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POPSGetting Closer to String Theory Without string theory, physicists need two theories to explain how the universe works. General relativity explains gravity, while the other three basic forces are explained by the “standard model.” Moreover, gravity has been very difficult to reconcile with quantum theory, a problem for which string theory offers a solution.
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POPSNew quantum algorithm helpes solving big problems. “Large-scale linear systems of equations exist in many fields, such as weather prediction, engineering, and computer vision”, says Harrow. “Quantum computers could supply serious improvements for these and many other problems. For example, a trillion-variable problem would take a classical computer at least a hundred trillion steps to solve, but using the new algorithm, a quantum computer could solve the problem in just a few hundred steps”. The solution could also be applied to other complex processes such as image and video processing, genetic analyses and even Internet traffic control. Sounds pretty good to me!
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POPSPhysicists Calculate Number of Parallel Universes
Think it's crazy? Check this out, then: To work these numbers out, Linde and Vanchurin looked back to the time shortly after the Big Bang, which they view as a quantum process that generated lots of quantum fluctuations. Then during the period of inflation, the universe grew rapidly and these quantum fluctuations were "frozen" into classical perturbations in distinct regions. Today, each of these regions could be a different universe, having its own distinct laws of low energy physics. By analyzing the mechanism (called "slow roll inflation") that initially generated the quantum fluctuations, the scientists could estimate the number of resulting universes at 10^10^10^7 (a number which is dependent on the model they used). However, this number is limited by other factors, specifically by the limits of the human brain. Since the total amount of information that one individual can absorb in a lifetime is about 10^16 bits, which is equivalent to 10^10^16 configurations, this means tha
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POPSInvisible hand in invisible matter. Dark matter might not exist. Dr Famaey added, "If we account for our observations with a modified law of gravity, it makes perfect sense to replace the effective action of hypothetical dark matter with a force closely related to the distribution of visible matter." The implications of the new research could change some of the most widely held scientific theories about the history and expansion of the universe. Lead researcher Dr. Gianfranco Gentile at the University of Ghent concludes, "Understanding this puzzling conspiracy is probably the key to unlock the formation of galaxies and their structures." What about NASA's direct proof on dark matter's existance? Broken study? This is actually makes sense, but so far is a little hard to accept. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
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POPSDid you know? This is a great video everyone should take some time to watch. We see daily many different advances on science, technology, internet... Everywhere, journals, blogs, radio, TV, here, on Clipmarks, reading some very interesting clips about many new creations, advances, innovations, new things that we just find awesome. But at the end of the day, putting everything together, do we ask ourselves what does all this means in a more general context?
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POPSInfant pain, adult repercussions Continuation: To test this hypothesis, LaPrairie and Murphy gave adult animals that were injured at the time of birth a drug called naloxone. This drug blocks the actions of endogenous opioids. After animals received an injection of naloxone, they behaved just like an uninjured animal. The scientists then focused on the periaqueductal gray region to see if inflammation at birth altered the natural opioid protein expression in this brain region. Using a variety of anatomical techniques, the investigators showed that animals that were injured at birth had endogenous opioid levels that were two times higher than normal. While it's beneficial to decrease pain sensitivity in some cases, it's not good to be completely resilient to pain. ------------------------------------------- Wow, I had now idea of that. The feeling of pain fascinates me. It's just so interesting how important it is and to think how it works... Sometimes we may not even pay attention to it, but many of
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POPSHearing Voices – Underpinnings of Auditory Hallucinations What exactly is going on in the brain during auditory hallucinations? And is the act of hearing voices inside one’s head always incontrovertible evidence of psychosis? In recent years, the use of MRIs, PET scans and other imaging technologies has given researchers some specific clues about these and other questions. This is very interesting, so far there was nothing that confirmed that there are any kinds of brain tissue abnomalities in schizophrenic people, this research, done by a group of researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway can help in the development of new therapy techniques on people with auditory hallucinations. They spotted an abnormal activity on a brain's area which is related to external speech (the right middle temporal gyrus), which can be the cause of language processing dysfunctions. Most notably, the group of British researchers hypothesized that if such language dysfunction “has its origins in early brain development, it might be possible to dete
