It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A research team led by professors from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Physics and Astronomy has announced the discovery of a new electronic state of matter.
Jeremy Levy, a distinguished professor of condensed matter physics, and Patrick Irvin, a research associate professor are coauthors of the paper "Pascal conductance series in ballistic one-dimensional LaAIO3/SrTiO3 channels." The research focuses on measurements in one-dimensional conducting systems where electrons are found to travel without scattering in groups of two or more at a time, rather than individually.
The study was published in Science on Feb. 14.
"Normally, electrons in semiconductors or metals move and scatter, and eventually drift in one direction if you apply a voltage. But in ballistic conductors the electrons move more like cars on a highway. The advantage of that is they don't give off heat and may be used in ways that are quite different from ordinary electronics. Researchers before us have succeeded in creating this kind of ballistic conductor," explained Levy.
"The discovery we made shows that when electrons can be made to attract one another, they can form bunches of two, three, four and five electrons that literally behave like new types of particles, new forms of electronic matter."
Levy compared the finding to the way in which quarks bind together to form neutrons and protons. An important clue to uncovering the new matter was recognizing that these ballistic conductors matched a sequence within Pascal's Triangle.
"If you look along different directions of Pascal's Triangle you can see different number patterns and one of the patterns was one, three, six, 10, 15, 21. This is a sequence we noticed in our data, so it became a challenging clue as to what was actually going on. The discovery took us some time to understand but it was because we initially did not realize we were looking at particles made up of one electron, two electrons, three electrons and so forth. If you combine all this together you get the sequence of 1,3,6,10."
Levy, who is also director of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, noted that the new particles feature properties related to quantum entanglement, which can potentially be used for quantum computing and quantum redistribution. He said the discovery is an exciting advancement toward the next stage of quantum physics.
"This research falls within a larger effort here in Pittsburgh to develop new science and technologies related to the second quantum revolution," he said.
"In the first quantum revolution people discovered the world around them was governed fundamentally by laws of quantum physics. That discovery led to an understanding of the periodic table, how materials behave and helped in the development of transistors, computers, MRI scanners and information technology.
"Now in the 21st century, we're looking at all the strange predictions of quantum physics and turning them around and using them. When you talk about applications, we're thinking about quantum computing, quantum teleportation, quantum communications, quantum sensing—ideas that use properties of the quantum nature of matter that were ignored before."
More information:DOI: 10.1126/science.aat6467 "Pascal conductance series in ballistic one-dimensional LaAlO3/SrTiO3 channels" Science (2020). https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aat6467
Improving protection of wildlife in national parks
How are wild animals managed in European national parks and what factors influence management decisions? The team of Suzanne van Beeck Calkoen and associate professor Dr. Marco Heurich of the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management at the University of Freiburg has examined differences in national policies for wild animal management in European national parks. Due to major variations in wild animal management policies in Europe, the researchers are calling for a uniform legal framework in order to improve the protection of wildlife in national parks. The researchers have published their latest results in the scientific publication the Journal of Environmental Management.
The team has demonstrated that many of the European national parks fail to meet the targets set for the management of protected areas as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). "In contrast to the United States and Canada, in Europe there are no standard regulations for handling ungulates such as roe and red deer within the national parks," explains van Beeck Calkoen. According to the researchers, the absence of common policies and differences between species communities, hunting traditions, and cultural or political contexts have led to major differences in wildlife management in European countries.
In order to achieve the aims of the national parks and continue to further the development of strategies for handling wild animals, van Beeck Calkoen and other researchers are calling for uniform, European policies on conserving wild animals that correspond to the IUCN guidelines. "A framework is needed that provides a common definition of national parks with clearly specified laws, requirements, and policies," says van Beeck Calkoen. The scientists emphasize that the parks require an integrated, adaptive management system that takes into account all ecosystem processes, local traditions, and socio-political contexts, and a network of national park authorities that promotes the sharing of knowledge and development of the management system.
