Tag: science

Quantum effects in biology

Beneath all these quantum solutions to puzzling vital phenomena, we find ourselves with a deeper mystery. Quantum coherence is an immensely delicate phenomenon, depending on those in-tune particle waves. To maintain it, physicists usually have to enclose their systems within near-perfect vacuums and cool them down to very close to absolute zero temperature to freeze out any heat-driven molecular motion. Molecular vibrations are the mortal enemy of quantum coherence. How, then, does life manage to maintain its molecular order for long enough to perform its quantum tricks in warm and wet cells? That remains a profound riddle.

living systems seem to be able to maintain quantum states without decoherence. i’m really curious what the implications for the feasibility of high qubit quantum computers are.

Tricorder

I’m not one for future shock, but this place triggers it increasingly more frequently. we’re somewhere between SL2 and SL3, depending on domain.

Sometimes moonshots come in small packages — small enough to float in the bloodstream and send out alerts when danger is afoot. That was Andrew Conrad’s vision when he came to Google X after a storied medical research career. Now he is revealing details of that vision — and reporting that experiments are well under way in realizing it.

Real life Milgram

a McDonald’s manager take a phone call from a man pretending to be a police officer. The caller orders the manager to strip search an employee. And then much much worse. lest you think this was an isolated incident featuring exceptionally weak-minded people, the same caller was alleged to have made several other calls resulting in similar behavior.

500 exo-comets

Astronomers have studied 500 comets orbiting the Beta Pictoris and have discovered that they belong to 2 distinct families of exocomets: old exocomets that have made multiple passages near the star, and younger exocomets that probably came from the recent breakup of 1 or more larger objects. Beta Pictoris is a young star located 63 light-years from the Sun. It is only 20 ga old and is surrounded by a huge disc of material — a very active young planetary system where gas and dust are produced by the evaporation of comets and the collisions of asteroids.

Lattice light sheet

Ultra-high-resolution movies of live 3D biomolecules now possible

A new imaging platform called a “lattice light sheet” developed by Nobel laureate Eric Betzig is a significant leap forward for light microscopy. It captures high-resolution images rapidly and minimizes damage to cells, so it can image the 3D activity of molecules, cells, and embryos in fine detail over longer periods than was previously possible.

And that allows for stunning videos of biological processes across a range of sizes and time scales, from the movements of individual proteins to the development of entire animal embryos.

Ocean vs Atmosphere Climate

Circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth’s climate as the atmosphere. Major cooling of Earth and continental ice build-up in the Northern Hemisphere 2.7M years ago coincided with a shift in the circulation of the ocean – which pulls in heat and CO2 in the Atlantic and moves them through the deep ocean from north to south until it’s released in the Pacific. The ocean conveyor system changed at the same time as a major expansion in the volume of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere as well as a substantial fall in sea levels. It was the Antarctic ice that cut off heat exchange at the ocean’s surface and forced it into deep water. This caused global climate change at that time, not CO2 in the atmosphere.

Sub 2h marathon

The road is so flat and straight, you can see them coming from 1km away. 6 runners flow in arrowhead formation around the Canadian city of Saskatoon. The early November air is still and dry, the sky overcast, and the temperature hovers a bit above freezing, just as predicted. All in their early 20s, they’ve been training together for this moment for years; only in the last month did their coach select which 3 will go for the record. The remaining 3 form the front of the arrowhead, blocking the wind and enduring the mental effort of controlling the pace. Should one of them cross the finish line in 2 hours—or faster—all 6 will share equally in the $50M jackpot promised by the heirs to the Hoka One One fortune. The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world. The chase is on. So, will they make it? And what year is this? We’ve cut the distance to the sub-2 marathon in half since 1998, but it will get progressively harder to trim the remaining seconds. Still, the physiologists tell us that it’s not impossible, meaning it is possible. I’m saying the year is…2075—and they make it.

The 2h barrier fell in October 2019, though as always there’s drama.

Santa Maria

The wreck of Columbus’ Santa Maria is still undiscovered.

A UNESCO mission of experts has concluded that a shipwreck near Haiti, cannot have been the flagship of Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to America. The mission was requested by the Haitian Government, following claims earlier this year by an American explorer that he had found the remains of the Santa Maria.

60 ka Art

The discovery of 40 ka cave paintings at opposite ends of the globe suggests that the ability to create representational art had its origins further back in time in Africa, before modern humans spread across the rest of the world. “The basis for this art was there 60 ka ago; it may even have been there in Africa before 60 ka ago and it spread with modern humans”.