There was the title of a 1993 book by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman that dubbed the Higgs “The God Particle.” There was the search for the Higgs particle that launched after 2009’s first collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. There was the 2013 announcement that Peter Higgs and Francois Englert won the Nobel Prize in Physics for independently theorizing in 1964 that a fundamental particle — the Higgs — is the source of mass in subatomic particles, making the universe as we know it possible.

(Plus, there are the Iowa State University physicists on the author list of a 2012 research paper describing how the ATLAS Experiment at the collider observed a new particle later confirmed to be the Higgs.)

And now Jigang Wang, a professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State and a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, and a team of researchers have discovered a form of the famous particle within a superconductor, a material capable of conducting electricity without resistance, generally at very cold temperatures.

Wang and his collaborators — including Chang-Beom Eom, the Raymond R. Holton Chair for Engineering and Theodore H. Geballe Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Ilias Perakis, professor and chair of physics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; and Eric Hellstrom, professor and interim chair of mechanical engineering at Florida State University — report the details in a paper recently published online by the journal Nature Communications.

They write that in lab experiments they’ve found a short-lived “Higgs mode” within iron-based, high-temperature (but still very cold), multi-energy band, unconventional superconductors.

A quantum discovery

This Higgs mode is a state of matter found at the quantum scale of atoms, their electronic states and energetic excitations. The mode can be accessed and controlled by laser light flashing on the superconductor at terahertz frequencies of trillions of pulses per second. The Higgs modes can be created within different energy bands and still interact with each other.

Wang said this Higgs mode within a superconductor could potentially be used to develop new quantum sensors.

“It’s just like the Large Hadron Collider can use the Higgs particle to detect dark energy or antimatter to help us understand the origin of the universe,” Wang said. “And our Higgs mode sensors on the table-top have the potential help us discover the hidden secrets of quantum states of matter.”

That understanding, Wang said, could advance a new “quantum revolution” for high-speed computing and information technologies.

“It’s one way this exotic, strange, quantum world can be applied to real life,” Wang said.

Light control of superconductors

The project takes a three-pronged approach to accessing and understanding the special properties, such as this Higgs mode, hidden within superconductors:

Wang’s research group uses a tool called quantum terahertz spectroscopy to visualize and steer pairs of electrons moving through a superconductor. The tool uses laser flashes as a control knob to accelerate supercurrents and access new and potentially useful quantum states of matter.

Eom’s group developed the synthesis technique that produces crystalline thin films of the iron-based superconductor with high enough quality to reveal the Higgs mode. Hellstrom’s group developed deposition sources for the iron-based superconducting thin film development.

Perakis’ group led the development of quantum models and theories to explain the results of the experiments and to simulate the salient features that come from the Higgs mode.

The work has been supported by a grant to Wang from the National Science Foundation and grants to Eom and Perakis from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Interdisciplinary science is the key here,” Perakis said. “We have quantum physics, materials science and engineering, condensed matter physics, lasers and photonics with inspirations from fundamental, high-energy and particle physics.”

There are good, practical reasons for researchers in all those fields to work together on the project. In this case, students from the four research groups worked together with their advisors to accomplish this discovery.

“Scientists and engineers,” Wang wrote in a research summary, “have recently come to realize that certain materials, such as superconductors, have properties that can be exploited for applications in quantum information and energy science, e.g., processing, recording, storage and communication.”

In Biointerphases, published by AIP Publishing, researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands show how the design can use softer materials and still be strong enough to work.

Probabilistic fasteners work, because they are designed with a tiny pattern on one surface that interlocks with features on the other surface. Currently available fasteners, like Velcro and 3M, are called hook and loop fasteners. That design requires harder, stiff material, which is what causes the loud ripping sound when they are peeled off and why they can damage delicate surfaces, such as fabrics, when attached to them.

The team believes a 3D mushroom design can be made with softer, more flexible materials. The half-spherical mushroom shapes provide sufficient interlocking force on the fabric and hold strong.

For the study, the authors used 3D printing combined with molding to create soft surfaces patterned with the tiny mushrooms. That material was then safely attached to three different fabrics and removed without causing damage to them.

“We wanted to prove that, if you go toward these less stiff features, they can be used to attach and detach to soft and delicate surfaces, like fabrics, without damage. It can be used in many applications such as for diapers or silent fasteners for military use,” author Preeti Sharma said. “There is still a lot of research to be done, but the mushroom-shaped design worked quite well for soft mechanical fasteners.”

The design could lead to advances in the field of soft robotics. Soft robotics aims to build robots with designs that mimic living creatures like octopuses, caterpillars, and worms.

In that kind of robotics, interfaces play a significant role. With advances that make the current mushroom design stronger but keep its softness, it could be used to help robots walk on walls and ceilings like a gecko — an animal that can do that because of an attachment-detachment process that’s similar to how probabilistic fasteners work.

