Number 421
A self-disinfecting fabric eliminates bacteria, fungi and viruses in hospital settings
The material incorporates two photoactive compounds that, when exposed to light, generate a highly reactive form of oxygen that damages the microorganisms adhering to the fabric.
Wild elephants use a rich gestural repertoire intentionally to ‘mean business’
If you spend time observing wild elephants, you can’t help but notice their conspicuous gestures. They may fling their trunk or spread their ears wide, and you intuitively understand that ’they mean business.’ But until now, we didn’t know whether wild elephants were using these gestures to communicate intentionally.
Harmless amoeba’s tight-space crawling offers clues to how its deadly relative invades the brain
Tiny, shapeless invaders can find their way from ponds to the human brain and cause an infection so severe that it has a 95% fatality rate. The amoeba Naegleria fowleri naturally lives in ponds, feasting on bacteria, but once it enters the human body, it makes a run for the brain tissue, traversing complex, tight spaces to reach its destination.
== no, I haven’t looked at the math, but am guessing simple to a physicist may not be to me
Simple math formula predicts when AI chatbots will go rogue
Most of us now carry in our pockets devices capable of running small AI chatbots. These chatbots have little safety oversight to ensure they don’t provide information and answers with the potential to encourage self-harm, lead to financial loss or promote extremist notions—especially when operating offline.
== yjc, note I had all javascript turned off, possible paywall otherwise
Why Quants Keep Winning: The Public Math Behind Wall Street’s Biggest Edge
The equations are old. The papers are public. The edge is knowing what to trust when money is on the line.
194-year-old tortoise reveals stable gene switches that may help resist aging
Jonathan, an Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea), is estimated to be 194 years old. This makes him the oldest living giant tortoise and the oldest land animal in the world today. He’s thought to have hatched in 1832—making him a contemporary of Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria.
== yjc
Linguists find Madonna’s voice defies age-related expectations
As women go through menopause, their voices tend to become deeper. This is partly because the vocal folds may swell and the surrounding muscles lose elasticity, resulting in a lower pitch. Age-related physiological changes can also affect the pronunciation of certain vowels.
Population surveys and research studies suggest that meaningful social connections are strong predictors of health and longevity. In other words, a sense of belonging to a social group and strong social bonds appear to be linked with better health and a longer lifespan.
Radio galaxy from 12.5 billion years ago may be most powerful ever found
When material falls onto a galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, the resulting accretion activity can power an active galactic nucleus (AGN) and launch powerful relativistic jets of plasma, producing large amounts of radio waves. Such a galaxy is called a radio-loud active galactic nucleus (RLAGN). The energy that the jets carry can influence star formation in the galaxy and heat its surrounding gas.
Levitating glass sphere becomes entangled with light at room temperature
When two quantum particles become entangled, their properties are so deeply intertwined that neither can be fully described without the other. However, this delicate link is easily broken by tiny disturbances from the surrounding environment and becomes ever harder to protect as objects grow larger.
The first stand-alone nuclear clock is ticking in Vienna
The technology has the potential to significantly surpass the precision of previous atomic clocks. It is an important step toward a new kind of high-performance metrology, allowing a range of physical quantities to be measured with previously unattainable precision.
First observation of quantum spins shifting a centimeter-scale object in the lab
Demonstrating quantum phenomena in objects massive enough to be meaningfully influenced by gravity has proven difficult, as large objects are significantly harder to isolate from environmental factors, such as heat and vibration, than nanoscopic particles are.
A 2-in-1 approach captures toxic metals and recovers rare earth elements from wastewater
We generally throw away a broken camera lens, earphones or an old phone that has stopped working and is beyond repair because they seem useless when they no longer function. However, these objects contain rare earth elements (REEs) that have applications in magnets, superconductivity, optics and batteries, among others. When these objects end up in water, recovering REEs becomes difficult.
Wave-shaped wall and roof designs can protect against hurricane-force winds
When wind interacts with structures, the rapid movement of air across a surface can create an area of low pressure. Higher air pressure underneath or inside a structure pushes the surface outward toward the low-pressure zone. The strongest forces develop at the corners and edges of the roof, where vortices congregate and threaten structural integrity.
