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    NASA’s IXPE helps Solve Black Hole Jet mystery

    November 25, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This illustration shows NASA’s IXPE spacecraft, at right, observing blazar Markarian 501, at left. A blazar is a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and dust with a bright jet of high-energy particles pointed toward Earth. The inset illustration shows high-energy particles in the jet (blue). When the particles hit the shock wave, depicted as a white bar, the particles become energized and emit X-rays as they accelerate. Moving away from the shock, they emit lower-energy light: first visible, then infrared, and radio waves. Farther from the shock, the magnetic field lines are more chaotic, causing more turbulence in the particle stream.
    Credits: NASA/Pablo Garcia

    Some of the brightest objects in the sky are called blazars...

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    Drug Triggers Immune Cells to Attack Prostate Cancer

    November 25, 2022, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    A drug compound stimulates immune cells to attack prostate tumors, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Shown is a human prostate cancer organoid, a small 3D structure that serves as a model of prostate tumors. When the organoid is grown with prostate cancer patients’ immune cells, which have been treated with the drug, the immune cells attack the cancer. Red shows dead cells. Blue shows DNA.

    A single drug compound simultaneously attacks hard-to-treat prostate cancer on several fronts, according to a new study in mice and human cells...

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    Teaching Photonic Chips to ‘Learn’

    November 24, 2022, Categories  Physics

    CHIP used in research
    Silicon Photonic Architecture for Training Deep Neural Networks with Direct Feedback Alignment, OPTICA

    A multi-institution research team has developed an optical chip that can train machine learning hardware.

    Machine learning applications skyrocketed to $165B annually, according to a recent report from McKinsey. But, before a machine can perform intelligence tasks such as recognizing the details of an image, it must be trained. Training of modern-day artificial intelligence (AI) systems like Tesla’s autopilot costs several million dollars in electric power consumption and requires supercomputer-like infrastructure. This surging AI “appetite” leaves an ever-widening gap between computer hardware and demand for AI...

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    Astronomers Observe Intra-Group Light – the elusive glow between distant galaxies

    November 24, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    igl_between_galaxies_400138.jpg
    Light ‘between’ the galaxies – the ‘intra-group light’ – however dim, is radiated from stars stripped from their home galaxy. Image: Supplied.

    Pioneering a new technique, researchers have peered into the extremely faint light that exists between galaxies to describe the history and state of orphan stars. An international team of astronomers have turned a new technique onto a group of galaxies and the faint light between them — known as ‘intra-group light’ — to characterise the stars that dwell there.

    Lead author of the study published in MNRAS, Dr Cristina Martínez-Lombilla from the School of Physics at UNSW Science, said “We know almost nothing about intra-group light.

    “The brightest parts of the intra-group light are ~50 times fainter than the darkest night sky on Earth...

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