Thursday, January 9, 2025

Say That


Language is like a life form, but we don't think about it that way. Every day new words are being born, like a new species, and with them, entire new branches on the tree of life, or at least, the tree of knowledge. 

This first article is long only because the part about controlling people's dreams is pretty cool:

Parasomnia: What happens inside a sleepwalker's brain?
May 2024, phys.org

Parasomnia - sleepwalking

Those who experience parasomnias during non-REM sleep sometimes report having dream-like experiences and sometimes appear completely unconscious (i.e., on automatic pilot).

They provoke a parasomnia episode in the lab, where on the first night the patient sleeps normally, but on the second night is kept awake and only allowed to sleep the next morning, when they are exposed to a loud sound upon entering the deep-sleep stage. In some cases, this results in a parasomnia episode. 

In 56% of episodes, patients reported that they had been dreaming during the episode. "It was often about an impending misfortune or danger. Some reported that they thought the ceiling was going to come down. One patient thought they'd lost their baby and was searching through the bedsheets, and stood up in bed to try to save ladybugs from gliding down the wall and dying," Siclari explains.

"In 19% of the cases, the patients weren't experiencing anything and simply awoke to find themselves doing things, almost like a trance."

"Interestingly, patients almost never mention the sound that initiated the parasomnia episode, but rather some other type of impending danger. The louder we go with the sound volume, the higher the chance that we provoke an episode."

via Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience: Jacinthe Cataldi et al, Shared EEG correlates between non-REM parasomnia experiences and dreams, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48337-7

Above image credit: We can see in the image above, that the robots don't know what a child is, or we don't have enough well-labelled samples in the noosphere aka the internet: AI Art - Child's Handwriting 1 - 2024

Astronomers discover at least one in a dozen stars show evidence of planetary ingestion
Mar 2024, phys.org

Planetary ingestion - when a star eats a planet.

via ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D) and Monash University: Fan Liu, At least one in a dozen stars exhibits evidence of planetary ingestion, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07091-y. 


Study outlines spectroscopic signatures of fractionalization in octupolar quantum spin ice
Mar 2024, phys.org

π-flux octupolar quantum spin ice (π-O-QSI) - a new 3D quantum spin liquid that can host fractionalized excitations.

via University of Toronto: Félix Desrochers et al, Spectroscopic Signatures of Fractionalization in Octupolar Quantum Spin Ice, Physical Review Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.066502. 


Red light therapy for repairing spinal cord injury passes milestone
May 2024, phys.org

Photobiomodulation - It's light therapy, delivered either by implantable device or transcutaneous delivery, where the light source is placed against the skin.

via University of Birmingham: Andrew R. Stevens et al, Implantable and transcutaneous photobiomodulation promote neuroregeneration and recovery of lost function after spinal cord injury, Bioengineering & Translational Medicine (2024). DOI: 10.1002/btm2.10674


Creating chimeroids by mixing stem cells from different donors to create multiple cell line organoids
Jun 2024, phys.org

Chimeroids - functional organoids with multiple cell lines; achieved by obtaining pluripotent stem cells from multiple individuals, then broken into multiple parts, mixed all together to allow the results to grow into a multi-cell-line organoid, which they call a chimeroid.

F*** right off. 

via Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard: Noelia Antón-Bolaños et al, Brain Chimeroids reveal individual susceptibility to neurotoxic triggers, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07578-8

Also: Aparna Bhaduri, Chimeric brain organoids capture human genetic diversity, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-01648-7


Picotaur—the unrivaled microrobot
Aug 2024, phys.org

Picotaur - a tiny robot

via Carnegie Mellon University Mechanical Engineering: Sukjun Kim et al, Picotaur: A 15 mg Hexapedal Robot with Electrostatically Driven, 3D‐Printed Legs, Advanced Intelligent Systems (2024). DOI: 10.1002/aisy.202400196


Two-way mathematical 'dictionary' could connect quantum physics with number theory
Sep 2024, phys.org

Big Als - "big algebras," a two-way mathematical 'dictionary' between symmetry, algebra, and geometry, that could strengthen the connection between the distant worlds of quantum physics and number theory.

via Institute of Science and Technology Austria: Tamás Hausel, Commutative avatars of representations of semisimple Lie groups, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2319341121


Quantum research breakthrough uses synthetic dimensions to efficiently process quantum information
Oct 2024, phys.org

Synthetic photonic networks - they can process quantum information based on the quantum walks of high-dimensional photons entangled in their temporal states.

via Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique at Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre: Monika Monika et al, Quantum state processing through controllable synthetic temporal photonic lattices, Nature Photonics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-024-01546-4

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Wednesday, January 8, 2025

On the Misunderstandings of Thermodynamics


Thermodynamics is hard. 

