Saturday, February 24, 2024

3.177 - AMICOR (26)

 3.177 AMICOR

#Com Dra. Valderês A. Robinson Achutti (*13/06/1931+15/16/2021)

No aeroporto de Papette, no Tahiti (Polinesia Francesa) em setembro de 1987
para a 1a Conferência sobre Prevenção da Febre e Cardiopatia Reumática no Pacífico Sul

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#José Antônio Brenner (*01/03/1934+19/02/2024)


Meu querido primo, colega de curso secundário, arquiteto e historiador, em cuja homenagem Re-Publico uma postagem cujo texto completo, o link aqui está , e do qual, aqui e agora, só transcrevo os primeiros parágrafos:

175 ANOS DEPOIS...
Aloyzio Achutti
Ganhei vários novos primos: Um deles é meu ex-colega de curso secundário em Santa Maria (nas décadas de 1940-50) - José Antônio Brenner - que vim a conhecer como parente so a partir da descoberta dessa história, resultado de suas pesquisas genealógicas. Estamos na sexta geração de um ancestral comum, o imigrante Johann Friedrich Böbion aqui chegado em 1828 com duas filhas (Katherine Henrietta e Maria Katherine), e que deixara na Europa uma terceira (Louise Katherine), para quem escreveu uma carta datada de 21 de abril de 1833. Esta, que não  viera para se juntar aos seus por estar grávida, era casada com Johan Heinrich Lind. A carta, escrita pelo avô de meu bisavô materno, nunca chegou às mãos da destinatária em Niederlinxweiler, por que ela havia emigrado para o Canadá, com o marido e dois filhos, sem que seu pai soubesse.
Eu descendo, por parte de minha mãe, da Henriette Katherine,  casada com companheiro de viajem Jacob Adami, em cerimônia realizada tão logo chegaram ao Brasil, durante o período de quarentena em Praia Grande da Armação (hoje Niteroi).
Meu primo, historiador que me passou uma copia da carta, já traduzida para o português e o inglês, enriquecida com valiosos comentários, descende da outra filha do missivista, Maria Katherina, que viajara grávida de 5 meses, perdeu o filho na viagem do Rio para Porto Alegre, e logo depois seu marido, Johann Friedrich Werkle. Viuva, casou-se logo depois com  Philipp Jakob Schirmer (filho de outro emigrante, aqui chegado em leva anterior)./.../
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#Quanta Magazine

Each week Quanta Magazine explains one of the most important ideas driving modern research. This week, our physics staff writer Charlie Wood describes the difficulties physicists still face in understanding the quantum quirks of the strong force.
 

 

