Are Humans Alone In the Universe?

New study estimates the odds of life and intelligence emerging beyond our planet

From: Columbia University

May 18, 2020 -- Despite knowing when life first appeared on Earth, scientists still do not understand how life occurred, which has important implications for the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe. A new paper shows how an analysis using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference could shed light on how complex extraterrestrial life might evolve in alien worlds.

We know from the geological record that life started relatively quickly, as soon as our planet's environment was stable enough to support it. We also know that the first multicellular organism, which eventually produced today's technological civilization, took far longer to evolve, approximately 4 billion years.

But despite knowing when life first appeared on Earth, scientists still do not understand how life occurred, which has important implications for the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

In a new paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences today, David Kipping, an assistant professor in Columbia's Department of Astronomy, shows how an analysis using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference could shed light on how complex extraterrestrial life might evolve in alien worlds.

"The rapid emergence of life and the late evolution of humanity, in the context of the timeline of evolution, are certainly suggestive," Kipping said. "But in this study it's possible to actually quantify what the facts tell us."

To conduct his analysis, Kipping used the chronology of the earliest evidence for life and the evolution of humanity. He asked how often we would expect life and intelligence to re-emerge if Earth's history were to repeat, re-running the clock over and over again.

He framed the problem in terms of four possible answers: Life is common and often develops intelligence, life is rare but often develops intelligence, life is common and rarely develops intelligence and, finally, life is rare and rarely develops intelligence.

This method of Bayesian statistical inference -- used to update the probability for a hypothesis as evidence or information becomes available -- states prior beliefs about the system being modeled, which are then combined with data to cast probabilities of outcomes.

"The technique is akin to betting odds," Kipping said. "It encourages the repeated testing of new evidence against your position, in essence a positive feedback loop of refining your estimates of likelihood of an event."

From these four hypotheses, Kipping used Bayesian mathematical formulas to weigh the models against one another. "In Bayesian inference, prior probability distributions always need to be selected," Kipping said. "But a key result here is that when one compares the rare-life versus common-life scenarios, the common-life scenario is always at least nine times more likely than the rare one."

The analysis is based on evidence that life emerged within 300 million years of the formation of the Earth's oceans as found in carbon-13-depleted zircon deposits, a very fast start in the context of Earth's lifetime. Kipping emphasizes that the ratio is at least 9:1 or higher, depending on the true value of how often intelligence develops.

Kipping's conclusion is that if planets with similar conditions and evolutionary time lines to Earth are common, then the analysis suggests that life should have little problem spontaneously emerging on other planets. And what are the odds that these extraterrestrial lives could be complex, differentiated and intelligent? Here, Kipping's inquiry is less assured, finding just 3:2 odds in favor of intelligent life.

This result stems from humanity's relatively late appearance in Earth's habitable window, suggesting that its development was neither an easy nor ensured process. "If we played Earth's history again, the emergence of intelligence is actually somewhat unlikely," he said.

Kipping points out that the odds in the study aren't overwhelming, being quite close to 50:50, and the findings should be treated as no more than a gentle nudge toward a hypothesis.

"The analysis can't provide certainties or guarantees, only statistical probabilities based on what happened here on Earth," Kipping said. "Yet encouragingly, the case for a universe teeming with life emerges as the favored bet. The search for intelligent life in worlds beyond Earth should be by no means discouraged."

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Columbia University. Original written by Carla Cantor. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. David Kipping. An objective Bayesian analysis of life’s early start and our late arrival. PNAS, 2020 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1921655117

                      https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200518162639.htm

Extroverts Prefer Certain Word Choices

From: Nanyang Technological University in Singapore

December 28, 2020 -- A study by a team of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) psychologists has found a link between extroverts and their word choices.

The finding highlights the need for stronger linguistic indicators to be developed for use in online personality prediction tools, which are being rapidly adopted by companies to improve digital marketing strategies.

Today, marketing companies use predictive algorithms to help them forecast what consumers want based on their online behaviors. Companies are also keen to leverage data and machine learning to understand the psychological aspects of consumer behavior, which cannot be observed directly, but can provide valuable insights about how to improve targeted advertising.

For example, an 'extrovert consumer' might be attracted to marketing messages that match their personality, and retail brands could then choose to target such consumers by using more extroverted and creative language to advertise their products.

However, personality prediction tools available today that are used by marketing firms are not entirely accurate due to a lack of theoretically sound designs.

Principal investigator of the study, Associate Professor Lin Qiu from the Psychology program at the NTU School of Social Sciences said, "Current machine learning algorithms for personality prediction can seem like a black box - there are many linguistic indicators that can be included in their design, but many of them are dependent on the type of computer application used. This may lead to biases and overfitting, an error affecting the performance of the machine learning algorithms.  This begs the question – how should we create robust and accurate personality predictions?"

The study found a correlation between extroverts and their tendency to use certain categories of words. The results showed a small strength of relationship between extraversion and the use of "positive emotion words" and "social process words". 

Positive emotion words are defined by psychologists - using text analysis tools - as words that describe a pleasant emotional state, such as 'love', 'happy', or 'blessed', or that indicate positivity or optimism, such as 'beautiful' or 'nice'. Social process words include words containing personal pronouns except 'I', and words showing social intentions, such as 'meet', 'share' and 'talk'.

"This is the first time a relationship has been established between extroverts and their tendency to use the two categories of words. As it is a small correlation, we believe that stronger linguistic indicators are needed to improve machine learning approaches, amid rising interest in such tools in consumer marketing," Associate Professor Qiu said.   

The NTU team said the findings, which was published in the Journal of Research in Personality in December 2020, can provide marketers with well-founded linguistic predictors for the design of machine learning algorithms, improving the performance of software tools for personality prediction.

