Researchers Discover a New Path for Light Through Metal
By (ScienceDaily)
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Metals carry electricity with ease, but normally do nothing to transmit light waves. Surface plasmons, unusual light-coupled oscillations that form on the surface of metallic materials, are the exception to that rule. When excited on the surface of metals by light waves of specific frequencies, plasmons are able to retain that same frequency, but with wavelengths that are orders-of-magnitude smaller, cramming visible and near-infrared light into the realm of the nanoscale.
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Until now, the best candidates for plasmonic materials were gold and silver. These noble metals, however, are not compatible with standard silicon manufacturing technologies, limiting their use in commercial products. Silver is the metal with the best optical and surface plasmon properties, but it forms grainy, or semi-continuous, thin films. Silver also easily degrades in air, which causes loss of optical signal, making it a less-attractive material in plasmon technologies.
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In addition to plasmonics, the researchers also speculate that titanium nitride may have applications in metamaterials, which are engineered materials that can be tailored for almost any application because of their extraordinary response to electromagnetic, acoustic, and thermal waves. Recently proposed applications of metamaterials include invisibility cloaks, optical black holes, nanoscale optics, data storage, and quantum information processing.
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Placenta On Toast? Could We Derive Benefits from Ingesting Afterbirth?
By (ScienceDaily)
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Almost all non-human mammals eat placenta for good reasons. Are we missing something? A paper by neuroscientists at the University at Buffalo and Buffalo State College suggests that ingestion of components of afterbirth or placenta -- placentophagia -- may offer benefits to human mothers and perhaps to non-mothers and males.
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Kristal says there is a current fad of ingesting encapsulated placenta, which mirrors unverified reports in the 1960s and 1970s of people in back-to-nature communes cooking and eating human placentas. The upsurge in recent anecdotal reports of the benefits of taking placenta by new mothers, irrespective of dose, method of preparation, or time course, suggests more of a placebo effect than a medicinal effect.
"People will do anything," Kristal says, "but we shouldn't read too much significance into reports of such exceptions, even if they are accurate, because they are neither reliable nor valid studies. My own studies found no evidence of the routine practice of placentophagia in other cultures, findings supported by a recent extensive study by anthropologists at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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Why is there something instead of nothing?
By Ethan Siegel
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The Universe is expanding and cooling, and what this means is that -- when the temperature drops below a certain point -- you can no longer create matter/antimatter pairs as quickly as you destroy them! Why's that? Because E = mc2, and once the energy of your Universe drops below the mass necessary to create the particles/antiparticles you're looking to make, the ones that already exist simply go away.
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Same deal with the anti-neutrons/positrons and the neutrons/electrons. But although it's possible that these individual percentages are equal, it isn't mandatory. The other possibility is -- and this happens in nature -- that particles will prefer one type of decay, while antiparticles will prefer a different type!
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Looking solely at the protons/neutrons/anti-protons/anti-neutrons that result from this decay, what would we wind up with?
More matter than anti-matter! In fact, so long as you fulfill these three famous criteria:
1. Out-of-equilibrium conditions,
2. Baryon-number-violating interactions, and
3. C- and CP-violation (the differences in decays, above),
you not only can create more matter than antimatter (or vice versa), but an asymmetry is inevitable. And since something like this is required to create more matter than antimatter in the Universe, and that's the Universe we have, this is why there's something instead of nothing!
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Most kids don't spend 1 hour a day outside
By (UPI)
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Sixty percent of U.S. parents said their children spend less than an hour a day outdoors, a survey by L.L.Bean and the National Park Foundation indicated.
"Getting your children outside does not have to mean going for a long hike or needing expensive equipment. It can often be as simple as pitching a tent in your own backyard," Rob Hutchison, outdoor discovery school instructor at L.L.Bean, said in a statement. "By engaging your kids in the outdoors and making activities both educational and fun, they are more apt to develop a love of the outdoors and a desire to stay active."
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Heart attack aspirin dosage not an issue
By (UPI)
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U.S. researchers said they found no significant difference between high- versus low-dose aspirin in the prevention of recurring cardiovascular events.
Lead author Payal Kohli, a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said each year, more than 1 million Americans suffer a heart attack and nearly all are prescribed a daily aspirin and an anti-platelet medication during recovery. However, the optimal aspirin dose has been unclear.
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"We observed no difference between patients taking a high dose versus a low of aspirin as it relates to cardiovascular death, heart attack, stroke or stent thrombosis," Kohli said in a statement.
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Bottlenose dolphins: 'Gangs' run society, scientists say
By Victoria Gill
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Male bottlenose dolphins organise gang-like alliances - guarding females against other groups and occasionally "changing sides".
A team studying dolphins in Shark Bay, western Australia, say the animals roam hundreds of square kilometres, often encountering other dolphin groups.
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This latest study reveals that these highly intelligent marine mammals live in an "open society". Rather than males guarding a specific territory, groups have what Dr Connor described as a "mosaic of overlapping ranges".
The fact that the dolphins travel in their troops and frequently encounter strangers reveals a great deal about their intelligence, because when one group meets another, the animals have to decide how to respond.
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