Lifeboat Foundation

Studies show that humans have among the most precise and subtle awareness of both musical tonality and ‘beat’, or rhythm.

The evolution of beat perception likely unfolded gradually among primates, reaching its pinnacle in humans.

By Henkjan Honing & The MIT Press Reader

Malware — information security newspaper | hacking news.

In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2024. We’ll hear about the mass of the neutrino, the neural basis of consciousness and the climate lawsuits at the Hague, to name but a few.

Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 6 January 2023.

New discoveries in Tidal Disruption Events enhance our understanding of supermassive black holes and their properties.

A new study by Hebrew University is a significant breakthrough in understanding Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) involving supermassive black holes. The new simulations, for the first time ever, accurately replicate the entire sequence of a TDE from stellar disruption to the peak luminosity of the resulting flare. This study has unveiled a previously unknown type of shockwave within TDEs, settling a longstanding debate about the energy source of the brightest phases in these events. It confirms that shock dissipation powers the brightest weeks of a TDE flare, opening doors for future studies to utilize TDE observations as a means to measure essential properties of black holes and potentially test Einstein’s predictions in extreme gravitational environments.

The mysteries of supermassive black holes have long captivated astronomers, offering a glimpse into the deepest corners of our universe. Now, a new study led by Dr. Elad Steinberg and Dr. Nicholas C. Stone at the Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University, sheds new light on these enigmatic cosmic entities.

New observations at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility offer vital insights into energetic ions in fusion plasmas, key for fusion power development and space plasma understanding, with implications for satellite technology.

In a burning plasma, maintaining confinement of fusion-produced energetic ions is essential to producing energy. These fusion plasmas host a wide array of electromagnetic waves that can push energetic ions out of the plasma. This reduces the heating of the plasma from fusion reaction products and ends the burning plasma state.

Recent measurements at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility provide the first direct observations of energetic ions moving through space and energy in a tokamak. Researchers combined these measurements with advanced computer models of electromagnetic waves and how they interact with energetic ions. The results provide an improved understanding of the interplay between plasma waves and energetic ions in fusion plasmas.

Rice University materials scientists developed a fast, low-cost, scalable method to make covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Credit: Photo by Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University.

Materials scientists at Rice University have created an efficient, affordable, and scalable technique for producing covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These crystalline polymers are notable for their adjustable molecular structure, extensive surface area, and porosity, making them potentially valuable in areas like energy applications, semiconductor devices, sensors, filtration systems, and drug delivery.

“What makes these structures so special is that they are polymers but they arrange themselves in an ordered, repeating structure that makes it a crystal,” said Jeremy Daum, a Rice doctoral student and lead author of a study published in ACS Nano. “These structures look a bit like chicken wire ⎯ they’re hexagonal lattices that repeat themselves on a two-dimensional plane, and then they stack on top of themselves, and that’s how you get a layered 2D material.”

A new Northwestern Medicine study shows that RNA interference may play a key role in Alzheimer’s. For the first time, scientists have identified short strands of toxic RNAs that contribute to brain cell death and DNA damage in Alzheimer’s and aged brains. Short strands of protective RNAs are decreased during aging, the scientists report, which may allow Alzheimer’s to develop.

The study also found that older individuals with a superior memory capacity (known as SuperAgers) have higher amounts of protective short RNA strands in their brain cells. SuperAgers are individuals aged 80 and older with a memory capacity of individuals 20 to 30 years younger.

“Nobody has ever connected the activities of RNAs to Alzheimer’s,” said corresponding study author Marcus Peter, the Tom D. Spies Professor of Cancer Metabolism at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We found that in aging brain cells, the balance between toxic and protective sRNAs shifts toward toxic ones.”

Born tail first, bottlenose dolphin calves are initially adorned with two delicate rows of whiskers along their snout, resembling the tactile whiskers of seals. However, these whiskers are shed shortly after birth, leaving behind a pattern of indentations called vibrissal pits. Recently, Tim Hüttner and Guido Dehnhardt, researchers from the University of Rostock in Germany, began to suspect that these pits might serve a purpose beyond being mere remnants.

Could they allow adult bottlenose dolphins to sense weak electric fields? Taking an initial close look, they realized that the remnant pits resemble the structures that allow sharks to detect electric fields, and when they checked whether captive bottlenose dolphins could sense an electric field in water, all of the animals felt the field.

‘It was very impressive to see,’ says Dehnhardt, who recently published the extraordinary discovery and how the animals could use their electric sense in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

The research-based map is the first to display an updated, comprehensive National Seismic Hazard Model for all 50 states.

Nearly 75 percent of the U.S. could experience damaging earthquake shaking, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey-led team of 50+ scientists and engineers.

This was one of several key findings from the latest USGS National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM). The model was used to create a color-coded map that pinpoints where damaging earthquakes are most likely to occur based on insights from seismic studies, historical geologic data, and the latest data-collection technologies.