How the study was conducted

Previous individual studies reviewed by the NTU team have shown that extraversion, or the general tendency to experience positive emotions and enjoy social interactions, is related to the use of words described by psychologists as "positive emotion" or "social process" words. But the strength of this reported relationship has varied substantially between the different studies exploring it.

To establish the effectiveness of such linguistic predictors, the NTU team reviewed 37 studies looking at the same topic to conduct a meta-analysis. Extraversion was determined using internationally recognized personality type questionnaires.

Moving forward, the NTU research team will investigate the relationship between extraversion and other word categories.

While machine learning and predictive analytics can provide companies and marketers with an added advantage in their business strategies, more thought must be put into the design of such analytical models, the NTU research team said.

They hope their work will provide clarity on the types of words that can help guide the development of more accurate machine learning tools for personality prediction.

Note to Editors:

Paper titled "A meta-analysis of linguistic markers of extraversion: Positive emotion and social process words", published in the Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 89, December 2020.

https://media.ntu.edu.sg/NewsReleases/Pages/newsdetail.aspx?news=0d951e0f-309f-4e67-ada8-0b6e50dc7661

A New Class of Antibiotics

Dual-acting immuno-antibiotics block an essential pathway in a wide range of bacteria and also activate the adaptive immune response

From: The Wistar Institute

December 23, 2020 -- Wistar Institute scientists have discovered a new class of compounds that uniquely combine direct antibiotic killing of pan drug-resistant bacterial pathogens with a simultaneous rapid immune response for combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR). These finding were published today in Nature.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared AMR as one of the top 10 global public health threats against humanity. It is estimated that by 2050, antibiotic-resistant infections could claim 10 million lives each year and impose a cumulative $100 trillion burden on the global economy. The list of bacteria that are becoming resistant to treatment with all available antibiotic options is growing and few new drugs are in the pipeline, creating a pressing need for new classes of antibiotics to prevent public health crises.

"We took a creative, double-pronged strategy to develop new molecules that can kill difficult-to-treat infections while enhancing the natural host immune response," said Farokh Dotiwala, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center and lead author of the effort to identify a new generation of antimicrobials named dual-acting immuno-antibiotics (DAIAs).

Existing antibiotics target essential bacterial functions, including nucleic acid and protein synthesis, building of the cell membrane, and metabolic pathways. However, bacteria can acquire drug resistance by mutating the bacterial target the antibiotic is directed against, inactivating the drugs or pumping them out.

"We reasoned that harnessing the immune system to simultaneously attack bacteria on two different fronts makes it hard for them to develop resistance," said Dotiwala.

He and colleagues focused on a metabolic pathway that is essential for most bacteria but absent in humans, making it an ideal target for antibiotic development. This pathway, called methyl-D-erythritol phosphate (MEP) or non-mevalonate pathway, is responsible for biosynthesis of isoprenoids -- molecules required for cell survival in most pathogenic bacteria. The lab targeted the IspH enzyme, an essential enzyme in isoprenoid biosynthesis, as a way to block this pathway and kill the microbes. Given the broad presence of IspH in the bacterial world, this approach may target a wide range of bacteria.

Researchers used computer modeling to screen several million commercially available compounds for their ability to bind with the enzyme, and selected the most potent ones that inhibited IspH function as starting points for drug discovery.

Since previously available IspH inhibitors could not penetrate the bacterial cell wall, Dotiwala collaborated with Wistar's medicinal chemist Joseph Salvino, Ph.D., professor in The Wistar Institute Cancer Center and a co-senior author on the study, to identify and synthesize novel IspH inhibitor molecules that were able to get inside the bacteria.

The team demonstrated that the IspH inhibitors stimulated the immune system with more potent bacterial killing activity and specificity than current best-in-class antibiotics when tested in vitro on clinical isolates of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including a wide range of pathogenic gram negative and gram positive bacteria. In preclinical models of gram negative bacterial infection, the bactericidal effects of the IspH inhibitors outperformed traditional pan antibiotics. All compounds tested were shown to be nontoxic to human cells.

"Immune activation represents the second line of attack of the DAIA strategy," said Kumar Singh, Ph.D., Dotiwala lab postdoctoral fellow and first author of the study.

"We believe this innovative DAIA strategy may represent a potential landmark in the world's fight against AMR, creating a synergy between the direct killing ability of antibiotics and the natural power of the immune system," echoed Dotiwala.

Co-authors: Rishabh Sharma, Poli Adi Narayana Reddy, Prashanthi Vonteddu, Madeline Good, Anjana Sundarrajan, Hyeree Choi, Kar Muthumani, Andrew Kossenkov, Aaron R. Goldman, Hsin-Yao Tang, Joel Cassel, Maureen E. Murphy, Rajasekharan Somasundaram, and Meenhard Herlyn from Wistar; and Maxim Totrov from Molsoft LLC.

Work supported by: The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation, funds from the Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement (CURE) Program and the Wistar Science Discovery Fund; The Pew Charitable Trusts supported Farokh Dotiwala with a Wistar Institute recruitment grant; Additional support was provided by the Adelson Medical Research Foundation and the Department of Defense. Support for The Wistar Institute facilities was provided by Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA010815 and National Institutes of Health instrument grant S10 OD023586.