The very concept of the green roof is an abomination, because it's antithetical to the purpose of a roof to begin with - a green roof is literally storing water on top of the building, on purpose. Roofs are sloped and bound by drainage systems to get the water out as thoroughly and quickly as possible. Water is the enemy, and yet with a  green roof, we're inviting it into the building on purpose. Sounds cool, looks cool, dumbest thing ever.

But then again, cool roofs are also a problem. One of the ways a building gets rid of unintended and uncontrolled water intrusion is through the silent, invisible power of the stack effect (heat rises). A hot roof facilitates and amplifies this stack effect, cooking-out excess moisture that gets into the interstitial spaces in a building. You can make a building as perfect as possible, but water will get in there, because that's what it does, and because nothing is perfect. 

What can sometimes appear like a deficit (roofs get too hot) can actually be an integral part of the overall design (ridding excess moisture). 

This is similar to highly efficient (almost magically efficient) ambient heat pumps - they only use the exact amount of energy needed. Traditional air conditioners are over-designed in that they cool the air way more than they need to. But for hot and humid climates, this has the benefit of removing moisture from the air. A modern, magical heat pump that removes the heat but not the moisture, does not make a comfortable indoor environment, and could actually lead to unintended side effects like mold growth. 


Cool roofs outperform green roofs in urban climate modeling study
July 2024, phys.org

A three-dimensional urban climate model of Greater London tested the thermal effects of different passive and active urban heat management systems, including painted "cool roofs," rooftop solar panels, green roofs, ground level tree vegetation and air conditioning during the two hottest days of the summer of 2018, and found that if adopted widely throughout London, cool roofs could reduce outdoor temperatures across the city about 1.2 C up to 2 C.

Other systems, such as extensive street-level vegetation or solar panels would provide a smaller net cooling effect, only about 0.3 degrees C on average across London, though they offer other environmental benefits. Similarly, while green roofs offer benefits like water drainage and wildlife habitats, their net cooling effect on the city was found to be negligible on average.

Though on average the effect of green roofs was negligible, the researchers found that their effect on temperature varied significantly throughout the day. During the warmest times of day, the wide adoption of green roofs could lower urban temperatures by an average of 0.5 degrees C. However, this would be offset overnight as the thermal mass from the roofs would retain daytime heat, releasing when the sun was down and increasing night-time temperatures by about the same amount.

via University College London: Cool roofs could be most effective at reducing outdoor urban temperatures in London compared with other roof top and vegetation interventions: a mesoscale urban climate modelling study, Geophysical Research Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024GL109634

Research shows how common plastics could passively cool and heat buildings with the seasons
Jun 2024, phys.org

Roofs and walls are not the same. Roofs have a clear view of the sky, where they can radiate their heat upwards. Walls can't radiate upwards, they're blocked by other things, and they absorb a lot of heat from surrounding buildings and pavement. They're also affected by different "kinds" of heat:

Radiant heat moves from buildings to the sky in a narrow portion of the infrared spectrum known as the atmospheric transmission window, so the researchers call this narrowband. At ground level, radiant heat moves across the entire infrared spectrum, and the researchers call that broadband.

"By coating walls and windows with materials that only radiate or absorb heat in the atmospheric window (like propylene), we can reduce broadband heat gain from the ground in the summer, and loss in the winter, while maintaining the cooling effect of the sky.

via Oak Ridge National Lab, Arizona State University, Princeton and UCLA: Radiative Cooling and Thermoregulation in the Earth's Glow, Cell Reports Physical Science (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2024.102065.