The Unpredictable Strong Force Continues to Surprise Physicists

By CHARLIE WOOD

After more than a century of slamming particles together, physicists have a pretty good idea of what goes on in the heart of the atom. Electrons buzz in probabilistic clouds around a nucleus of protons and neutrons, each of which contains a trio of bizarre particles known as quarks. The force that holds all the quarks together to make the nucleus is the aptly named strong force. It is the strong force that must be overcome to split the atom. And it is the strong force that binds quarks together so tightly that no quark has ever been spotted solo.
These features of quarks, many of which might be encountered in a high school science class, have been established as experimental facts. And yet from a theoretical perspective, physicists can’t really explain any of them.
True, there is a theory of the strong force, and it is a gem of modern physics. It goes by the name of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), with “chromo” referring to an aspect of quarks poetically dubbed “color.” Among other things, QCD describes how the strong force intensifies as quarks separate and weakens as they come together, somewhat like an elastic band. That property is precisely the opposite of how more familiar forces like magnetism behave, and its discovery in the 1970s led to Nobel Prizes. Quarks, from a mathematical perspective, were largely demystified.
Yet that mathematics works best when the force between the particles is relatively weak, leaving much to be desired from a broad experimental perspective. QCD’s predictions were spectacularly confirmed in collider experiments that smushed quarks close enough together that the strong force between them slackened. But when quarks are given free rein to be themselves, as they are in the nucleus, they pull apart from each other and strain at their confining bonds, and the strong force becomes so strong that pen-and-paper calculations fail. In those circumstances, the quarks form protons, neutrons and a host of other two-quark and three-quark particles known generally as hadrons — but no one can calculate why this occurs.
To learn what quirks quarks are capable of, physicists can really only run brute-force digital simulations (which have made remarkable strides in recent years) or watch particles ricochet in good old-fashioned collider experiments. And so, nearly 60 years after physicists first conceived of the quark, the particle continues to surprise.
What’s New and Noteworthy
Just last summer, the LHCb collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe spotted signs of two hitherto unseen varieties of quark foursomes known as tetraquarks briefly zipping through the collider’s underground tunnels. Cataloging the diversity of quark behaviors helps physicists refine their models for simplifying the complexities of the strong force by providing new examples of phenomena the theory must account for.
Tetraquarks were first discovered at the LHC in the summer of 2014, after more than a decade of hints that quarks might form these foursomes as well as ganging up in twos and threes. The discovery fueled a debatethat became heated despite hinging on a seemingly esoteric question: Should four quarks be thought of as a “molecule” of two loosely attracted double-quark hadrons known as mesons, or do they gather in more unusual pairings known as diquarks?
Over the following years, particle physicists amassed evidence of a small menagerie of exotic tetraquarks and five-quark “pentaquarks.” One grouping stood out in 2021, a “double charm” tetraquark that lived thousands of times longer than its exotic brethren (clocking in at a Methuselah-like 12 sextillionths of a second). It proved that one variety of quark — the charm quark — could form more resilient pairs than most educated guesses or careful computations had predicted.
Around the same time, researchers developed a new way of sifting through the maelstrom that follows a proton-on-proton collision for evidence of chance encounters between quark composites. These brief rendezvous can reveal whether a given pairing of hadrons attracts or repels, a prediction beyond the reach of QCD. In 2021, physicists used this “femtoscopy” technique to learn what happens when a proton approaches a pairing of “strange” quarks. The insight may improve theories about what happens inside neutron stars.

Just last year, physicists learned that even the quarks in the well-studied helium atom hide secrets. Denuded helium atoms launched the field of nuclear physics in 1909, when Ernest Rutherford (or really, his junior collaborators) fired them at a sheet of gold foil and discovered the nucleus. These days, helium atoms have become the targets for even smaller projectiles. In early 2023, a team fired a stream of electrons at helium nuclei (made of two protons and two neutrons) and were baffled to find that the quark-filled targets ballooned far more than QCD had led them to expect. 
AROUND THE WEB
Big Think featured an article about the history of quarks and why bigger bundles of them were so interesting in 2022, after new tetraquarks and pentaquarks popped up at the LHC. The author, the particle physicist Don Lincoln, participated in the first detection of the heaviest type of quark in 1995.
The physicist Derek Leinweber of the University of Adelaide in Australia has generated videos that capture the various behaviors of quarks and the “gluon” particles, carriers of the strong force, that glue them together. Such QCD simulations on supercomputers complement collision experiments as the main ways of understanding quarks.
PBS Space Time dives deeply into the concept of quark color and why quarks can’t wander off on their own (at least under normal circumstances), in this video.

QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY | ALL TOPICS

 

Never-Repeating Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information

By BEN BRUBAKER

Two researchers have proved that Penrose tilings, famous patterns that never repeat, are mathematically equivalent to a kind of quantum error correction.

Read the article

TOPOLOGY

 

A New Agenda for Low-Dimensional Topology

By KEVIN HARTNETT

This past October, dozens of mathematicians gathered in Pasadena to create the third version of “Kirby’s list” — a compendium of the most important unsolved problems in topology, the study of deformable shapes.