Journal Reference:

1. Kumar Sachin Singh, Rishabh Sharma, Poli Adi Narayana Reddy, Prashanthi Vonteddu, Madeline Good, Anjana Sundarrajan, Hyeree Choi, Kar Muthumani, Andrew Kossenkov, Aaron R. Goldman, Hsin-Yao Tang, Maxim Totrov, Joel Cassel, Maureen E. Murphy, Rajasekharan Somasundaram, Meenhard Herlyn, Joseph M. Salvino, Farokh Dotiwala. IspH inhibitors kill Gram-negative bacteria and mobilize immune clearance. Nature, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03074-x

                          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201223125759.htm

Transistors for Quantum Computing

Industry collaboration leads to important milestone in the creation of a quantum computer

From: Niels Bohr Institute

December 28, 2020 – For a quantum computer, one of the obstacles for progress in the quest for a working quantum computer has been that the working devices that go into a quantum computer and perform the actual calculations, the qubits, have hitherto been made by universities and in small numbers. But in recent years, a pan-European collaboration, in partnership with French microelectronics leader CEA-Leti, has been exploring everyday transistors--that are present in billions in all our mobile phones—for their use as qubits.

The French company Leti makes giant wafers full of devices, and, after measuring, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have found these industrially produced devices to be suitable as a qubit platform capable of moving to the second dimension, a significant step for a working quantum computer. The result is now published in Nature Communications.

Quantum dots in two dimensional array is a leap ahead

One of the key features of the devices is the two-dimensional array of quantum dot. Or more precisely, a two by two lattice of quantum dots. “What we have shown is that we can realize single electron control in every single one of these quantum dots. This is very important for the development of a qubit, because one of the possible ways of making qubits is to use the spin of a single electron. So reaching this goal of controlling the single electrons and doing it in a 2D array of quantum dots was very important for us”, says Fabio Ansaloni, former PhD student, now postdoc at center for Quantum Devices, NBI.

Using electron spins has proven to be advantageous for the implementation of qubits. In fact, their “quiet” nature makes spins weakly interacting with the noisy environment, an important requirement to obtain highly performing qubits.

Extending quantum computers processors to the second dimension has been proven to be essential for a more efficient implementation of quantum error correction routines. Quantum error correction will enable future quantum computers to be fault tolerant against individual qubit failures during the computations.

The importance of industry scale production

Assistant Professor at Center for Quantum Devices, NBI, Anasua Chatterjee adds: “The original idea was to make an array of spin qubits, get down to single electrons and become able to control them and move them around. In that sense it is really great that Leti was able to deliver the samples we have used, which in turn made it possible for us to attain this result. A lot of credit goes to the pan-European project consortium, and generous funding from the EU, helping us to slowly move from the level of a single quantum dot with a single electron to having two electrons, and now moving on to the two dimensional arrays. Two dimensional arrays is a really big goal, because that’s beginning to look like something you absolutely need to build a quantum computer. So Leti has been involved with a series of projects over the years, which have all contributed to this result.”

The credit for getting this far belongs to many projects across Europe

The development has been gradual. In 2015, researchers in Grenoble succeeded in making the first spin qubit, but this was based on holes, not electrons. Back then, the performance of the devices made in the “hole regime” were not optimal, and the technology has advanced so that the devices now at NBI can have two dimensional arrays in the single electron regime. The progress is threefold,  the researchers explain: “First, producing the devices in an industrial foundry is a necessity. The scalability of a modern, industrial process is essential as we start to make bigger arrays, for example for small quantum simulators. Second, when making a quantum computer, you need an array in two dimensions, and you need a way of connecting the external world to each qubit. If you have 4-5 connections for each qubit, you quickly end up with a unrealistic number of wires going out of the low-temperature setup. But what we have managed to show is that we can have one gate per electron, and you can read and control with the same gate. And lastly, using these tools we were able to move and swap single electrons in a controlled way around the array, a challenge in itself.”

Two dimensional arrays can control errors

Controlling errors occurring in the devices is a chapter in itself. The computers we use today produce plenty of errors, but they are corrected through what is called the repetition code. In a conventional computer, you can have information in either a 0 or a 1. In order to be sure that the outcome of a calculation is correct, the computer repeats the calculation and if one transistor makes an error, it is corrected through simple majority. If the majority of the calculations performed in other transistors point to 1 and not 0, then 1 is chosen as the result. This is not possible in a quantum computer since you cannot make an exact copy of a qubit, so quantum error correction works in another way: State-of-the-art physical qubits do not have low error rate yet, but if enough of them are combined in the 2D array, they can keep each other in check, so to speak. This is another advantage of the now realized 2D array.

The next step from this milestone

The result realized at the Niels Bohr Institute shows that it is now possible to control single electrons, and perform the experiment in the absence of a magnetic field. So the next step will be to look for spins – spin signatures – in the presence of a magnetic field. This will be essential to implement single and two qubit gates between the single qubits in the array. Theory has shown that a handful of single and two qubit gates, called a complete set of quantum gates, are enough to enable universal quantum computation.

Link to the Scientific article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20280-3

Industry collaboration leads to important milestone in the creation of a quantum computer – Niels Bohr Institute - University of Copenhagen (ku.dk)

Writing Came About from Bookkeeping

Lydia Wilson, in the December 23, 2020. Issue of Nautilus, explains the written use of basic bookkeeping on clay tablets in the Near East about 5,000 years ago and how it developed into written language, before which time humans communicated by oral language only.

I assure you that every modern accountant dimly senses this connection.  It is a complex and beautiful story.  Several decades ago, Scientific American touched on this development.  The Nautilus story by Wilson can be found at:  http://nautil.us/issue/94/evolving/reading-that-strange-and-uniquely-human-thing

Afterword by the blog author

This blog is collected from news stories gathered by a retired American certified public accountant.

