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A team has developed an explainable AI model for automatic collision avoidance between ships.

A team has developed an explainable AI model for automatic collision avoidance between ships.

Extreme cosmic events such as colliding black holes or the explosions of stars can cause ripples in spacetime, so-called gravitational waves. Their discovery opened a new window into the universe. To observe them, ultra-precise detectors are required. Designing them remains a major scientific challenge for humans. Researchers have been working on how an artificial intelligence system could explore an unimaginably vast space of possible designs to find entirely new solutions.

Diamonds with certain optically active defects can be used as highly sensitive sensors or qubits for quantum computers, where the quantum information is stored in the electron spin state of these colour centeres. However, the spin states have to be read out optically, which is often experimentally complex. Now, a team has developed an elegant method using a photo voltage to detect the individual and local spin states of these defects. This could lead to a much more compact design of quantum sensors.

Diamonds with certain optically active defects can be used as highly sensitive sensors or qubits for quantum computers, where the quantum information is stored in the electron spin state of these colour centeres. However, the spin states have to be read out optically, which is often experimentally complex. Now, a team has developed an elegant method using a photo voltage to detect the individual and local spin states of these defects. This could lead to a much more compact design of quantum sensors.

Growing cells in the laboratory is an art that humans have mastered decades ago. Recreating entire three-dimensional tissues is much more challenging. Researchers are developing a new hydrogel-based material that makes it possible to engineer artificial skin tissues, which can serve as living three-dimensional models of human skin for better understanding and treating skin diseases.

Researchers have developed a machine learning workflow to optimize the output force of photo-actuated organic crystals. Using LASSO regression to identify key molecular substructures and Bayesian optimization for efficient sampling, they achieved a maximum blocking force of 37.0 mN -- 73 times more efficient than conventional methods. These findings could help develop remote-controlled actuators for medical devices and robotics, supporting applications such as minimally invasive surgery and precision drug delivery.

A researcher has analyzed the most frequent situations faced by football goalkeepers. The aim is to compile data to facilitate the design of more effective training. The work stresses the importance of practicing the deflections and first touch shots that are produced.

Researchers have demonstrated a way to use corn protein to improve the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries, a finding that holds promise for expanding the use of the high-energy, lighter-weight batteries in electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and other applications.

First ever supercomputer simulations of Mars with a fully molten core could explain the Red Planet's unusual magnetic field. Billions of years ago, Mars had an active magnetic field. Mysteriously, its imprint is strongest in the southern hemisphere. Researchers found that Mars could have produced a one-sided magnetic field with a fully molten core, rather than the traditional, Earth-like solid inner core setup.

A new study modeled the chemistry of TOI-270 d, an exoplanet between Earth and Neptune in size, finding evidence that it could be a giant rocky planet shrouded in a thick, hot atmosphere. TOI-270 d is only 73 light years from Earth and could serve as a 'Rosetta Stone' for understanding an entire class of new planets.

Desalination plants, a major and growing source of freshwater in dry regions, could produce less harmful waste using electricity and new membranes.

Researchers share a model that identifies the optimal location for bowling ball placement. Employing a system of six differential equations derived from Euler's equations for a rotating rigid body, their model creates a plot that shows the best conditions for a strike. The model accounts for a variety factors, including the thin layer of oil applied to bowling lanes, the motion of the subtly asymmetric bowling ball, and a 'miss-room' to allow for human inaccuracies.

Researchers share a model that identifies the optimal location for bowling ball placement. Employing a system of six differential equations derived from Euler's equations for a rotating rigid body, their model creates a plot that shows the best conditions for a strike. The model accounts for a variety factors, including the thin layer of oil applied to bowling lanes, the motion of the subtly asymmetric bowling ball, and a 'miss-room' to allow for human inaccuracies.

