113 articles from FRIDAY 15.10.2021

Fast flows prevent buildup of impurities on the edge of tokamak plasmas

Impurities in the plasmas in fusion tokamaks can reduce performance. These impurities are created by interactions between the hot plasma and the metal tokamak walls. These walls are often armored with tungsten. This material resists heat, but degrades over time, releasing impurities into the plasma. Simulations predict how these impurities behave, but they are difficult to measure directly...

Greening the gray: Fighting floods with restoration versus riprap

When Hurricane Ida roared to shore in Louisiana last month, a system of flood gates, levees, and pumps largely kept the water out of New Orleans. Natural barriers such as wetlands, islands, and even oyster reefs also played a role by acting as "speed bumps" that damped the storm's impact.

Using quantum Parrondo's random walks for encryption

Assistant Professor Kang Hao Cheong and his research team from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have set out to apply concepts from quantum Parrondo's paradox in search of a working protocol for semiclassical encryption. In a recent Physical Review Research letter, the team published the paper "Chaotic switching for quantum coin Parrondo's games with application to...

Who's been kissing who? Prairie dog 'greet kisses' reveal complex social networks

Prairie dogs—those chubby little burrowing rodents found in grasslands across the central and western United States—may not have TikTok or Instagram but they do have intricate social networks. Understanding their connections, interactions and surprisingly complex world could help wildlife conservationists more successfully relocate and reintroduce species into the wild, according to a new...

Gulf Stream and Kuroshio Current found to be synchronized on decadal time scale

A team of researchers with members affiliated with a large number of institutions across Japan has found that the Gulf stream and Kuroshio are synchronized on a decadal time scale. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of decades of weather satellite data and the link between the two ocean currents. Paola Cessi, with the Scripps Institution of...

China's FAST telescope could detect self-replicating alien probes

One of the most challenging questions to answer when confronting the Fermi paradox is why exponentially scaling technologies haven't taken over the universe by now. Commonly known as von Neumann probes, the idea of a self-replicating swarm of extraterrestrial robots has been a staple of science fiction for decades. But so far, there has never been any evidence of their existence outside the realm...

Fresh concerns for wetland springs

New research led by Flinders University is renewing calls to protect the source of water and aquifers supporting the ecologically significant Doongmabulla Springs Complex in central Queensland from a proposed Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin.

Ultrafast optical switching can save overwhelmed datacenters

EPFL and Microsoft Research scientists demonstrated ultrafast optical circuit switching using a chip-based soliton comb laser and a completely passive diffraction grating device. This particular architecture could enable an energy-efficient optical datacenter to meet enormous data bandwidth requirements in future.