After 51 Years, A Zodiac Message Is Decoded

Codebreakers finally crack the Zodiac Killer's diabolical cipher

December 14, 2020 -- Agence France-Presse [AFP, the French Press Agency] has released a news story that a small group of cryptology code crackers has decoded the Zodiac killer’s 1969 “340” message, which consists of 340 figures in seventeen columns.  The code was cracked by an American web designer, Australian mathematician and a Belgian logician.  The solved message has been shared with the FBI, which has issued a statement which states that their investigation is still open, so they have no conclusions to offer at this time.  See this link, which also includes a link to a 13 minute video explaining how the Zodiac’s code was cracked:

Codebreakers Finally Crack The Zodiac Killer's Diabolical Cipher After 50 Years (sciencealert.com)

Research Hints COVID-19 Virus Enters the Brain

A new study shows how spike protein crosses the blood-brain barrier

From:  University of Washington Health Sciences/UW Medicine

December 17, 2020 -- The SARS-CoV-2 virus, like many viruses before it, is bad news for the brain. In a new study, researchers found that the spike protein, often depicted as the red arms of the virus, can cross the blood-brain barrier in mice. The spike proteins alone can cause brain fog. Since the spike protein enters the brain, the virus also is likely to cross into the brain.

More and more evidence is coming out that people with COVID-19 are suffering from cognitive effects, such as brain fog and fatigue.

And researchers are discovering why. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, like many viruses before it, is bad news for the brain. In a study published Dec.16 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers found that the spike protein, often depicted as the red arms of the virus, can cross the blood-brain barrier in mice.

This strongly suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, can enter the brain.

The spike protein, often called the S1 protein, dictates which cells the virus can enter. Usually, the virus does the same thing as its binding protein, said corresponding author William A. Banks, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Healthcare System physician and researcher. Banks said binding proteins like S1 usually by themselves cause damage as they detach from the virus and cause inflammation.

"The S1 protein likely causes the brain to release cytokines and inflammatory products," he said.

In science circles, the intense inflammation caused by the COVID-19 infection is called a cytokine storm. The immune system, upon seeing the virus and its proteins, overreacts in its attempt to kill the invading virus. The infected person is left with brain fog, fatigue and other cognitive issues.

Banks and his team saw this reaction with the HIV virus and wanted to see if the same was happening with SARS CoV-2.

Banks said the S1 protein in SARS-CoV2 and the gp 120 protein in HIV-1 function similarly. They are glycoproteins -- proteins that have a lot of sugars on them, hallmarks of proteins that bind to other receptors. Both these proteins function as the arms and hand for their viruses by grabbing onto other receptors. Both cross the blood-brain barrier and S1, like gp120, is likely toxic to brain tissues.

"It was like déjà vu," said Banks, who has done extensive work on HIV-1, gp120, and the blood-brain barrier.

The Banks' lab studies the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer's, obesity, diabetes, and HIV. But they put their work on hold and all 15 people in the lab started their experiments on the S1 protein in April. They enlisted long-time collaborator Jacob Raber, a professor in the departments of Behavioral Neuroscience, Neurology, and Radiation Medicine, and his teams at Oregon Health & Science University.

The study could explain many of the complications from COVID-19.

"We know that when you have the COVID infection you have trouble breathing and that's because there's infection in your lung, but an additional explanation is that the virus enters the respiratory centers of the brain and causes problems there as well," said Banks.

Raber said in their experiments transport of S1 was faster in the olfactory bulb and kidney of males than females. This observation might relate to the increased susceptibility of men to more severe COVID-19 outcomes.

As for people taking the virus lightly, Banks has a message:

"You do not want to mess with this virus," he said. "Many of the effects that the COVID virus has could be accentuated or perpetuated or even caused by virus getting in the brain and those effects could last for a very long time."

This study was partially supported by a National Institute on Aging-funded COVID-19 supplement to a shared RF1 grant of Banks and Raber.

                     https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201217154046.htm

 

Passing 100% of Sound Through a Barrier

Perfect transmission through barrier using sound: research team led by Professor Xiang Zhang proves for the first time a century-old quantum theory

December 23, 2020 -- The perfect transmission of sound through a barrier is difficult to achieve, if not impossible based on our existing knowledge. This is also true with other energy forms such as light and heat.

A research team led by Professor Xiang Zhang, President of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) when he was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, (UC Berkeley) has for the first time experimentally proved a century old quantum theory that relativistic particles can pass through a barrier with 100% transmission. The research findings have been published in the top academic journal Science. 

Just as it would be difficult for us to jump over a thick high wall without enough energy accumulated. In contrast, it is predicted that a microscopic particle in the quantum world can pass through a barrier well beyond its energy regardless of the height or width of the barrier, as if it is “transparent”. 

As early as 1929, theoretical physicist Oscar Klein proposed that a relativistic particle can penetrate a potential barrier with 100% transmission upon normal incidence on the barrier. Scientists called this exotic and counterintuitive phenomenon the "Klein tunneling" theory. In the following 100 odd years, scientists tried various approaches to experimentally test Klein tunneling, but the attempts were unsuccessful and direct experimental evidence is still lacking. 

Professor Zhang’s team conducted the experiment in artificially designed phononic crystals with triangular lattice. The lattice’s linear dispersion properties make it possible to mimic the relativistic Dirac quasiparticle by sound excitation, which led to the successful experimental observation of Klein tunneling. 

"This is an exciting discovery. Quantum physicists have always tried to observe Klein tunneling in elementary particle experiments, but it is a very difficult task. We designed a phononic crystal similar to graphene that can excite the relativistic quasiparticles, but unlike natural material of graphene, the geometry of the man-made phononic crystal can be adjusted freely to precisely achieve the ideal conditions that made it possible to the first direct observation of Klein tunneling,” said Professor Zhang.

The achievement not only represents a breakthrough in fundamental physics, but also presents a new platform for exploring emerging macroscale systems to be used in applications such as on-chip logic devices for sound manipulation, acoustic signal processing, and sound energy harvesting.

