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Mar 18, 2022

Homing in on the Higgs boson’s interaction with the charm quark

Posted by in category: particle physics

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson a decade ago, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been hard at work trying to unlock the secrets of this special particle. In particular, they have been investigating in detail how the Higgs boson interacts with fundamental particles such as those that make up matter, that is, quarks and leptons. In the Standard Model of particle physics, these matter particles fall into three categories, or “generations”, of increasing mass, and the Higgs boson interacts with them with a strength that is proportional to their mass. Any deviation from this behaviour would provide a clear indication of new phenomena.

ATLAS and CMS have previously observed the interactions of the Higgs boson with the heaviest quarks and leptons, i.e. those of the third generation, which agree with the predictions from the Standard Model within the current measurement precision. They have also obtained the first indications that the Higgs boson interacts with a muon, a lepton of the second generation. However, they have yet to observe it interacting with second-generation quarks. In two recent publications, ATLAS and CMS report analyses that place tight limits on the strength of the Higgs boson’s interaction with a charm quark, a second-generation quark.

ATLAS and CMS study the Higgs boson’s interactions by looking at how it transforms, or “decays”, into lighter particles or how it is produced together with other particles. In their latest studies, using data from the second run of the LHC, the two teams searched for the decay of the Higgs boson into a charm quark and its antimatter counterpart, the charm antiquark.

Mar 18, 2022

AI Autonomy: Self-Initiation, Adaptation and Continual Learning

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

As more and more AI agents are used in practice, it is time to think about how to make these agents fully autonomous so that they can learn by themselves continually in a self-motivated and self-initiated manner rather than being retrained offline periodically on the initiation of human engineers and accommodate or adapt to unexpected or novel circumstances. As the real-world is an open environment that is full of unknowns or novelties, detecting novelties, characterizing them, accommodating or adapting to them, and gathering ground-truth training data and incrementally learning the unknowns/novelties are critical to making the AI agent more and more knowledgeable and powerful over time.

Mar 18, 2022

US government clients unaffected by Viasat cyberattack

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, government, law enforcement

“The investigation into the recent cyber event on the KA-SAT European network continues in partnership with law enforcement, government partners and Viasat’s third-party cybersecurity firm,” Viasat said in a statement March 11. “We currently believe this was a deliberate, isolated and external cyber event.”

Mar 18, 2022

Pulsar Shoots 7-light-year-long Phaser Blast

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Nature proves truth is still stranger than fiction: A pulsar has shot energetic particles in a thin, straight line that extends for light-years into space. The discovery might explain how antimatter makes its way to Earth.

Star Trek can keep its ray guns — pulsars make far more powerful beams of radiation.

Crushed stellar cores, left behind when a massive star goes supernova, are among nature’s own particle accelerators. Though pulsars are only the size of Manhattan, their dizzying spins and powerful magnetic fields can energize particles to a significant fraction of the speed of light. In addition, pulsars glow with high-energy radiation, which can itself convert into pairs of electrons and their antimatter counterpart, positrons.

Mar 18, 2022

How to map the brain

Posted by in category: neuroscience

As efforts to chart the brain’s neurons gather pace, researchers must find a way to make the accumulating masses of data useful.

Mar 18, 2022

First ship-to-containership LNG bunkering operation in Asia

Posted by in category: futurism

Singapore has performed the first liquefied natural gas bunkering operation from ship to containership in Asia. It is also the first time that bunkering took place simultaneously with cargo operations. This is a step forward for the decarbonisation of Singapore’s port.

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Mar 18, 2022

Russia’s Killer Drone in Ukraine Raises Fears About AI in Warfare

Posted by in categories: drones, military, robotics/AI

The maker of the lethal drone claims that it can identify targets using artificial intelligence.

Mar 18, 2022

Human brain organoids grown in cheap 3D-printed bioreactor

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

Circa 2021


It is now possible to grow and culture human brain tissue in a device that costs little more than a cup of coffee. With a $5 washable and reusable microchip, scientists can watch self-organising brain samples, known as brain organoids, growing in real time under a microscope.

The device, dubbed a “microfluidic bioreactor”, is a 4-by-6-centimetre chip that includes small wells in which the brain organoids grow. Each is filled with nutrient-rich fluid that is pumped in and out automatically, like the fluids that flush through the human brain.

Continue reading “Human brain organoids grown in cheap 3D-printed bioreactor” »

Mar 18, 2022

Dozens of budget Android phones are at risk due to a critical security flaw

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, security

The vulnerability could provide hackers with an easy method to take over your phone.

Mar 18, 2022

Scientists See What People Picture in Their Mind’s Eye

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Summary: Using electrocorticogram technology to capture brain waves, researchers found the meaning of what people imagine can be determined from brain wave patterns, even if the image differs from what a person is looking at.

Source: Osaka University.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Now, researchers from Japan have found that even a mental picture can communicate volumes.