The design also could be used on grippers for robots used in farming and other agricultural jobs, Sharma said.

Sharma said more research into the design is needed before it is ready to be used in a commercially available product. Minor changes to the mushroom shape, possibly lengthening or shortening it to make it more effective, could lead to an even better product, she said.

Story Source:

Materials provided by American Institute of Physics. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by the University of Notre Dame, combined satellite imagery with agricultural surveys as well as household dietary datasets of 160 large-scale land acquisitions across four continents between 2005 and 2015. It is the first comprehensive global analysis of the impact of the land acquisitions of its kind.

“These land deals have been happening for the last two decades on a massive scale,” said Marc Muller, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame and lead author of the study. “Our goal was to use empirical data to sort out whether or not large-scale land acquisitions have improved food security by using empirical data. But what we found was that there was either no impact or a negative impact. There was no positive impact.”

Following a global food crisis during the early 2000s, foreign investors purchased more than 220 million acres of land in middle-income and developing countries, according to the study’s estimates, to increase crop production and contribute to the global food supply.

“In many countries throughout the world land is being commodified, so it is becoming easier to buy and sell land. Those, and rising food prices, were drivers for these companies,” Muller said.

There are two competing arguments when it comes to land acquisitions. Proponents view the multinational companies that purchased the land as better positioned to improve production and increase crop yields. But those who oppose argue that the acquisitions encroach on natural resources, lead to displacement of local farm workers and can have a negative impact on local residents — including giving rise to livelihood losses, social instability and/or violence in those regions.

While scientists have analyzed these types of acquisitions using modeling studies, and others have looked at specific situations as a result of the land deals through case studies, Muller said this is the first global analysis of this scale.

Muller and his team analyzed land deals across Latin America, eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. By combining satellite imagery, researchers could see whether crop lands expanded and/or intensified. “We also used data from agriculture surveys to identify what types of crops had been planted in and around those lands prior to the acquisition compared to after, to account for potential transitions from local crops to export-bound crops, and crops that can also be used for biofuel,” such as palm oil and sugar cane, Muller said.

According to the study, trends differed depending on the region — and in some cases the acquisitions had a negative effect on household diets.

In Latin America and eastern Europe — where countries are considered middle-income — investors purchased land in intensified agricultural areas, where crops were already export-bound and local residents already consumed food from global markets. “So, in that sense, these land deals didn’t really change much,” said Muller. “They didn’t increase crop production and they didn’t cause more damage to local food insecurity than what was already taking place. In Africa and Asia, things looked very different.”

The research showed that those land acquisitions increased cropland, cultivating previously uncultivated land, and showed a clear transition from local staple crops such as tapioca to export-bound crops such as wheat and flex crops for potential use as biofuel.

“These crops are interesting for investors because if the price of food is low and the price of energy is high, you can then use the crops for energy,” said Muller. “But these types of crops are not nutrient dense, so it’s not great in terms of food security. As a matter of fact, the data from the household surveys we studied showed a consistent decrease in diet diversity after the deals took place.”

The study is the first in a series the research team will produce based on their analysis. Forthcoming studies will look at the impact of large-scale land acquisitions in relation to water, energy and environment.

Muller is an affiliated member of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative and a faculty fellow with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

Co-authors of the study include Gopal Penny, also at Notre Dame; Meredith T. Niles at the University of Vermont; Vincent Ricciardi at the University of British Columbia; Davide Danilo Chiarelli and Maria Cristina Rulli at the Polytechnic University of Milan; Kyle Frankel Davis at the University of Delaware; Jampel Dell’Angelo at the University of Amsterdam; Paolo D’Odorico and Lorenzo Rosa at the University of California, Berkeley; and Nathan D. Mueller at Colorado State University.

The National Science Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development and the Mava Foundation funded the study.

“Our research shows the highly diverse regional distribution of out-of-hospital sudden death during the COVID-19 pandemic surge and follows the geographic distribution of seroconversion to SARS-CoV-2 in New York City,” explains lead investigator Stavros E. Mountantonakis, MD, FHRS, Northwell Health-Lenox Hill Hospital, Department of Cardiac Electrophysiology, New York, NY, USA. “This finding adds to the previously reported association between out-of-hospital sudden death and COVID-19 presumed deaths and further supports an association between out-of-hospital sudden death and SARS-COV-2 epidemiologic burden.”

The investigators collected results of all antibody tests reported to the New York City Department of Health between March 3 and August 20, 2020 for all New York City zip codes, excluding eight commercial districts. New York City requires mandatory reporting of all tests. Data from March 20 to April 22, 2020, during the height of the pandemic, were obtained from the Fire Department of New York City on the number of patients pronounced dead at the scene from sudden cardiac arrest, the classification the Department uses for out-of-hospital sudden death. For comparison, they collected data for the same period in 2019. Census data were used to examine the possible influence of factors including age, race, access to medical insurance, education, and immigration status.