"In current acoustic communications, the transmission loss of acoustic energy on the interface is unavoidable. If the transmittance on the interface can be increased to nearly 100%, the efficiency of acoustic communications can be greatly improved, thus opening up cutting-edge applications. This is especially important when the surface or the interface play a role in hindering the accuracy acoustic detection such as underwater exploration. The experimental measurement is also conducive to the future development of studying quasiparticles with topological property in phononic crystals which might be difficult to perform in other systems,” said Dr. Xue Jiang, a former member of Zhang’s team and currently an Associate Researcher at the Department of Electronic Engineering at Fudan University.

Dr. Jiang pointed out that the research findings might also benefit the biomedical devices. It may help to improve the accuracy of ultrasound penetration through obstacles and reach designated targets such as tissues or organs, which could improve the ultrasound precision for better diagnosis and treatment.

On the basis of the current experiments, researchers can control the mass and dispersion of the quasiparticle by exciting the phononic crystals with different frequencies, thus achieving flexible experimental configuration and on/off control of Klein tunneling. This approach can be extended to other artificial structure for the study of optics and thermotics. It allows the unprecedent control of quasiparticle or wavefront, and contributes to the exploration on other complex quantum physical phenomena.

The article published in Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6523/1447.

                               https://www.hku.hk/press/news_detail_22183.html

Chemists Describe a New Form of Ice

A groundbreaking improvement for storing and transporting hydrogen

SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH)

December 22, 2020 -- Scientists from the United States, China, and Russia have described the structure and properties of a novel hydrogen clathrate hydrate that forms at room temperature and relatively low pressure. Hydrogen hydrates are a potential solution for hydrogen storage and transportation, the most environmentally friendly fuel. The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Ice is a highly complex substance with multiple polymorphic modifications that keep growing in number as scientists make discoveries. The physical properties of ice vary greatly, too: for example, hydrogen bonds become symmetric at high pressures, making it impossible to distinguish a single water molecule, whereas low pressures cause proton disorder, placing water molecules in many possible spatial orientations within the crystal structure. The ice around us, including snowflakes, is always proton-disordered. Ice can incorporate xenon, chlorine, carbon dioxide, or methane molecules and form gas hydrates, which often have a different structure from pure ice. The vast bulk of Earth's natural gas exists in the form of gas hydrates.

In their new study, chemists from the United States, China, and Russia focused on hydrogen hydrates. Gas hydrates hold great interest both for theoretical research and practical applications, such as hydrogen storage. If stored in its natural form, hydrogen poses an explosion hazard, whereas density is way too low even in compressed hydrogen. That is why scientists are looking for cost-effective hydrogen storage solutions.

"This is not the first time we turn to hydrogen hydrates. In our previous research, we predicted a novel hydrogen hydrate with 2 hydrogen molecules per water molecule. Unfortunately, this exceptional hydrate can only exist at pressures above 380,000 atmospheres, which is easy to achieve in the lab but is hardly usable in practical applications. Our new paper describes hydrates that contain less hydrogen but can exist at much lower pressures," Skoltech professor Artem R. Oganov says.

The crystal structure of hydrogen hydrates strongly depends on pressure. At low pressures, it has large cavities which, according to Oganov, resemble Chinese lanterns, each accommodating hydrogen molecules. As pressure increases, the structure becomes denser, with more hydrogen molecules packed into the crystal structure, although their degrees of freedom become significantly fewer.

In their research published in the Physical Review Letters, the scientists from the Carnegie Institution of Washington (USA) and the Institute of Solid State Physics in Hefei (China) led by Alexander F. Goncharov, a Professor at these two institutions, performed experiments to study the properties of various hydrogen hydrates and discovered an unusual hydrate with 3 water molecules per hydrogen molecule. The team led by Professor Oganov used the USPEX evolutionary algorithm developed by Oganov and his students to puzzle out the compound's structure responsible for its peculiar behavior. The researchers simulated the experiment's conditions and found a new structure very similar to the known proton-ordered C1 hydrate but differing from C1 in water molecule orientations. The team showed that proton disorder should occur at room temperature, thus explaining the X-ray diffraction and Raman spectrum data obtained in the experiment.

                 https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/sios-cda122220.php

 

New Population of Blue Whales Discovered

They sing a different song in the western Indian Ocean

From The New England Aquarium

BOSTON, MASS. (December 21, 2020) – An international team of researchers has discovered what it believes to be a new population of blue whales in the western Indian Ocean.

*HIGH-RES IMAGES OF BLUE WHALES AVAILABLE HERE*

Blue whales are the largest animals that have ever lived on our planet, and they are found around the globe in all oceans. All blue whales sing very low-pitched and recognizable songs, and conveniently for researchers, every population has its own unique song. In a recently published paper in the journal Endangered Species Research, the researchers describe a new blue whale song that is heard from the Arabian Sea coast of Oman across to the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean and as far south as Madagascar in the southwest Indian Ocean.

Dr. Salvatore Cerchio, Director of the African Aquatic Conservation Fund’s Cetacean Program and Visiting Scientist at the New England Aquarium, led the analysis of recordings of the whale from three locations in the western Indian Ocean. Dr. Cerchio first recorded the novel song in 2017, during research focused on Omura’s whales in the Mozambique Channel off Madagascar, and he recognized it as a blue whale song that had never been described. Cerchio was also working with a team of scientists collecting acoustic recordings off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea. This is part of a research effort focused on the highly endangered Arabian Sea humpback whale, an ongoing collaboration between the Environment Society of Oman, Five Oceans Environmental Services LLC, Oman’s Environment Authority and Oman’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources.

While analyzing the Oman acoustic data, the team recognized the same unusual song. This novel blue whale song was recorded even more prevalently off Oman than Madagascar, and it became clear to the researchers that they had found what was likely a previously unrecognized population of blue whales in the western Indian Ocean.

