“Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time.”

https://qz.com/1344927/the-case-for-puns-as-the-most-elevated-display-of-wit/

“A UCF physicist has discovered a new material that has the potential to become a building block in the new era of quantum materials, those that are composed of microscopically condensed matter and expected to change our development of technology.

Researchers are entering the Quantum Age, and instead of using silicon to advance technology they are finding new quantum materials, conductors that have the ability to use and store energy at the subatomic level.

Assistant Professor Madhab Neupane has spent his career learning about the quantum realm and looking for these new materials, which are expected to become the foundation of the technology to develop quantum computers and long-lasting memory devices. These new devices will increase computing power for big data and greatly reduce the amount of energy required to power electronics.

Big companies recognize the potential and they are investing in research. Microsoft has invested in its Station Q, a lab dedicated solely to studying the field of topological quantum computing. Google has teamed up with NASA on a Quantum AI Lab that studies how quantum computing and artificial intelligence can mesh. Once the quantum phenomena are well understood and can be engineered, the new technologies are expected to change the world, much like electronics did at the end of the 20th century.

Neupane’s discovery, published today in Nature Communications is a big step in making that reality happen.

“Our discovery takes us one step closer to the application of quantum materials and helps us gain a deeper understanding of the interactions between various quantum phases,” Neupane said.

The material Neupane and his team discovered, Hf2Te2P—chemically composed of hafnium, tellurium and phosphorus—is the first material that has multiple quantum properties, meaning there is more than one electron pattern that develops within the electronic structure, giving it a range of quantum properties”.

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-team-first-of-its-kind-material-quantum-age.html

https://www.axios.com/west-antarctica-rising-could-halt-melting-glaciers-325bec72-e20e-47d1-bb5f-2e1d2f9f4857.html

More great news for dark chocolate lovers!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180424133628.htm

Climate change from 1772 to 2017 depicted as vertical stripes. https://boingboing.net/2018/05/25/climate-change-depicted-as-ver.html

No sperm or egg required: mouse proto-embryo made in the lab – Scientists have for the first time created embryo-like structures in the lab from stem cells, without recourse to eggs or sperm, they reported Wednesday.

http://ow.ly/NOoj50he1nf

Nice piece on this spider. ” The extraordinary life and death of the world’s oldest known spider

This is the story of the oldest known spider in the world and the people who knew her. The details are compiled largely from research conducted by Barbara Main and Leanda Mason, who knew her best over nearly half a century.

She was born beneath an acacia tree in one of the few patches of wilderness left in the southwest Australian wheat belt, in an underground burrow lined with her mother’s perfect silk.

Her mother had used the same silk, strong and thick, to seal the burrow’s entrance against the withering heat of the summer of 1974, and against all the flying, prodding things that prowled the North Bungulla Reserve.

She lived like that, in safety and darkness, for the first six months of her life. Then one day in the rainy autumn months, her mother unsealed the tunnel, and she left.
[…]
On April 19, Mason, Main and Grant Wardell-Johnson co-published a paper in Pacific Conservation Biology, announcing the death of spider 16 at age 43.

She was the oldest spider known to have existed, Mason wrote, eclipsing the previous record set by a 28-year-old tarantula.

“We can be inspired by an ancient mygalomorph spider and the rich biodiversity she embodied,” she wrote, beside a photo of a perfect hole beneath a tree — nearly half a century of work: Main’s, hers and the spider’s.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/01/the-extraordinary-life-and-death-of-the-worlds-oldest-known-spider/

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180426-why-plastics-are-not-just-an-ocean-problem?ocid=ww.social.link.googleplus