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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 20, 2024 at 10:59am

They also demonstrated the process as scalable, with the interference effect persisting even when sending more than one qubit through the cavity.

By carrying out the process on the IBM Quantum Platform and IonQ's quantum hardware, the team demonstrated a proof-of-concept for their protocol, showing a similar system could have the potential to be an energy-effective way of rapidly charging and extracting power from a quantum system.
Though a qubit can simulate the fundamental physics, new methods will be needed to turn the protocol into something more practical and battery-like, meaning it will be a while before you'll be recharging your electric moped in an eyeblink.

Still, the experiment shows there's nothing in the laws of physics that says we can't exploit the quantum landscape for long-life, rapid-charging energy storage.

https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearc...

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 20, 2024 at 10:58am

 Quantum Breakthrough Could Charge Batteries in a Snap

Batteries based on the wave-like nature of charged particles could revolutionize energy storage, potentially cramming in more power at a faster rate than conventional electrochemical cells could ever hope to manage. A new protocol developed by a team of physicists from National Cheng Kung University could transform the basic principles of a fast-charging quantum battery into a practical system, demonstrating ways the superposition of a battery may be used to store energy quickly and efficiently.

Fundamental to quantum physics is the principle that all bits of matter have a wave-like identity that spreads out through space and time.

As counterintuitive as it is to our experience of reality, these waves represent the properties of an object – whether it's an electron, a molecule, a cat, or a whole planet – as a spectrum of possibility referred to as its superposition.

In recent years, researchers have pondered whether one or more objects in a superposition have something in common with the chaotic zip and bounce of heated material in an engine. Tapping into this quantum phenomenon could even provide new ways to transfer and hold energy.

It's a nice idea in concept, but transforming the theory behind quantum heat engines into a working device requires identifying suitable processes that don't waste a whole lot of energy.

The researchers experimentally evaluated two approaches to using the superposition of a particle to charge a hypothetical quantum battery to determine whether its fuzzy state is indeed transferring energy.

In place of an actual battery, the team simply used a trapped ion in a superposition state known as a qubit, which can gain energy as it passes through a reflective space that constrains the kinds of waves passing through.
Sending the ion through a device that split its wave into two beams, the team compared the battery's ability to store energy as separated waves passed through multiple entry points into a single cavity, and then into multiple cavities.
Not only did they find the ion's superposition really can allow for efficient charging, they found the 'many doorways, one room' approach induced an interference effect that could theoretically lead to what they call a "perfect charging phenomenon", which allows a complete conversion of stored energy to work from the quantum battery at any point in the charging process.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 20, 2024 at 9:51am

Discovery may explain why Egyptian pyramids were built along long-lost Ahramat branch of the Nile

Some 31 pyramids in Egypt, including the Giza pyramid complex, may originally have been built along a 64-km-long branch of the river Nile which has long since been buried beneath farmland and desert. The findings, reported in a paper in Communications Earth & Environment, could explain why these pyramids are concentrated in what is now a narrow, inhospitable desert strip.

The Egyptian pyramid fields between Giza and Lisht, built over a nearly 1,000-year period starting approximately 4,700 years ago, now sit on the edge of the inhospitable Western Desert, part of the Sahara. Sedimentary evidence suggests that the Nile used to have a much higher discharge, with the river splitting into several branches in places. Researchers have previously speculated that one of these branches may have flown by the pyramid fields, but this has not been confirmed.

Eman Ghoneim and colleagues studied satellite imagery to find the possible location of a former river branch running along the foothills of the Western Desert Plateau, very near to the pyramid fields. They then used geophysical surveys and sediment cores to confirm the presence of river sediments and former channels beneath the modern land surface, indicating the presence of a former branch, which they propose naming "Ahramat" (meaning pyramids in Arabic).

The authors suggest that an increased build-up of windblown sand, linked to a major drought which began approximately 4,200 years ago, could be one of the reasons for the branch's migration east and eventual silting up.

The discovery may explain why these pyramid fields were concentrated along this particular strip of desert near the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, as they would have been easily accessible via the river branch at the time they were built. Additionally, the authors found that many of the pyramids had causeways that ended at the proposed riverbanks of the Ahramat branch, which they suggest is evidence the river was used for transporting construction materials.

The findings reiterate the importance of the Nile as a highway and cultural artery for ancient Egyptians, and also highlight how human society has historically been affected by environmental change, according to the authors.

Future research to find more extinct Nile branches could help prioritize archaeological excavations along their banks and protect Egyptian cultural heritage, they add.

Eman Ghoneim, The Egyptian pyramid chain was built along the now abandoned Ahramat Nile Branch, Communications Earth & Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01379-7. www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01379-7

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 19, 2024 at 12:48pm

Why digging soil is not good?

