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Submission + - RoboCop statue rises in Detroit: 'big, beautiful, bronze piece of art' (theguardian.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A 15-year quest ends with a monument, drawing crowds and nostalgia as Detroit embraces its cult-film past

The statue looms and glints at more than 11 feet tall and weighing 3,500 pounds, looking out at the city with, how to put it a characteristically stern expression?

Despite its daunting appearance and history as a crimefighter of last resort, the giant new bronze figure of the movie character RoboCop is being seen as a symbol of hope, drawing fans and eliciting selfie mania since it began standing guard over Detroit on Wednesday afternoon.

Submission + - Poor mental health linked to dark web use (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new Florida Atlantic University study reveals significant mental health differences between dark web users and those who use only the surface web, and sheds light on a group whose involvement in this secretive online space has largely kept them outside the scope of traditional research.

Published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, the study finds that dark web users reported substantially higher levels of depressive symptoms and paranoid thoughts as compared to surface web users. In addition, there were substantial differences between dark web users and surface web users pertaining to suicidal thoughts, non-suicidal self-injury and digital self-harm.

Adults who reported suicidal thoughts had nearly three times greater odds of reporting dark web use. Likewise, those who reported non-suicidal self-injury (e.g. cutting or burning oneself) were nearly five times more likely to report use of the dark web, and individuals who had engaged in digital self-harm (anonymously posting hurtful or negative comments about themselves online) had more than 19 times greater odds of reported dark web use.

"Our findings suggest that many individuals who turn to the dark web may be doing so not just for privacy concerns, but as a reflection of deeper mental health struggles and the possible desire to socialize and engage in information-seeking in a context free of scrutiny that might otherwise be experienced on the surface web or offline," said Meldrum.

Submission + - Why meetings can harm employee well-being (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones.

A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce.

Faced with what we call meeting madness, the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting?

Submission + - How Long Poop Stays in Your Body Could Impact Your Health, Study Finds (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: According to a 2023 review that brought together data from dozens of studies, distinct differences can be seen between the gut microbiomes of 'speeders' and 'slowpokes'.

Since the human gut microbiome is intrinsically linked to health, this could have implications that have gone unnoticed before now.

In particular, slow transit times and constipation have been linked with metabolic and inflammatory disorders, as well as neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease.

Submission + - JWST spots a strange red dot so extreme scientists can't explain it (sciencedaily.com) 2

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The discovery of strange, ultra-red objects—especially the extreme case known as The Cliff—has pushed astronomers to propose an entirely new type of cosmic structure: black hole stars. These exotic hybrids could explain rapid black hole growth in the early universe, but their existence remains unproven.

Submission + - Scientists just teleported information using light (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Quantum communication follows a similar idea, but individual photons act as the information carriers. A zero or one is encoded through the direction of the photon's polarization (i.e., their orientation in the horizontal and vertical directions or in a superposition of both states). Because photons behave according to quantum mechanics, their polarization cannot be measured without leaving detectable traces. Any attempt to intercept the message would be exposed.

Teleportation requires the photons to be nearly identical in properties such as timing and color. Producing such photons is hard because they come from separate sources.

At the University of Stuttgart, the researchers successfully teleported the polarization state of a photon from one quantum dot to a photon produced by a second quantum dot. One dot emits a single photon and the other generates an entangled photon pair. "Entangled" means the two photons share a single quantum state even when physically apart. One photon from the pair travels to the second quantum dot and interacts with its photon. When the two overlap, their superposition transfers the information from the original photon to the far-away partner of the entangled pair.

A key element of this achievement was the use of "quantum frequency converters," devices that adjust small frequency mismatches between photons.

Submission + - The internet works thanks to a shared infrastructure that nobody owns (elpais.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In the 21st century, every government should understand that ensuring software sovereignty and security is part of its job, not only for themselves but also for businesses, society, and researchers. In the 21st century, software is the invisible infrastructure of our everyday life, like roads and bridges. Everything runs on software, and a significant portion of this is made possible by open source, which is maintained by people selflessly. If this open source breaks down, it’s as if a road or bridge collapses: everything else becomes much more complicated and dangerous.

Submission + - Scientists may have found dark matter after 100 years of searching (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A University of Tokyo researcher analyzing new data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected a halo of high-energy gamma rays that closely matches what theories predict should be released when dark matter particles collide and annihilate. The energy levels, intensity patterns, and shape of this glow align strikingly well with long-standing models of weakly interacting massive particles, making it one of the most compelling leads yet in the hunt for the universe’s invisible mass.

Submission + - 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: AI slop feels inescapable — whether you’re watching TV, reading the news, or trying to find a new apartment.

That is, unless you’re using Slop Evader, a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.

The tool is available for Firefox and Chrome, and has one simple function: Showing you the web as it was before the deluge of AI-generated garbage. It uses Google search functions to index popular websites and filter results based on publication date, a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.

Submission + - Ion-based cooling technique could make computer chips more powerful (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: [R]esearchers at The University of Osaka have developed a strategy to enhance cooling by driving the flow of ions through nanoscale channels. This ionothermoelectric strategy is analogous to the Peltier technique, in which passing an electric current through a material results in heating or cooling. This compelling invention is published in ACS Nano.

"We fabricated a nanosized pore in a semiconductor membrane and surrounded the nanopore with a 'gate,' in the form of a nanowire. Applying a voltage to the gate induced the flow of ions through the nanopore," explains lead author, Makusu Tsutsui. "Varying the voltage modulated the surface charge of the nanopore."

A negative applied voltage resulted in a negatively charged nanopore that was only permeable to positively charged ions, or cations. Consequently, each ion drags a certain quantity of heat along with its charge. The team created a concentration gradient in saltwater around the nanopore to drive cation transport in one direction, effectively pumping heat out of the nanopore. Reversing the applied voltage made the nanopore surface positive and permeable only to negative ions, or anions, therefore switching the system from cooling to heating.

Submission + - Are aliens real? Do aliens exist? Technosignatures may hold new clues (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Asked whether he believes aliens exist, Frank responds with a scientist's perspective:

He suggests microbial life may be common across the cosmos, but intelligent civilizations could be rare and short-lived. For scientists to find another civilization, he says, "we have to overlap with them in time." If technological civilizations last only a short time, the galaxy could lack technological civilizations at any given moment.

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