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POPSNanodiamonds Advance Anticancer Gene Therapy Dr. Ho and his research team engineered surface-modified nanodiamond particles that successfully and efficiently delivered DNA into mammalian cells. The delivery efficiency was 70 times greater than that of a conventional standard for gene delivery. That's just great! :D
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POPSCould we create quantum creatures in the lab? By impinging on the virus, it forces it into a superposition of both its ground state and next vibrational energy state. Now the virus should be doing two different things at once " the equivalent of you simultaneously mowing the lawn and doing the shopping. "They have come up with a really neat experiment " inventive and I think feasible," says Peter Knight of Imperial College London. You can read the full article for more details on the process. It's worth reading if you care enough or are just curious. :)
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POPSEarly Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late More important, these regions included the suprachiasmatic area, which is home to the body’s circadian clock. This area sends signals to boost alertness as the pressure to sleep mounts. Unlike night owls, early risers didn’t get this late-day lift. Peigneux says faster activation of sleep pressure appears to prevent early birds from fully benefiting from the circadian signal, as evening types do. Wait wait, did he just say the night owls showed no difference in attention-related brain activity and instead, after 10 hours they had grown more alert? This is great! I always worried about that, now seems like I don't have to, anymore. :D
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POPSTrapped girls raised alarm on Facebook Now come on, it is a nice story and everything but as said, if they had access to facebook, why not just dial 000 for the Fire Service? Endangering their lives just for a story to tell their friends?
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POPSPhysicist unlocking the mysteries of neighboring galaxies "...Our observations also suggest that the Triangulum Galaxy is being ripped apart by Andromeda." Andromeda, and our own galaxy the Milky Way, are the two largest members of a small cluster of galaxies known as the Local Group. Triangulum, the third largest member of the Local Group, is about one-tenth the size of Andromeda. "Within a few billion years Triangulum will be completely destroyed by Andromeda and its stars will be dispersed throughout the Andromeda halo," says Dr. Widrow. "And a few billion years after that, Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide and merge together to form a giant elliptical galaxy."
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POPSDitching binary will make quantum computers more powerful Brilliant! Jonathan Home at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, says Neeley's team needs to extend its basic system in such a way that two or more qudits can transport information between them, which would allow more complex computational operations to be undertaken. "Designing the sort of system where two qudits interact, but still retain the interesting properties of a five-level system, will be a major challenge," Home says. Did he say "challenge"? I bet we're going to see this working anytime soon.
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POPSCreating fat that burns calories Understanding how brown fat develops may ultimately lead to better ways to treat diseases like diabetes. This research is still in its early days, Celi says. “At the present time, this is not an immediate intervention , but it is definitely something to look forward to in the long run.” Awesome news, hope they can really develop this research to help at least diminish this huge problem that obesity and diabetes are today.
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POPSMolecules revealed in all their glory by microscope Gross revealed to physicsworld.com that there was an element of luck in discovering that carbon monoxide makes for a highly effective AFM tip because they had picked up the CO molecule by accident during routine use of their conventional AFM. The researchers were quick, however, to realize that the observed improvement in resolution made scientific sense because CO has been used in scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), for many years, to improve resolution for the same reason. Now, this is funny how we can discover things even if we're not trying to. Gross says that he and his team intend to develop their research with the short term goal of improving resolution and building up a catalogue of chemical signatures for a range of different atoms and molecules. Eventually the CO-tipped AFM could be used to determine the identity of unidentified familiar molecules for use in chemical analysis. In the longer term, new forms of AFM such as this could be applied to the study of chemical rea
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POPSStrategically Placed Obstacle Near an Exit Can Speed Evacuations Andreas Schadschneider, a professor at the University of Cologne's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Germany who has studied pedestrian and traffic flows, says that the obstacle effect has popped up occasionally in the literature for several years. But the new work is, to his knowledge, the first time it has been empirically tested. "So, it no longer remains a vague theoretical prediction, but should be considered a serious effect that might be used for substantial increase in the safety of sports arenas and other large public buildings," Schadschneider says. This is interesting, but the man's got a point when he says: "For one thing, real-world evacuees might be discouraged by the appearance of an obstacle and retreat toward a different exit, which could negate the obstacle's benefits." Indeed, it's a hard thing to simulate. Just hope they're right.
