Science news

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/devices/mramlike-device-could-make-logic-run-backwards This is an interesting idea: Engineers at Purdue University and the University of California at Berkeley have discovered that a simple combination of commonly available devices creates a computing element that could lead to some truly strange circuits: logic that can perform its inverse operation. Some important aspects of modern computing—notably encryption—depend on there being →

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42103058 A population of finches on the Galapagos has been discovered in the process of becoming a new species. This is the first example of speciation that scientists have been able to observe directly in the field. →

https://paperpile.com/blog/shortest-papers/ If you ever wondered about the shortest science papers ever published, or you just want to take the unique opportunity to read several papers in full within one minute, this post is for you. →

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sugar-industry-buried-evidence-links-cancer-heart-disease-half-century/all/ The US government has only recently updated its health guidelines to advise people to cut out a lot of sugar from their diets, but as highlighted in two recent studies, the sugar industry has been aware of its dangers for at least half a century. It’s worth remembering that plenty of industry research is →

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-myths-debunked/ →

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/nanodevice-maps-the-angle-of-light-to-color-and-vice-versa  An international team of researchers has added a small twist to typical light filters. They’ve fabricated a nanoscale device that divides incident light into its different component colors based on the direction the light is coming from. They’ve switched from making filters with equally spaced grooves to an aperiodic architecture wherein the grooves are not equally spaced. The research →

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/optoelectronics/new-laser-technique-promises-photonic-devices-inside-of-silicon When a laser beam modifies a material, those modifications can either be temporary or permanent, and the change can also be either extremely subtle or drastic. The modified material starts responding differently to the laser beam. Scientists have taken advantage of these interactions to create structures within silicon that enable photonic devices. “We can also imagine →

http://www.iflscience.com/space/a-huge-new-gravitational-waves-announcement-is-happening-on-monday/  In the space of just a few weeks, the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations have announced the fourth detection of gravitational waves and three of their most prominent physicists received a Nobel Prize for their work. And on Monday they will announce something new.  →

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/10/09/saunas-cut-pneumonia-risk/ Sauna is good for you in many ways has been known in Finland for a long time. Here is another proof:  Sweating in a sauna at least twice a week could slash the risk of potentially deadly infections like pneumonia, research shows. Men who enjoyed sauna sessions on a regular basis were almost 30 per cent less likely to develop the →

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/nobel-prize-awarded-for-detection-of-gravity-waves  The three men who won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics helped prove Einstein correct by detecting gravitational waves from a pair of colliding black holes.  Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne were awarded for conceiving and creating the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO.  Just last week, a sister detector in Italy called Virgo →