“It was quite remarkable,” said Cerchio, “to find a whale song in your data that was completely unique, never before reported, and recognize it as a blue whale.” Blue whale song has been extensively studied globally, and several blue whale populations have been identified based on their distinct songs throughout the Indian Ocean.

“With all that work on blue whale songs, to think there was a population out there that no one knew about until 2017, well, it kind of blows your mind,” Cerchio said.

In 2018, the team reported their findings to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which was in the process of evaluating the status of blue whale populations in the Indian Ocean. The finding created quite a bit of excitement at the meeting, and raised many new questions about blue whale population movements and structure in the Indian Ocean.  Emmanuelle Leroy and Tracey Rogers of the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, were also conducting acoustic research on blue whales in the Indian Ocean. Upon reading the IWC report on the new song, Leroy recognized that they also had recorded the same song off the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean.

“Shortly after we made the first report at IWC,” said Cerchio, “I received an email from Emmanuelle saying, ‘Hey Sal, I think we have that Oman song off the Chagos!’”

The collaborative team grew, and analysis of data from all three sites suggested that the population may spend most of its time in the northwestern Indian Ocean, in the Arabian Sea and to the west of the Chagos. It has long been recognized that a unique population of blue whales resides in the Northern Indian Ocean, but it was assumed that whales in the Arabian Sea belonged to the same population that has been studied off Sri Lanka and ranges into the southcentral Indian Ocean. However, the songs tell a different story.

“Before our recording effort off Oman, there were no acoustic data from the Arabian Sea, and so the identity of that population of blue whales was initially just a guess,” said Andrew Willson from Five Oceans Environmental Services LLC, who led the deployment of the recording units. “Our work shows that there is a lot more to learn about these animals, and this is an urgent requirement in light of the wide range of threats to large whales related to expanding maritime industries in the region.” 

Blue whales were hunted to near extinction around the globe during the 20^th century, and populations have only started to recover very slowly over the past several decades following the global moratorium on commercial whaling. The Arabian Sea was targeted by illegal Soviet whaling in the 1960’s, an activity that nearly eradicated what were already likely to be small populations of humpback whales, blue whales, sperm whales, and Bryde’s whales.

Some researchers consider both the northern Indian Ocean blue whales and Arabian Sea humpback whales to comprise unique subspecies, not simply populations, making them particularly special and important to biodiversity.

 “These populations appear to be unique among baleen whales, in the case of the Arabian Sea humpback whales because of their year-round residency in the region without the same long-range migration of other populations,” Willson points out.

 “For 20 years we have focused work on the highly endangered Arabian Sea humpback whale, for which we believe only about 100 animals remain off the coast of Oman,” says Suaad Al Harthi, Executive Director of the Environment Society of Oman. “Now, we are just beginning to learn more about another equally special, and likely equally endangered, population of blue whale.” 

Additional coauthors of the paper include Robert Baldwin of Five Oceans Environmental Services LLC, Danielle Cholewiak of NOAA Fisheries, Tim Collins of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Gianna Minton of Megaptera Marine Conservation, Charles Muirhead of Duke University, Tahina Rasoloarijao of the Institut Halieutique et des Sciences Marines, Madagascar, and Maïa Sarrouf Willson of the Environment Society of Oman.

The work was supported by the International Whaling Commission, Renaissance Services S.A.O.G., Shell Development Oman LLC (SDO), and NOAA Fisheries.

New Population of Blue Whales Discovered in the Western Indian Ocean - New England Aquarium (neaq.org)

Who Deserves the Vaccine First?

By Lisa Marshall at University of Colorado, Boulder

Dec. 10, 2020 -- Should people who already had COVID-19 step aside and give their place in the vaccine line to someone else? In some cases, yes, suggests new University of Colorado Boulder research.

“Our research suggests that prioritizing people who have not yet had COVID could allow hard-hit communities to stretch those first doses farther and get to some of the herd immunity effects sooner,” said Dan Larremore, a computational biologist at the BioFrontiers Institute whose team used mathematical modeling to determine how different distribution strategies could play out in cities around the globe.

He and lead author Kate Bubar, a graduate student in the Department of Applied Mathematics, teamed up with colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Chicago, to do the study. They found that if, in general, saving lives is the objective, enabling people 60 and older to go to the front of the line works best. If reducing future infections is the goal, however, the 20- to 49-year-old crowd should get the first doses. In very few cases did vaccinating children first make sense.

For the study the researchers used demographic data — including age distribution and published contact rates amid and between different age groups — from countries around the world.

They also drew on information on the percentage of people who are already “seropositive” or previously infected with the virus in different locations.

Then they modeled what would happen in five different scenarios in which a different group got to be first in line: Children and teenagers, adults between the ages of 20 and 49, adults aged 20 or older or adults aged 60 or older. In the fifth scenario, there was no distribution strategy and anyone who wanted a vaccine got one while supplies lasted.

Results from the United States, Belgium, Brazil, China, India, Poland, South Africa and Spain are included in the paper.

Local circumstances matter

Different strategies worked better or worse, depending on each area’s population but a few findings jumped out.

“In the broadest array of scenarios, across countries, prioritizing adults 60-plus first was the best way to minimize mortality,” said Larremore. “If we want to go back to pre-pandemic behavior, giving the first wave of vaccines after healthcare workers to older adults is the way to go.”

That finding has already been used by global health experts to inform vaccine distribution strategies, with the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control referencing the study in recommendations to prioritize older adults.

But after that, as individual states determine who’s next, the story gets more complicated.

“If transmission is rampant, and hospitals are being overwhelmed, then directly protecting those who are at the highest risk for severe outcomes is the best way to save lives and decrease the stress on our healthcare system,” said Bubar. “But, if instead, transmission is relatively low in a given area then prioritizing those who have the most contacts would be better— provided that the vaccine blocks transmission.”