Where are the best places for life in the cosmos?
Earth seems like a troubled place right now, but at least our cosmic surroundings appear peaceful. This is not universally true, as explosions, collisions and other dangers lurk in other places and times.
The study found that the experimental drug zavondemstat and a closely related research compound, QC6352—developed to treat cancers such as colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancer—do not primarily target KDM4, a family of proteins that can help cancer cells grow and spread when overactive.
Laughter, sighs and screams reveal unwritten social rules in everyday life
Alongside words, humans have a treasure trove of nonverbal tools to help express themselves. We chuckle, sigh and gasp to communicate our feelings without uttering a word. What has amazed researchers for ages is how we rarely stop to think about how we know which sound belongs in which situation.
Meet the long-legged giants that light up the deep ocean
Thousands of meters below the waves off Australia’s east coast, far beyond where sunlight can reach, a stunning light show takes place in the dark. The cause? Two species of long-legged creatures emitting a blue glow.
== yjc
Why it’s important to regularly replace your surge protectors
Time and spikes take a toll on a surge protector, even with no visible signs of damage.
== have always felt permanent daylight savings was a political decision not a scientific one
Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Harm Sleep and Mental Health
Canadian health researchers are urging the country to choose permanent standard time over permanent daylight saving time if it ends the twice-yearly clock change, warning that darker winter mornings could harm sleep and mental health.
Milky Way may have begun as thousands of galaxies, new simulations suggest
In the early days of the universe, our home looked very different from how it does today. Back then, the region in our universe that would eventually become our Milky Way neighborhood was a collection of thousands of smaller galaxies—some pumping out tons of new stars, others filled only with gas or littered with dead stars and black holes.
Old Hearts Become Biologically Younger When Transplanted Into Younger People
The heart sits in your chest, carefully armored by sternum and ribs, constantly pulsing to maintain the flow of blood, transporting oxygen, nutrients, and other essential substances to every extremity of your body.
== yjc
Why are 3 trees planted upside down at Fredericton Botanic Garden?
At the Fredericton Botanic Garden, visitors may expect to find trees planted firmly in the ground. Instead, three ash trees are standing upside down.
== in last post was wondering if this would affect BC, well here’s the answer
Giant underwater Kelvin wave could ‘pack a punch’ for B.C. in mid-October
A giant underwater wave of water connected to this year’s El Niño weather pattern is moving up the west coast of the Americas, raising alarm bells among scientists about how climate change is magnifying the impacts of the naturally occurring phenomenon.
Particle Collider Experiment Recreates the Big Bang’s Primordial Soup - and Find Unexpected Pattern
Protons and neutrons are made of smaller particles called quarks, which are held together by the “strong force” carried by particles called gluons. When heated or squeezed enough, protons and neutrons melt into a hot soup of free quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma. It’s thought that this primordial soup of particles filled the universe in the first milliseconds after the Big Bang.
Resistance gene helps C. difficile spores survive hospital-grade disinfectants
Antibiotic resistance is supercharging dangerous gut bacteria to withstand even hospital-grade disinfectants intended to kill them.
New type of human ‘jumping gene’ found in a poxvirus
Transposons can insert blocks of DNA into a gene and disrupt its function, leading to disease. But in the long term, they can be a constructive force in evolution, regulating or assembling new beneficial genes. While transposons account for half of human DNA, most are inactive, with only a very small number remaining mobile and able to replicate within genomes.
Scientists used customized, semitransparent solar panels to generate electricity while boosting blue- and red-light wavelengths to enhance broccoli growth.
Ancient sea levels reveal when the Earth’s poles went wandering
Earth’s poles do not always stay in the same place. For example, a region once near the North Pole can end up near the equator, and an area near the equator can shift up toward the pole. This is known as true polar wander (TPW), and it’s when Earth’s crust and mantle shift together relative to its spin axis.
=== yjc
There’s a New Way to Break RSA Encryption
Until now, cryptographers thought factoring was the only way to break RSA. Not anymore.
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
— Winston Churchill