Is Fusion Energy Coming Soon?

MIT Researchers Say Their Fusion Reactor Is “Very Likely to Work”

By Victor Tangermann

A team of researchers at MIT and other institutions say their “SPARC” compact fusion reactor should actually work— at least in theory, as they argue in a series of recently released research papers.

In a total of seven papers penned by 47 researchers from 12 institutions, the team argues that no unexpected impediments or surprises have shown up during the planning stages.

In other words, the research “confirms that the design we’re working on is very likely to work,” Martin Greenwald, deputy director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and project lead,  told The New York Times.

Fusion power remains elusive, but the tech promises to one day become a safe and clean way of producing energy by fusing atomic nuclei together like the Sun. Despite almost a century of research, though, nobody has managed to pull it off yet.

SPARC, one of the largest privately funded project of its kind in the field, would be a first of its kind: a “burning plasma” reactor that fuses hydrogen isotopes to form helium, with no other input of energy needed.

Thanks to progress in the field of superconducting magnets, the team hopes to achieve the same performance as far larger reactors, such as the gigantic ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) reactor, which started assembly in July.

The magnets are used to contain the extremely hot and high pressure reactions going on inside the reactor, one of fusion’s greatest challenges.

According to the team’s calculations, SPARC should be able to produce twice as much fusion energy compared to the amount needed to generate the reaction. That would be a massive jump, since no researchers have managed to break even yet.

In fact, in the papers, the researchers note it could be theoretically possible to generate ten times the amount — though there’s plenty of work ahead before they could say that for sure.

The MIT team is hoping to construct its compact reactor over the next three to four years, with the eventual goal of generating electricity starting in 2035, the Times reports.

“What we’re trying to do is put the project on the firmest possible physics basis, so that we’re confident about how it’s going to perform, and then to provide guidance and answer questions for the engineering design as it proceeds,” Greenwald said in an official statement.

READ MORE: Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Is ‘Very Likely to Work,’ Studies Suggest [The New York Times]

More on fusion: Scientists Start Construction of World’s Largest Fusion Reactor

           https://futurism.com/mit-researchers-fusion-reactor-very-likely-work

The Great Lakes Are Full

With no signs of receding

“Water levels have always fluctuated on the Great Lakes, but the recent extreme seesawing, particularly on the upper lakes—Superior, Michigan, and Huron—is unprecedented in the century that records have been kept (see charts). Michigan and Huron, which are linked and share the same level, stood at record highs in August, 84 cm above their historic average. The two lakes bottomed out at record lows in 2013. Although a relatively modest 25 cm above average, Superior in 2020 was just 5 cm below its record peak for August set a year ago.”

                 -- Physics Today, October 2020 issue

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4589

Deforestation and Regrowth Studied

Regrowing forests are absorbing just a small proportion of the carbon dioxide released from widespread deforestation in the Amazon, according to new evidence

From Lancaster University

September 28, 2020 -- After calculating how much carbon had been lost through deforestation, scientists have discovered that, in more than 30 years, the regrowth of secondary forests in the Brazilian Amazon has offset less than 10 per cent of emissions from the loss of old-growth forests.

Secondary forests -- areas of new forest growing on land that has previously been deforested -- form a key part of policies aiming to tackle net carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.

In 2017 there were nearly 130,000 square kilometers of secondary forest in the Brazilian Amazon -- roughly equivalent to the size of England.

Despite their scale and importance for climate targets, our understanding of their contribution to the tropical carbon balance is incomplete. It was not clear to what extent carbon emissions from deforestation have been offset by secondary forest growth, or how this has varied over time.

A new study by an international team of researchers from the UK and Brazil, published by Global Change Biology, used open source MapBiomas data to map the age, extent and carbon stock of secondary forests across the Brazilian Amazon between 1986 and 2017.

After calculating how much carbon had been lost through deforestation, the scientists discovered that, in more than 30 years, the regrowth of secondary forests in the Brazilian Amazon has offset less than 10 per cent of emissions from the loss of old-growth forests.

Charlotte Smith, a PhD researcher at Lancaster University and lead author of the study, said: "Secondary forests have an incredible potential to store large quantities of carbon. However, it takes a long time for them to build this carbon stock, so without a drastic decline in the rate of deforestation their environmental benefits will continue to be undermined."

Despite a fifth of deforested land now being covered in secondary forest, the researchers found that most secondary forests are relatively young -- more than 85 per cent are younger than 20 years old and almost half (42 per cent) are less than five years old.

This is because secondary forests are also subject to deforestation. Areas of land have been repeatedly deforested -- thus limiting secondary forests' effectiveness as a carbon store. "Of all the secondary forest mapped over the 32-year period, 60 per cent had been deforested again by 2017," said Charlotte.

The researchers then looked at other factors known to affect secondary forest growth and carbon up-take, such as climate, landscape and proximity to old-growth forests, which can act as a source of seeds.

They found that the majority of secondary forests are situated far from primary forests, in the drier parts of the Amazon. These factors suggest they will be relatively poor for taking-up carbon.

The findings highlight that halting deforestation, particularly of old-growth forest, is essential and that secondary forest growth alone is not sufficient to control carbon emissions in the Amazon.

Co-author, Professor Jos Barlow, said: "Although secondary forests could be an important part of the solution to climate change, it is also important not to overstate their relevance. Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon surpassed 10,000km2 last year, and will almost certainly surpass that in 2020."

The researchers hope that these results will help inform policies and management proposals that can mitigate climate change more effectively. "We show that preventing further deforestation remains the most urgent priority to mitigate climate change," said Charlotte.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200928152848.htm

Photos Show AI Getting Smarter

Models are learning how to generate images from captions, a sign that they’re getting better at understanding our world

By Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review

September 25, 2020 -- Of all the AI models in the world, OpenAI’s GPT-3 has most captured the public’s imagination. It can spew poems, short stories, and songs with little prompting, and has been demonstrated to fool people into thinking its outputs were written by a human. But its eloquence is more of a parlor trick, not to be confused with realintelligence.

