Lifeboat Foundation

With a new, “portable” atomic clock, scientists are measuring not what time it is but changes to time itself.

12 Feb 2018 Engineering and Physical Sciences Photography Competition 2018 Previous slideNext slide1 of 16View AllSkip Ad Second place in the Weird and Wonderful category This picture of Placental ‘Pop Art’ has won Second place in the Weird and Wonderful category of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s annual photography competition. These images show automatically segmented chorionic vascular trees obtained from high resolution photography. Dr Rosalind Aughwane/UCL/EPSRC/PA Back to image.

A University of Texas at Dallas graduate student, his advisor and industry collaborators believe they have addressed a long-standing problem troubling scientists and engineers for more than 35 years: How to prevent the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope from crashing into the surface of a material during imaging or lithography. Details of the group’s solution appeared in the January issue of the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, which is published by the American Institute of Physics. Scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) operate in an ultra-high vacuum, bringing a fine-tipped p…

The first discovered interstellar visitor to our solar system has had a violent past, which is causing it to tumble around chaotically, a Queen’s University Belfast scientist has discovered.

Using lasers instead of electrodes to vibrate the hairs in the inner ears could lead to less damaging cochlear implants.

It’s impressive, but it doesn’t seem that practical. Maybe a temporary solution while they get the cost of ATLAS down a lot, and get ATLAS equipped with human like hands.

In other news, this Boston Dynamics robot just learned how to open doors and let itself out: http://bit.ly/2EqgWN2

An international team of researchers has developed a tiny, liquid-based engine powered by a demixing fluid. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes their little engine and possible uses for it.

Fabricated device and band structure. (A) Scanning electron microscope image of the device, which is composed of two regions identified by blue and yellow shading, corresponding to two photonic crystals with different topological properties. The interface between the two photonic crystals supports helical edge states with opposite circular polarization (s+ and s–). Grating couplers at each end of the device scatter light in the out-of-plane direction for collection. (B) Close-up image of the interface. Black dashed lines identify a single unit cell of each photonic crystal. Credit: Science…

Professor Panos Athanasopoulos, a linguist from Lancaster University and Professor Emanuel Bylund, a linguist from Stellenbosch University and Stockholm University, have discovered that people who speak two languages fluently think about time differently depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events.

The finding, published in the ‘Journal of Experimental Psychology: General’, reports the first evidence of cognitive flexibility in people who speak two languages.

Bilinguals go back and forth between their languages rapidly and, often, unconsciously — a phenomenon called code-switching.

Continue reading “This is why the language you speak can change how you perceive time” »