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Possible new law of nature on the way

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The world of physics is excited about strong but early evidence about the behavior of muons, paricles identical to electrons only 200x more massive (heavier), which once born take 2.2 microseconds to decay into an electron, and which spin like tops. In a new, extremely precise measurement, they were made to wobble using magnetic fields but they unexpectedly wobbled quite significantly faster than the Standard Model suggests they would. They might spin so fast due to an unknown force caused by an unknown particle, and this is what is so exciting.

“We found that a muon … is not in agreement with our current best theory of physics at the subatomic level, and … it potentially points to a future with new laws, new particles and new forces in physics which we haven’t seen to date,” said Professor Mark Lancaster at U of Manchester.

“The main goal of the experiment is to make the measurement and compare with the theory, and if they disagree then it’s telling us that there’s something in nature which is not in the theory,” explained James Mott at Fermilab.

The four known forces of nature (gravity, electricity, two nuclear forces: strong and weak interactions) have left scientists without an answer for some observed phenomena, such as the speed at which galaxies spin (faster than the best model suggests). Therefore, they continue to search for glitches in their already-tight models which might point them things they don’t yet know about.

The most recent work was done at Fermilab (Muon g-2 experiment), but a similar experiment was already done earlier at the Large Hadron Collider. These tools accelerate particles in large rings at close to the speed of light.

The evidence needs more tests for greater certainty, particularly to rule out the possibility of a systematic error, and particularly with a new, independent experiment, but physicists will be chasing this line of experiment eagerly.

“This is outstanding confirmation of experimental technique, and very, very suggestive of the possibility of new physics,” noted scientist David Hertzon of U of Washington.

By the editors

#AnomalousMagneticDipoleMomentOfTheMuon #QuantumElectrodynamics

Flying electric car prototype unveiled in Brazil, bringing Uber-like aerial ride-sharing closer to reality

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SAO PAULO, Brazil – Embraer, the Brazilian aerospace giant that produces commercial, military, executive, and agricultural aircraft is now taking the next step in unveiling a prototype for an electric flying car aimed at the passenger market as part of its project to develop an air urban mobility ecosystem.

The working prototype took to the air at Embraer’s headquarters in Gavião Peixoto, São Paulo, last week. The vertical take-off vehicle looks like an oversized drone, with 10 propellers - 8 horizontal and 2 vertical - and is designed to transport passengers in what will eventually be totally autonomous flight, said the company.

The long road to prepare it for market includes obtaining certification for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL) and the full development of solutions for urban air traffic management.

Uber is already working with Embraer on this future-focused project. “Embraer’s team focused on the customer experience with their latest vehicle concept, using built-in redundant systems to achieve optimal safety, while also achieving low noise output with an eight rotor system, which enables span-wise lift,” said Mark Moore, Engineering Director of Aviation, Uber. “Our team looks forward to continued collaboration with the Embraer team to achieve a quiet, green, and safe, aerial ridesharing vehicle.”

By Milan Sime Martinic

Fully automated convenience stores open in São Paulo

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SÃO PAULO – French multinational Carrefour, an operator of retail and grocery stores in Brazil, announced this week the launch of its first two autonomous neighborhood markets.

The convenience stores will operate without humans at checkout counters and without customer service, a model that goes a step beyond Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology which runs partially automated stores in some US and UK cities.

The Brazilian stores do not have employees to assist with purchases nor automatic cashiers. Instead, clients use an app to enter the stores and customers pay as if on an e-commerce website and receive a code to leave the store.

The stores have been operating since mid-December, but have just now been announced, according to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Mystery solved: A poison formed by blue-green algae cause of mass extinction of bald eagles in southeastern US

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A substance from a previously unknown blue-green alga, also known as cyanobacteria, that lives on ground nettles in freshwater lakes is responsible for making various birds and other animals sick, according to research by teams at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany and the University of Georgia.

The harmful substance finds its way into herbivorous fish, water birds, and turtles, which were eventually eaten by the bald eagles, say the researchers, solving the long-running mystery of the mass extinction of bald eagles in the southeastern US. Since the 1990s scientists have been searching for the “eagle killer poison” that causes nerve disorders in the birds which then lose control of their bodies and die.

Though it remains unclear why the bacteria produces the poison in some lakes but not in others, a unique bromine compound may be responsible, say researchers. It turns out that the bacteria need bromine to produce their poison and the scientists point out that a herbicide containing bromine is used in some lakes to destroy the invasive ground nettle.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Brazil’s new supersonic fighter jet already in test phase

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SAO PAOLO, Brazil – The skies over Sao Paulo state are roaring with low-altitude flights of the Saab-designed Gripen-E military aircraft being built by the Swedish company but completed and serviced at a nearby Embraer plant and Brazil’s National Aircraft Development Center.

The airplanes are part of a $4.5 billion order for 36 aircraft by the Brazilian Air Force, of which 15 will be fully produced by Embraer.