Among the primary aims of national parks are the protection of natural processes and species conservation. If these goals are in conflict with one another, then park administrations decide over which measures should be taken while taking into consideration the protected assets of the national parks. In order to analyze whether the measures were in accordance with the defined goals, van Beeck Calkoen and her team evaluated the state of management of ungulates in European national parks on the basis of authenticity and other variables that could influence management. To do this, the team collected data from 209 European national parks in 29 countries.
"In more than two-thirds of the national parks, ungulate populations were regulated through culling, hunting, or both," explains Heurich, who led the study. What is more, only 28.5 percent of the parks are in compliance with international standards because they have spaces that are excluded from human intervention which account for at least three-quarters of their total surface area.
More information: Suzanne T.S. van Beeck Calkoen et al, Ungulate management in European national parks: Why a more integrated European policy is needed, Journal of Environmental Management (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110068
Farmers to tackle locust swarms armed with new app
Grassopper of Acrididae family: Anacridium aegyptium. Credit: Alvesgaspar/Wikipedia.
A new smartphone app to tackle pests destroying crops has been developed—and it could soon help farmers whose lands are being decimated by swarms of locusts, something the UN has called for "rapid action" action on.
The team of researchers from the University of Lincoln, UK, has designed and built the specialist app, called MAESTRO, which can recognise locusts and grasshopper pests through the smartphone's camera and record their GPS location.
The aim is for farmers to use the app to record the location and volume of locusts to enable the targeted delivery of pesticides to prevent swarms from spreading and decimating crops in their path. The next stage is the development of a cloud server which the app data will be uploaded to so that the pest's location can be identified in real time.
This potential targeted approach enables the precise use of pesticides to reduce the magnitude of locust swarms.
In January the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that a Desert Locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa could provoke a humanitarian crisis as swarms of the pest continue to migrate and devastate crops in its path, and is calling for urgent international support to fight the worsening upsurge.
Dr. Bashir Al-Diri from the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln led the study. He said: "Each year, approximately 18 million hectares of land are damaged by locusts and grasshoppers, impacting hugely on farmers and their productivity.
"Monitoring techniques currently rely on field surveys by people through digging insect eggs, but this information only helps farmers to make mid and long-term forecasting decisions and can delay effective management measures.
"Our goal is to help farmers identify and record the spread of locusts on their land before they start to develop air borne swarms. We hope this new app will eventually put more knowledge and more power into the hands of the farmers. They will be able to predict insect population and spread, and act quickly and accurately to save their crops."
To build the new software, the scientific team gathered more than 3,500 images of locusts to train the system behind the app, which can also recognise a variety of terrain and plant growth.
With its advanced computer vision technology, the developers hope that the app framework will be used for a wide range of other applications in the future to capture and document key crop pests and diseases.
For example, it could easily be adapted to help individuals identify plant diseases and access expert advice on how to combat them, or to digitally capture the number and type of birds and wildlife in specific locations as part of national and international surveys.
More information: Piotr Chudzik et al, Mobile Real-Time Grasshopper Detection and Data Aggregation Framework, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-57674-8
The Epstein Barr virus portal structure as found at eBIC. Credit: Diamond Light Source
The Epstein-Barr virus is one of the most widespread human viruses. Part of the herpesvirus family, it causes glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis), cancer and autoimmune diseases. At present, there is no treatment for infections caused by this virus. In work recently published in Nature Communications, scientists from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC) in Spain used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to reveal the structure of a key protein, known as a portal, in the Epstein-Barr virus. Similarities between herpesviruses and tailed bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) suggest that these two types of organism may be related. In a second paper published in the same journal, the team solved the structure of the portal protein in bacteriophage T7, using a combination of cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography. These results allowed them to infer how the Epstein-Barr virus portal works and may help in the development of a treatment for this virus.
In 2018, we brought you the news that high-resolution cryo-EM at eBIC had uncovered new information about a critical feature of the Herpes Simplex Virus. Cryo-EM has now worked its magic on the related Epstein-Barr virus, paving the way towards ways to defeat this untreatable virus.
The herpesvirus family is enormous and includes eight human pathogens. The Epstein-Barr virus infects B-cells (a type of white blood cell) and also the epithelial cells that make up skin and also line the inside of the throat, blood vessels and organs. It causes glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis) and can cause several kinds of cancer and autoimmune diseases.