Nonetheless, researchers believe that the techniques used to create GPT-3 could contain the secret to more advanced AI. GPT-3 trained on an enormous amount of text data. What if the same methods were trained on both text and images?

Now new research from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, AI2, has taken this idea to the next level. The researchers have developed a new text-and-image model, otherwise known as a visual-language model, that can generate images given a caption. The images look unsettling and freakish—nothing like the hyperrealistic deepfakes generated by GANs—but they might demonstrate a promising new direction for achieving more generalizable intelligence, and perhaps smarter robots as well.

Fill in the blank

GPT-3 is part of a group of models known as “transformers,” which first grew popular with the success of Google’s BERT. Before BERT, language models were pretty bad. They had enough predictive power to be useful for applications like autocomplete, but not enough to generate a long sentence that followed grammar rules and common sense.

BERT changed that by introducing a new technique called “masking.” It involves hiding different words in a sentence and asking the model to fill in the blank. For example:

• The woman went to the ___ to work out.
• They bought a ___ of bread to make sandwiches.

The idea is that if the model is forced to do these exercises, often millions of times, it begins to discover patterns in how words are assembled into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. As a result, it can better generate as well as interpret text, getting it closer to understanding the meaning of language. (Google now uses BERT to serve up more relevant search results in its search engine.) After masking proved highly effective, researchers sought to apply it to visual-language models by hiding words in captions.

This time the model could look at both the surrounding words and the content of the image to fill in the blank. Through millions of repetitions, it could then discover not just the patterns among the words but also the relationships between the words and the elements in each image.

The result is models that are able to relate text descriptions to visual references—just as babies can make connections between the words they learn and the things they see. The models can look at the photo below, for example, and write a sensible caption like “Women playing field hockey.” Or they can answer questions about it like “What is the color of the ball?” by connecting the word “ball” with the circular object in the image.

A picture is worth a thousand words

But the AI2 researchers wanted to know whether these models had actually developed a conceptual understanding of the visual world. A child who has learned the word for an object can not only conjure the word to identify the object but also draw the object when prompted with the word, even if the object itself is not present. So the researchers asked the models to do the same: to generate images from captions. All of them spit out nonsensical pixel patterns instead.

It makes sense: transforming text to images is far harder than the other way around. A caption doesn’t specify everything contained in an image, says Ani Kembhavi, who leads the computer vision team at AI2. So a model needs to draw upon a lot of common sense about the world to fill in the details.

If it is asked to draw “a giraffe walking on a road,” for example, it needs to also infer that the road is more likely to be gray than hot pink and more likely to be next to a field of grass than next to the ocean—though none of this information is made explicit.

So Kembhavi and his colleagues Jaemin Cho, Jiasen Lu, and Hannaneh Hajishirzi decided to see if they could teach a model all this implicit visual knowledge by tweaking their approach to masking. Rather than train the model just to predict masked words in the captions from the corresponding photos, they also trained it to predict masked pixels in the photos on the basis of their corresponding captions.

The final images generated by the model aren’t exactly realistic. But that isn’t the point. They contain the right high-level visual concepts—the AI equivalent of a child drawing a stick figure to represent a human.

The ability of visual-language models to do this kind of an image generation represents an important step forward in AI research. It suggests the model is actually capable of a certain level of abstraction, a fundamental skill for understanding the world.

In the long term, this could have implications for robotics. The better a robot is at understanding its visual surroundings and using language to communicate about them, the more complex the tasks it will be able to carry out. In the short term, this type of visualization could also help researchers better understand exactly what “black box” AI models are learning, says Hajishirzi.

Moving forward, the team plans to experiment more to improve the quality of the image generation and expand the model’s visual and linguistic vocabulary to include more topics, objects, and adjectives.

 “Image generation has really been a missing puzzle piece,” says Lu. “By enabling this, we can make the model learn better representations to represent the world.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/25/1008921/ai-allen-institute-generates-images-from-captions/?itm_source=parsely-api

Small Molecule May Neutralize COVID-19

Drug That Could Treat And Prevent COVID-19 Licensed By New University of Pittsburgh-Backed Company For Worldwide Development

The drug will help treat people who already have coronavirus and prevent the infection in the elderly, our health care workers and people with weak immune systems.

     -- so says KDKA television news, a Pittsburgh CBS affiliate.  See https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/09/15/upmc-university-of-pittsburgh-coronavirus-drug/

Some Birds Are Very Smart

Newly Discovered Brain Structure May Grant Birds Impressive Intelligence

By Ross Pomeroy for Real Clear Science

September 25, 2020 -- Birds are capable of some extraordinary cognitive feats. New Caledonian crows can make and use tools. Grey parrots can learn various human words and complete certain tests of intelligence at the level of four to six-year-old human children. Pigeons can remember large numbers of images for several years. But how birds accomplish these tasks despite having brains the size of walnuts has long eluded our own comprehension.

Now, in two tandem studies, researchers in Germany have imaged a structure in the avian brain that might just endow birds with their impressive abilities, and maybe even grant them rudimentary consciousness.

In the first study, scientists used 3D-Polarized Light Imaging, a rising technique that came to prominence in the past decade or so, to map the nerve fibers of barn owls' and pigeons' forebrains, specifically the pallium, layers of grey and white matter that cover the upper surface.

They found that the structure and circuitry of both bird species' pallia are strikingly similar to the pallia of mice, monkeys, and humans.

"If the bird pallium as a whole is organized just like the mammalian pallium, then it follows that the part of the bird pallium that is demonstrably functionally connected like the mammalian prefrontal pallium should also function like it," Vanderbilt neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel wrote of the studies.