In communities where COVID had already infected large swaths of the population, prioritizing those who are “seronegative” or did not already test positive for the virus, could allow health agencies to stretch the vaccine farther and save more lives.

For instance, in New York City where 27% of people have already been infected, vaccinating one in five people over age 60 could bring mortality down by 73%.
 
“But the city could get that same level of population protection by vaccinating just one in six older adults —if those without antibodies were brought to the front of the line,” said Larremore.

A Covid test before your shot?

Just how might a city go about identifying people who’d already been infected?

In cases where vaccine availability was scarce, the authors said, it might be worth having individuals take an antibody test before getting the vaccine. Alternatively, people who’d already had COVID-19 could just be asked to consider sparing their dose for someone who does not already have partial protection from the virus.

In a city like Boulder, however, where only a small percentage of people have already been exposed, testing people prior to vaccination might not yield enough benefit to be worth the effort.

“We hope that state governments will consider the local status of the epidemic in their decisions about who to prioritize,” said Bubar.

This work is under peer review, and the authors hope to publish in early 2021. Meantime, as vaccines become available and policymakers begin to make tough decisions influenced by emotions, ethics and the economy, the authors hope their work can provide some statistical footing.

“We need policy decisions that are well-anchored in the most rigorous scientific estimates,” said Larremore. “This paper is all about providing them.”

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/12/10/who-should-get-first-covid-19-vaccines-global-study-provides-insights

High Precision Atomic Clock

The design, which uses entangled atoms, could help scientists detect dark matter and study gravity's effect on time

From Massachusetts Institute of Technology

December 16, 2020 -- A newly-designed atomic clock uses entangled atoms to keep time even more precisely than its state-of-the-art counterparts. The design could help scientists detect dark matter and study gravity's effect on time.

Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. These exquisite instruments use lasers to measure the vibrations of atoms, which oscillate at a constant frequency, like many microscopic pendulums swinging in sync. The best atomic clocks in the world keep time with such precision that, if they had been running since the beginning of the universe, they would only be off by about half a second today.

Still, they could be even more precise. If atomic clocks could more accurately measure atomic vibrations, they would be sensitive enough to detect phenomena such as dark matter and gravitational waves. With better atomic clocks, scientists could also start to answer some mind-bending questions, such as what effect gravity might have on the passage of time and whether time itself changes as the universe ages.

Now a new kind of atomic clock designed by MIT physicists may enable scientists explore such questions and possibly reveal new physics.

The researchers report in the journal Nature that they have built an atomic clock that measures not a cloud of randomly oscillating atoms, as state-of-the-art designs measure now, but instead atoms that have been quantumly entangled. The atoms are correlated in a way that is impossible according to the laws of classical physics, and that allows the scientists to measure the atoms' vibrations more accurately.

The new setup can achieve the same precision four times faster than clocks without entanglement.

"Entanglement-enhanced optical atomic clocks will have the potential to reach a better precision in one second than current state-of-the-art optical clocks," says lead author Edwin Pedrozo-Peñafiel, a postdoc in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.

If state-of-the-art atomic clocks were adapted to measure entangled atoms the way the MIT team's setup does, their timing would improve such that, over the entire age of the universe, the clocks would be less than 100 milliseconds off.

The paper's other co-authors from MIT are Simone Colombo, Chi Shu, Albert Adiyatullin, Zeyang Li, Enrique Mendez, Boris Braverman, Akio Kawasaki, Saisuke Akamatsu, Yanhong Xiao, and Vladan Vuletic, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics.

Time limit

Since humans began tracking the passage of time, they have done so using periodic phenomena, such as the motion of the sun across the sky. Today, vibrations in atoms are the most stable periodic events that scientists can observe. Furthermore, one cesium atom will oscillate at exactly the same frequency as another cesium atom.

To keep perfect time, clocks would ideally track the oscillations of a single atom. But at that scale, an atom is so small that it behaves according to the mysterious rules of quantum mechanics: When measured, it behaves like a flipped coin that only when averaged over many flips gives the correct probabilities. This limitation is what physicists refer to as the Standard Quantum Limit.

"When you increase the number of atoms, the average given by all these atoms goes toward something that gives the correct value," says Colombo.

This is why today's atomic clocks are designed to measure a gas composed of thousands of the same type of atom, in order to get an estimate of their average oscillations. A typical atomic clock does this by first using a system of lasers to corral a gas of ultracooled atoms into a trap formed by a laser. A second, very stable laser, with a frequency close to that of the atoms' vibrations, is sent to probe the atomic oscillation and thereby keep track of time.

And yet, the Standard Quantum Limit is still at work, meaning there is still some uncertainty, even among thousands of atoms, regarding their exact individual frequencies. This is where Vuletic and his group have shown that quantum entanglement may help. In general, quantum entanglement describes a nonclassical physical state, in which atoms in a group show correlated measurement results, even though each individual atom behaves like the random toss of a coin.

The team reasoned that if atoms are entangled, their individual oscillations would tighten up around a common frequency, with less deviation than if they were not entangled. The average oscillations that an atomic clock would measure, therefore, would have a precision beyond the Standard Quantum Limit.

Entangled clocks

In their new atomic clock, Vuletic and his colleagues entangle around 350 atoms of ytterbium, which oscillates at the same very high frequency as visible light, meaning any one atom vibrates 100,000 times more often in one second than cesium. If ytterbium's oscillations can be tracked precisely, scientists can use the atoms to distinguish ever smaller intervals of time.

The group used standard techniques to cool the atoms and trap them in an optical cavity formed by two mirrors. They then sent a laser through the optical cavity, where it ping-ponged between the mirrors, interacting with the atoms thousands of times.

