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Archive for the ‘science’ category: Page 99

Sep 20, 2018

Brain science initiatives in China underway

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, science

Plans to develop major research centres will add more power to knowledge about the brain.

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Sep 18, 2018

TESS Shares 1st Science Image in Hunt to Find New Worlds

Posted by in categories: science, space

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which began science operations in July, has released its first full frame image using all four of its cameras.

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Sep 18, 2018

Stockton U. may build $41M science center at former Atlantic City airport

Posted by in categories: science, transportation

Stockton University will conduct a study on a proposed environmental center.

The Press of Atlantic City reports Atlantic City and the university received a $100,000 state grant last week to conduct the feasibility study on the new Marine and Environmental Science Center. According to university officials, the facility would cost about $41 million to build.

The facility would be built on a 15-acre portion of Bader Field. Stockton University’s current science facility in Port Republic was built in the early 1900s.

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Sep 15, 2018

Japan’s science ministry seeks large budget increase, prioritizing massive neutrino detector

Posted by in categories: education, government, particle physics, science, space, supercomputing

Japan’s government is facing serious fiscal challenges, but its main science ministry appears hopeful that the nation is ready to once again back basic research in a big way. The Ministry of Education (MEXT) on 31 August announced an ambitious budget request that would allow Japan to compete for the world’s fastest supercomputer, build a replacement x-ray space observatory, and push ahead with a massive new particle detector.


Proposed successor to Super-Kamiokande, exascale computer and x-ray satellite win backing.

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Sep 13, 2018

Inside the ‘shadowy world’ of China’s fake science research black market

Posted by in categories: futurism, science

But Dr Oransky and colleagues are also calling for better peer review after research is published.

“We should reward people who come forward about problems in other people’s work, not in a punitive way, but actually looking at it and saying, ‘hey, that’s a problem, we should do something about it’, and give people the chance to correct the record,” he said.


In China, there’s a growing black market peddling fake research papers, fake peer reviews, and even entirely fake research results to anyone who will pay. Does the rise of fake and fraudulent science threaten the future of research?

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Sep 12, 2018

European science funders ban grantees from publishing in paywalled journals

Posted by in categories: business, physics, science

The move means grantees from these 11 funders—which include the national funding agencies in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France as well as Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics—will have to forgo publishing in thousands of journals, including high-profile ones such as Nature, Science, Cell, and The Lancet, unless those journals change their business model. “We think this could create a tipping point,” says Marc Schiltz, president of Science Europe, the Brussels-based association of science organizations that helped coordinate the plan. “Really the idea was to make a big, decisive step—not to come up with another statement or an expression of intent.”


Bold move is intended to trigger open-access tipping point.

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Sep 10, 2018

The Fate of Free Will: When Science Crosses Swords with Philosophy

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, science

In some domains the two knowledge systems are complementary, but in others they might be headed for conflict.

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Sep 9, 2018

The Alzheimer’s Hypothesis

Posted by in categories: aging, genetics, health, neuroscience, science

The Alzheimer’s Hypothesis

Introduction

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Aug 30, 2018

The New Science of Seeing Around Corners

Posted by in categories: computing, science

Computer vision researchers have uncovered a world of visual signals hiding in our midst, including subtle motions that betray what’s being said and faint images of what’s around a corner.

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Aug 27, 2018

Physicists race to demystify Einstein’s ‘spooky’ science

Posted by in categories: computing, encryption, mobile phones, neuroscience, quantum physics, science, space

When it comes to fundamental physics, things can get spooky. At least that’s what Albert Einstein said when describing the phenomenon of quantum entanglement—the linkage of particles in such a way that measurements performed on one particle seem to affect the other, even when separated by great distances. “Spooky action at a distance” is how Einstein described what he couldn’t explain.

While quantum mechanics includes many mysterious phenomena like entanglement, it remains the best fundamental physical theory describing how matter and light behave at the smallest scales. Quantum theory has survived numerous experimental tests in the past century while enabling many advanced technologies: modern computers, digital cameras and the displays of TVs, laptops and smartphones. Quantum entanglement itself is also the key to several next-generation technologies in computing, encryption and telecommunications. Yet, there is no clear consensus on how to interpret what quantum theory says about the true nature of reality at the subatomic level, or to definitively explain how entanglement actually works.

According to Andrew Friedman, a research scientist at the University of California San Diego Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS), “the race is on” around the globe to identify and experimentally close potential loopholes that could still allow alternative theories, distinct from quantum theory, to explain perplexing phenomena like quantum entanglement. Such loopholes could potentially allow future quantum encryption schemes to be hacked. So, Friedman and his fellow researchers conducted a “Cosmic Bell” test with polarization-entangled photons designed to further close the “freedom-of-choice” or “free will” loophole in tests of Bell’s inequality, a famous theoretical result derived by physicist John S. Bell in the 1960s. Published in the Aug. 20 issue of Physical Review Letters, their findings are consistent with quantum theory and push back to at least 7.

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