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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 28, 2014 at 6:44am

Nobel laureates offer new interpretations of quantum mysteries

http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548

The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. A View on the Quantum Nature of our Universe, Compulsory or Impossible?

Gerard 't Hooft

(Submitted on 7 May 2014)

When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, "quantum logic" is taking over from "classical logic" in the minds of almost all researchers today. Dissatisfied, the author investigated how one can look at things differently. This report is an overview of older material, but also contains many new observations and calculations. Quantum mechanics is looked upon as a tool, not as a theory. Examples are displayed of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and we argue that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, may be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analyse a system that could be classical at its core. We then explain how these apparently heretic thoughts can be reconciled with Bell's theorem and the usual objections voiced against the notion of 'super determinism'. Our proposal would eradicate the collapse problem and the measurement problem.

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/nobel-laureates-offer-new-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 28, 2014 at 5:52am

climate-smart rice to save farmers in flood-prone areas
Farmers in India’s eastern region, prone for flash floods, are now shifting to flood-tolerant variety of rice, developed by Manila-based International Rice Research Institute, IRRI. The variety – Swarna-SUB1, is bread from a popular Indian variety of rice Swarna by upgrading it with SUB1, the gene for flood tolerance. Swarna was developed by Andhra Pradesh Agriculture University.

The new variety can withstand floods for two weeks, unlike existing varieties which would wilt if remained under water even for a few days resulting in economic loss to farmers. However, Swarna-SUB1 can rise back to life after having submerged for two weeks.

“The demand for this variety is increasing and we are readying 300 quintal breeder seed this year,” said Dr. O.N. Singh, Head of Crop Improvement Division of Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack Odhisa. He told Indian Science Journal, after successful experimental crop, Swarna-SUB1 would now be distributed for cultivation in flood-prone areas of eastern India – Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Odhisa and Andhra Pradesh.

Climate-smart rice varieties are made to especially thrive in environments affected by flooding, drought, cold temperatures, and soils that are too salty or contain too much iron that leads to iron toxicity. IRRI has distributed the climate-smart rice varieties to about 10 million of the poorest and most disadvantaged rice farmers in various countries in South Asia under Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project promoted by IRRI. The STRASA project was initiated in 2007, with its first two phases funded with about USD 20 million each.

“Under the past phases of the project, 16 climate-smart rice varieties tolerant of flood, drought, and salinity were released in various countries in South Asia; about 14 such varieties were released in sub-Saharan Africa. Several more are in the process of being released,” said Abdelbagi Ismail, IRRI scientist and STRASA project leader.

In addition to improving varieties and distributing seeds, the STRASA project also trains farmers and scientists in producing good-quality seeds. Through the project’s capacity-building component, 74,000 farmers—including 19,400 women farmers—underwent training in seed production.

“An estimated 140,000 tons of seed of these varieties were produced between 2011 and 2013. These seed releases are estimated to have reached over ten million farmers, covering over 2.5 million hectares of rice land.” said Dr. Ismail. This is double the initial target of 5 million farmers reached.

IRRI collaborates with more than 550 partners in getting climate-smart rice varieties to farmers in South Asia and Africa. These partners include national agricultural research and extension programs, government agencies, nongovernment organizations, and private sector actors, including seed producers.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 28, 2014 at 5:27am

Microbes defy rules of DNA code

Researchers find widespread 'recoding'.
The instructions encoded into DNA are thought to follow a universal set of rules across all domains of life. But researchers report today in Science1 that organisms routinely break these rules.

The finding has implications for the design of synthetic life: by designing organisms that break the rules, researchers may be able to make novel life forms resistant to viral infection. Making these organisms also been proposed as a way to stop synthetic life forms from infecting unintended hosts. Widespread exceptions to these rules, however, could make it difficult to engineer organisms that will not pass on their DNA to those in the wild.
http://www.nature.com/news/microbes-defy-rules-of-dna-code-1.15283

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 27, 2014 at 9:59am

Visual Cortex Found To Process Sound As Well As Sight
''Decoding Sound and Imagery Content in Early Visual Cortex''
Human early visual cortex was traditionally thought to process simple visual features such as orientation, contrast, and spatial frequency via feedforward input from the lateral geniculate nucleus. However, the role of nonretinal influence on early visual cortex is so far insufficiently investigated despite much evidence that feedback connections greatly outnumber feedforward connections. Here, the researchers explored in five fMRI experiments how information originating from audition and imagery affects the brain activity patterns in early visual cortex in the absence of any feedforward visual stimulation. They show that category-specific information from both complex natural sounds and imagery can be read out from early visual cortex activity in blindfolded participants. The coding of nonretinal information in the activity patterns of early visual cortex is common across actual auditory perception and imagery and may be mediated by higher-level multisensory areas. Furthermore, this coding is robust to mild manipulations of attention and working memory but affected by orthogonal, cognitively demanding visuospatial processing. Crucially, the information fed down to early visual cortex is category specific and generalizes to sound exemplars of the same category, providing evidence for abstract information feedback rather than precise pictorial feedback. The results suggest that early visual cortex receives nonretinal input from other brain areas when it is generated by auditory perception and/or imagery, and this input carries common abstract information. The findings are compatible with feedback of predictive information to the earliest visual input level, in line with predictive coding models.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814%2900458-8