"It's like the light serves as a communication link between atoms," Shu explains. "The first atom that sees this light will modify the light slightly, and that light also modifies the second atom, and the third atom, and through many cycles, the atoms collectively know each other and start behaving similarly."

In this way, the researchers quantumly entangle the atoms, and then use another laser, similar to existing atomic clocks, to measure their average frequency. When the team ran a similar experiment without entangling atoms, they found that the atomic clock with entangled atoms reached a desired precision four times faster.

"You can always make the clock more accurate by measuring longer," Vuletic says. "The question is, how long do you need to reach a certain precision. Many phenomena need to be measured on fast timescales."

He says if today's state-of-the-art atomic clocks can be adapted to measure quantumly entangled atoms, they would not only keep better time, but they could help decipher signals in the universe such as dark matter and gravitational waves, and start to answer some age-old questions.

"As the universe ages, does the speed of light change? Does the charge of the electron change?" Vuletic says. "That's what you can probe with more precise atomic clocks."

Story Source:

Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Jennifer Chu. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Related Multimedia:

• Illustration showing entanglement of atoms trapped in an optical cavity composed of two mirrors

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Journal Reference:

1. Pedrozo-Peñafiel, E., Colombo, S., Shu, C. et al. Entanglement on an optical atomic-clock transition. Nature, 2020 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-3006-1

New type of atomic clock keeps time even more precisely: The design, which uses entangled atoms, could help scientists detect dark matter and study gravity's effect on time -- ScienceDaily

Monkeys, Like Humans, Are Persistent

Studying this phenomenon in animals can teach us about how their minds -- and ours -- work, the researchers said.

From Georgia State University

December 18, 2020 -- Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they've already committed time and effort to. It's called the 'sunk costs' phenomenon, where the more resources we sink into an endeavor, the likelier we are to continue -- even if we sense it's futile. A new study shows that both capuchin monkeys and rhesus macaques are susceptible to the same behavior and that it occurs more often when the monkeys are uncertain about the outcome.

If you've ever stayed in a relationship too long or stuck with a project that was going nowhere, you're not alone. Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they've already committed time and effort to. It's called the "sunk costs" phenomenon, where the more resources we sink into an endeavor, the likelier we are to continue -- even if we sense it's futile.

But why would we engage in such potentially self-defeating behavior?

Georgia State researchers think two factors may play a role. First, it may be a deep, evolutionarily ancient mechanism that helps us balance overall cost and benefit. Second, it may be influenced by uncertainty about the outcome (you never know, it might work out, so why not keep trying?)

Julia Watzek, a recent Georgia State University Ph.D. recipient, and her graduate advisor Professor Sarah F. Brosnan have shown that both capuchin monkeys and rhesus macaques are susceptible to the same behavior and that it occurs more often when the monkeys are uncertain about the outcome. Their new study, "Capuchin and rhesus monkeys show sunk cost effects in a psychomotor task," was published recently in Nature's Scientific Reports.

The monkeys are housed at the university's Language Research Center, where they have indoor and outdoor areas to live and play in, and participate in entirely voluntary and non-invasive cognitive and behavioral research, said Brosnan, who is affiliated with the Department of Psychology and the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. In fact, she has worked with some of these monkeys for over twenty years. "They're like my second set of kids," she said.

In the study, 26 capuchin monkeys and 7 rhesus macaques got to play a simple video game where they operated a joystick, and they needed to move a cursor onto a moving target and keep it there while the target kept moving. If they were successful, they heard a "whoop" sound that indicated success and got a treat. If their cursor lost contact with the moving target, they didn't get a reward and a new round began. After being trained, the experiment tested them on rounds of either 1, 3 or 7 seconds. "Monkeys have really quick reaction times on these games," said Brosnan, "so one second to them is actually a long time."

In fact, Watzek said, "Most rounds lasted only 1 second. So if you didn't get a reward after that, it was actually better to quit and start a new round. That would likely get you a treat sooner than if you had kept going."

The researchers found that both species of monkeys showed sunk cost effects. "They persisted 5 to 7 times longer than was optimal," said Brosnan, "and the longer they had already tried, the more likely they were to complete the entire task."

Uncertainty played a large part, because when the monkeys got a signal that additional work was required, they were less susceptible to sunk cost behavior, though they still did demonstrate it.

Studying this phenomenon in animals "teaches us something about how their minds work, as well as our own," Watzek said.

This is important for several reasons, Brosnan said. First, it suggests that this behavior is likely driven by evolution and deeply embedded across species.

"The epitome of the sunk cost is I've invested so much in this, I'm just going to keep going," Brosnan said. And there may be benefits to this. "Sometimes, you need to have patience," she said. That helps when you're foraging for food, hunting prey, waiting for eggs to hatch, seeking a mate, or building a nest or enclosure.

Second, it shows that human capacities like rationalization, or human concerns like not giving up on something we have publicly committed to, are probably not the main drivers of the sunk cost phenomenon.

And third, it reminds us that there is sometimes a good reason to give up.

"We're predisposed to keep trying," Brosnan said. "And when we find ourselves sticking with things, we should also be a little reflective. Do I have a good reason to keep trying? Or should I leave with no reward, because it will save me more in the long run? That's really hard to do. But hopefully we can use our cognitive abilities to help us overcome the emotional heartache of occasional sunk costs."

Story Source:

Materials provided by Georgia State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Julia Watzek, Sarah F. Brosnan. Capuchin and rhesus monkeys show sunk cost effects in a psychomotor task. Scientific Reports, 2020; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-77301-w

Monkeys, like humans, persist at tasks they've already invested in: Studying this phenomenon in animals can teach us about how their minds -- and ours -- work, the researchers said. -- ScienceDaily