Lifeboat Foundation

For decades, astronomers and physicists have been trying to solve one of the deepest mysteries about the cosmos: An estimated 85% of its mass is missing. Numerous astronomical observations indicate that the visible mass in the universe is not nearly enough to hold galaxies together and account for how matter clumps. Some kind of invisible, unknown type of subatomic particle, dubbed dark matter, must provide the extra gravitational glue.

In underground laboratories and at particle accelerators, scientists have been searching for this dark matter with no success for more than 30 years. Researchers at NIST are now exploring new ways to search for the invisible particles. In one study, a prototype for a much larger experiment, researchers have used state-of-the-art superconducting detectors to hunt for dark matter.

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Non-metal nitrides are compounds in which nitrogen and non-metallic elements are linked by covalent bonds. Because of their technologically interesting properties, they have increasingly become the focus of materials research. In Chemistry—A European Journal, an international team with researchers from the University of Bayreuth presents previously unknown phosphorus-nitrogen compounds synthesized under very high pressures.

They contain structural units whose existence could not be empirically proven before. The study exemplifies the great, as yet untapped potential of high-pressure research for nitrogen chemistry.

The researchers succeeded in synthesizing a previously unknown modification of the phosphorus nitride P₃N₅, the polymorph δ-P₃N₅, at a pressure of 72 gigapascals. At 134 gigapascals, the phosphorus nitride PN₂ formed in the diamond anvil cell. Both compounds are classified as ultra-incompressible materials with the bulk moduli above 320 GPa.

The Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) experiment at CERN is the world’s leading experiment in quark flavor physics with a broad particle physics program. Its data from Runs 1 and 2 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has so far been used for over 600 scientific publications, including a number of significant discoveries.

While all scientific results from the LHCb collaboration are already publicly available through open access papers, the data used by the researchers to produce these results is now accessible to anyone in the world through the CERN open data portal. The data release is made in the context of CERN’s Open Science Policy, reflecting the values of transparency and international collaboration enshrined in the CERN Convention for more than 60 years.

“The data collected at LHCb is a unique legacy to humanity, especially since no other experiment covers the region LHCb looks at,” says Sebastian Neubert, leader of the LHCb open data project. “It has been obtained through a huge international collaborative effort, which was funded by the public. Therefore the data belongs to society.”

To perform coordinated movements, we rely on special sensory neurons in our muscles and joints. Without them, the brain wouldn’t know what the rest of our body was doing. A team led by Niccolò Zampieri has studied their molecular markers to better understand how they work and describes the results in Nature Communications.

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch: We’re all familiar with the five senses that allow us to experience our surroundings.

Equally important but much less well known is the sixth sense: “Its job is to collect information from the muscles and joints about our movements, our posture and our position in space, and then pass that on to our central nervous system,” says Dr. Niccolò Zampieri, head of the Development and Function of Neural Circuits Lab at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin. “This sense, known as proprioception, is what allows the central nervous system to send the right signals through motor neurons to muscles so that we can perform a specific movement.”

Elon Musk told Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey that there was allegedly important data being hidden from the former CEO during his tenure at the helm of the social media company after Mr Dorsey had called for “full transparency” around the so-called “Twitter Files”.

On Wednesday, Mr Dorsey responded to a tweet from Mr Musk and asked him to publish all data from the microblogging platform, uncensored, in a Wikileaks-style dump.

“If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions?” tweeted Mr Dorsey. “Make everything public now.”

The software system competed against human coders in programming contests.

A novel system called AlphaCode uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create computer code, and has recently participated in programming competitions, using critical thinking, algorithms, and natural language comprehension. The AI system performed extremely well in competitions.

AlphaCode can create code quickly and efficiently

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Finally, there’s a solution for the hard-to-reach small intestine.

Imagine if we could power devices inside the body. This would lead to major developments in biomedical research and much potential for new applications in chemical sensors, drug-delivery systems and electrical stimulation devices.

Now, Binghamton University researchers have invented a capsule-sized biobattery they believe may be a solution for the hard-to-reach small intestine, according to a press release by the institution published on Thursday.

“Eureka 1” is an innovative underwater drone that can collect rare minerals from the seafloor without causing too much damage to the ecosystem.

Impossible Metals has announced in a press release that “Eureka 1,” its first autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), has finished its first field test by carefully choosing pebbles to collect in an aquatic environment. This is a big step for the company, which wants to move toward a green economy by finding better ways to mine essential minerals.

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The new sodium-sulfur batteries are also environmentally friendly, driving the clean energy mission forward at a low cost.

To realize the universal goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, the world is keenly looking at advancements in battery technology. Lower costs, higher capacity, and optimal utilization of scarce natural resources are expected to play a major role in taking the mission forward.

Their findings were published in Advanced Materials.

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