All herpesviruses infect in a similar way. Once the virus has entered a cell and reached the nucleus, it releases its DNA. This DNA can lie dormant for many years until specific conditions trigger replication. When the virus replicates, the DNA is introduced into a new viral shell (capsid), forming a new virus capable of attacking other cells. The virus uses a protein called a portal for packaging its DNA into the viral capsid and to release it to the host cell during infection. As the portal plays a critical role in replication and infection, it makes an attractive target for the development of new anti-viral drugs.
The portal: an open and shut case?
The similarities between the capsid structure and viral DNA packaging mechanism of herpesviruses and tailed bacteriophages suggest that they may be related. Although researchers have been able to determine the structure of portal proteins from bacteriophages successfully, the study of herpesvirus portals has been more challenging. Scientists from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC) have now used cryo-EM at eBIC to reveal the structure of the portal protein in the Epstein-Barr virus at a resolution of 3.5 Å.
In a second study, the same team used a combination of cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography to characterise the structure of the portal protein in bacteriophage T7. Their work illustrates the power of using these techniques in conjunction to solve challenging molecular structures.
The bacteriophage also uses its portal to package its DNA inside a pro-capsid. The tail components then assemble on the portal to make an infectious virus. The ejection conduit remains tightly sealed until infection, when the channel opens to deliver the DNA to the host cell. All of the portals analysed to date for the Caudovirales family of bacteriophages share common structural features.
In search of antivirals
Miquel Coll is head of the Structural Biology of Protein & Nucleic Acid Complexes and Molecular Machines Lab at IRB Barcelona and a professor at IBMB-CSIC. He says;
"Understanding the structure of the portal protein could aid the design of inhibitors for the treatment of herpesvirus infections such as Epstein-Barr. As this protein is only found in herpesviruses, these inhibitors would be virus-specific and may be less toxic for humans."
Cristina Machón and Montserrat Fàbrega, postdoctoral fellows at IRB Barcelona and IBMB-CSIC are first authors on both papers. They say that "solving the structure of the portal protein of bacteriophage T7 has allowed us to infer how the portal from Epstein-Barr virus works."
The drugs currently used to treat herpesvirus infections target the viral DNA polymerase. They are not very efficient, with serious side effects and the appearance of viral resistance after prolonged treatment. There is no specific treatment for the Epstein-Barr virus. Knowledge of the atomic structures of portal proteins will be extremely valuable, allowing the structure-driven design of compounds targeting their function—highly specific anti-virals that should cause fewer side effects.
An image of active regions on the Sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The glowing hot gas traces out the twists and loops of the Sun's magnetic field lines. Credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory/ AIA
A new study led by the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa has helped refine understanding of the amount of hydrogen, helium and other elements present in violent outbursts from the Sun, and other types of solar "wind," a stream of ionized atoms ejected from the Sun.]
Coronal mass ejections (CME) are giant plasma bursts that erupt from the sun, heading out into thesolar systemat speeds as fast as 2 million miles per hour. Like the sun itself, the majority of a CME's atoms arehydrogen. When these particles interact with Earth's atmosphere, they lead to the brilliant multicolored lights of the Aurora Borealis. They also have the potential to knock out communications, bringing modern civilization to a standstill.
And their cause is pretty much a mystery.
UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) researcher Gary Huss led a team of scientists in investigating a sample of solar wind collected by NASA's Genesis mission.
Most of our understanding of the composition of the sun, which makes up 99.8% of the mass of the Solar System, has come from astronomical observations and measurements of a rare type of meteorite. In 2001, the Genesis probe headed to space to gather samples of solar wind in pure materials, and bring the material back to Earth to be studied in a lab. Those samples represented particles gathered from different sources of solar wind, including those thrown off by CMEs.
The Genesis samples allowed for a more accurate assessment of the hydrogen abundance in CMEs and other components of the solar wind. About 91% of the Sun's atoms are hydrogen, so everything that happens in the solar wind plasma is influenced by hydrogen.