Read the article


Related: 
In the ‘Wild West’ of Geometry, Mathematicians Redefine the Sphere

By Leila Sloman (2023)

GEOPHYSICS

 

Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption

By ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS

The Reykjanes Peninsula has entered a new volcanic era. Innovative efforts to map and monitor the subterranean magma are saving lives.

Read the article


Related: 
A Massive Subterranean ‘Tree’ Is
Moving Magma to Earth’s Surface

By Robin George Andrews (2021)

Q&A

 

A Multitalented Scientist Seeks the Origins of Multicellularity

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

The pathbreaking geneticist Cassandra Extavour pursues the secrets of multicellular life while balancing careers in both science and singing.

Read the interview


Related: 
Single Cells Evolve Large Multicellular Forms
in Just Two Years

By Veronique Greenwood (2021)

 

QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST

 

Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit

By CHARLIE WOOD;
Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT

Astronomers have long known of rogue worlds — cosmic loners that drift through space, untethered to a star. Now JWST is spotting them in pairs.


Listen to the podcast
 

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#Our World in Data

The global fight against polio — how far have we come?


A generation ago, polio paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children every year. Many countries have now eliminated polio, and our generation has the chance to eradicate it entirely.


We’re hiring a Junior Data Scientist!


We’re looking for a Junior Data Scientist to help with the whole chain of collection, transformation, documentation, and dissemination of data on the many topics that we cover.


Recent articles, updates, and announcements

What were the death tolls from pandemics in history?
Period versus cohort measures: what’s the difference?
Why do women live longer than men?
The Human Development Index and related indices: what they are and what we can learn from them
How do researchers measure how common and deadly armed conflicts are?

The mission of Our World in Data is to make data and research on the world’s largest problems understandable and accessible.

We are a nonprofit, building Our World in Data as a public good that’s freely available to everyone. Help us do more by supporting us with a donation.

#IHME

Neck pain projected to increase 32.5% by 2050

Neck, collarbone, and shoulder of an individual


In 2020, 230 million people suffered from neck pain globally, with women and populations in low- and middle-income countries carrying the greatest burden. A new study examined global neck pain prevalence and published projections for future cases.

269 million people are expected to have neck pain by 2050, a 32.5% increase. Global regions with a projected increase in neck pain of more than 100% included central sub-Saharan Africa, eastern sub-Saharan Africa, western sub-Saharan Africa, and Oceania.

Notable findings:
  • Global 2050 projections: 160 million forecasted cases in females, and 109 million forecasted cases in males.
     
  • Populations in West Africa, Eastern Mediterranean, Northern Europe, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Persian Gulf experienced the highest age-standardized prevalence from 1990 to 2020.
     
  • Older adults ages 45 to 74 were affected the most by neck pain in 2020.
     
This study, using data from the Global Burden of Disease, was a collaboration between The Kolling InstituteNorthern Sydney Local Health InstituteUniversity of Sydney, and IHME.
Read the research
Top Stories
Healthcare professional loading a vaccine to administer
A hub for global vaccine coverage   

Did you know that 17 million children missed routine vaccine coverage in 2020 due to the pandemic? We recently launched a comprehensive database that includes global vaccine coverage, extensive vaccine research, and global trends in vaccine prevalence. 
Explore the resources→
Image of Prof Ibrahim Abubakar
Transforming data into health action in Nigeria   

