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Month: March 2018

Scientists have mapped 6,000 new craters on the Moon with the help of a newly developed technique based on artificial intelligence (AI).

“When it comes to counting craters on the Moon, it’s a pretty archaic method,” said Mohamad Ali-Dib from the University of Toronto, Scarborough in Canada.

“Basically we need to manually look at an image, locate and count the craters and then calculate how large they are based off the size of the image. Here we’ve developed a technique from artificial intelligence that can automate this entire process that saves significant time and effort,” Ali-Dib said.

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All galaxies, no matter how big they are, rotate once every billion years, astronomers have discovered. The Earth spinning around on its axis once gives us the length of a day, and a complete orbit of the Earth around the Sun gives us a year. “It’s not Swiss watch precision. But regardless of whether a galaxy is very big or very small, if you could sit on the extreme edge of its disk as it spins, it would take you about a billion years to go all the way round,” said Gerhardt Meurer, from of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia.

By using simple maths, you can show all galaxies of the same size have the same average interior density. “Discovering such regularity in galaxies really helps us to better understand the mechanics that make them tick — you won’t find a dense galaxy rotating quickly, while another with the same size but lower density is rotating more slowly,” Meurer said.

Researchers also found evidence of older stars existing out to the edge of galaxies. “Based on existing models, we expected to find a thin population of young stars at the very edge of the galactic disks we studied,” Meurer said.

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The power of quantum technology in 2018: how does this develop nowadays

Quantum technology is a new field in physics, derived from quantum physics and, especially, quantum mechanics and it transposes their principles into every day use applications such as quantum computers, quantum cryptography or quantum imaging. Ever since the study of quantum technology has been taking very seriously across the globe, a lot of new technologies and applications were developed to make our lives easier, faster and more secure.

Quantum technology still needs to be promoted.

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Piezoelectric materials, which generate an electric current when compressed or stretched, are familiar and widely used: think of lighters that spark when you press a switch, but also microphones, sensors, motors and all kinds of other devices. Now a group of physicists has found a material with a similar property, but for magnetism. This “piezomagnetic” material changes its magnetic properties when put under mechanical strain.

“Piezomagnetic materials are rarely found in nature, as far as I’m aware,” said Nicholas Curro, professor of physics at UC Davis and senior author of a paper on the discovery published March 13 in the journal Nature Communications.

Curro and colleagues were studying a barium-iron-arsenic compound, BaFe2As2, that can act as a superconductor at temperatures of about 25 Kelvin when doped with small amounts of other elements. This type of iron-based superconductor is interesting because although it has to be kept pretty cold to work, it could be stretched into wires or cables.

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Summary: Scientists just discovered bacteria that trigger autoimmune conditions and found that a simple antibiotic or vaccination stopped the autoimmune reaction. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Yale University researchers discovered a strain of gut bacteria that can travel throughout the body and trigger an autoimmune reaction. More importantly, the scientists say that administering simple antibiotics or vaccines can suppress the autoimmune response, and hold promise as new treatments for chronic autoimmune conditions, such as autoimmune liver disease and systemic lupus.

An autoimmune disease is a condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue. Up until the new study, scientists weren’t sure what causes autoimmune disease. However, researchers have long suspected that bacteria and viruses play a role.

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Summary: Cholesterol drug alirocumab was linked to a 15% lower risk of dying in a new study released Saturday. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

The cholesterol-lowering drug alirocumab was linked to a 15% lower risk of death, and an equivalent reduction of cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, according to a new study.

It’s the first time a cholesterol-lowering drug has reduced deaths since statins such as Crestor and Lipitor came out decades ago.

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