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POPSDiscovery of natural odors could help develop mosquito repellents "CO2 emitted in human breath is the main attractant for the Culex mosquito to find people, aiding the transmission of these deadly diseases," Ray said. "In our experiments we identified hexanol, and a related odor, butanal, as strong inhibitors of CO2-sensitive neurons in Culex mosquitoes. These compounds can now be used to guide research in developing novel repellents and masking agents that are economical and environmentally safe methods to block mosquitoes' ability to detect CO2 in our breath, thereby dramatically reducing mosquito-human contact." Woah, this is just great! This should be a great reason to celebrate, once thei're done with the repellent. I think there isn't one person in the planet who hasn't got mad with mosquitos at one time or another. Great news, just great.
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POPSDeath rays from space "Every square centimeter on the top of the Earth's atmosphere is hit by several cosmic rays per second," Fields says. "This is forever going on." At present, the average human receives the equivalent of about 10 chest X-rays per year from cosmic rays. We shouldn't be alarmed by this, since it is just part of the natural background radiation under which humans and our ancestors have been exposed to for eons. Indeed, cosmic-ray-induced mutations may sometimes be beneficial. "It is clear that in some way cosmic rays shaped evolution of organisms on Earth," says Franco Ferrari from the University of Szczecin in Poland. Although 30 light-years is small on a galactic scale, Fields thinks it likely that Earth has been caught in a supernova "kill radius" as many as a dozen times over our 4.5-billion-year history. However, a nearby supernova is not the only way to increase the cosmic ray intensity. As our Sun orbits around the galactic center, it regularly passes through one of th
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POPSNew form of carbon created. This is a very nice one. And high speed transistors from MEG? This would provide many changes in all the electronic equipment we use daily.
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POPSScientists are to turn chickens into dinosaurs. Now, a quote from the classic Jurassic Park movie: Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs... Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth... Is this really a good idea?
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POPSKamikaze Planet Some as-yet-unknown manifestation of tidal forces could prolong the planet's life by as much as 500 million years. That's because the close and fierce interaction between two large and essentially gaseous bodies could produce turbulence or other effects that could somehow cancel out WASP-18b's orbital deterioration. Astronomers may know whether that's happening within a decade or so, Collier Cameron says. "It's the find of a lifetime," says astronomer Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park. "The beauty of this discovery is that we will be able to know within 5 to 10 years,"Hamilton says. "I think that it could go either way--which makes it very exciting." Very interesting!
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POPSThe revolution in Nanophotonics Future work may involve creating a spaser-based nanolaser that uses an electrical source instead of a light source, which would make them more practical for computer and electronics applications. Awesome news. I can only think how great it's going to be for other projects and researches, speeding up the discoveries. :)
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POPSTranslating human feelings into computer data. Such tools could help companies pinpoint the effect of specific issues on customer perceptions, helping them respond with appropriate marketing and public relations strategies. For casual Web surfers, simpler incarnations of sentiment analysis are sprouting up in the form of lightweight tools like Tweetfeel, Twendz and Twitrratr. These sites allow users to take the pulse of Twitter users about particular topics. A quick search on Tweetfeel, for example, reveals that 77 percent of recent tweeters liked the movie “Julie & Julia.” But the same search on Twitrratr reveals a few misfires. The site assigned a negative score to a tweet reading “julie and julia was truly delightful!!” That same message ended with “we all felt very hungry afterwards” " and the system took the word “hungry” to indicate a negative sentiment. While the more advanced algorithms used by Scout Labs, Jodange and Newssift employ advanced analytics to avoid such pitfalls, none of these serv
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POPSDiscovered particles from the most massive explosions in the Milky Way. Rest of the article: This star died and exploded in the Milky Way. When a star of this mass dies, most of its material is ejected and ploughs a pathway through a massive, stellar wind. This wind has been created earlier in the death process, when the star lost part of its original mass. The wind blows away from the star, and the final definitive explosion of the star then drives new material through the previously established wind. A shock-wave in space Electrons and positrons are accelerated during the process and create a shock-wave, similar to that formed when an aeroplane breaks the sound barrier. Julia Becker and her colleagues show that it is just such a shock-wave that has created the observed particle flux that has astounded scientists. Wow...
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