Science news

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeopathy-nonsense-risk-harm-29-european-academies-science-advisory-council-remedies-a7963786.html A scientific organisation intended to influence EU policy has called for tougher regulations of alternative medicine, branding homeopathy“nonsense” and warning the “promotion and use of homeopathic products risks significant harms”. The statement was made by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC). Homeopathy uses vastly diluted amounts of a substance that causes symptoms in the hope of curing a →

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/turning-heat-electrons-reveals-elusive-physics-phenomenon Electrons in platinum move in different directions depending on their spin when the metal is heated at one end. Scientists have observed this phenomenon, called the spin Nernst effect, for the first time. “The measurement was a tour de force; the measurement was ridiculously hard”  The effect and its brethren — with names like the →

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-connect-human-brain-internet-first-time/ According to a press release, the team of neuroscientists and engineers have used an electroencephalogram (EEG) – a device that detects electrical signals in the brain – to transmit neurological activity to a cheap Raspberry Pi computer. This then live streams the data to a program running on a website that anyone can view at any time. →

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/scientists-have-managed-to-store-light-as-sound-for-the-first-time/ A team of researchers from the University of Sydney has managed to convert the digital information carried by light waves into sound waves inside a microchip. As reported in Nature Communications, the researchers were able to build a chip that slows down light by turning it into sound waves. “The information in our chip in acoustic →

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/plasticeating-fungus-found-at-a-landfill-site-in-pakistan/ Researchers have found a species of fungus, known as Aspergillus tubingensis, that is able to feed off of plastic. In lab experiments, published in Environmental Pollution, scientists found that the mycelium of the fungus colonizes polyester polyurethane plastic, causing surface degradation and scarring. This is not the first time that organisms have been found to be able to feed →

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-09-flip-flop-qubits-radical-quantum.html Engineers at Australia’s University of New South Wales have invented a radical new architecture for quantum computing, based on novel ‘flip-flop qubits’, that promises to make the large-scale manufacture of quantum chips dramatically cheaper – and easier – than thought possible. →

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608797/are-there-optical-communication-channels-in-our-brains/ Here’s an interesting question: are there optical communication channels in the brain? This may be a radical suggestion but one for which there is more than a little evidence to think it is worth pursuing. →

http://www.osa.org/en-us/about_osa/newsroom/news_releases/2017/high-dimensional_quantum_encryption_performed_in_r/ For the first time, researchers have sent a quantum-secured message containing more than one bit of information per photon through the air above a city. The demonstration showed that it could one day be practical to use high-capacity, free-space quantum communication to create a highly secure link between ground-based networks and satellites, a requirement →

http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-have-conducted-the-first-thorium-salt-experiments-in-over-40-years#.WaUkb5ppSUB.facebook Netherlands-based nuclear power provider, NRG, are taking a gamble. They’re conducting experiments that could see a shift from uranium-based nuclear power to thorium. There has been the historical battle between using uranium or thorium as a nuclear fuel. Uranium provided a potential source of weapons-grade plutonium. A significant advantage of using thorium over uranium is it doesn’t →

https://qz.com/1055287/an-error-made-in-1925-led-to-a-crisis-in-modern-science-now-researchers-are-joining-to-fix-it/?utm_source=parVG In 1925, Fisher published Statistical Methods for Research Workers, whete he explained the concept of statistical significance. Somewhat arbitrarily, Fisher chose to define statistical significance as a difference that had less than a .05 probability of occurring by random chance (in technical terms, this is called a p-value).  Fast forward more than a century later, →