New fabric makes urban heat islands more bearable
Jun 2024, phys.org

Only hats, shoulder coverings and the tops of shoes - about 3% of clothing - face direct sunlight. The other 97% of are being heated by thermal radiation from the sides and below.

"Solar is visible light, thermal radiation is infrared, so they have different wavelengths. That means you need to have a material that has two optical properties at the same time."

In tests under the Arizona sun, the material kept 2.3 C (4.1 F) cooler than the broadband emitter fabric used for outdoor endurance sports and 8.9 C (16 F) cooler than the commercialized silk commonly used for shirts, dresses and other summer clothing.

via University of Chicago: Ronghui Wu et al, Spectrally engineered textile for radiative cooling against urban heat islands, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adl0653

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Quantum Progress


Someone said Majorana fermions so I listened:
Physicists move one step closer to topological quantum computing
Jul 2024, phys.org

Theory predicts that a combination of superconductivity and the quantum anomalous Hall effect will give rise to topologically protected particles called Majorana fermions that will potentially revolutionize future technologies such as quantum computers.

Such a combination can be achieved by inducing superconductivity in the edge of a quantum anomalous Hall insulator that is already resistance-free. The resultant chiral Majorana edge state, which is a special type of Majorana fermions, is a key to realizing "flying qubits" (or quantum bits) that are topologically protected.

via University of Cologne, KU Leuven, the University of Basel, and Forschungszentrum Jülich joint Cluster of Excellence Matter and Light for Quantum Computing ML4Q: Anjana Uday et al, Induced superconducting correlations in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator, Nature Physics (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02574-1

Image credit: Quantum computer with outer shielding of dilution refrigerator removed - Anna-Lena Lundqvist at Chalmers University of Technology - 2023


'Kink state' control may provide pathway to quantum electronics
Jul 2024, phys.org

Careful now

Kink states are electrical conduction pathways at the edge of the semiconducting material Bernal bilayer graphene that can regulate the flow of electrons in a quantum system via the quantum valley Hall effect. 

via Pennsylvania State University: Ke Huang et al, High-temperature quantum valley Hall effect with quantized resistance and a topological switch, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adj3742


New method could yield fast, cross-country quantum network
Jul 2024, phys.org

They're building long quantum channels using vacuum sealed tubes with an array of spaced-out lenses. These vacuum beam guides, about 20 centimeters in diameter, would have ranges of thousands of kilometers and capacities of more than 1,013 qubits per second, better than any existing quantum communication approach. Photons of light encoding quantum data would move through the vacuum tubes and remain focused thanks to the lenses.

via University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory LIGO: Yuexun Huang et al, Vacuum Beam Guide for Large Scale Quantum Networks, Physical Review Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.020801.


Test of a prototype quantum internet runs under New York City for half a month
Aug 2024, phys.org

"Progress toward a fully automated practical entanglement network"

Qunnect researchers used a leased 34-kilometer-long fiber circuit they called the GothamQ loop. Using polarization-entangled photons, they operated the loop for 15 continuous days, with fidelity nearly 90%. 

via Qunnect Inc. in Brooklyn, New York: Alexander N. Craddock et al, Automated Distribution of Polarization-Entangled Photons Using Deployed New York City Fibers, PRX Quantum (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PRXQuantum.5.030330

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Tuesday, January 7, 2025

On Intermental Access and Semantic Phrenology


Now they're using pairs of epilepsy patients, talking to each other.

Context contingent networks is the new wordcloud. But this is literally the baby steps of mind-reading, word-by-word:

Brain activity associated with specific words is mirrored between speaker and listener during a conversation
Aug 2024, phys.org

The team collected brain activity data and conversation transcripts from pairs of epilepsy patients during natural conversations, using electrocorticography and GPT-2

"We can see linguistic content emerge word-by-word in the speaker's brain before they actually articulate what they're trying to say, and the same linguistic content rapidly reemerges in the listener's brain after they hear it."

Word-specific brain activity peaked in the speaker's brain around 250 ms before they spoke each word, and corresponding spikes in brain activity associated with the same words appeared in the listener's brain approximately 250 ms after they heard them.

via Princeton and New York University School of Medicine Comprehensive Epilepsy Center: A shared model-based linguistic space for transmitting our thoughts from brain to brain in natural conversations, Neuron (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.06.025.


