X-rays, it is harmless because it is not ionizing radiation.”

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The man, in his 30s, is in stable condition at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash. Officials said they are monitoring him there out of an abundance of caution, not because he is seriously ill. The man arrived in the United States last week, before federal health officials began screening travelers from the central Chinese city of Wuhan at Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York’s John F. Kennedy international airports, the first such effort since the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, calls for sensible regulation of AI. I agree. “Companies such as ours cannot just build promising new technology and let market forces decide how it will be used. It is equally incumbent on us to make sure that technology is harnessed for good and available to everyone.”

Companies cannot just build new technology and let market forces decide how it will be used.

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Satellite and Earth observation startup Capella Space has unveiled a new design for its satellite technology, which improves upon its existing testbed hardware platform to deliver high-resolution imaging capable of providing detail at less than 0.5 meters (1.6 feet). Its new satellite, code-named “Sequoia,” also will be able to provide real-time tasking, meaning Capella’s clients will be able to get imaging from these satellites of a desired area basically on demand.

Capella’s satellites are “synthetic aperture radar” (SAR for short) imaging satellites, which means they’re able to provide 2D images of the Earth’s surface even through cloud cover, or when the area being imaged is on the night side of the planet. SAR imaging resolution is typically much higher than the 0.5-meter range that Capella’s new design will enable — and it’s especially challenging to get that kind of performance from small satellites, which is what Sequoia will be.

The new satellite design is a “direct result of customer feedback,” Capella says, and includes advancements like an improved solar array for faster charging and quicker recycling; better thermals to allow it to image for longer stretches at a time; a much more agile targeting array, which means it can switch targets much more quickly in response to customer needs; and a higher bandwidth downlink, meaning it can transfer more data per orbital pass than any other SAR system from a commercial company in its size class.

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