Science X Newsletter Week 33

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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 33:

	Company in Canada gets U.S. patent for space elevator Exploring space while seated on Earth, gazing up on screens in museum theaters or at home via VR headsets. is exciting but the top imagination-grabber is the very idea of finding a way to access space. This is the present-day realm of creative thinking over space elevators, in the use of a giant tower to carry us to space.
	New design could finally help to bring fusion power closer to reality It's an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away—and always will be.
	Molecular scientists unexpectedly produce new type of glass When Prof. Juan de Pablo and his collaborators set about to explain unusual peaks in what should have been featureless optical data, they thought there was a problem in their calculations. In fact, what they were seeing was real. The peaks were an indication of molecular order in a material thought to be entirely amorphous and random: Their experiments had produced a new kind of glass.
	Caltech announces discovery in fundamental physics When the transistor was invented in 1947 at Bell Labs, few could have foreseen the future impact of the device. This fundamental development in science and engineering was critical to the invention of handheld radios, led to modern computing, and enabled technologies such as the smartphone. This is one of the values of basic research.
	Omega-3 may block psychosis years later, study finds Omega-3, a fatty acid found in oily fish, may prevent the onset of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders long after being consumed, according to a study released Tuesday.
	Cosmic mystery deepens with discovery of new ultra-high-energy neutrino Evidence of a fourth ultra-high energy neutrino—the highest-energy neutrino yet—has been detected by the South Pole-based IceCube experiment, a project that Berkeley Lab researchers helped build and to which they currently contribute analysis.
	Eat less meat, save the planet To conserve the planet's ecosystems and their diverse plant and animal species, human populations should consume less meat, according to Florida International University researchers.
	Charting the slow death of the Universe An international team of astronomers studying more than 200 000 galaxies has measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever before. This represents the most comprehensive assessment of the energy output of the nearby Universe. They confirm that the energy produced in a section of the Universe today is only about half what it was two billion years ago and find that this fading is occurring across all wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the far infrared. The Universe is slowly dying.
	Programming and prejudice: Computer scientists discover how to find bias in algorithms Software may appear to operate without bias because it strictly uses computer code to reach conclusions. That's why many companies use algorithms to help weed out job applicants when hiring for a new position.
Can America cope with a resurgence of tropical disease? One rainy Friday morning in March 2015, Dr Laila Woc-Colburn saw two patients with neurocysticercosis (a parasitic infection of the brain) and one with Chagas disease, which is transmitted by insects nicknamed 'kissing bugs'. Having attended medical school in her native Guatemala, she was used to treating these kinds of diseases. But she was not in Guatemala any more – this was Houston, Texas.
	Computer scientists find mass extinctions can accelerate evolution A computer science team at The University of Texas at Austin has found that robots evolve more quickly and efficiently after a virtual mass extinction modeled after real-life disasters such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs. Beyond its implications for artificial intelligence, the research supports the idea that mass extinctions actually speed up evolution by unleashing new creativity in adaptations.
	Research team creates a superfluid in a record-high magnetic field MIT physicists have created a superfluid gas, the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate, for the first time in an extremely high magnetic field. The magnetic field is a synthetic magnetic field, generated using laser beams, and is 100 times stronger than that of the world's strongest magnets. Within this magnetic field, the researchers could keep a gas superfluid for a tenth of a second—just long enough for the team to observe it. The researchers report their results this week in the journal Nature Physics.
	Protons and antiprotons appear to be true mirror images In a stringent test of a fundamental property of the standard model of particle physics, known as CPT symmetry, researchers from the RIKEN-led BASE collaboration at CERN have made the most precise measurements so far of the charge-to-mass ratio of protons and their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons.
	How people with autism spectrum disorders understand idioms and other figures of speech How do children and young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) understand idioms and other figures of speech? A 4.15 million euro EU project based out of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology is examining the links between language and perception in autistic individuals as just one of 15 cross-disciplinary projects designed to bring a better understanding to how our perception and language interact and change over time and in individuals.
	New model describes cognitive decision making as the collapse of a quantum superstate (Phys.org)—Decision making in an enormous range of tasks involves the accumulation of evidence in support of different hypotheses. One of the enduring models of evidence accumulation is the Markov random walk (MRW) theory, which assigns a probability to each hypothesis. In an MRW model of decision making, when deciding between two hypotheses, the cumulative evidence for and against each hypothesis reaches different levels at different times, moving particle-like from state to state and only occupying a single definite evidence level at any given point.
	Computer scientists introduce new graphics software Computer scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Evangelos Kalogerakis today unveiled a new software modeling program that uses sophisticated geometric matching and machine learning to successfully mimic the human perception of style, giving users powerful new tools to compare the style similarity of three-dimensional (3D) objects.
	Quantum computing advance locates neutral atoms For any computer, being able to manipulate information is essential, but for quantum computing, singling out one data location without influencing any of the surrounding locations is difficult. Now, a team of Penn State physicists has a method for addressing individual neutral atoms without changing surrounding atoms.
	Glass paint could keep metal roofs and other structures cool even on sunny days Sunlight can be brutal. It wears down even the strongest structures, including rooftops and naval ships, and it heats up metal slides and bleachers until they're too hot to use. To fend off damage and heat from the sun's harsh rays, scientists have developed a new, environmentally friendly paint out of glass that bounces sunlight off metal surfaces—keeping them cool and durable.
	Could a digital pen change how we diagnose brain function? For all of the advances in medical technology, many of the world's most widely-used diagnostic tools essentially involve just two things: pen and paper.
	Study suggests long term collaborations result in more productive scientific careers (Phys.org)—Alexander Michael Petersen, a researcher with the Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies in Italy has conducted a study looking into one measure of scientific career success—publication—and found that those people that pair with another researcher to form a long term collaboration, tend to have more productive careers. In his paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Petersen describes the study he carried out, and what he found along the way.

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