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    Quantum Computing: Exotic Particle had an ‘Out-of-Body Experience’

    August 26, 2021, Categories  Physics

    Artist’s illustration of ghost particles moving through a quantum spin liquid. (Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab)

    An unexpected finding could advance quantum computers and high-temperature superconductors. Scientists have taken the clearest picture yet of electronic particles that make up a mysterious magnetic state called quantum spin liquid (QSL).

    The achievement could facilitate the development of superfast quantum computers and energy-efficient superconductors.

    The scientists are the first to capture an image of how electrons in a QSL decompose into spin-like particles called spinons and charge-like particles called chargons.

    “Other studies have seen various footprints of this phenomenon, but we have an actual picture of the state in which the spinon lives...

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    Unveiling a Century-old Mystery: Where the Milky Way’s Cosmic Rays come from

    August 26, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers have succeeded for the first time in quantifying the proton and electron components of cosmic rays in a supernova remnant. At least 70% of the very-high-energy gamma rays emitted from cosmic rays are due to relativistic protons, according to the novel imaging analysis of radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray radiation. The acceleration site of protons, the main components of cosmic rays, has been a 100-year mystery in modern astrophysics, this is the first time that the amount of cosmic rays being produced in a supernova remnant has been quantitatively shown and is an epoch-making step in the elucidation of the origin of cosmic rays.

    The origin of cosmic rays, the particles with the highest energy in the universe, has been a great mystery since their discovery in 1912...

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    High Cholesterol Fuels Cancer by Fostering Resistance to a form of Cell Death

    August 25, 2021, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    The proposed model to explain how cancer cells respond to 27HC treatment. Acute (left) treatment with 27HC disrupts lipid metabolism via interfering with SREBPs and LXR signaling, and this results in the inhibition of cell growth and migration. Cancer cells can adapt to the metabolic stress imposed by chronic treatment by 27HC (right). The cells that survive (27HC resistant cells) increase lipid uptake and accommodate the metabolic stress associated with this activity by upregulating the activity of processes that allow them to withstand lipid oxidative stress (ferroptosis); an activity which confers upon them enhanced tumor growth and metastatic capabilities. Numerical source data are reported in the Source Data File.

    Chronically high cholesterol levels are known to be associated with...

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    Phosphorescent Material inspired by ‘Glow in the Dark’ Wood

    August 25, 2021, Categories  Chemistry/Nanotechnology, Biology/Biotechnology

    Basswood tree
    The researchers found that basswood naturally phosphoresces weakly and so mimicked this in their new material. (Credit: Sarka)

    Scientists have harnessed the natural ability of wood to faintly glow to develop a new sustainable phosphorescent material that could potentially be used in a wide number of applications, from medical imaging and optical sensing to ‘glow in the dark’ dyes and paints.

    An international team of researchers led by North East Forestry University (China) and the University of Bath (UK) investigated the natural phosphorescent properties of lignin, a major component of wood.

    Room-temperature phosphorescence (RTP) is when a material absorbs energy with a short wavelength (such as UV light) and then emits it as visible light...

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