However, measuring hydrogen in the Genesis samples proved to be a challenge. An important component of the recent work was to develop appropriate standards using terrestrial minerals with known amounts of hydrogen, implanted with hydrogen by a laboratory accelerator.
A precise determination of the amount of hydrogen in the solar wind allowed researchers to discern small differences in the amount of neon and helium relative to hydrogen ejected by these massive solar ejections. Helium and neon, both noble gases, are difficult to ionize. The new measurements of hydrogen showed that helium and neon were both enriched in coronal mass ejections, providing clues to the underlying physics in the Sun that causes the coronal mass ejections.
In the very energetic event, "the ejected material appears to be enriched almost systematically in atoms that require the most energy to ionize," said Ryan Ogliore, co-author and assistant professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis. "That tells us a lot about the physics involved in the first stages of the explosion on the Sun."Team identifies low-energy solar particles from beyond Earth
New technologies, strategies expanding search for extraterrestrial life
Data from the VLA's observations will be provided to a new signal-processing system built by the SETI Institute. This will allow an additional use -- searching for signs of extraterrestrial technologies -- for the data already being generated by the VLA. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Washington.
New approaches will not only expand upon but also go beyond the traditional SETI technique of searching for intelligently-generated radio signals, first pioneered by Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960. Scientists now are designing state-of-the-art techniques to detect a variety of signatures that can indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial technologies. Such "technosignatures" can range from the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute announced an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) that will provide data to a state-of-the-art technosignature search system.
"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. "Determining whether we are alone in the Universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it," Beasley continued.
"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky," said Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute and Principal Investigator for the Breakthrough Listen Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley. "This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search," he added.
Siemion highlighted the singular role the $100-million Breakthrough Listen Initiative has played in reinvigorating the field of SETI in recent years. Siemion also announced the latest scientific results from Listen, a SETI survey in the direction of stars where a distant civilization could observe the Earth's passage across the sun, and the availability of nearly 2 PetaBytes of data from the Listen Initiative's international network of observatories.
Other indicators of possible technologies include laser beams, structures built around stars to capture the star's power output, atmospheric chemicals produced by industries, and rings of satellites similar to the ring of geosynchronous communication satellites orbiting above Earth's equator.
"Such indicators are becoming detectable as our technology advances, and this has renewed interest in SETI searches at both government agencies and private foundations," Siemion said.
Life forms, whether intelligent or not, also can produce detectable indicators. These include the presence of large amounts of oxygen, smaller amounts of methane, and a variety of other chemicals. Victoria Meadows, Principal Investigator for NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the University of Washington, described how scientists are developing computer models to simulate exterrestrial environments and to help support future searches for habitable planets and life beyond the Solar System.
"Upcoming telescopes in space and on the ground will have the capability to observe the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby cool stars, so it's important to understand how best to recognize signs of habitability and life on these planets," Meadows said, "These computer models will help us determine whether an observed planet is more or less likely to support life."
As new programs implement the expanding technical capabilities for detecting extraterrestrial life and intelligence, it's important to define what constitutes compelling, credible evidence, according to Jill Tarter, of the SETI Institute.
"How strong does the evidence need to be to justify claiming a discovery? Can we expect to find smoking guns? If the evidence requires many caveats, how do we responsibly inform the public," Tarter asked.
Tarter pointed out that projects such as the University of California at San Diego's PANOSETI visible-light and infrared search, and the SETI Institute's Laser SETI search are being built with co-observing sites to reduce false positives. Such measures, she said, will boost confidence in reported detections, but also add to the expense of the project.
The news media also share responsibility for communicating accurately with the public, Tarter emphasized. She cited cases in recent years of "exuberant reporting" of bogus claims of SETI detections. "A real detection of extraterrestrial intelligence would be such an important milestone in our understanding of the Universe that journalists need to avoid uncritical reporting of obviously fake claims," she said.
"As continuing discoveries show us that planets are very common components of the Universe, and we are able to study the characteristics of those planets, it's exciting that at the same time, technological advances are giving us the tools to greatly expand our search for signs of life. We look forward to this new realm of discovery," said Beasley, who organized the AAAS panel.