"Corvids and parrots have upwards of half a billion neurons in their pallia and can have as many as 1 or 2 billion—like monkeys," she added. "So far, it appears that the more neurons there are in the pallium as a whole... the more cognitive capacity is exhibited by the animal."

In the second study, scientists at the University of Tübingen observed the neuronal response in trained crows as they pecked a screen in response to visual stimuli. The experiment suggested that the pallium of crows functioned similarly to the prefrontal cortex in primates, exhibiting neural activity that seemingly corresponds to the animal’s perception about what it has seen. Scientists have described the prefrontal cortex as a "mental sketch pad", representing knowledge and information not in the immediate physical environment.

"Concluding that birds do have what it takes to display consciousness— patterns of neuronal activity that represent mental content that drives behavior—now appears inevitable," Herculano-Houzel wrote of the second study.

The broader, speculative implication of the research is that the last common ancestor of birds and mammals, which existed 320 million years ago, may also have had the same cognitive machinery and thus been similarly capable of formidable thinking abilities.

https://www.realclearscience.com/quick_and_clear_science/2020/09/25/newly_discovered_brain_structure_may_grant_birds_impressive_intelligence.html

Safer Software for Autonomous Vehicles

From:  Technical University of Munich

September 15, 2020 -- Before autonomous vehicles participate in road traffic, they must demonstrate conclusively that they do not pose a danger to others. New software developed at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) prevents accidents by predicting different variants of a traffic situation every millisecond.

A car approaches an intersection. Another vehicle jets out of the cross street, but it is not yet clear whether it will turn right or left. At the same time, a pedestrian steps into the lane directly in front of the car, and there is a cyclist on the other side of the street. People with road traffic experience will in general assess the movements of other traffic participants correctly.

"These kinds of situations present an enormous challenge for autonomous vehicles controlled by computer programs," explains Matthias Althoff, Professor of Cyber-Physical Systems at TUM. "But autonomous driving will only gain acceptance of the general public if you can ensure that the vehicles will not endanger other road users -- no matter how confusing the traffic situation."

Algorithms that peer into the future

The ultimate goal when developing software for autonomous vehicles is to ensure that they will not cause accidents. Althoff, who is a member of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at TUM, and his team have now developed a software module that permanently analyzes and predicts events while driving. Vehicle sensor data are recorded and evaluated every millisecond. The software can calculate all possible movements for every traffic participant -- provided they adhere to the road traffic regulations -- allowing the system to look three to six seconds into the future.

Based on these future scenarios, the system determines a variety of movement options for the vehicle. At the same time, the program calculates potential emergency maneuvers in which the vehicle can be moved out of harm's way by accelerating or braking without endangering others. The autonomous vehicle may only follow routes that are free of foreseeable collisions and for which an emergency maneuver option has been identified.

Streamlined models for swift calculations

This kind of detailed traffic situation forecasting was previously considered too time-consuming and thus impractical. But now, the Munich research team has shown not only the theoretical viability of real-time data analysis with simultaneous simulation of future traffic events: They have also demonstrated that it delivers reliable results.

The quick calculations are made possible by simplified dynamic models. So-called reachability analysis is used to calculate potential future positions a car or a pedestrian might assume. When all characteristics of the road users are taken into account, the calculations become prohibitively time-consuming. That is why Althoff and his team work with simplified models. These are superior to the real ones in terms of their range of motion -- yet, mathematically easier to handle. This enhanced freedom of movement allows the models to depict a larger number of possible positions but includes the subset of positions expected for actual road users.

Real traffic data for a virtual test environment

For their evaluation, the computer scientists created a virtual model based on real data they had collected during test drives with an autonomous vehicle in Munich. This allowed them to craft a test environment that closely reflects everyday traffic scenarios. "Using the simulations, we were able to establish that the safety module does not lead to any loss of performance in terms of driving behavior, the predictive calculations are correct, accidents are prevented, and in emergency situations the vehicle is demonstrably brought to a safe stop," Althoff sums up.

The computer scientist emphasizes that the new security software could simplify the development of autonomous vehicles because it can be combined with all standard motion control programs.

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200916113601.htm

Toward Healthier Babies

New research shows improving the lifestyle of women with obesity during pregnancy could mean long-term cardiovascular benefits for their children.

King’s College – September 11, 2020 – The study, led by King’s [College] and supported by the British Heart Foundation and Tommy’s charity, examined how an antenatal diet and physical activity intervention in pregnant women with obesity could positively influence the health of the women and their children three years after giving birth.

The UPBEAT trial is a randomized controlled trial which aims to improve the diet and physical activity of obese pregnant women across the UK. Women who were given a diet and exercise intervention were compared to women in a control group, who made no changes to their lifestyle during pregnancy.

Follow-up examinations three years after birth showed that the children born to the intervention arm of the trial had a lower resting heart rate of -5 bpm than children treated with standard care. A higher resting heart rate in adults is associated with hypertension and cardiovascular dysfunction.

The study also showed that mothers in the intervention arm maintained a healthier diet three years after birth.

While women reported lower glycemic load, maternal energy and saturated fatty acids intake, and higher protein intake three years after delivery, there were no differences in self-reported physical activity or in measures of body composition.

Lead author Kathryn Dalrymple from King’s College London said: “This research shows that an lifestyle intervention in pregnant women, which focused on improving diet and increasing physical activity, is associated with improved cardiovascular function in the child at three-years of age and a sustained improvement in the mothers diet, three years after the intervention finished. These findings are very exciting as they add to the evidence that pregnancy is a window of opportunity to promote positive health and lifestyle changes which benefit the mother and her child.”

Tommy’s Research and Policy Director, Lizzie D’Angelo, said: “Pregnancy can be higher risk for women who are obese, but trying to lose lots of weight while pregnant is not advised, so our research focuses on finding new ways to make pregnancy safer for these families. It’s very reassuring to see that our researchers have been able to improve mothers’ diets and children’s heart health in the long term, helping to give these babies the best start in life.”