Ambisonic rendering is a way to simulate the precise locations of sounds in 3D, and an ambisonics algorithm has allowed researchers to create rich virtual 'soundscapes.'Researchers decided to test the limits of ambisonic sound reproduction through their 'AudioDome' loudspeaker array. Humans' spatial acuity is high in front of our faces but decreases around the sides of our head, and the researchers' experiments obtained very similar results from listeners in the AudioDome, proving that the loudspeaker array can reproduce sound locations at a spatial scale beyond the human limits of perception.

A decades-long stretch of extremely low precipitation in the 1500s may have spurred cultural changes among the Rapa Nui people that reduced time spent building statues, but not all archaeologists agree

Our Sun, like all stars, is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. They are by far the most abundant elements, formed in the early moments of the Universe. But our star is also rich in other elements astronomers call "metals." Carbon, nitrogen, iron, gold, and more. These elements were created through astrophysical processes, such as supernovae and neutron star collisions. The dust of long-dead stars that gathered together into molecular clouds and formed new, younger stars such as the Sun. Stars rich in metals. But there are still stars out there that are not metal rich. These extremely metal-poor stars, or EMPs, hold clues to the origin of stars in the cosmos.

In an early-stage trial, a single dose of a CRISPR treatment lowered cholesterol levels, possibly permanently

When JWST launched, it found the most distant known galaxy: JADES-GS-z14-0, with a redshift of 14.32, and seen about 290 million years after the Big Bang. Now, a team of astronomers has gone even deeper, searching for galaxies in the redshift 15-30 range, which would be galaxies from 270 to 100 million years after the beginning of the Universe. They've found a few candidates in the 15-20 range, but these could be closer, low-mass dusty galaxies.

This Washington Post article (click headline to read, or find it archived here), shows how chilled the research climate in America has become because of the Administration’s threats.  And the Admin hasn’t even =said anything about evolution yet.  (Has anybody ever asked Trump or RFK Jr. whether they accept evolution?)

The threats involve not just the potential of being demonized for publishing on a subject that the administration might denigrate, but also the possibility of researchers in that area being punished because they’re foreigners.

A few quotes:

A few days before they were to submit a scientific paper together, an evolutionary biologist in Europe received an unexpected request from two co-authors in the United States.

After much thought, the co-authors said they preferred not to risk publishing at this time. One had just lost a job because of a canceled government grant; the other feared a similar fate if they went ahead with the paper. Although both were legally in the U.S., they worried they might lose their residency if their names appeared on a potentially controversial article.

The subject: evolution.

. . . .Although President Donald Trump’s executive orders have not targeted research involving evolution, the authors’ unease about publishing on the subject reflects the fear and uncertainty now rippling through the science world.

The paper “was months of work, but at the same time I know the current situation, and I’m scared for my friends in the U.S.,” said the European evolutionary biologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation. “I told them, ‘If you think it is too dangerous, don’t do it.’ ”

Now granted, this is for a symposium volume (something that Steve Gould called the least-read form of scientific literature), with the paper and volume described in this way:

The withheld paper described ways in which evolution unfolds in both living and nonliving systems, a subject relevant to the search for life elsewhere in the universe. The authors included measurements and genomic data on different species. An example of evolution in the nonliving world would be the growth of the universe after the Big Bang, as new minerals and elements came into being, the European scientists said.

. . .The special edition of the Royal Society journal that was to have included the withdrawn paper, emerged from the Workshop on Information Selection and Evolution last October in Washington, which drew a multidisciplinary collection of 100 researchers from as far away as Japan to discuss the latest thinking on evolution.

“People were talking about the evolution of languages, the evolution of technology, the evolution of species, the evolution of minerals and atoms and planets and things like this,” Wong said. “It was just so scintillating.”

Of course there’s a big difference between biological evolution and the idea of “change”, even though people have tried to analogize them by confecting the idea of “memes” (which can’t explain the evolution of minerals, atoms, or planets), so this heterogeneity is why the volume doesn’t get my juices flowing.

But that is not the point. NO scientific paper should be withheld, or the authors forced to hide their real names, because they work and publish in a well-accepted field or are living under a government that is bludgeoning people left and right.  Every day it gets crazier, and every day science becomes subject to more censorship.