Science X Newsletter Week 01

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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 01:

	Chinese drone maker unveils human-carrying drone Chinese drone maker Ehang Inc. on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world's first drone capable of carrying a human passenger.
	Why too much evidence can be a bad thing (Phys.org)—Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect on trial was unanimously found guilty by all judges, then the suspect was acquitted. This reasoning sounds counterintuitive, but the legislators of the time had noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is yet to be discovered. They intuitively reasoned that when something seems too good to be true, most likely a mistake was made.
	Researchers discover new fundamental quantum mechanical property Nanotechnologists at the University of Twente research institute MESA+ have discovered a new fundamental property of electrical currents in very small metal circuits. They show how electrons can spread out over the circuit like waves and cause interference effects at places where no electrical current is driven. The geometry of the circuit plays a key role in this so called nonlocal effect. The interference is a direct consequence of the quantum mechanical wave character of electrons and the specific geometry of the circuit. For designers of quantum computers it is an effect to take account of. The results are published in the British journal Scientific Reports.
	Facebook study suggests online users reinforce their views by creating echo chambers (Phys.org)—A team of researchers from several institutions in Italy and one in the U.S. has found evidence that suggests Internet users follow a pattern similar to that found in other media regarding how they look for and use information they find. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they downloaded data from Facebook, analyzed it and found examples of echo chamber type behaviors.
	Artificial pancreas to undergo long-term clinical tests Researchers will soon undertake one of the largest-ever long-term clinical trials of a system designed to help regulate blood sugar levels of individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus. If the so-called artificial pancreas system performs in patients as hoped, it could lead to commercial trials and eventual regulatory approval in the United States and abroad.
	Scientists create 'nano-reactor' for the production of hydrogen biofuel Scientists at Indiana University have created a highly efficient biomaterial that catalyzes the formation of hydrogen—one half of the "holy grail" of splitting H2O to make hydrogen and oxygen for fueling cheap and efficient cars that run on water.
	Why the real King Kong became extinct The largest ape to roam Earth died out 100,000 years ago because it failed to tuck into savannah grass after climate change hit its preferred diet of forest fruit, scientists suggest.
	Material could harvest sunlight by day, release heat on demand hours or days later Imagine if your clothing could, on demand, release just enough heat to keep you warm and cozy, allowing you to dial back on your thermostat settings and stay comfortable in a cooler room. Or, picture a car windshield that stores the sun's energy and then releases it as a burst of heat to melt away a layer of ice.
	Evidence for new state of hydrogen: Discovery gives glimpse of conditions found on other planets Scientists have recreated an elusive form of the material that makes up much of the giant planets in our solar system, and the sun.
	Pure quantum-mechanical mixture of electrons and photons demonstrated in bismuth selenide In 2013, MIT physicists showed for the first time that shining powerful mid-infrared laser light on solid bismuth selenide produces Floquet-Bloch states, which are characterized by replicas of electronic energy states inside a solid with gaps opening up at crossing points of replica states. The same external light also interacts with free electron states immediately outside the solid producing a competing state, called the Volkov state, which is gapless.
	Team reports that black hole activity can be observed via visible rays All you need is a 20 cm telescope to observe a nearby, active black hole.
	Researchers try mathematical recipe for slicing pizza (Phys.org)—If you are rather fussy about making sure the pizza you order and share is conventionally (properly) cut into triangles, you may want to avoid having pizza-theory mathematicians presiding over the knife-cutting. They may be much more eager to explore possibilities and variations than give you the usual sized slice.
	Stretchable, transparent heater made from metallic glass (Phys.org)—Researchers have fabricated a stretchable and transparent electrode that can be used for applications such as heating parts of the body and defrosting the side view mirrors on cars. It is the first stretchable electronics device made from metallic glass, which is a metal that has an amorphous (disordered) structure like that of a glass, instead of the highly ordered crystalline structure that metals normally have.
	Strong magnetic fields discovered in majority of stars Strong magnetic fields discovered in majority of stars—Finding to impact understanding of stellar evolution
	Musical melodies obey same laws as foraging animals (Phys.org)—Most people think of music as more of an art than a science. Although sound is a wave, and can therefore be described by the laws of physics, understanding how certain patterns of sound waves create what we perceive as music requires a much higher-level perspective than merely understanding the properties of waves.
	Physicists offer theories to explain mysterious collision at Large Hadron Collider Physicists around the world were puzzled recently when an unusual bump appeared in the signal of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, causing them to wonder if it was a new particle previously unknown, or perhaps even two new particles. The collision cannot be explained by the Standard Model, the theoretical foundation of particle physics.
	The Anthropocene: Hard evidence for a human-driven Earth The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on the Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geoscientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminium, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing across the planet, coincident with elevated greenhouse gas emissions and unprecedented trans-global species invasions.
	Globular clusters could host interstellar civilizations Globular star clusters are extraordinary in almost every way. They're densely packed, holding a million stars in a ball only about 100 light-years across on average. They're old, dating back almost to the birth of the Milky Way. And according to new research, they also could be extraordinarily good places to look for space-faring civilizations.
	New material for detecting photons captures more quantum information Detecting individual particles of light just got a bit more precise—by 74 picoseconds to be exact—thanks to advances in materials by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and their colleagues in fabricating superconducting nanowires.
	Scientists find key driver for treatment of deadly brain cancer Glioblastoma multiforme is a particularly deadly cancer. A person diagnosed with this type of brain tumor typically survives 15 months, if given the best care. The late Senator Ted Kennedy succumbed to this disease in just over a year.

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