"We also look forward to the coming decade, when we hope to build a next-generation Very Large Array, which will be able to search a volume of the Universe a thousand times larger than that accessible to current telescopes—making it the most powerful radio technosignature search machine humanity has ever constructed," Beasley added.
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative today released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.
At a media briefing today in Seattle as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, announced the release of nearly 2 petabytes of data, the second data dump from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released last June, the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.
The data, most of it fresh from the telescope prior to detailed study from astronomers, comes from a survey of the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz (GHz). About half of the data comes via the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which, because of its location in the Southern Hemisphere, is perfectly situated and instrumented to scan the entire galactic disk and galactic center. The telescope is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, owned and managed by the country's national science agency, CSIRO.
The remainder of the data was recorded by the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the world's largest steerable radio dish, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder, built and operated by UC Berkeley and located at Lick Observatory outside San Jose, California.
"Since Breakthrough Listen's initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public," said Breakthrough Listen's lead system administrator, Matt Lebofsky. "It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon."
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also announced today an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and provide data to state-of-the-art digital backend equipment built by the SETI Institute.
"The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA, permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky," said Siemion, who, in addition to his UC Berkeley position, is the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. "This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search."
"As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting," said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. "Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it."
"For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth. So, all we could do was speculate. Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question," said Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen.
Earth transit zone survey
In releasing the new radio and optical data, Siemion highlighted a new analysis of a small subset of the data: radio emissions from 20 nearby stars that are aligned with the plane of Earth's orbit such that an advanced civilization around those stars could see Earth pass in front of the sun (a "transit" like those focused on by NASA's Kepler space telescope). Conducted by the Green Bank Telescope, the Earth transit zone survey observed in the radio frequency range between 4 and 8 gigahertz, the so-called C-band. The data were then analyzed by former UC Berkeley undergraduate Sofia Sheikh, now a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, who looked for bright emissions at a single radio wavelength or a narrow band around a single wavelength. She has submitted the paper to the Astrophysical Journal.
"This is a unique geometry," Sheikh said. "It is how we discovered other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets, as well. This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of that region of the sky."
While Sheikh and her team found no technosignatures of civilization, the analysis and other detailed studies the Breakthrough Listen group has conducted are gradually putting limits on the location and capabilities of advanced civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.
"We didn't find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz," Siemion said. "These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment."
Sheikh noted that her mentor, Jason Wright at Penn State, estimated that if the world's oceans represented every place and wavelength we could search for intelligent signals, we have, to date, explored only a hot tub's worth of it.
"My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because I looked at nearby targets on purpose," Sheikh said. "So, we know that there isn't anything as strong as our Arecibo telescope beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky."
Beacons in the galactic center?
The so-far unanalyzed observations from the galactic disk and galactic center survey were a priority for Breakthrough Listen because of the higher likelihood of observing an artificial signal from that region of dense stars. If artificial transmitters are not common in the galaxy, then searching for a strong transmitter among the billions of stars in the disk of our galaxy is the best strategy, Simeon said.
On the other hand, putting a powerful, intergalactic transmitter in the core of our galaxy, perhaps powered by the 4 million-solar-mass black hole there, might not be beyond the capabilities of a very advanced civilization. Galactic centers may be so-called Schelling points: likely places for civilizations to meet up or place beacons, given that they cannot communicate among themselves to agree on a location.
"The galactic center is the subject of a very specific and concerted campaign with all of our facilities because we are in unanimous agreement that that region is the most interesting part of the Milky Way galaxy," Siemion said. "If an advanced civilization anywhere in the Milky Way wanted to put a beacon somewhere, getting back to the Schelling point idea, the galactic center would be a good place to do it. It is extraordinarily energetic, so one could imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to harness a lot of energy, they might somehow use the supermassive black hole that is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy."
Visit from an interstellar comet
Breakthrough Listen also released observations of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, which had a close encounter with the sun in December and is now on its way out of the solar system. The group had earlier scanned the interstellar rock 'Oumuamua, which passed through the center of our solar system in 2017. Neither exhibited technosignatures.
