Lifeboat Foundation

For those of you still upset over Pluto’s demotion, there may be a new ninth planet. Or at least NASA scientists believe it exists — and they want you to help find it.

The Zooniverse space projects site has launched a NASA-funded venture, Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, which lets anyone participate in the search for the not-yet-discovered planet.

“There are really low barriers to entry,” Dr. Laura Trouille of Zooniverse told CNN. “Anyone can participate, from a kindergartener to a 95-year-old.”

Science mimicking nature’s dew in a lab. Important btw in how we looking at H₂O harvesting and improving how we advance green energy; however, I see usage of this research in other emerging technologies as well.

Understanding how droplet condensation happens plays an essential role for our fundamental insights of wetting behaviors in nature and numerous applications. Since there is a lack of study of the initial formation and growing processes of condensed droplets down to nano-/submicroscale, relevant underlying mechanisms remain to be explored. We report an in situ observation of vapor condensation on nano-/microtextured superhydrophobic surfaces using optical microscopy. An interesting picture of the vapor condensation, from the initial appearance of individual small droplets (≤1 μm) to a Cassie-Baxter wetting state (30 μm), are exhibited. It is found that individual droplets preferentially nucleate at the top and the edge of single micropillars with very high apparent contact angles on the nanotextures. Scenarios of two distinguished growing modes are reported statistically and the underlying mechanisms are discussed in the view of thermodynamics. We particularly reveal that the formation of the Cassie-Baxter wetting state is a result of a continuous coalescence of individual small droplets, in which the nanotexture-enhanced superhydrophobicity plays a crucial role. We envision that these fundamental findings can deepen our understanding of the nucleation and development of condensed droplets in nanoscale, so as to optimize design strategies of superhydrophobic materials for a broad range of water-harvesting and heat-transfer systems.

Scientists from Harvard University plan to create a mammoth hybrid. They will splice mammoth DNA preserved in Siberian ice with Asian elephant DNA and grow the hybrid in an artificial womb.

Nice information on Quantum open systems via the existence of a functional relationship between a rigorous measure of quantum non–Markovian ity and the CCA localization. Sharing with my other QC R&D friends.

As discovered by P. W. Anderson, excitations do not propagate freely in a disordered lattice, but, due to destructive interference, they localise. As a consequence, when an atom interacts with a disordered lattice, one indeed observes a non-trivial excitation exchange between atom and lattice. Such non-trivial atomic dynamics will in general be characterised also by a non-trivial quantum information backflow, a clear signature of non–Markovian dynamics. To investigate the above scenario, we consider a quantum emitter, or atom, weakly coupled to a uniform coupled-cavity array (CCA). If initially excited, in the absence of disorder, the emitter undergoes a Markovian spontaneous emission by releasing all its excitation into the CCA (initially in its vacuum state). By introducing static disorder in the CCA the field normal modes become Anderson-localized, giving rise to a non–Markovian atomic dynamics. We show the existence of a functional relationship between a rigorous measure of quantum non–Markovian ity and the CCA localization. We furthermore show that the average non–Markovian ity of the atomic dynamics is well-described by a phenomenological model in which the atom is coupled, at the same time, to a single mode and to a standard — Markovian — dissipative bath.

New research on Parkinson and holds additional insights in cell & neuro technology.

Autophagy functions as a main route for the degradation of superfluous and damaged constituents of the cytoplasm. Defects in autophagy are implicated in the development of various age-dependent degenerative disorders such as cancer, neurodegeneration and tissue atrophy, and in accelerated aging. To promote basal levels of the process in pathological settings, we previously screened a small molecule library for novel autophagy-enhancing factors that inhibit the myotubularin-related phosphatase MTMR14/Jumpy, a negative regulator of autophagic membrane formation. Here we identify AUTEN-99 (autophagy enhancer-99), which activates autophagy in cell cultures and animal models. AUTEN-99 appears to effectively penetrate through the blood-brain barrier, and impedes the progression of neurodegenerative symptoms in Drosophila models of Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. Furthermore, the molecule increases the survival of isolated neurons under normal and oxidative stress-induced conditions. Thus, AUTEN-99 serves as a potent neuroprotective drug candidate for preventing and treating diverse neurodegenerative pathologies, and may promote healthy aging.

Nice research on finite temperatures and diamond structure spins.

Here the quantum criticality in the Ising-XXZ diamond structure at finite temperature have been studied by the trance distance discord calculations. Around the critical lines, the first-order derivative of the trace distance discord exhibits a maximal at a finite temperature and diverges under the thermodynamic limits T → 0. By analyzing the finite-temperature scaling behaviors, we show that the trace distance discord can detect exactly the quantum phase transition from the entangled state in ferrimagnetic phase to an unentangled state in ferrimagnetic phase or to an unentangled state in ferromagnetic phase. The results also show that the trace distance can distinguish the two kinds of transitions by consulting to the different finite-temperature scaling behaviors. As a comparison, we also study the behaviors of some other typical quantum correlations (e.g., concurrence, quantum discord and Hellinger distance) around the critical points, and the results state that the trance distance discord is more reliable than the others to spotlight the critical points for this Ising-XXZ diamond structure at finite temperatures.

Surely, this model system has three different critical phases, and it would be significant and challenging in the future to consider the multipartite quantum correlations which may grasp all these transitions. The bipartite quantum correlations imposed on this Ising-XXZ diamond structure, as studied in this work, can not detect the transition from UFI phase to UFM phase at finite temperature, an issue for future investigations.

Now, a discussion on Highly sensitive Plasmonic Nano-antenna arrays.

Plasmonic photoconductive antennas have great promise for increasing responsivity and detection sensitivity of conventional photoconductive detectors in time-domain terahertz imaging and spectroscopy systems. However, operation bandwidth of previously demonstrated plasmonic photoconductive antennas has been limited by bandwidth constraints of their antennas and photoconductor parasitics. Here, we present a powerful technique for realizing broadband terahertz detectors through large-area plasmonic photoconductive nano-antenna arrays. A key novelty that makes the presented terahertz detector superior to the state-of-the art is a specific large-area device geometry that offers a strong interaction between the incident terahertz beam and optical pump at the nanoscale, while maintaining a broad operation bandwidth. The large device active area allows robust operation against optical and terahertz beam misalignments. We demonstrate broadband terahertz detection with signal-to-noise ratio levels as high as 107 dB.

The Dawn spacecraft has detected for the first time evidence of organic compounds on the dwarf planet.

Your life achievements deserve better motivators than death.

Some time ago, I bumped into a short excerpt of a video interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Larry King. After I watched it, I was sadly surprised by what deGrasse Tyson said. Before you read further, you should take a minute to watch the interview below. If you can’t see the video or can’t be bothered to watch it, you’ll find a transcript right below it.

NdGT: If you could live forever, would you?

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