70 articles from FRIDAY 29.11.2019

Blue Origin’s expansion plans rush ahead at its Seattle-area HQ — and in Los Angeles

KENT, Wash. — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture is rapidly expanding on several fronts, ranging from its headquarters facility south of Seattle to a new beachhead in the Los Angeles area — within the orbit of its main competitor, Elon Musk's SpaceX. Just three and a half years ago, Blue Origin's workforce amounted to 600 employees, and even then, Bezos said his...

Amazon fires are causing glaciers in the Andes to melt even faster

If you have turned on a TV or read the news during the past few months, you have probably heard of the widespread fires that wrought havoc on the Amazon rainforest this year. Fires occur in the rainforest every year, but the past 11 months saw the number of fires increase by more than 70% when compared with 2018, indicating a major acceleration in land clearing by the country's logging and farming...

NA61/SHINE gives neutrino experiments a helping hand

Neutrinos are the lightest of all the known particles that have mass. Yet their behavior as they travel could help answer one of the greatest puzzles in physics: why the present-day universe is made mostly of matter when the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. In two recent papers, the NA61/SHINE collaboration reports particle measurements that are crucial for...

Black Friday in Britain: where it all went wrong

This year has been challenging for retailers, to put it mildly. According to the British Retail Consortium, sales were down 1.3% year on year in September, the most recent month available, and the worst since the consortium's records began in 1995. The summer wasn't much better, with sales down 0.5% in August and up only 0.3% in July – itself a record low. The Centre for Retail Research says it...

New algorithms to determine eigenstates and thermal states on quantum computers

Determining the quantum mechanical behavior of many interacting particles is essential to solving important problems in a variety of scientific fields, including physics, chemistry and mathematics. For instance, in order to describe the electronic structure of materials and molecules, researchers first need to find the ground, excited and thermal states of the Born-Oppenheimer Hamiltonian...

Compound controls biological clock with light

Researchers at Japan's Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) of Nagoya University, the Netherlands' University of Groningen, and colleagues have found a new way to regulate the biological clocks of cells. Further studies on their approach, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could lead to treatments for a variety of conditions, including sleep disorder.

Are 'dog years' for real? An explanation of calculating canine age

If your dog has been alive and kicking its paws about for a decade, the widely held belief is that it has aged as much as a human would have done by the grand old age of 70. This conversion factor—each year of a dog's life accounting for seven human years—comes from dividing human life expectancy of around 77 by the canine life expectancy of around 11.

Ultraluminous X-ray source UGC 6456 ULX investigated in detail

Russian astronomers have performed a detailed study of one of the ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in the galaxy UGC 6456. Results of the research, presented in a paper published November 20 on arXiv.org, suggest that this source, designated UGC 6456 ULX, is one of the brightest known ULXs in the optical range.

Black Hole or Newborn Stars? SOFIA Finds Galactic Puzzle

Portal origin URL: Black Hole or Newborn Stars? SOFIA Finds Galactic PuzzlePortal origin nid: 455848Published: Friday, November 29, 2019 - 11:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: Scientists on SOFIA found a black hole that seems to be changing its galactic surroundings in a way that is usually associated with newborn stars.Portal...

Researchers find potential solution to overheating mobile phones

Modern computer memory encodes information by switching magnetic bits within devices. Now, a ground-breaking study conducted by researchers from NUS Electrical and Computer Engineering has found a new efficient way of using 'spin waves' to switch magnetization at room temperature for more energy-efficient spin memory and logic devices.

Samsung researchers: More efficient quantum dots without heavy metals

A team at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology has announced that they have improved quantum dot (QD) technology for use in large displays by developing QDs that are both more efficient and have no heavy metals. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their work and their plans for the future. Alexander Efros, with the Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington D.C....

Biologists examine sperm quality on the basis of their metabolism

Every tenth couple worldwide is affected by infertility. The reasons for this are manifold, but mostly well researched. Nevertheless, about fifteen percent of cases remain unexplained. A team of biologists at TU Dresden has now gained new insights into the metabolic properties that make up a good sperm cell.

Adiabatic shortcuts: Short and sweet in the quantum world

Completing a task slowly and carefully may provide us with a high-quality product. It can be summed up by the popular adage "easy does it." But what if a high price has to be paid for slowness? Time is a scarce resource and, what is more, a good result is not guaranteed, since we may be easily disturbed or interrupted by various matters and events if we take too long. So it is clear that we are...