Lifeboat Foundation

By breaking with conventionality, University of Otago physicists have opened up new research and technology opportunities involving the basic building block of the world—atoms.

In a study, just published in Nature Communications, researchers put one atom inside each of two laser beams before moving them together until they started to interact with each other.

Co-author Associate Professor Mikkel F. Andersen, of the Department of Physics, says this allows the atoms to exchange properties in a way which could be “very useful” for future quantum technologies.

Continue reading “Atom interaction discovery valuable for future quantum technologies” »

I suspect that if you asked an engineer at Intel about quantum computing, they probably wouldn’t want to know about it unless the chips could be fabricated using standard fabrication technology. Using standard processes means using electrons as the basis for quantum computing.

Electrons are lovely in many respects, but they are rather extroverted. It doesn’t matter what you do, they will run off and play with the neighbors. The constantly interacting electron does not look after its quantum state, so quantum information is rapidly lost, making processing really difficult. This makes the achievement of a quantum non-demolition measurement in an electron system rather remarkable.

Using human cancer cells, tumor and blood samples from cancer patients, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have uncovered the role of a neurotransmitter in the spread of aggressive cancers. Neurotransmitters are chemical “messengers” that transmit impulses from neurons to other target cells.

The work, described in the April 9 issue of the journal Cell Reports, found that this neurotransmitter, called N-acetyl-aspartyl-glutamate (NAAG) NAAG is more abundant in cancers with a tendency to grow and spread rapidly—or so-called higher grade cancers—than in lower grade tumors, making it a potential marker for tumor progression or regression during cancer therapy, the researchers say. The experiments also demonstrated that NAAG is a source of glutamate, a chemical that cancer cells use as building blocks to survive, in tumors that express an enzyme called glutamate carboxypeptidase II (GCPII). The group also discovered that stopping the GCPII from being active by using a drug called 2-PMPA to treat human ovarian tumors implanted in ovaries of mice, reduced tumor weights and glutamate concentrations.

The city’s new green building legislation will result in the equivalent of taking more than one million cars off the road by 2030.

Researchers at Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine (RCIGM) have utilized a machine-learning process and clinical natural language processing (CNLP) to diagnose rare genetic diseases in record time. This new method is speeding answers to physicians caring for infants in intensive care and opening the door to increased use of genome sequencing as a first-line diagnostic test for babies with cryptic conditions.

“Some people call this artificial intelligence, we call it augmented intelligence,” said Stephen Kingsmore, MD, DSc, President and CEO of RCIGM. “Patient care will always begin and end with the doctor. By harnessing the power of technology, we can quickly and accurately determine the root cause of genetic diseases. We rapidly provide this critical information to intensive care physicians so they can focus on personalizing care for babies who are struggling to survive.”

A new study documenting the process was published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The workflow and research were led by the RCIGM team in collaboration with leading technology and data-science developers —Alexion, Clinithink, Diploid, Fabric Genomics and Illumina.

Continue reading “Researchers use machine-learning system to diagnose genetic diseases” »

O.o its prob gonna eat me someday :0.

Slime mould might easily be one of the strangest life forms on our planet. They are neither plants, animals, nor fungi, but various species of complex, single-celled amoebas of the protist kingdom. Sometimes they form colonies able to grow, move, and even exhibit a strange kind of intelligence.

Even without a nervous system, they are able to learn about substances they encounter, retaining that knowledge and even communicating it to other slime moulds. Now a team of scientists at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) has figured out how: slime moulds actually absorb the substance into their veins.

Continue reading “This Brainless Slime Learns And Remembers” »

Is our take on the next-generation tandem-duct platform. Flying up to 10 feet off the ground at 45 miles per hour, the Aero-X is a surface-effect craft that rides like a motorcycle — an off road vehicle that gets you off the ground.

The Aero-X can be adapted for a variety of uses: surveying, search and rescue, border patrol, disaster relief, agricultural, ranching, rural transportation and…

Because it responds to your movements just as a motorcycle would, the Aero-X is intuitive to fly. And as it is built with very few moving parts, its cost of ownership is a fraction of even the most basic airplane or helicopter.

Ammonia—a colorless gas essential for things like fertilizer—can be made by a new process which is far cleaner, easier and cheaper than the current leading method. UTokyo researchers use readily available lab equipment, recyclable chemicals and a minimum of energy to produce ammonia. Their Samarium-Water Ammonia Production (SWAP) process promises to scale down ammonia production and improve access to ammonia fertilizer to farmers everywhere.

In 1900, the global population was under 2 billion, whereas in 2019, it is over 7 billion. This population explosion was fueled in part by rapid advancements in food production, in particular the widespread use of ammonia-based fertilizers. The source of this ammonia was the Haber-Bosch process, and though some say it’s one of the most significant achievements of all time, it comes with a heavy price.

The Haber-Bosch process only converts 10 percent of its source material per cycle so needs to run multiple times to use it all up. One of these source materials is hydrogen (H₂) produced using fossil fuels. This is chemically combined with nitrogen (N₂) at temperatures of about 400–600 degrees Celsius and pressures of about 100–200 atmospheres, also at great energy cost. Professor Yoshiaki Nishibayashi and his team from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Systems Innovation hope to improve the situation with their SWAP process.

Continue reading “Researchers dramatically clean up ammonia production and cut costs” »

Negative pressure governs not only the Universe or the quantum vacuum. This phenomenon, although of a different nature, appears also in liquid crystals confined in nanopores. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, a method has been presented that for the first time makes it possible to estimate the amount of negative pressure in spatially limited liquid crystal systems.

At first glance, negative pressure appears to be an exotic phenomenon. In fact, it is common in nature, and what’s more, occurs on many scales. On the scale of the Universe, the cosmological constant is responsible for accelerating the expansion of spacetime. In the world of plants, attracting intermolecular forces (not: expanding thermal motions) guarantee the flow of water to the treetops of all trees taller than ten metres. On the quantum scale, the pressure of virtual particles of a false vacuum leads to the creation of an attractive force, appearing, for example, between two parallel metal plates (the famous Casimir effect).

“The fact that a negative pressure appears in liquid crystals confined in nanopores was already known. However, it was not known how to measure this pressure. Although we also cannot do this directly, we have proposed a method that allows this pressure to be reliably estimated,” says Dr. Tomasz Rozwadowski from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow, the first author of a publication in the Journal of Molecular Liquids.

Continue reading “Liquid crystals in nanopores produce a surprisingly large negative pressure” »