Tag: relevant

Matter-antimatter asymmetry confirmed in baryons

The LHCb detector. (credit: Fermilab ) Everyone, at some point in their lives, wonders why they are here. Existential questions don’t stop at the personal level, though. Why is there a Universe, and why is it filled with matter? The last question is a puzzle that has gainfully occupied the minds of and employed physicists for many years. The time spent pondering such questions has not been wasted, as it turns out, as researchers from the LHCb detector report  that one of the theoretical paths that allows matter to outnumber antimatter is open for business. An overly simple reading of the Standard Model of physics predicts that matter will be produced at the same rate as antimatter. The antimatter and matter should, through simple statistics, collide and wipe each other out, leaving only energy. But that didn’t happen. The substance we label matter was, somehow, produced in greater abundance than antimatter. In the beginnings of the Universe, antimatter was eliminated, leaving only matter. A closer look at the Standard Model reveals that some imbalance is expected. But it also predicts a Universe with much less matter than we observe. And, experimentally, we’ve only observed the relevant matter/antimatter asymmetry for a particular class of particles, called mesons. That notably leaves out the particles that make up the Universe, called baryons. Luckily, baryon asymmetry is exactly what one of the LHC detectors, called LHCb, is designed to investigate. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Matter-antimatter asymmetry confirmed in baryons

Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Nevada residents applying to sell medical marijuana got just got an unpleasant surprise. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that a vulnerability in a website portal leaked the data of more than 11, 700 applicants, including their driver’s license and social security numbers. Officials have taken down the relevant site until they fix the flaw, but there’s a concern that fraudsters might have seen the info and used it for malicious purposes. The scale of the leak might be modest. A spokesperson tells ZDNet that the data represented just a “portion” of one data base among several. And when Nevada voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2000, it’s possible that some of the information is outdated. Even so, this underscores a common problem with government data: frequently, agencies are their own worst enemies thanks to avoidable security holes and imperfect policies. Source: ZDNet

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Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Brains can recover some ‘lost’ memories

For the longest while, researchers believed that you could only preserve a memory in your brain if the relevant neurons were active. However, it now looks like this isn’t always the case — and that could be a tremendous help to anyone suffering from short-term memory loss. Scientists have discovered that small jolts of electricity to the brain (specifically, a pulse of transcranial magnetic stimulation) can revive recent memories. Your mind can slow near-term memories down to a dormant state where they’re in the background, but remain ready to come back when necessary. You can’t apply this method to long-term memories (you likely need different techniques for that), so don’t expect to revisit your childhood with a zap to your head. However, the findings should improve our understanding of how the brain works — it’s already clear that memory is more complex than we thought. And in the long run, there’s a chance this could lead to treatments for Alzheimer’s and other conditions where regaining short-term memories could greatly improve a patient’s quality of life. Via: Motherboard Source: Science

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Brains can recover some ‘lost’ memories

Google adds a food delivery shortcut to Maps for iOS

Not content with a simple navigation app, Google has updated Maps for iOS with a handy food delivery shortcut. So when you tap on a nearby restaurant, perhaps to see its opening times, you’ll soon see a button titled “Place an Order.” Tapping this will give you a few different options (these will vary depending on your country and the business in question) such as Grubhub, Seamless and Eat 24 in the US. Select your preferred service and you’ll be thrown across to the relevant iPhone app. It’s a small addition, sure, but one that could make ordering dinner just a little faster at night. Via: Mac Rumors Source: Google Maps (iOS)

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Google adds a food delivery shortcut to Maps for iOS