Digging disrupts natural processes that keep soil healthy and productive. Minimising cultivation is desirable when trying to grow plants in ways that have the least environmental impact.

Digging the soil bulldozes a number of structures underground. Drainage channels created by worms are destroyed, important fungal networks are broken and carbon that’s been locked in the soil is released into the atmosphere. 

Digging also brings weed seeds closer to the surface, causing them to sprout more readily.

Benefits don’t necessarily include better crops, although some gardeners have reported higher yields. 

Charles Dowding, a champion of no-dig gardening, compared side-by-side beds over eight years. One was dug, the other wasn’t. He reported 100kg of additional produce from the no-dig bed.

So how does a no-dig garden grow? Instead of cultivating the soil, no-dig gardeners cover their beds with a layer of mulch or well-rotted organic matter, either from their own compost bins or the garden centre. 

If the ground is weedy, simply cover it with a few sheets of cardboard.

Then add another layer of compost on top (this is sometimes known as lasagne gardening). 

The weeds will be smothered and plants root into the soil below, which will be enriched by the activity of worms carrying the compost into the underlying soil.

Source: 

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/no-dig-gardening?utm_campaign=...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 18, 2024 at 12:21pm

A high-fat diet promotes cancer progression by inducing gut microbiota–mediated leucine production

Researchers have found a link between diet, a type of gut bacterium and breast cancer. The study, published on 6 May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, found that a high-fat diet increased the number of Desulfovibrio bacteria in the guts of mice, suppressing their immune systems and accelerating tumour growth.

Researchers say the finding could spark new ideas for therapies for breast cancer, the most common malignancy affecting women worldwide.

Mice that are fed a high-fat diet often serve as a proxy for human obesity in animal studies. The team found that mice consuming a high-fat diet had more Desulfovibrio bacteria and had elevated levels of a type of cell that suppresses the immune system, myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), which originate in the bone marrow. This suggested to the researchers that higher numbers of Desulfovibrio bacteria and a suppressed immune system were linked;

High-fat-diet mice also had higher levels of the amino acid leucine circulating in their blood than did mice fed a normal diet. Knowing that leucine can be made by some kinds of gut bacteria, the team treated the mice with antibiotics that killed Desulfovibrio. This caused both MDSC and leucine levels to return to normal.

Armed with this information, the researchers went back to the blood samples that they had taken from the people with breast cancer. As anticipated, those with a BMI of more than 24 had higher levels of leucine, more immunosuppressive MDSCs and survived fewer years post-treatment than those with a lower BMI.

In other words, Desulfovibrio bacteria, benefiting from a high-fat diet, made excess leucine. This caused a spike in the numbers of MDSCs, which suppress the immune system and allow tumours to grow.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01443-4?utm_source=Live+...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2306776121?utm_source=Live+Au...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 18, 2024 at 8:48am

Microplastics may slow the rate at which carbon is pulled from the sea surface to the depths

Plastics in the ocean do more harm than suffocate turtles, fish and other marine life.

A new study  shows that microplastics may reduce the ability of the ocean to help offset the climate crisis by slowing down the rate at which carbon is taken from the sea surface to the depths.

For millennia, the ocean has been part of a carbon sink process in which dead phytoplankton clump together and fall into the deep ocean in showers of what look like "marine snow". The resulting carbon sequestration is a marine version of how trees and plants on terrestrial Earth take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soil.

But new research  shows that microplastics in the ocean are slowing the process down by making the "marine snow" more buoyant. Plastics want to float. If phytoplanktons grow on microplastics in biofilms, instead of as free living organisms, that changes the buoyancy of the phytoplankton when they die.

Basically, the plastics are slowing down the sinking rate of the marine snow, which is potentially reducing the efficiency with which the ocean can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

So microplastics  could be a threat to global scale processes, such as the carbon cycle that is so important for all life.

 Kai Ziervogel et al, Microbial interactions with microplastics: Insights into the plastic carbon cycle in the ocean, Marine Chemistry (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.marchem.2024.104395

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 18, 2024 at 8:31am

New technique to freeze brain tissue without harm

A team of medical researchers has developed a technique to freeze and thaw brain tissue without causing damage.
In their study, published in the journal Cell Reports Methods, the group tested bathing brain organoid tissue in candidate chemicals before freezing them using liquid nitrogen.

Prior research has shown that no matter how quickly brain matter is frozen, the freezing and thawing process always causes tissue damage. This has made it more difficult for researchers to study brain matter because research must be conducted immediately after obtaining a tissue sample. In this new effort, the team  found a way around this problem by soaking the tissue in a special solution before freezing.

