Lifeboat Foundation

After a two-decade wait that included a long struggle for funding and a move halfway across a continent, a rebooted experiment on the muon — a particle similar to the electron but heavier and unstable — is about to unveil its results. Physicists have high hopes that its latest measurement of the muon’s magnetism, scheduled to be released on 7 April, will uphold earlier findings that could lead to the discovery of new particles.

The Muon g – 2 experiment, now based at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, first ran between 1997 and 2001 at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. The original results, announced in 2001 and then finalized in 2006¹, found that the muon’s magnetic moment — a measure of the magnetic field it generates — is slightly larger than theory predicted. This caused a sensation, and spurred controversy, among physicists. If those results are ultimately confirmed — in next week’s announcement, or by future experiments — they could reveal the existence of new elementary particles and upend fundamental physics. “Everybody’s antsy,” says Aida El-Khadra, a theoretical physicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Because contrast suppression is orientation-specific and relies on cortical processing, our results suggest that people experiencing a major depressive episode have normal retinal processing but altered cortical contrast normalization,” write the researchers in their paper.

We know that depression is linked to variations in the way our brains are wired, but new research suggests that people who are going through a depressive episode actually see the world around them differently.

And the team behind the study hopes that a better understanding of how visual information is processed in the brains of people with depression could help to inform our treatment approaches in the future.

Continue reading “Visual Illusion Reveals That Depression Can Change How We Physically See The World” »

There’s a new crypto converter on the market for those looking for a more seamless way to send and receive money internationally.

With the emergence of crypto remittance companies in recent years, a group of undergraduates based in Nigeria teamed up to stake their claim in the market. Software engineers Ben Eluan and Osezele Orukpe became the CEO and CTO, respectively, of their company, Flux, a new crypto remittance company that allows merchants to send and receive money from anywhere in the world, TechCrunch reports. Through Flux, users can convert fiat funds into crypto that can be sent to people in other countries without all the time constraints and exorbitant fees.

Related: 10 of the Most Successful Black Entrepreneurs.

Several years after scientists discovered what was considered the oldest crater a meteorite made on the planet, another team found it’s actually the result of normal geological processes.

During fieldwork at the Archean Maniitsoq structure in Greenland, an international team of scientists led by the University of Waterloo ’s Chris Yakymchuk found the features of this region are inconsistent with an impact crater. In 2012, a different team identified it as the remnant of a three-billion-year-old meteorite crater.

“Zircon crystals in the rock are like little time capsules,” said Yakymchuk, a professor in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “They preserve ancient damage caused by shockwaves you get from a meteorite impact. We found no such damage in them.”

Protein Transport in Peroxisomes.

#peroxisomes #protein Transport

Continue reading “Protein Transport in Peroxisome” »

As a future Mars tourist attraction, Olympus Mons is unlike anything else in the solar system.

After winning a state science fair and becoming a finalist in a national competition, Dasia Taylor now has her sights set on a patent.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in South Korea has developed a simple method for converting 2D drawings to 3D objects. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their technique and possible uses for it.

Over the past several decades, 3D printing has become a popular way to create three-dimensional objects in a relatively simple manner. Such printing allows for on-demand supply of simple products. In this new effort, the researchers have developed another way to create 3D objects without the need for a printer.

The technique involves hand-drawing (or conventionally printing) a 2D image on an object using a special pen with special ink and then submerging the object in a tub of water. When the object is pulled from the water, the ink has been partly removed from the object and has formed into a 3D representation of the original image.

The scientists used interviews to convince some study subjects they had undergone childhood events that didn’t happen to them, such as getting lost or being in a car accident, according to a report published Monday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Then the researchers said they used other interview techniques that prompted the volunteers to reassess the memories and help realize they might be false or misremembered.

The work confirms previous research on the malleability of memories while pointing to potential techniques for recognizing and rooting them out.