Lifeboat Foundation

We swat bees to avoid painful stings, but do they feel the pain we inflict? A new study suggests they do, a possible clue that they and other insects have sentience—the ability to be aware of their feelings.

“It’s an impressive piece of work” with important implications, says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher and expert on animal sentience at the London School of Economics who was not involved with the paper. If the study holds up, he says, “the world contains far more sentient beings than we ever realized.”

Previous research has shown honey bees and bumble bees are intelligent, innovative, creatures. They understand the concept of zero, can do simple math, and distinguish among human faces (and probably bee faces, too). They’re usually optimistic when successfully foraging, but can become depressed if momentarily trapped by a predatory spider. Even when a bee escapes a spider, “her demeanor changes; for days after, she’s scared of every flower,” says Lars Chittka, a cognitive scientist at Queen Mary University of London whose lab carried out that study as well as the new research. “They were experiencing an emotional state.”

If you’re expecting monoclonal antibody treatments to save you from getting more severe outcomes like death should you get Covid-19, it may be time to rethink that strategy. A letter published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on November 18 detailed how many of the currently spreading Omicron subvariants, namely the BA.4.6, BA.2.75.2, and BJ.1 ones, appear to be resistant to most available monoclonal antibody treatments. And the BQ.1.1 Omicron subvariant, which has become one of the two dominant versions of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the U.S., seems resistant to all of the available monoclonal antibody treatments. Yes, all of them, as in every single one.

BQ certainly doesn’t stand for “be quiet,” as the BQ.1.1 subvariant is now causing a commotion, being responsible for an estimated 24.2% of all new reported Covid-19 cases over the past week while the not-too-different BQ.1 subvariant has been the culprit behind 25.5% of them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If you do the math, that means that these two Omicron subvariants are now comprising over half of all reported Covid-19 cases, meaning that they have overtaken the BA.5 as the “alpha-dog” of SARS-CoV-2 versions. Therefore, you can probably no longer rely on any type of monoclonal antibody should you get Covid-19. That’s certainly bad news for anyone not able to get enough protection from Covid-19 vaccination such as those who have very weak immune systems.

You know that 1997 Backstreet Boys song that goes “everybody, yeah?” Well, looks like the latest 2022 Covid-19 coronavirus Omicron subvariants have been going, “antibody, no-oh.” So much for the argument that other Covid-19 precautions are not needed because monoclonal antibodies are available. Even back in 2020 and 2021 when monoclonal antibody treatments seemed to work against the then-circulating previous versions of the virus, such an argument held water about as well as a Brillo pad thong since relying on any single Covid-19 precaution or treatment has always been a foolhardy approach. Doing so was akin to telling someone, “since you have underwear on, why do you need pants or a skirt or a kilt?” Ever since the start of the pandemic, real pandemic experts have continued to advocate for more of a “Swiss cheese” approach that entails always layering on different Covid-19 interventions simultaneously because each single intervention has its holes.

Furstenberg’s Proof

Szemerédi had been examining sets that contain a “positive fraction” of all the integers. Take, for example, the set containing all multiples of 5. As you look at bigger and bigger swaths of the number line, multiples of 5 continue to appear regularly. Mathematicians say that the set containing all multiples of 5 has the fraction of a fifth of all the integers.

Entry for the #3Blue1Brown Summer of Math Exposition 2022 (#SoME2)byRodrigo Coin Curvo& Alexander Maier.

You can buy Universe Sandbox 2 game here: http://amzn.to/2yJqwU6

Hello and welcome to What Da Math!
In this video, we will talk about the planets we discovered in 2018 that seem to be in a galaxy far away.

Continue reading “We Just Discovered Planets in Another Galaxy” »

You can buy Universe Sandbox 2 game here: http://amzn.to/2yJqwU6

Hello and welcome to What Da Math!
In this video, we will talk about alien life.

Continue reading “Potential Answer for Fermi Paradox” »

What we call laws of physics are often just mathematical descriptions of some part of nature. Ultimate physical laws probably don’t exist and physics is all the better for it, says theoretical physicist Sankar Das Sarma.

Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research via Chris Adami, Paul Davies, AIP Advances, EurekaAlert and University of Portsmouth

“Information,” wrote Arizona State University astrophysicist Paul Davies in an email to The Daily Galaxy, “is a concept that is both abstract and mathematical. It lies at the foundation of both biology and physics.”

Continue reading “Is Information the Fifth State of Matter in the Universe?” »

Scientists with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a method that helps to fine-tune the control of particles using ultrasonic waves according to new research, which they say expands our understanding of the field of acoustic levitation.

The levitation of objects, once a phenomenon seen only in science fiction and fantasy, now represents a field in acoustics with practical applications in multiple research areas, industries, and even among hobbyists. However, the use of high-intensity sound waves to suspend small objects in the air is nothing new. The theoretical basis for overcoming gravity with the help of acoustic radiation pressure goes as far back as the 1930s, when researcher Louis King first studied the suspension of particles in the field of a sound wave, and how this demonstrates acoustic radiation force being exerted against them.

Later calculations beginning in the 1950s helped to further refine our understanding of the acoustic radiation force produced by the scattering of sound waves. However, the modern foundation for acoustic levitation science draws mainly from the work of superconductivity pioneer Lev. P. Gorkov, who was the first to synthesize previous studies and provide a solid mathematical basis for the phenomenon.