The work involved dipping or soaking brain organoids (brain tissue grown from stem cells) in candidate compounds and then freezing and thawing them to see how they fared. After many attempts, they found one combination of solutions that worked best—a mix of ethylene glycol, methylcellulose DMSO and Y27632. They named the solution mix MEDY.

The research team then tested MEDY under a variety of conditions to see how well it prevented damage from freezing. The conditions involved changing variables, such as the age of the organoids prior to freezing and how long they were soaked in a MEDY solution. They then allowed the organoids to resume growing after they were thawed for up to 150 days.

The researchers found little difference between organoids that had been frozen and those that had not—even those that had been frozen for as long as 18 months.

As a final test, the research team used their technique on a sample of brain tissue obtained from a live human patient and found that it worked just as well.

The research team suggests that their technique should allow researchers to store brain tissue samples on a scale large enough to allow for new types of brain and nervous system research.

Weiwei Xue et al, Effective cryopreservation of human brain tissue and neural organoids, Cell Reports Methods (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.crmeth.2024.100777

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 18, 2024 at 8:28am

Gut bacteria enhance cancer immunotherapy in mouse study

Roughly one in five cancer patients benefit from immunotherapy—a treatment that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer. Such an approach to beating cancer has seen significant success in lung cancer and melanoma, among others. Optimistic about its potential, researchers are exploring strategies to improve immunotherapy for cancers that don't respond well to the treatment, with the hope of benefiting more patients.

Cancer immunotherapy employs the body's immune cells to target and destroy tumors. One such treatment uses immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs to unleash the immune system by releasing the natural brakes that keep immune T cells quiet, a feature that prevents the body from harming itself. But some tumors fight back to suppress the attacking immune cells, damping the effectiveness of such inhibitors.

Now, researchers have found, in mice, that a strain of gut bacteria—Ruminococcus gnavus—can enhance the effects of cancer immunotherapy. The study, which appears May 17 in Science Immunology, suggests a new strategy of using gut microbes to help unlock immunotherapy's untapped cancer-fighting potential.

R. gnavus has been found in gut microbiota of cancer patients who respond well to immunotherapy. In clinical trials, fecal transplants from such individuals have helped some unresponsive patients reap immunotherapy's benefits.

Blanda Di Luccia et al, TREM2 deficiency reprograms intestinal macrophages and microbiota to enhance anti-PD-1 tumor immunotherapy, Science Immunology (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.adi5374. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adi5374

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 16, 2024 at 11:08am

Scientists generate heat over 1,000°C with solar power instead of fossil fuel

Instead of burning fossil fuels to smelt steel and cook cement, researchers in Switzerland want to use heat from the sun. The proof-of-concept study, published May 15 in the journal Device, uses synthetic quartz to trap solar energy at temperatures over 1,000°C (1,832°F), demonstrating the method's potential role in providing clean energy for carbon-intensive industries.

Glass, steel, cement, and ceramics are at the very heart of modern civilization, essential for building everything from car engines to skyscrapers. However, manufacturing these materials demands temperatures over 1,000°C and relies heavily on burning fossil fuels for heat. These industries account for about 25% of global energy consumption.

Researchers have explored a clean-energy alternative using solar receivers, which concentrate and build heat with thousands of sun-tracking mirrors. However, this technology has difficulties transferring solar energy efficiently above 1,000°C.

To boost the efficiency of solar receivers, the researchers  turned to semitransparent materials such as quartz, which can trap sunlight—a phenomenon called the thermal-trap effect. The team crafted a thermal-trapping device by attaching a synthetic quartz rod to an opaque silicon disk as an energy absorber.

When they exposed the device to an energy flux equivalent to the light coming from 136 suns, the absorber plate reached 1,050°C (1,922°F), whereas the other end of the quartz rod remained at 600°C (1,112°F).

Using a heat transfer model, the team also simulated the quartz's thermal-trapping efficiency under different conditions. The model showed that thermal trapping achieves the target temperature at lower concentrations with the same performance, or at higher thermal efficiency for equal concentration. 

Solar thermal trapping at 1000 ºC and above, Device (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.device.2024.100399. www.cell.com/device/fulltext/S2666-9986(24)00235-7

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 16, 2024 at 11:00am

Identifying proteomic risk factors for cancer using prospective and exome analyses of 1,463 circulating proteins and risk of 19 cancers in the UK Biobank, Nature Communications (2024). www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48017-6

Karl Smith-Byrne et al, Identifying therapeutic targets for cancer among 2074 circulating proteins and risk of nine cancers, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46834-3

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