Tracy Parker, Senior Dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Keeping physically active and maintaining a balanced diet are both important ways of keeping our hearts healthy. This research shows that for pregnant women, the benefits don't end there. A healthy diet before, during and after pregnancy can have positive long-term health benefits for both mother and child.

The team of researchers will follow-up these children again at 8-10 years of age to see if this improvement in cardiovascular function is maintained through childhood.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/healthy-diet-exercise-pregnancy-lead-to-healthier-children

A New Type of Superconductor

By David Nutt, Cornell University|

 September 21, 2020 -- Until now, the history of superconducting materials has been a tale of two types: s-wave and d-wave.

Now, Cornell researchers – led by Brad Ramshaw, the Dick & Dale Reis Johnson Assistant Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences – have discovered a possible third type: g-wave.

Their paper, “Thermodynamic Evidence for a Two-Component Superconducting Order Parameter in Sr2RuO4,” published Sept. 21 in Nature Physics. The lead author is doctoral student Sayak Ghosh, M.S. ’19.

Electrons in superconductors move together in what are known as Cooper pairs. This “pairing” endows superconductors with their most famous property – no electrical resistance – because, in order to generate resistance, the Cooper pairs have to be broken apart, and this takes energy.

In s-wave superconductors – generally conventional materials, such as lead, tin and mercury – the Cooper pairs are made of one electron pointing up and one pointing down, both moving head-on toward each other, with no net angular momentum. In recent decades, a new class of exotic materials has exhibited what’s called d-wave superconductivity, whereby the Cooper pairs have two quanta of angular momentum.

Physicists have theorized the existence of a third type of superconductor between these two so-called “singlet” states: a p-wave superconductor, with one quanta of angular momentum and the electrons pairing with parallel rather than antiparallel spins. This spin-triplet superconductor would be a major breakthrough for quantum computing because it can be used to create Majorana fermions, a unique particle which is its own antiparticle.

For more than 20 years, one of the leading candidates for a p-wave superconductor has been strontium ruthenate (Sr2RuO4­), although recent research has started to poke holes in the idea.

Ramshaw and his team set out to determine once and for all whether strontium ruthenate is a highly desired p-wave superconductor. Using high-resolution resonant ultrasound spectroscopy, they discovered that the material is potentially an entirely new kind of superconductor altogether: g-wave.

“This experiment really shows the possibility of this new type of superconductor that we had never thought about before,” Ramshaw said. “It really opens up the space of possibilities for what a superconductor can be and how it can manifest itself. If we’re ever going to get a handle on controlling superconductors and using them in technology with the kind of fine-tuned control we have with semiconductors, we really want to know how they work and what varieties and flavors they come in.”

As with previous projects, Ramshaw and Ghosh used resonant ultrasound spectroscopy to study the symmetry properties of the superconductivity in a crystal of strontium ruthenate that was grown and precision-cut by collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany.

However, unlike previous attempts, Ramshaw and Ghosh encountered a significant problem when trying to conduct the experiment.

“Cooling down resonant ultrasound to 1 kelvin (minus 457.87 degrees Fahrenheit) is difficult, and we had to build a completely new apparatus to achieve this,” Ghosh said.

With their new setup, the Cornell team measured the response of the crystal’s elastic constants – essentially the speed of sound in the material – to a variety of sound waves as the material cooled through its superconducting transition at 1.4 kelvin (minus 457 degrees Fahrenheit).

“This is by far the highest-precision resonant ultrasound spectroscopy data ever taken at these low temperatures,” Ramshaw said.

Based on the data, they determined that strontium ruthenate is what’s called a two-component superconductor, meaning the way electrons bind together is so complex, it can’t be described by a single number; it needs a direction as well.

Previous studies had used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to narrow the possibilities of what kind of wave material strontium ruthenate might be, effectively eliminating p-wave as an option.

By determining that the material was two-component, Ramshaw’s team not only confirmed those findings, but also showed strontium ruthenate wasn’t a conventional s- or d-wave superconductor, either.

“Resonant ultrasound really lets you go in and even if you can’t identify all the microscopic details, you can make broad statements about which ones are ruled out,” Ramshaw said. “So then the only things that the experiments are consistent with are these very, very weird things that nobody has ever seen before. One of which is g-wave, which means angular momentum 4. No one has ever even thought that there would be a g-wave superconductor.”

Now the researchers can use the technique to examine other materials to find out if they are potential p-wave candidates.

However, the work on strontium ruthenate isn’t finished.

“This material is extremely well studied in a lot of different contexts, not just for its superconductivity,” Ramshaw said. “We understand what kind of metal it is, why it’s a metal, how it behaves when you change temperature, how it behaves when you change the magnetic field. So you should be able to construct a theory of why it becomes a superconductor better here than just about anywhere else.”

Co-authors include researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids; the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University; and the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/09/researchers-identify-new-type-superconductor

High Protein Foods That Are Great For You

By HealthPrep Staff

Protein is essential to a healthy diet and many of the healthy protein foods are packed with additional vitamins and nutrients. The benefits protein itself has for the body are considerable and it positively affects the body down to a cellular level. Hair and nails are comprised mostly of protein and the body utilizes protein to build and repair tissues. The body also uses protein to make enzymes, hormones, and other chemicals that allow the body to function well. It assists in building bones, muscle, cartilage, skin, and blood. The body requires a lot of protein to function properly as it doesn’t store it. This is why it’s important to eat the right amount of protein daily.

There are plenty of good proteins that offer other health benefits along with necessary fat to ensure a healthy body. Learn more about this now.

Eggs

If we consider one egg has all the building block nutrients to grow a baby chicken, it not hard to imagine all of the health benefits eggs can have for us. Eggs are considered food for the muscles due to how much protein from each egg can be incorporated into proteins in the body. An egg has the highest value of amino acids compared to any other food out there. They also carry antioxidants that gather in the retina of the eyes to protect them from macular degeneration and cataracts, among other conditions. Eggs also contain high amounts of vitamin B12 and B2, vitamin A, selenium, calcium, iron, potassium, and more.