"If interstellar travel is possible, which we don't know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don't know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices," said Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen. "Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is."
Regardless of the kind of SETI search, Siemion said, Breakthrough Listen looks for electromagnetic radiation that is consistent with a signal that we know technology produces, or some anticipated signal that technology could produce, and inconsistent with the background noise from natural astrophysical events. This also requires eliminating signals from cellphones, satellites, GPS, internet, Wi-fi and myriad other human sources.
In Sheikh's case, she turned the Green Bank telescope on each star for five minutes, pointed away for another five minutes and repeated that twice more. She then threw out any signal that didn't disappear when the telescope pointed away from the star. Ultimately, she whittled an initial 1 million radio spikes down to a couple hundred, which she was able to eliminate as Earth-based human interference. The last four unexplained signals turned out to be from passing satellites.
Siemion emphasized that the Breakthrough Listen team intends to analyze all the data released to date and to do it systematically and often.
"Of all the observations we have done, probably 20% or 30% have been included in a data analysis paper," Siemion said. "Our goal is not just to analyze it 100%, but 1000% or 2000%. We want to analyze it iteratively."
Using digital cameras for basic health checks saves zoo animals from anesthetics
A pilot study undertaken by researchers from the University of South Australia at Adelaide Zoo, has developed a new way to undertake basic health checks of exotic wildlife using a digital camera.
Filming animals using a high-resolution digital camera installed on a tripod could offer another way for veterinarians to take an animal's pulse or check its breathing rate.
In the UniSA study, nine species of Adelaide Zoo's animals were filmed for three minutes, up to 40 meters away, picking up tiny movements in the chest cavity that indicate heart and breathing rates.
The animals filmed included a giant panda, African lion, Sumatran tiger, orangutan, Hamadryas baboon, koala, red kangaroo, alpaca and a little blue penguin.
UniSA Professor Javaan Chahl, a remote sensing engineer and one of the study leads, says the experiment recorded heart and breathing signal from all the animals.
"The study was done without any physical contact with the animals and without disrupting their daily routine," Prof Chahl says.
"Until now, monitoring vital signs of wild animals has used specialized equipment and usually required disturbing them or their environment."
"We showed through this experiment that digital cameras can successfully extract cardiopulmonary signals from the animals in a zoo setting. The technique needs refining and more validation, but it demonstrates that wild animals can be remotely monitored for signs of poor health, allowing for earlier detection of illness and fewer unconscious trips to the vet," Prof Chahl says.
Adelaide Zoo's veterinarian, Dr. Ian Smith, congratulated the researchers. "The study so far looks very promising as a useful tool for monitoring animals both in a zoo setting but also in open range and wild settings."
"We look forward to hearing how the researchers get on with validating and refining their technique," Dr. Smith says.
A paper about the pilot study has been published in Sensors.
More information: Ali Al-Naji et al. A Pilot Study for Estimating the Cardiopulmonary Signals of Diverse Exotic Animals Using a Digital Camera, Sensors (2019). DOI: 10.3390/s19245445
The United States Supreme Court will issue a ruling this year in a landmark case that will determine whether transgender people—individuals whose sex assigned at birth does not match their current innate sense of being male, female, both or neither—are protected by federal law from employment discrimination.
At stake is whether transgender individuals can reasonably earn a living without fear of losing their jobs simply because they are transgender.
Our new study, published on Feb. 11, suggests that such protections are sorely needed. On nearly all measures of economic and social well-being, transgender people do much worse.
Little is known about transgender people
We are scholars of economics, health and LGBT populations who wanted to find out about how transgender people fare economically.
A growing body of research on sexual minorities has steadily advanced over the past 25 years. However, when we first started working on this research project three years ago, we found little published work on the economic lives of transgender people.
Most research that did exist came only from studies of one or two progressive-leaning states, such as California or Massachusetts, or used "convenience" or "snowball" samples of transgender people where participants are recruited through social networks.
These types of data are useful, but they might not accurately reflect the general transgender population in the United States.
Starting in 2014, this survey gave states the option to ask respondents their sexual orientation and gender identity. When asked "Are you transgender?" over 2,100 adults responded "yes."
