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Category: computing – Page 5

Simulations suggest a breakthrough in understanding how turbulence develops

A new study revisits a century-old question about how turbulence starts. The findings could potentially influence not only aircraft engineering but even the design of mechanical heart valves, and treatment of heart disease. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Computer simulations at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology indicate that very small vortices may create increasingly larger swirls of flow—the opposite of the traditional view of how energy is transferred in turbulence.

Often seen in nature, from whirlpools to the shape of galaxies, vortices are one of the main flow structures that drive turbulence. The dominant idea over the last 100 years is that large swirling motions in a fluid break apart into smaller and smaller swirls, passing energy down the chain until it finally disappears—a process known as the forward cascade.

Space Weather Could Be Hiding Alien Signals

Dr. Vishal Gajjar: “If a signal gets broadened by its own star’s environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it’s there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we’ve seen in technosignature searches.”

What steps can be taken to identify why we haven’t received radio signals from an extraterrestrial intelligence, also called technosignatures? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated potential explanations regarding why humanity continues hearing silence from technosignatures. This study has the potential to help scientists and the public better understand the shortcomings and enhancements that can be made in the search for intelligent life beyond Earth.

For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate how radio signals leaving extrasolar star systems could be influenced by a myriad of factors, specifically space weather coming from the host star. This study comes as SETI and other researchers worldwide continue to come up empty regarding identifying technosignatures. The goal of the study was to ascertain potential reasons while putting constraints on both how and where to search for technosignatures.

In the end, the researchers ascertained that space weather plays a role in altering the outgoing radio signals by dispersing them, as opposed to the radio signals maintaining a fixed beam. The team ascertained that M-dwarf stars, which constitute approximately 75 percent of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy while being smaller and cooler than our Sun, are prime targets for searching for technosignatures. This is due to their space weather, which is far more active than stars like our Sun, dispersing the radio signals.

Performance characteristics of genome-sequencing–based CHIP calling and impact on epidemiologic associations

Do we need better ways to detect clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP)?

In this Research Letter, Alexander G. Bick & team find epidemiology studies underestimate the strength of the association between clonal hematopoiesis and disease due to false negatives from shallow, whole-genome versus deep targeted sequencing.

Address correspondence to: Alexander Bick, 2,200 Pierce Ave., 550 RRB, Nashville, Tennessee, 37,232, USA. Email: [email protected].

Find articles by Corty, R. in: | Google Scholar

1Department of Internal Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Ultrafast computing: Light-driven logic tops 10 terahertz in WS₂

The future for our computers will literally be at the speed of light. Extremely short light pulses can perform ultrafast logical operations: these are the findings of a study recently published in the journal Nature Photonics. The study represents an important step toward developing a new generation of information processing technologies, potentially hundreds of times faster than what we have at present.

Today’s computers rely on the movement of electrical charges inside transistors; however, these can only achieve a maximum frequency whose physical limits are hard to overcome. Unlike traditional electronics, based on the movement of electric charges, this innovative approach manipulates the state of electrons in matter by the use of oscillating light.

As Giulio Cerullo of the Politecnico di Milano explained, “We have shown that light can be used not only to transmit information, but also to process it. With the use of ultra-short laser pulses, we can control the quantum states of matter on time scales of a few millionths of a billionth of a second, i.e. at the same frequencies as light oscillations, speeds previously unknown in electronics.” These operations are performed at rates above 10 terahertz, over a hundred times faster than the best modern electronic devices.

Miniature laser technology could bring lab testing into your home

A research team at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has developed new laser technology that could lead to tiny, cost-effective biosensors. The sensors integrate lasers and optics together on a centimeter-sized chip, which could move testing from hospitals to patients’ homes. This, in turn, would free up hospital beds and reduce visits to clinics.

The team’s study, “Flat Plasmonic Biosensor with an On-Chip Metagrating-Integrated Laser,” is published in ACS Sensors.

By studying how various biomolecules interact with each other—for example, antibodies in the immune system and xenobiotic antigens—researchers can gain valuable insights leading to new medicines and vaccines or assess whether a sample contains signs of infection.

Sandisk Extreme Fit Drive launched as ‘world’s smallest’ 1TB USB Type-C flash drive: Price in India, features and more

Laptops & PC News: Sandisk has launched the SANDISK Extreme Fit USB-C Flash Drive in India, the world’s smallest 1TB USB-C flash drive. The tiny drive is aimed at profes.

The Simulation Argument Was Never Actually Debunked — And The Math Is Getting Worse

In 2017, headlines around the world declared the simulation hypothesis dead. Physicists had debunked it, the articles said. We could all move on. There was one problem. The paper they cited never mentioned the simulation hypothesis. The debunking was invented by journalists who never read the research. And in the years since, the actual physics has gotten significantly worse.

This documentary follows that physics all the way down.

We begin with what really happened in 2017 — the Ringel-Kovrizhin paper, what it actually proved, and Scott Aaronson’s correction that nobody shared. Then we examine Nick Bostrom’s original 2003 trilemma, the real math behind it, and why two decades of attacks from Sean Carroll, Lisa Randall, and Sabine Hossenfelder have failed to break it. Every critique concedes something. Every attempted kill shot narrows the escape routes.

From there, we trace the physics of information through three remarkable lives. Konrad Zuse, who built the first programmable computer in his parents’ living room during the bombing of Berlin, then proposed in 1967 that the universe itself is a computation — and was ignored. John Archibald Wheeler, who lost his brother in World War Two and spent the rest of his life asking whether reality is built from information, condensing it into three words that changed physics: \.

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Bringing the genetically minimal cell to life on a computer in 4D

This work represents a fundamental advance in understanding life’s basic principles. By building a cell from the bottom up—specifying every gene, protein, and reaction—researchers can test how life functions with minimal complexity. The simulation serves as a “digital twin” that allows scientists to probe questions impossible to address experimentally, such as how spatial organization affects cellular processes or how subtle parameter changes alter cell cycle timing.

Simulating the complete cell cycle of the minimal cell provides a platform to understand the progression of complete states over time. The spatial heterogeneity of the intracellular environment can strongly affect biochemical reactions that control phenotypes.

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