Milk

Milk, along with its high protein content, is rich in calcium, which everyone's bones need to stay strong. As a great source of both protein and calcium, milk builds muscles and tissue. The carbohydrates in milk give individuals energy when they need it. It is rich in nutrients that keep all aspects of the body functioning well such as vitamin A, phosphorus, vitamin B, as well as vitamin D, which is a crucial vitamin individuals also receive from exposure to the sun. The fats in milk are essential fatty acids the body requires in moderation. Individuals can choose from a range of different kinds of milk, including homogenous milk, skim milk, one percent milk, and perhaps the most popular: two percent milk.

Reveal the health benefits cottage cheese offers the body now.

Cottage Cheese

Like milk, cottage cheese provides a good source of calcium and protein, which plays a big role in the strength of teeth and bones. It also aids in the prevention of osteoporosis and can help regulate blood pressure. Cottage cheese promotes healthy weight loss, along with fruits, whole grains, and vegetable oil. A study showed a generous intake of dairy products like cottage cheese can greatly assist individuals dealing with obesity or premenopausal women. Cottage cheese includes live cultures also known as probiotics, which have been proven to have benefits such as muscle-building powers, something protein can also help with. Many individuals who work out regularly choose to consume a healthy protein-filled snack including cottage cheese after an intense exercise session to help with muscle recovery.

Chicken Breast

The lean meat of a chicken breast contains plenty of protein without too much fat. Chicken also contains numerous minerals, including phosphorus and calcium, both of which assist in boosting an individual's bone health. It also contains selenium, which helps prevent arthritis from developing. The nutrients tryptophan and vitamin B5 can help alleviate stress as they offer a calming effect on the body. It is also rich in vitamin B6, which can help prevent heart attacks by lowering levels of homocysteine. Chicken also contains niacin, which can assist in lowering unhealthy cholesterol in the body.

Sockeye Salmon

Salmon is high in many vitamins and minerals, as well as being an excellent source of low-fat protein. It also contains potassium, selenium and vitamin B12. The main health factor of sockeye salmon is its content of omega-3 fatty acids. EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids are the most beneficial to an individual's health and contribute to the health of the brain, heart, joints, and mood. Salmon can also lower the risk of a variety of cancers and other diseases such as asthma, depression, high blood pressure, macular degeneration, and multiple sclerosis.

Lentils

Lentils, a member of the legume family, are a great source of fiber that keeps an individual's cholesterol low. They can help patients manage blood sugar disorders because of their high fiber content, preventing blood sugar levels from rising quickly after a meal. Lentils are a good source of protein along with essential minerals and contain almost no fat. Lentils have a fair amount of magnesium in each serving, which is helpful for women experiencing premenstrual syndrome, as it alleviates mood swings and also aids in the health of their heart. They also contain iron, which helps with an individual's daily energy levels and can also prevent anemia from occurring.

Natural Peanut Butter

Peanut butter can help individuals lose weight, although it is important to note it does contain a lot of calories for a small amount. It contains fiber and protein, however, that fills individuals up for a longer period. The indulgence factor of peanut butter is known to help individuals on a diet to fight off cravings. Peanut butter contains monounsaturated fat, which is the heart-healthy kind. Studies have concluded adults who ate a diet high in mono-saturated fat had less belly fat than those who ate more saturated fat. Peanut butter also contains vitamin E (which is an antioxidant), magnesium, potassium, and vitamin B6.

Almonds

Although almonds are high in fat, they carry a vast amount of nutrients, such as fiber, protein, monounsaturated fat, which all help in the reduction of an individual's risk of developing heart disease. Packed with vitamin E, they help the body protect itself against ultraviolet light damage and Alzheimer’s disease. Manganese helps the body create strong bones as well as regulating blood sugar. Magnesium helps the function of organs, muscles, nerve function, blood glucose control, and the regulation of blood pressure. The flavonoids contained in the skin of the almonds act as an antioxidant and work together with vitamin E to help individuals age well. Although almonds are high in fat, the body isn’t able to absorb the amount of fat they contain as it's too difficult to break down.

Tofu

There have been some mixed messages about soy products and how healthy they are. It is important to note healthy tofu would come from an unprocessed soy product. When in a pure form, tofu offers an excellent source of amino acids, calcium, and iron along with micronutrients.

A study on Chinese adults concluded tofu is a more effective way of preventing stomach cancer than normal soy. When tofu replaces meat, there is an increase of folate, vitamin K, calcium, magnesium, iron, and fiber. It will also lower cholesterol intake, lowering an individual's risk of cardiovascular disease. There are also anti-inflammatory properties that can help protect blood vessels from inflammatory damage. The phytonutrient genistein can motivate the activity of a tumor suppressor protein called p53. When it becomes active, it can assist in cell death of cancer cells preventing the activity of cancer from growing. It is especially effective in slowing tumor formation of breast and prostate cancer.

Quinoa

Quinoa contains flavonoids, which are plant antioxidants showing many health benefits. In particular, the antioxidants quercetin and kaempferol are found in large amounts in quinoa. They provide molecules with anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anti-cancer, and anti-depressant qualities.

It is high in fiber, protein, and many minerals, and doesn’t contain gluten, making it a good option for celiac disease patients. While many gluten-free foods contain lots of refined starches, quinoa is a naturally gluten-free food. Where most proteins lack some of the necessary amino acids, quinoa has all of the amino acids the body needs. It is also high in magnesium, potassium, zinc, and iron.