Although this is only a fraction of 1% of the total survey sample, this is a much larger sample of transgender people than has been used in other survey-based studies. And, importantly, it allowed us to examine transgender individuals from states as diverse as Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Idaho and Florida.
The most consistent pattern we found is that individuals who described themselves as transgender did much worse in aspects of their lives that affect their economic well-being—like educational attainment, employment and poverty status—than otherwise comparable individuals who did not identify as transgender.
This was especially true for employment. Transgender people were 11 percentage points less likely to be working compared to nontransgender, or cisgender, people.
We found that this effect was driven by two forces: Transgender people were more likely to be unemployed—that is, they would like to work but are not currently working—and much more likely to report that they are unable to work.
We speculate that transgender people may be unable to work due to a disability, poor health, lack of transportation or other structural barriers.
It's also possible that transgender people have been turned away so many times by potential employers—possibly due to discrimination—that they are what economists aptly refer to as "discouraged," and thus they report that they are "unable to (find) work."
Our results also showed that transgender people had much lower rates of college education than nontransgender people. While 28% of nontransgender people in the survey said they had a college education, the same was true for only 14% of transgender respondents.
Even after accounting for lower college education rates, we found that transgender people had higher rates of poverty and worse health than otherwise comparable individuals who did not identify as transgender.
Rapidly changing policy
The landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015 extended same-sex marriage throughout the United States. Since then, a phrase has emerged to describe the incomplete protection against employment discrimination afforded LBGT people: sexual minorities in most states can be "married on Sunday and fired on Monday."
This is because there is currently no explicit federal employment protection barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Instead, sexual minorities must rely on a patchwork of state laws. Currently, 26 states have no explicit nondiscrimination protections for sexual minorities.
The state patchwork of legal protections for sexual and gender minorities has led to the case currently pending in the Supreme Court, RG & GR Funeral Homes v. EEOC. In this case, Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman, was fired from her job at a funeral home after her transition.
Map of Indonesia locating Mount Merapi volcano which erupted Thursday
Indonesia's Mount Merapi, one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupted Thursday as fiery red molten lava streamed down from the crater and it belched clouds of grey ash 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) into the sky.
Authorities did not raise the rumbling volcano's alert status after the early-morning eruption, but they advised commercial planes to take caution in the area.
But any activity at Merapi raises concern and local residents were ordered to stay outside a three-kilometre no-go zone around the rumbling crater near Indonesia's cultural capital Yogyakarta.
Volcanic ash rained down on a 10-square kilometre area, according to the Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Centre.
Mount Merapi's last major eruption in 2010 killed more than 300 people and forced the evacuation of some 280,000 residents.
It was Merapi's most powerful eruption since 1930, which killed around 1,300 people, while another explosion in 1994 took about 60 lives.
The Southeast Asian archipelago has more than 17,000 islands and islets—and nearly 130 active volcanoes.
It sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", a vast zone of geological instability where the collision of tectonic plates causes frequent quakes and major volcanic activity.
Volcanic ash rained down on a 10-square kilometre area
A research team led by professors from the University of Pittsburgh Department of Physics and Astronomy has announced the discovery of a new electronic state of matter.
Jeremy Levy, a distinguished professor of condensed matter physics, and Patrick Irvin, a research associate professor are coauthors of the paper "Pascal conductance series in ballistic one-dimensional LaAIO3/SrTiO3 channels." The research focuses on measurements in one-dimensional conducting systems where electrons are found to travel without scattering in groups of two or more at a time, rather than individually.
The study was published in Science on Feb. 14.
"Normally, electrons in semiconductors or metals move and scatter, and eventually drift in one direction if you apply a voltage. But in ballistic conductors the electrons move more like cars on a highway. The advantage of that is they don't give off heat and may be used in ways that are quite different from ordinary electronics. Researchers before us have succeeded in creating this kind of ballistic conductor," explained Levy.
"The discovery we made shows that when electrons can be made to attract one another, they can form bunches of two, three, four and five electrons that literally behave like new types of particles, new forms of electronic matter."
