Lifeboat Foundation

Coastal artisanal fisheries, particularly those in developing countries, are facing a global crisis of overexploitation¹. Artificial reefs (ARs), or human–made reefs², have been widely advocated by governmental and non-governmental conservation and management organizations for addressing these issues. Industries, particularly oil and gas, seeking to avoid the costs of removal or conventional disposal of used materials are often major advocates for deploying ARs. Yet, major questions remain regarding the success of such efforts in the context of weak governance and poorly sustained international investment in AR development projects. There is frequently confusion over whether or not ARs should be fishing sites and the precise goals of constructing such ARs are often unclear, making difficult to evaluate their successfulness³. Over the last 40 years, both failures and success AR implementation programs have been reported^4,5. The main point of the present work is to underline the importance of the governance issue and address social and management factors on AR “success”.

To improve fishery yields, it has been recommended that ARs must be no-take areas (e.g.,²). Yet, most ARs were historically delineated as sites for fishing⁴, and were rarely implemented at large scales in/for no-take zones, even in countries with centuries of experience in constructing ARs, such as Japan. In Japan, fishery authorities and local fishers use ARs to promote sustainable catches and to establish nursery grounds of target species⁶. However, fishery authorities and local fishery cooperatives in Japan have extensive management authority over ARs. For example, fishing around ARs is usually limited to hook and line techniques, with net fishing rarely being permitted in areas where risk of entanglement in ARs is high. Furthermore, during spawning, fishing gear and fishing season are often restricted around ARs in Japan. These practices are recognized for their effectiveness in maintaining good fishing performance and marine conservation in Japan and elsewhere where they have been implemented⁷.

Continue reading “Successful artificial reefs depend on getting the context right due to complex socio-bio-economic interactions” »

New research by a City College of New York team has uncovered a novel way to combine two different states of matter. For one of the first times, topological photons—light—has been combined with lattice vibrations, also known as phonons, to manipulate their propagation in a robust and controllable way.

The study utilized topological photonics, an emergent direction in photonics which leverages fundamental ideas of the mathematical field of topology about conserved quantities—topological invariants—that remain constant when altering parts of a geometric object under continuous deformations. One of the simplest examples of such invariants is number of holes, which, for instance, makes donut and mug equivalent from the topological point of view. The topological properties endow photons with helicity, when photons spin as they propagate, leading to unique and unexpected characteristics, such as robustness to defects and unidirectional propagation along interfaces between topologically distinct materials. Thanks to interactions with vibrations in crystals, these helical photons can then be used to channel infrared light along with vibrations.

The implications of this work are broad, in particular allowing researchers to advance Raman spectroscopy, which is used to determine vibrational modes of molecules. The research also holds promise for vibrational spectroscopy—also known as infrared spectroscopy —which measures the interaction of infrared radiation with matter through absorption, emission, or reflection. This can then be utilized to study and identify and characterize chemical substances.

In a new study from Skoltech and the University of Kentucky, researchers found a new connection between quantum information and quantum field theory. This work attests to the growing role of quantum information theory across various areas of physics. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Quantum information plays an increasingly important role as an organizing principle connecting various branches of physics. In particular, the theory of quantum error correction, which describes how to protect and recover information in quantum computers and other complex interacting systems, has become one of the building blocks of the modern understanding of quantum gravity.

“Normally, information stored in physical systems is localized. Say, a computer file occupies a particular small area of the hard drive. By “error” we mean any unforeseen or undesired interaction which scrambles information over an extended area. In our example, pieces of the computer file would be scattered over different areas of the hard drive. Error correcting codes are mathematical protocols that allow collecting these pieces together to recover the original information. They are in heavy use in data storage and communication systems. Quantum error correcting codes play a similar role in cases when the quantum nature of the physical system is important,” Anatoly Dymarsky, Associate Professor at the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology (CEST), explains.

“Our mathematical equation lets us predict which individuals will have both more happiness and more brain activity for intrinsic compared to extrinsic rewards. The same approach can be used in principle to measure what people actually prefer without asking them explicitly, but simply by measuring their mood.”

Summary: A new mathematical equation predicts which individuals will have more happiness and increased brain activity for intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards. The approach can be used to predict personal preferences based on mood and without asking the individual.

Source: UCL

Continue reading “Math Equation of Mood Can Predict Your Preferences Better Than You Can” »

Circa 2012

Faraday and Dirac constructed magnetic monopoles using the practical and mathematical tools available to them. Now physicists have engineered effective monopoles by combining modern optics with nanotechnology. Part matter and part light, these magnetic monopoles travel at unprecedented speeds.

In classical physics (as every student should know) there are no sources or sinks of magnetic field, and hence no magnetic monopoles. Even so, a tight bundle of magnetic flux — such as that created by a long string of magnetic dipoles — has an apparent source or sink at its end. If we map the lines of force with a plotting compass, we think we see a magnetic monopole as our compass cannot enter the region of dense flux. In 1,821 Michael Faraday constructed an effective monopole of this sort by floating a long thin bar magnet upright in a bowl of mercury, with the lower end tethered and the upper end free to move like a monopole in the horizontal plane.

Reservoir computing, a machine learning algorithm that mimics the workings of the human brain, is revolutionizing how scientists tackle the most complex data processing challenges, and now, researchers have discovered a new technique that can make it up to a million times faster on specific tasks while using far fewer computing resources with less data input.

With the next-generation technique, the researchers were able to solve a complex computing problem in less than a second on a desktop computer — and these overly complex problems, such as forecasting the evolution of dynamic systems like weather that change over time, are exactly why reservoir computing was developed in the early 2000s.

These systems can be extremely difficult to predict, with the “butterfly effect” being a well-known example. The concept, which is closely associated with the work of mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz, essentially describes how a butterfly fluttering its wings can influence the weather weeks later. Reservoir computing is well-suited for learning such dynamic systems and can provide accurate projections of how they will behave in the future; however, the larger and more complex the system, more computing resources, a network of artificial neurons, and more time are required to obtain accurate forecasts.

Who has a different opinion here?

Science writer Charles Q. Choi identifies a number of limitations, including a, perhaps, surprising one: AIs are very bad at math.

Continue reading “Sure, AI Could Run the World — Except for Its Fundamental Limits” »

Reservoir computing is already one of the most advanced and most powerful types of artificial intelligence that scientists have at their disposal – and now a new study outlines how to make it up to a million times faster on certain tasks.

That’s an exciting development when it comes to tackling the most complex computational challenges, from predicting the way the weather is going to turn, to modeling the flow of fluids through a particular space.

Such problems are what this type of resource-intensive computing was developed to take on; now, the latest innovations are going to make it even more useful. The team behind this new study is calling it the next generation of reservoir computing.

Black holes are getting weirder by the day. When scientists first confirmed the behemoths existed back in the 1970s, we thought they were pretty simple, inert corpses. Then, famed physicist Stephen Hawking discovered that black holes aren’t exactly black and they actually emit heat. And now, a pair of physicists has realized that the sort-of-dark objects also exert a pressure on their surroundings.

The finding that such simple, non-rotating “black holes have a pressure as well as a temperature is even more exciting given that it was a total surprise,” co-author Xavier Calmet, a professor of physics at the University of Sussex in England, said in a statement.