Words like 'this' and 'that' act as attention tools across languages
Jul 2024, phys.org

This and that and here and there are 'demonstrative' words are used to direct listeners' focus of attention and to establish joint attention.

There is debate about whether directing the listener's attention - the 'mentalistic' representation - is part of the meaning (semantics) of demonstratives, or whether it arises from general principles of social cognition (pragmatics). The researchers used computational modeling and experiments with speakers of ten different languages from eight different language groups to investigate this question.

Results showed that participants were not only sensitive to the location of the target but also to the listener's attention. As expected, the meaning of demonstratives varied within and across languages. For example, the 'near' demonstrative (such as English 'this one') sometimes had a spatial meaning ('the one close to me'). But it also had a joint attention meaning ('the one we are both looking at') or a 'mentalistic' meaning ('the one over here'), directing the listener's attention towards the speaker.

Interestingly, speakers of languages with a three-word system used the medial word (such as Spanish 'ese') to indicate joint attention.

via Yale University and the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen: Jara-Ettinger, Julian et al, Demonstratives as attention tools: Evidence of mentalistic representations within language, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2402068121. 

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Algorithmic Intent


Whether this is collusion or not it provides the same support for the fact that - we cannot actually study these things because we have no idea what they're doing on the back end (looking at you Chat)

Team debunks research showing Facebook's news-feed algorithm curbs election misinformation
Sep 2024, phys.org

The team's work shows that the research was conducted during a short period when Meta temporarily introduced a new, more rigorous news algorithm rather than its standard one, and that the previous researchers did not account for the algorithmic change. This helped to create the misperception, widely reported by the media, that Facebook and Instagram's news feeds are largely reliable sources of trustworthy news.

Also note - "social media are not required to make any public notification of significant changes to their algorithms" (not in the United States, that is)

via Manning College of Information and Computer Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst: H. Holden Thorp, Context matters in social media, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adt2983.


Post Script:
Researchers identify 'dancer' as a new curiosity style in Wikipedia browsing
Oct 2024, phys.org

I just thought this was an interesting point:

"Wikipedia is a very special place on the internet. The site features exclusively free content and no commercial advertisements. Much of the rest of the contemporary digital landscape is designed to activate individuals' buying impulses and customizes our media content. This raises the question of how much we are in charge of where our curiosity takes us in online contexts beyond Wikipedia."
-David Lydon-Staley, assistant professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at U Penn

via University of Pennsylvania Complex Systems Lab: Dale Zhou et al, Architectural styles of curiosity in global Wikipedia mobile app readership, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn3268


Post Post Script, same thing:
Our outrage over social media posts helps misinformation spread, study shows
Nov 2024, phys.org

The formula we all knew was there the whole time:

"Since outrage is associated with increased engagement online, outrage-evoking misinformation may be likely to spread farther in part because of the algorithmic amplification of engaging content."

via Department of Psychology and School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management: Killian L. McLoughlin et al, Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adl2829

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Monday, January 6, 2025

Neologistics and the Built Environment


Every breakthrough brings new words with it:

UK breakthrough could slash cement CO2 emissions
May 2024, BBC News

Electric cement - reactivated recycled cement using an electric arc furnace powered by the slag that was originally used to recycle steel, and via the Cambridge University's Department of Engineering.

Transparent metamaterial for energy-efficient regulation in building can clean itself like a lotus leaf
May 2024, phys.org

Polymer-based micro-photonic multi-functional metamaterial - made of microscopic pyramids of silicone and allows sunlight to enter, maintains a more comfortable indoor climate without additional energy, and cleans itself like a lotus leaf. 

via Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Light Technology Institute: Gan Huang et al, Radiative cooling and indoor light management enabled by a transparent and self-cleaning polymer-based metamaterial, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48150-2

Image credit: A jet of particles moving at nearly light speed emerges from a massive star in this artist’s concept. The star’s core ran out of fuel and collapsed into a black hole. Some of the matter swirling toward the black hole was redirected into dual jets firing in opposite directions. We see a gamma-ray burst when one of these jets happens to point directly at Earth. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

