A Scientific Research Vault
Dr Benjamin Pope is a physicist and data scientist at The University of Queensland, Brisbane. He is working to find planets around other stars using NASA space telescopes. With the help of leading-edge machine-learning algorithms, he is trying to dig up tiny signals out of the noise to expand our knowledge of the universe.
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In a collaborative effort, an international team of astronomers at The University of Queensland and the Dutch national observatory ASTRON have been looking for planets with the help of the most powerful radio telescope – Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) – located in the Netherlands. Recently, they were able to figure out stars spewing off radio waves. This hints at the presence of some hidden planets.
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Quasicrystal is a form of matter with an unusual arrangement of atoms. Although it’s called a “crystal” but it lacks symmetry. Unlike crystals, pattern within the quasicrystal does not repeat itself. They were first discovered in 1980s and since then the possible atomic arrangements violated the rules that fall under the category of crystals, that is, the materials could have only two-, three-, four- or six-fold symmetry.
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A starving being can eat everything and anything and within minutes. While in the character of 19th-century trapper, Leonardo DiCaprio, a starving man in The Revenant eats raw bison liver. Survival instinct is what keeps the living beings away from extinction coz of hunger and this can be seen in microorganisms as well.
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Peripheral nervous system (PNS) axons regenerate in contrast with central nervous system (CNS) axons, however, the rate of renewal is fairly slow. It is because of its sluggish rate majority of the peripheral nerve injuries lead to permanent disability for patients.
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Nature not only inspire poets, artists, painters but also engineers. In an attempt to simulate the locomotion of birds, researchers at Caltech have developed a bipedal robot that has a movement that is between walking and flying.
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Dr. Kamber Schwarz is a postdoc at MPIA in Heidelberg. She has been a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. She received her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of Michigan in 2018. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Ralph B. Baldwin Prize in Astronomy, 2020.
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The Stranger, also known as The Outsider in English, is a novella written by French author Albert Camus in 1942. It stands as the first of Camus’s novels published during his lifetime. The book highlights Camus’ philosophy of absurdism. Although there is no strong story line and writing style is simple, however, I did a couple of pauses here and there to reflect on certain questions about life in general.
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Researchers at University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have determined that even though the roundworms lack ear like organs, still they are able to comprehend sound.
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Astronomers led by Kamber Schwarz (MPIA in Heidelberg) have successfully deduced the mass of a potential “planet factory”, the protoplanetary disk around the star GM Aurigae. With the help of radio data from the ALMA observatory and physical modelling, the astronomers were able to track the GM Aurigae system.
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Nano world is full of mysterious features such as uncertainty principle, probabilities and wave function. It’s been at the beginning of quantum mechanics that researchers are working unceasingly to understand the perplexing phenomenon of the nano realm. Unlike the macro world, events at the nano scale are beyond the comprehension of physicists. One such problem is why some uber small heat sources cool down faster if they are packed too close.
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The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality is the second book of theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist, professor Brian Greene. However, this happens to be my third read from the author, first two were Until the End of Time and The Hidden Reality.
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Dr. Guido de Croon is a Full Professor at Delft University of Technology Netherlands. Dr. Croon’s research interests focus on the bio-inspired robotics, micro air vehicles, vision-based navigation and swarm robotics.
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Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari presents a 360-view of how addiction works. It gives a chronological account of the War on Drugs, hence, it’s a largely convincing book. Johann Hari started his journey in the first place as he had a few questions like: What causes addiction? Is there any alternative to system that we have been using that doesn’t seem to work?
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Big question regarding the formation of black holes and how they grow under different regimes have always been the holy grail for astrophysicists. Our galaxy hovers around a massive black hole which, under normal circumstances, is surrounded by spinning gases. Not much is known about these gases, however, some shine brightly, with an unceasing supply of fuel. While others go to a state of temporary dormancy and erupts again later with an influx of gases.
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