The flights are at times at an altitude of only 15 feet over flat, sparsely in order to minimize the effect of the sonic booms on people on the ground, says Saab, but the company does not report the speeds attained on test flights.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Hackers hack into 150,000 security cameras worldwide

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An international hacker collective wanting to show how monitored we are and how easy surveillance systems are to hack, breached camera-maker Verkada, gaining access to the video systems of all its customers which included hospitals, prisons, schools and police stations, and companies such as Tesla, Cloudflare and others, according to Swiss hacker Tillie Kottmann, who claimed credit on behalf of the collective.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Brazil will monitor forest threats with first nationally-developed satellite

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SAO PAOLO – Brazil’s new Earth observation satellite is the first one to be 100% conceptualized, designed, integrated, tested, and operated by Brazil.

Amazonia-1 was put into orbit from from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India at dawn Sunday after 13 years of development. It will sense, observe, and track deforestation in the Amazon region.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Switzerland endangering plant species – U of Bern research

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A recent study by U of Bern researchers has identified the major causes of increasing endangerment of plant species in the country.

Anne Kempel, author of the study that involved 420 botanists and worked together with the Swiss data and information center Info Flor, said that micropollutants, fertilizer pollution, the loss of natural flow dynamics due to river straightening, the use of rivers as a source of electricity, and the draining of bog areas are all troublesome for these plants.

By Milan Sime Martinić

When political parties reverse their policy stance, their supporters immediately switch their opinions too

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At least a significant portion of their supporters, according to U of Aarhus researchers.

When two competing political parties in Denmark reversed their policy stance on an issue — suddenly they both supported reducing unemployment benefits — their voters immediately moved their opinions by around 15% into line with their party.

The same thing happened when one of these parties shifted from opposing to supporting ending Denmark’s early retirement.

The researchers were studying how public opinion is formed. Their recent paper sheds light on how much influence political parties have over their supporters, according to the researchers, who surveyed their panel of subjects in five successive waves between 2010 and 2011. They studied the same group of party supporters before, during and after a policy reversal.

“We can see that [the] welfare programs were actually quite popular … and many of the voters of the center-right party were in favor of these welfare programs,” commented one of the researchers, Rune Slothuus. “Nevertheless, we can see that they reversed their opinion from supporting these welfare programs to opposing these welfare programs.”

“I was surprised to see the parties appeared this powerful in shaping opinions,” Slothuus said. “Our findings suggest that partisan leaders can indeed lead citizens’ opinions in the real world, even in situations where the stakes are real and the economic consequences tangible.”

The researchers pondered Western democracy in light of their findings: “If citizens just blindly follow their party without thinking much about it, that should lead to some concern about the mechanisms in our democracy. Because how can partisan elites represent citizens’ views if the views of citizens are shaped by the very same elites who are supposed to represent them?”

Source: How Political Parties Shape Public Opinion in the Real World. Rune Slothuus and Martin Bisgaard. First published: 04 November 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550

The brain listens for things it is trying to predict

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The brain interprets sounds as they contrast with its expectations; it recognizes patterns of sounds faster when they’re in line with what it is predicting it will hear, but it only encodes sounds when they contrast with expectations, according to Technische U researchers.

The researchers showed this by monitoring the two principal nuclei of the subcortical pathway responsible for auditory processing: the inferior colliculus and the medial geniculate body, as their subjects listened to patterns of sounds which the researches modified so that sometimes they would hear an expected sound pattern, and other times something unexpected.

Source: Alejandro Tabas, Glad Mihai, Stefan Kiebel, Robert Trampel, Katharina von Kriegstein. Abstract rules drive adaptation in the subcortical sensory pathway. eLife, 2020; 9 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.64501

We have a particular way of understanding a room

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When several research subjects were instructed to explore an empty room, and when they were instead seated in a chair and watched someone else explore the room, their brain waves followed a certain pattern, as recorded by a backpack hooked up to record their brain waves, eye movements, and paths. It didn’t matter if they were walking or watching someone else, according to UC researchers led by Dr Matthias Stangl.

The researchers also tested what happened when subjects searched for a hidden spot, or watched someone else do so, and found that brain waves flowed more strongly when they had a goal and hunted for something.

Source: Matthias Stangl, Uros Topalovic, Cory S. Inman, Sonja Hiller, Diane Villaroman, Zahra M. Aghajan, Leonardo Christov-Moore, Nicholas R. Hasulak, Vikram R. Rao, Casey H. Halpern, Dawn Eliashiv, Itzhak Fried, Nanthia Suthana. Boundary-anchored neural mechanisms of location-encoding for self and others. Nature, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03073-y

Extroverts and introverts use different vocabularies

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Extroverts use ‘positive emotion’ and ‘social process’ words more often than introverts, according to new research conducted at Nanyang Technological U.

‘Love,’ ‘happy,’ and ‘blessed’ indicate pleasant emotions, and ‘beautiful’ and ‘nice’ indicate positivity or optimism, and are among the words found to be used more often by extroverts. So too are ‘meet,’ ‘share,’ and ‘talk,’ which are about socializing. Extroverts use personal pronouns — except ‘I’ — more too, another indication of sociability.

The correlation, however, was small, and the researchers think that stronger linguistic indicators need to be found to achieve their general goal, which is improving machine learning approaches to targeting consumer marketing.

Source: Jiayu Chen, Lin Qiu, Moon-Ho Ringo Ho. A meta-analysis of linguistic markers of extraversion: Positive emotion and social process words. Journal of Research in Personality, 2020; 89: 104035 DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2020.104035