New material records mechanical stress through luminescence
Jun 2024, phys.org

Mechanoluminescent materials - exhibit luminescence when mechanically stimulated by recording mechanical stress history through a luminescent effect called an afterglow, which is stored for a long time, and uses a power supply of Pr-doped Li0.12Na0.88NbO3 (LNNO) applied to the surface and then irradiated with a flashlight.

via Tohoku University: Tomoki Uchiyama et al, Direct recording and reading of mechanical force by afterglow evaluation of multi-piezo mechanoluminescent material Li0.12Na0.88NbO3 on well-designed morphotropic phase boundary, Applied Physics Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1063/5.0209065


Newly created super-black wood can improve telescopes, optical devices and consumer goods
Jul 2024, phys.org

Nxylon - Thanks to an accidental discovery, researchers at the University of British Columbia have created a new super-black material that absorbs almost all light. They were experimenting with high-energy plasma to make wood more water-repellent. However, when they applied the technique to the cut ends of wood cells, the surfaces turned extremely black.

The team named and trademarked their discovery Nxylon (niks-uh-lon), after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night, and xylon, the Greek word for wood. It's made from basswood, a tree widely found in North America. It can replace expensive and rare black woods like ebony and rosewood for watchfaces, and it can be used in jewelry to replace the black gemstone onyx.

via University of British Columbia: Kenneth J. Cheng et al, Super‐Black Material Created by Plasma Etching Wood, Advanced Sustainable Systems (2024). DOI: 10.1002/adsu.202400184

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Sunday, January 5, 2025

Nature's Palette Prompts Advances in Color Tech


Ecocidal maniacs consider alternatives to destroying the planet with glitter:

Bacterial glitter - New findings open up possibilities for sustainable color technologies
Jul 2024, phys.org

Scientists sequenced the DNA of 87 structurally colored bacteria and 30 colorless strains and identified genes that are responsible for these fascinating colonies. 

"We discovered that the genes responsible for structural color are mainly found in oceans, freshwater, and special habitats such as intertidal zones and deep-sea areas. In contrast, microbes in host-associated habitats such as the human microbiome displayed very limited structural color,"

Surprisingly, these genes are also found in bacteria that live in deep oceans without sunlight. This could imply that the colors could reflect deeper processes of cell organization with important functions, such as protecting the bacteria from viruses, or efficiently colonizing floating food particles.

via Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Utrecht University, University of Cambridge, and the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research: Colin J. Ingham et al, Structural color in the bacterial domain: The ecogenomics of a 2-dimensional optical phenotype, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2309757121

Related image credit: Wing scales of a butterfly Papilio ulysses on a medical syringe needle - Daniel Knop Nikon Small World 12th Place - 2024 [link]


Study reveals why orange netting packaging makes oranges look more appealing
Aug 2024, phys.org

The "confetti illusion" - Food growers learned a long time ago that if they packed oranges in orange netting, the oranges inside look more orange, which the mind interprets as a more luscious ripe fruit. The same thing is true for yellow netting for lemons and green netting for limes. 

This research shows that the change in fruit color is not due to the way light reflects off the netting but that sensory stimuli are made of partial information and assembled into images only after the brain has knitted together input from several sources. 

via Giessen University: Karl R. Gegenfurtner, Perceptual ripening of oranges, i-Perception (2024). DOI: 10.1177/20416695241258748


Synthetic molecular switch enables 'painting' with natural light
Oct 2024, phys.org

A synthetic molecular switch made up of the organic molecule triptycene and a class of compounds called hydrazones can trigger shape changes in liquid crystals that allow them to reflect different colors. 

When chiral triptycene interacts with a liquid crystal molecule, it rearranges other liquid crystal molecules in twisted, DNA-like helices, which then reflect ambient light at different wavelengths based on their pitch, or how far apart the coils in their helical structure are spaced.

via Dartmouth and Southern Methodist University: Indu Bala et al, Multi-stage and multi-colour liquid crystal reflections using a chiral triptycene photoswitchable dopant, Nature Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-024-01648-0

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