Building a roadmap for detecting life on distant worlds - Carnegie Science

Researchers at HZB have taken an important step toward bringing one of quantum physics' more unusual predictions closer to experimental reality. Fractons, exotic quasiparticles previously predicted in quantum spin liquids using highly generalized gauge field theories, have now also appeared in simulations of a more realistic quantum solid-state model. Quasiparticles emerge from the collective behavior of many interacting particles inside a solid. For instance, vibrations moving through a crystal lattice can be described as quasiparticles known as phonons.

Venture will harness clinical data and laboratory tissue models in quest for potential new therapies

Brain beholder: Barbara Finlay, pictured here in the Wilder Brain Collection that she curated at Cornell University, spent her 40-year career studying how the brain develops and evolved. Finlay, who died on 12 September, championed the idea that developmental constraints dictate how evolution sculpts brains, a concept she used to model the timing of hundreds of events and align them across mammalian species.

A mother bat has one crucial challenge: find her own babies among hundreds of other bats in the colony. Making sure she cares for and nurses only her own offspring is important to ensuring their survival. Among Japanese house bats, mothers keep track of their pups using the babies' isolation calls.

One of the very dangerous consequences of global warming is the growing incidence of wildfires. Not only do they cause extensive physical destruction, but they put huge quantities of smoke into the atmosphere, severely impacting human health. This pollution can travel long distances from the direct effects of such fires, as witnessed earlier this year in the northeastern US due to wildfire smoke originating in western Canada and the US. This smoke includes a witches’ brew of gases and particles that can have deleterious consequences for human health. Among these are small particles called PM2.5, which can penetrate lung tissue and cause respiratory and cardiovascular harm, including aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, heart attacks, strokes and increased premature mortality. This has been known for some time. A less well-known but also dangerous component of wildfire smoke is ozone, which is a highly reactive molecule composed of three oxygen atoms (O3), as opposed to naturally occurring two-atom oxygen—O2.