Think Global Health recently spoke with Ibrahim Abubakar who was celebrated with the 2023 Roux Prize for his contributions to global health, specifically in fighting tuberculosis and improving access to health care for populations in Nigeria. Read the story→
IHME in the News
Gun violence protesters hold signs urging the end of nation-wide shootings
Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes Lead Tributes to Kansas City Chiefs Parade Shooting Victims (TIME)
» As stated in this article published last year, the U.S. had the 28th highest rate of deaths due to gun violence in the world in 2021—an outlier compared to other developed countries in Europe and Asia where gun death rates were fractions of that in the U.S., according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks all causes of death worldwide.
Outline of a person protesting alongside other people
How the Kansas City shooting proves the “good guy with a gun” idea is a fallacy (Vox)
» According to CNN, which referenced the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a University of Washington global health research group, the proportion of homicides caused by gun violence in the US was 18 times that of the average of other developed countries in 2019.
An airplane in a blue sky with scattered orange-colored clouds
Why some travelers are skipping the US: You guys are not afraid of this? (USA Today)
» Gun violence is a pressing issue in the U.S. The country ranks first for firearm homicides among high-income countries with populations over 10 million, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Delighted to have had the opportunity to contribute to the “Global, regional, and national burden of neck pain, 1990–2020, and projections to 2050: a systematic analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021”, which was released yesterday in The Lancet Rheumatology.  Many thanks to Prof. Lyn March and Dr. Marita Cross from the Kolling Institute, - A3BC - Northern Sydney Local Health District, and Medicine and Health - University of Sydney for their leadership and indefatigable collaborative spirits....and of course, the entire team of collaborators from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. With the very generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation & Global Alliance for Musculoskeletal Health.
LinkedIn post of the week 

Delighted to have had the opportunity to contribute to the “Global, regional, and national burden of neck pain, 1990–2020, and projections to 2050: a systematic analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021”, which was released yesterday in The Lancet Rheumatology.

Many thanks to Prof. Lyn March and Dr. Marita Cross from the Kolling Institute, - A3BC - Northern Sydney Local Health District, and Medicine and Health - University of Sydney for their leadership and indefatigable collaborative spirits....and of course, the entire team of collaborators from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. With the very generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation & Global Alliance for Musculoskeletal Health.

— James Elliott
Director, The Kolling Institute
What We’re Reading
Smoking scars the immune system for years after quitting » A cigarette habit and previous infection with a common virus both have important effects on the immune system. (Nature)

What’s fuelling the deadly cholera outbreak in Southern Africa? » Unchecked border movement and poor sewage systems have a new partner in inflicting misery: climate change. (Al Jazeera)
 
Featured Datasets

#AEON Magazine

 

Sports and games

Essay

The moral risks of fandom

 

Players, coaches and team owners sometimes do terrible things. What, if anything, should their fans do about that?

 

by Jake Wojtowicz and Alfred Archer

 

Political philosophy

Essay

Liberal socialism now

 

As the crisis of democracy deepens, we must return to liberalism’s revolutionary and egalitarian roots

 

by Matthew McManus

 
 

Values and beliefs

Video

A Zen Buddhist priest voices the deep matters he usually ponders in silence

 

5 minutes

 

Childhood and adolescence

Video

Striking shadow puppetry illuminates a skater kid’s memories of Boy Scout camp

 

12 minutes

 

History of technology

Essay

Indexing the information age

 

Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable

 

by Monica Westin

 

Evolution

Essay

Kinship

 

Science must become attuned to the subtle conversations that pervade all life, from the primordial to the present

 

by David Waltner-Toews

 
 

Biotechnology

Video

The two women behind a world-changing scientific discovery

 

14 minutes

#GetPocket

Enter an Archive of 7,000 Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online

Por OC 
Open Culture
4 min
September 27, 2022

We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its children’s literature. Occupying a space somewhere between the purely didactic and the nonsensical, most children’s books published in the past few hundred years have attempted to find a line between the two poles, seeking a balance between entertainment and instruction. However, that line seems to move closer to one pole or another depending on the prevailing cultural sentiments of the time. And the very fact that children’s books were hardly published at all before the early 18th century tells us a lot about when and how modern ideas of childhood as a separate category of existence began./.../

#SBC





#Neuroscience News

How Our Brains Process Music

Neuroscience News

February 20

Researchers unlocked how the brain processes melodies, creating a detailed map of auditory cortex activity. Their study reveals that the brain engages in dual tasks when hearing music: tracking pitch with neurons used for speech and predicting future notes with music-specific neurons.

Read more of this post