Oats

Oats have long been a popular breakfast food. One of the reasons individuals like them is because they contain a substantial amount of protein and fiber, two things that can keep individuals full until lunchtime. A 3.5-ounce dry serving of oats contains about seventeen grams of protein. Oats are also low in fat and have virtually no sugar. They are among the most protein-rich grains, which make them a better choice than toast or an English muffin. They are also gluten-free, which make them a great choice for individuals who have celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity. In addition, oatmeal is full of vitamins and minerals, including manganese, iron, copper, zinc, and many others. It also contains several antioxidants and is the only dietary source of a type of antioxidant called avenathramides. These antioxidants can improve blood pressure by lowering inflammation levels in the body.

Greek Yogurt

Greek yogurt is a versatile high-protein food appropriate for any time of day. Individuals can top it with some high-protein granola and fruit and eat it as a filling breakfast parfait, incorporate it as a side at lunch, or enjoy it as a post-workout snack. Plain yogurt can also be used as a condiment instead of sour cream, such as for tacos, baked potatoes, or beans. Greek yogurt's advantage over regular yogurt is its high protein content. It usually has between twelve and seventeen grams of protein per serving. However, individuals should be sure to check the nutrition label, because some brands do add a lot of sugar to their yogurt, which lowers the protein content. In addition to high protein levels, Greek yogurt contains plenty of calcium, vitamin D, and probiotics. These nutrients ensure healthy bones and a healthy digestive system.

Lean Beef

Eating lean cuts of beef is a great way for individuals to get extra protein in their diet without consuming too much fat. Lean beef is defined as beef with less than ten grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, and ninety-five milligrams of cholesterol per 3.5-ounce serving. These guidelines come from the United States Department of Agriculture, which also regulates the labels that can be put on beef being sold at the grocery store. If the label on a cut of beef says it is lean, consumers can trust it. Lean beef can be eaten in a variety of ways, including as steak and as ground beef. Hamburgers may have a reputation for being fattening, but they can be very healthy if they are made with lean ground beef and combined with healthy toppings. Lean ground beef at ten percent fat provides twenty-two grams of protein in a three-ounce serving, and it also provides a high dose of iron, zinc, B vitamins, and selenium. Iron is essential for healthy blood cell production, while zinc is important for immune function, and B vitamins and selenium support a healthy metabolism.

Tuna

Tuna, in addition to being a very portable and versatile food, is one of the most nutritious things individuals can eat. One cup of chunk light canned tuna contains a whopping thirty-nine grams of protein and has only about 180 calories. In addition, it is full of vitamins and minerals like B vitamins and selenium, which are essential for metabolic function. This fish also provides a substantial dose of omega-3 fatty acids, which are beneficial for the heart and brain. Individuals should be sure to pick out chunk light and skipjack varieties of tuna, as other types, such as albacore, can have higher levels of mercury.

Shrimp

Shrimp, in addition to being delicious, is very high in protein while being low in calories (as long as it isn't deep-fried). Individuals may not think of seafood as healthy or as diet food, but it is so easy to fit it into a low-calorie, high-protein diet. A three-ounce serving of shrimp is under one hundred calories but contains around seventeen or eighteen grams of protein. It is also high in essential nutrients like calcium, selenium, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. Saute these crustaceans with some fresh vegetables for a hearty, healthy post-workout meal. It is always great to have an excuse to eat more seafood!

https://healthprep.com/fitness-nutrition/10-high-protein-foods-that-are-great-for-you/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=328752040&utm_content=1146791188590393&utm_term=what%20is%20a%20protein&msclkid=d2eac97a010c1ca75633961d00d4e563

Inventor of Gore-Tex Dies

Dr. Robert W. "Bob" Gore (April 15, 1937 – September 17, 2020) was an American engineer and scientist, inventor and businessman. Gore led his family's company, W. L. Gore & Associates, in developing applications of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) ranging from computer cables to medical equipment to the outer layer of space suits. His most significant breakthrough was likely the invention of Gore-Tex, a waterproof/breathable fabric popularly known for its use in sporting and outdoor gear.

Early Life and Education

Dr. Robert Gore was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on April 15, 1937, to Wilbert "Bill” and Genevieve "Vieve" Gore. His family relocated to near Newark, Delaware in 1950, to be near his father's work at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware. The Gore family stayed with friends for several months while Bob's father built their house. Bob attended school in Newark beginning in eighth grade.

Gore graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware in 1959. With his wife and son, he moved to University Village in September 1959 to attend graduate school. He completed his graduate studies at the University of Minnesota, earning an M.S. and then a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1963.

Creating a Product: Multi-Tet Cable

While his father Bill Gore was working for DuPont, he was also experimenting at home with DuPont materials such as Teflon Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon PTFE). He wanted to insulate electrical wires using PTFE, but attempts to coat wire with powdered PTFE did not produce a consistent coating. In April 1957, while Bob was still a sophomore at Delaware, Bill showed him around his home lab and explained the problem he was having.

Bob suggested surrounding the wire with a different form of PTFE, a white tape that was already of uniform thickness. His father expected that the PTFE tape would not stick to the wire, but he tried the idea, and it worked. Wires were laid between layers of PTFE tape and sent through a grooved calendar roll, then heated to melt the tape into a coherent coating. The result was a PTFE-insulated ribbon cable containing multiple copper conductors, later called "Multi-Tet Cable".

Creating a Company: W.L. Gore and Associates

Solution of this technical problem was highly significant, and enabled Gore's parents, Bill and Genevieve, to create W. L. Gore & Associates in 1958. For the first two years, the business was run out of the basement of the Gore home. Robert Gore lived upstairs with his parents, other family members, and employees of the company. At one point 13 of the 16 people working for the company lived in the Gore home.

As stated in a 1960 brochure, the company "was established for the purpose of developing and utilizing technology in the field of fluorocarbon polymers, especially polytetrafluoroethylene", materials which “have a great and undeveloped potential to contribute value to society.”