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 26, 2014 at 9:07am

How the escape from gravity works: The plane flies a series of parabolas. From an altitude of about 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), the aircraft quickly ascends maybe another 20,000 feet into the sky and then plummets. It climbs and drops over and over again — 30 times — creating short periods of weightlessness at the crest.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 24, 2014 at 6:10am

Spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing-part 2

According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, quantum fluctuations in the metastable false vacuum – a state absent of space, time or matter – can give rise to virtual particle pairs. Ordinarily these pairs self-annihilate almost instantly, but if these virtual particles separate immediately, they can avoid annihilation, creating a true vacuum bubble. The Wuhan team’s equations show that such a bubble has the potential to expand exponentially, causing a new universe to appear. All of this begins from quantum behavior and leads to the creation of a tremendous amount of matter and energy during the inflation stage. (Note that as stated in this paper, the metastable false vacuum has “neither matter nor space or time,” but is a form of wavefunction referred to as “quantum potential.” While most of us wouldn’t be inclined to call this “nothing,” physicists do refer to it as such.)
This description of exponential growth of a true vacuum bubble corresponds directly to the period of cosmic inflation resulting from the Big Bang. According to this proof, the bubble even stops expanding – or else it may continue to expand at a constant velocity – once it reaches a certain size. Nevertheless, this is a very different version of inflation than those proposed by Guth, Linde and others, in that it doesn’t rely on scalar fields, only quantum effects. Still, this work dovetails well with that of the BICEP2 team, both discoveries having significant implications for our understanding of the universe and our future should they stand up to further inquiry.

This description of exponential growth of a true vacuum bubble corresponds directly to the period of cosmic inflation resulting from the Big Bang. According to this proof, the bubble even stops expanding – or else it may continue to expand at a constant velocity – once it reaches a certain size. Nevertheless, this is a very different version of inflation than those proposed by Guth, Linde and others, in that it doesn’t rely on scalar fields, only quantum effects. Still, this work dovetails well with that of the BICEP2 team, both discoveries having significant implications for our understanding of the universe and our future should they stand up to further inquiry.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 24, 2014 at 6:08am

Spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing-part1
Dongshan He, Dongfeng Gao, Qing-yu Cai
(Submitted on 4 Apr 2014)

An interesting idea is that the universe could be spontaneously created from nothing, but no rigorous proof has been given. In this paper, we present such a proof based on the analytic solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (WDWE). Explicit solutions of the WDWE for the special operator ordering factor p=-2 (or 4) show that, once a small true vacuum bubble is created by quantum fluctuations of the metastable false vacuum, it can expand exponentially no matter whether the bubble is closed, flat or open. The exponential expansion will end when the bubble becomes large and thus the early universe appears. With the de Broglie-Bohm quantum trajectory theory, we show explicitly that it is the quantum potential that plays the role of the cosmological constant and provides the power for the exponential expansion of the true vacuum bubble. So it is clear that the birth of the early universe completely depends on the quantum nature of the theory.

Comments: The problem of singularity can be avoided naturally as the universe can be spontaneously created from nothing
Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Journal reference: Phys. Rev. D 89, 083510 (2014)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.89.083510
Cite as: arXiv:1404.1207 [gr-qc]
(or arXiv:1404.1207v1 [gr-qc] for this version)
Submission history
From: Qing-Yu Cai [view email]
[v1] Fri, 4 Apr 2014 10:09:09 GMT (9kb)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.1207

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 23, 2014 at 7:28am

A slow heartbeat in athletes is not so funny
Changes in the ‘funny channel’ of heart’s pacemaker may be behind sinus bradycardia
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/slow-heartbeat-athletes...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 23, 2014 at 6:19am

How Gut Bacteria Help Make Us Fat and Thin
Intestinal bacteria may help determine whether we are lean or obese
Adults who do daily battle with obesity, the main causes of their condition are all too familiar: an unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle and perhaps some unlucky genes. In recent years, however, researchers have become increasingly convinced that important hidden players literally lurk in human bowels: billions on billions of gut microbes.

New evidence indicates that gut bacteria alter the way we store fat, how we balance levels of glucose in the blood, and how we respond to hormones that make us feel hungry or full. The wrong mix of microbes, it seems, can help set the stage for obesity and diabetes from the moment of birth.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-help-mak...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 23, 2014 at 6:14am

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