Multi-Tet cable was the breakout product for the new company. Bob Gore was listed as the inventor when W. L. Gore & Associates registered its first patent in 1958, for what was then called "Multiconductor Wiring Strip". Multi-tet cable was eventually used in the IBM System/360 and other computers and in communications and process control equipment. The company provided cables for the Surveyor satellites and Apollo space craft. During the Apollo 11 space mission, astronauts used a Gore cable to connect their ship to a seismograph placed on the surface of the Moon.

Bob Gore was elected to the Board of Directors of W. L. Gore & Associates in June 1961, while still a student at the University of Minnesota.

Expansion

After receiving his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1963,Robert Gore joined W. L. Gore & Associates as a research associate. In 1967 he became the company's technical and research leader.

Inventing Gore-Tex

In 1969, Bob Gore was researching a process for stretching extruded PTFE into pipe thread tape when he discovered that the polymer could be "expanded" into a porous form of PTFE, characterized by extremely high strength and porosity. He and others had attempted to stretch rods of PTFE by about 10%. His discovery of the right conditions for stretching PTFE was a happy accident, born partly of frustration. Instead of slowly stretching the heated material, he applied a sudden, accelerating yank. The solid PTFE unexpectedly stretched about 800%, forming a microporous structure that was about 70% air.

A patent application for expanded PTFE was filed on May 21, 1970, and eventually two separate patents were issued, one for the product, and another for the processes for making the product.

Bob Gore continued to investigate the properties of the new material, studying the effectiveness of different PTFE resins. He also worked with others to develop techniques for stretching the material both one-dimensionally, to create long filaments, and two-dimensionally, to create sheets of the membrane. Two-dimensional stretching created sheets with greater strength, porosity, and air flow, opening up possibilities for many new applications.

By 1971, Gore was experimenting with laminates, combining the stretched membrane with supporting materials for added strength. Based on this work, the company developed a waterproof laminate called expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE), now trademarked as Gore-Tex.

Medical Applications

Some of the company's earliest successful products, based on work with laminates, were burn bandages developed for the Park-Davis company, microfiltration products for Millipore Corporation, and a membrane for blood oxygenation for Baxter International. Creating Gore-Tex tubes for use as vascular grafts was another area of rapid development.

Gore-Tex is particularly useful internally in medical applications because it is nearly inert inside the body. In addition, the porosity of Gore-Tex permits the body's own tissue to grow through the material, integrating grafted material into the circulation system.

Waterproof Fabric

More popularly, Gore-Tex is known for its use as a waterproof, breathable fabric, used in outdoor clothing and sport footwear. To the human eye, it looks and feels like a smooth fabric. Structurally, the membrane of the fabric contains about nine-billion microscopic pores per square inch. The holes are large enough to allow body heat and water vapour to escape, but small enough to deflect water drops. As a result, moisture from rain or snow cannot penetrate the fabric, while perspiration can escape as it evaporates.

The first report of using Gore-Tex to make waterproof, breathable garments appeared in a market report, April 13, 1972. The manufacturing process was patented in 1972. The first commercial sales of Gore-Tex were made in 1976 when Early Winters, Ltd., began making and selling Gore-Tex tents. The next year Early sold Gore-Tex rainwear.

Gore-Tex is typically placed between an outer fabric and an inner lining. The material allows moisture to pass easily from one layer through the next, a process known as wicking. This, and a polymer coating that increases the ability of the fabric to repel water, reduce the chance that the wearer will become damp, cold, or a victim of heat loss. In 1989, Gore began to license manufacturers to use the Gore-Tex material and label: however, products must survive rigorous testing in the Gore company's rain room, abrasion tests and washing machines to be authorized for market release.

Executive Role

Robert became president and CEO of the company in 1976, replacing his father. The company retained its base in Newark, Delaware, but expanded worldwide. Ongoing work has developed Gore's initial ideas and resulted in four main areas of focus for the company: divisions for fabrics, medical, industrial, and electronic products. The organization's innovative managerial style has been a subject of study.

In 2000, Bob Gore stepped down as president, becoming chairman of the board of directors, a position he held until 2016.

Personal Life

Bob Gore married his third wife Sarah Louise "Sally" (née Ives) Coons in the late 1970s. She was a divorced mother of three boys. One of her sons is Chris Coons, now a United States Senator from Delaware, who worked for several years as a legal counsel for the family company.

Robert Gore held nine patents for his work with fluoropolymers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Gore

Stroke and Mosquito Viruses

A deadly combination of two mosquito-borne viruses may be a trigger for stroke, new research published in the The Lancet Neurology has found.

From: The University of Liverpool

September 18, 2020 -- University of Liverpool researchers and Brazilian collaborators have been investigating the link between neurological disease and infection with the viruses Zika and chikungunya. These viruses, which mostly circulate in the tropics, cause large outbreaks of rash and fever in places like Brazil and India. Zika is widely known to cause brain damage in babies following infection in pregnancy, but the new research shows it can also cause nervous system disease in adults.

The study of 201 adults with new onset neurological disease, treated in Brazil during the 2015Zika and 2016 chikungunya epidemics, is the largest of its kind to describe the neurological features of infection for several arboviruses circulating at the same time.

The new research shows that each virus can cause a range of neurological problems. Zika was especially likely to cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, in which the nerves in the arms and legs are damaged. Chikungunya was more likely to cause inflammation and swelling in the brain (encephalitis) and spinal cord (myelitis). However, stroke, which could be caused by either virus alone, was more likely to occur in patients infected with the two viruses together.

Stroke occurs when one of the arteries supplying blood to the brain becomes blocked. The risk of stroke is known to be increased after some types of viral infection, like varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and shingles, and HIV. Stroke is also being recognised increasingly as a complication of COVID-19. This has important implications for the investigation and management of patients with viral infection, as well as for understanding the mechanisms of disease.

In total 1410 patients were screened and 201 recruited over a two-year period at Hospital da Restauração in Recife, Brazil. Comprehensive PCR and antibody testing for viruses was carried out in Fiocruz laboratories.

Of the 201 patients admitted with suspected neurological disease linked to Zika, chikungunya or both, 148 had confirmation of infection on laboratory testing, around a third of whom had infection with more than one virus.

The median age of patients was 48, and just over half the patients were female. Only around 10% patients had fully recovered at discharge, with many having ongoing issues like weakness, seizures, and problems in brain function.

Of the stroke patients, who were aged 67 on average, around two thirds had infection with more than one virus. Many of the people who had a stroke had other stroke risk factors, such as high blood pressure, indicating that stroke following Zika and chikungunya viral infection may most often be seen in those who are already high risk.

Dr Maria Lúcia Brito Ferreira, neurologist and head of department at Hospital da Restauração, leading the Brazilian team said: "Zika infection most often causes a syndrome of rash and fever without many long-term consequences, but these neurological complications -- although rare -- can require intensive care support in hospital, often result in disability, and may cause death."

Dr Suzannah Lant, a Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, who worked on the study explained: "Our study highlights the potential effects of viral infection on the brain, with complications like stroke. This is relevant to Zika and chikungunya, but also to our understanding of other viruses, such as COVID-19, which is increasingly being linked to neurological complications."

Senior author Professor Tom Solomon, Director of the National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at the University of Liverpool said: "Although the world's attention is currently focused on COVID-19, other viruses that recently emerged, such as Zika and chikungunya, are continuing to circulate and cause problems. We need to understand more about why some viruses trigger stroke, so that we can try and prevent this happening in the future."

                    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200918104235.htm

Supercooled Water As a Stable Liquid

First-ever measurements provide evidence that extremely cold liquid water exists in two distinct structures that co-exist and vary in proportion dependent on temperature

By Karyn Hede, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

September 17, 2020 -- RICHLAND, Wash.—Supercooled water is really two liquids in one. That’s the conclusion reached by a research team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory after making the first-ever measurements of liquid water at temperatures much colder than its typical freezing point.

The finding, published today in the journal Science, provides long-sought experimental data to explain some of the bizarre behavior water exhibits at extremely cold temperatures found in outer space and at the far reaches of Earth’s own atmosphere. Until now, liquid water at the most extreme possible temperatures has been the subject of competing theories and conjecture. Some scientists have asked whether it is even possible for water to truly exist as a liquid at temperatures as low as -117.7 F (190 K) or whether the odd behavior is just water rearranging on its inevitable path to a solid.

The argument matters because understanding water, which covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, is critical to understanding how it regulates our environment, our bodies and life itself.

“We showed that liquid water at extremely cold temperatures is not only relatively stable, it exists in two structural motifs,” said Greg Kimmel, a chemical physicist at PNNL. “The findings explain a long-standing controversy over whether or not deeply supercooled water always crystallizes before it can equilibrate. The answer is: no.”

Supercooled water: a tale of two liquids

You’d think we understand water by now. It’s one of the most abundant and most studied substances on the planet. But despite its seeming simplicity—two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen per molecule—H₂O is deceptively complicated.

It is surprisingly difficult for water to freeze just below its melting point: water resists freezing unless it has something to get it started, like dust or some other solid to cling to. In pure water, it takes an energetic nudge to jostle the molecules into the special arrangement needed to freeze. And it expands when it freezes, which is weird behavior compared with other liquids. But that weirdness is what sustains life on Earth. If ice cubes sank or water vapor in the atmosphere didn’t retain warmth, life on Earth as we know it wouldn’t exist.

Water’s weird behavior has kept chemical physicists Bruce Kay and Greg Kimmel occupied for more than 25 years. Now, they and postdoctoral scientists Loni Kringle and Wyatt Thornley have accomplished a milestone that they hope will expand our understanding of the contortions liquid water molecules can make.

Various models have been proposed to explain water’s unusual properties. The new data obtained using a sort of stop-motion “snapshot” of supercooled water shows that it can condense into a high-density, liquid-like structure. This higher density form co-exists with a lower-density structure that is more in line with the typical bonding expected for water. The proportion of high-density liquid decreases rapidly as the temperature goes from -18.7 F (245 K)  to -117.7 F (190 K), supporting predictions of “mixture” models for supercooled water.

Kringle and Thornley used infrared spectroscopy to spy on the water molecules trapped in a kind of stop motion when a thin film of ice got zapped with a laser, creating a supercooled liquid water for a few fleeting nanoseconds.

“A key observation is that all of the structural changes were reversible and reproducible,” said Kringle, who performed many of the experiments.

Graupel: it’s supercooled water!

This research may help explain graupel, the fluffy pellets that sometimes fall during cool-weather storms. Graupel forms when a snowflake interacts with supercooled liquid water in the upper atmosphere.

“Liquid water in the upper atmosphere is deeply cooled,” says Kay, a PNNL lab fellow and expert in the physics of water. “When it encounters a snowflake it rapidly freezes and then in the right conditions, falls to Earth. It’s really the only time most people will experience the effects of supercooled water.”

These studies may also help understand how liquid water can exist on very cold planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—in our solar system, and beyond. Supercooled water vapor also creates the beautiful tails that trail behind comets.

Water molecule gymnastics

Here on Earth, a better understanding of the contortions water can perform when placed in a tight situation, such as a single water molecule wedged into a protein, could help scientists design new medicines.

“There isn't a lot of space for the water molecules that surround individual proteins,” said Kringle. “This research could shed light on how liquid water behaves in closely packed environments.”

Thornley noted that “in future studies, we can use this new technique to follow the molecular rearrangements underlying a broad range of chemical reactions.”

There is still much to be learned, and these measurements will help lead the way to a better understanding of the most abundant life-giving liquid on Earth.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science. The pulsed laser and infrared spectroscopy measurements were performed at EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science user facility located at PNNL.

https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/supercooled-water-stable-liquid-scientists-show-first-time