The investigators found that sudden death during the pandemic varied widely among neighborhoods and there was a moderate positive association between the rate of sudden death in a neighborhood and the percentage of positive antibody tests to SARS-CoV-2. The rate of sudden death in 2019 was also predictive of increased sudden deaths in a neighborhood during the first pandemic surge in New York City.

The investigators note that it is unclear whether this association is causative, or if there are factors that affect the geographic distribution of sudden death and SARS-CoV-2 infection similarly.

Dr. Mountantonakis observes, “The epidemiological data is a direct surrogate of viral burden and indirectly associated with people dying suddenly at home. It remains to be seen whether this is due to cardiac complications related to the virus or poor access to healthcare in neighborhoods that suffered the most during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

These findings emphasize the importance of preserving access to healthcare, especially in neighborhoods that suffered disproportionally in the first COVID-19 pandemic wave.

Writing in an accompanying editorial, John R. Giudicessi, MD, PhD, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA, notes that regardless of the ultimate breakdown between direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 on out-of-hospital sudden death incidence, the precipitous rise in New York City and other metropolitan areas is indisputable. “It appears increasingly likely that most areas will have to endure one or more additional surges before the benefits of vaccination efforts take hold,” he comments. “There is hope that maintaining safe access to routine and emergency health services, avoidance of ineffective treatment strategies, and improvements in how COVID-19 patients are monitored and treated in the outpatient setting may help reduce the incidence of out of hospital cardiac arrest and death.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Elsevier. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Yet archaeology as practiced today bears virtually no resemblance to the tomb raiding portrayed in movies and video games. Indeed, it bears little resemblance to even more scholarly depictions of the discipline in the entertainment sphere.

A paper published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution aims to give pause to an audience that has been largely prepared to take such out-of-touch depictions at face value. It reveals an archaeology practiced by scientists in white lab coats, using multi-million-euro instrumentation and state of the art computers.

It also reveals an archaeology poised to contribute in major ways to addressing such thoroughly modern challenges as biodiversity conservation, food security and climate change.

“Archaeology today is a dramatically different discipline to what it was a century ago,” observes Nicole Boivin, lead author of the study and Director of the Institute’s Department of Archaeology. “While the tomb raiding we see portrayed in movies is over the top, the archaeology of the past was probably closer to this than to present-day archaeology. Much archaeology today is in contrast highly scientific in orientation, and aimed at addressing modern-day issues.”

Examining the research contributions of the field over the past few decades, the authors reach a clear conclusion — archaeology today has a great deal to contribute to addressing the challenges of the modern era.

“Humans in the present era have become one of the great forces shaping nature,” emphasizes Alison Crowther, coauthor and researcher at both the University of Queensland and the MPI Science of Human History. “When we say we have entered a new, human-dominated geological era, the Anthropocene, we acknowledge that role.”

How can archaeology, a discipline focused on the past, hope to address the challenges we face in the Anthropocene?

“It is clear that the past offers a vast repertoire of cultural knowledge that we cannot ignore,” highlights Professor Boivin.

The two researchers show the many ways that data about the past can serve the future. By analysing what worked and didn’t work in the past — effectively offering long-term experiments in human society — archaeologists gain insight into the factors that support sustainability and resilience, and the factors that work against them. They also highlight ancient solutions to modern problems.

“We show how researchers have improved the modern world by drawing upon information about the ways people in the past enriched soils, prevented destructive fires, created greener cities and transported water without fossil fuels,” notes Dr. Crowther.

People also continue to use, and adapt, ancient technologies and infrastructure, including terrace and irrigation systems that are in some cases centuries or even millennia old.

But the researchers are keen to highlight the continued importance of technological and social solutions to climate change and the other challenges of the Anthropocene.

“It’s not about glorifying the past, or vilifying progress,” emphasizes Professor Boivin. “Instead, it’s about bringing together the best of the past, present and future to steer a responsible and constructive course for humanity.”

In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the interdisciplinary team of environmental engineers, Earth system scientists and data science experts stressed that not all parts of the tropics will be affected equally. For instance, the rain belt will move north in parts of the Eastern Hemisphere but will move south in areas in the Western Hemisphere.

According to the study, a northward shift of the tropical rain belt over the eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean will result in future increases of drought stress in southeastern Africa and Madagascar, in addition to intensified flooding in southern India. A southward creeping of the rain belt over the eastern Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean will cause greater drought stress in Central America.

“Our work shows that climate change will cause the position of Earth’s tropical rain belt to move in opposite directions in two longitudinal sectors that cover almost two thirds of the globe, a process that will have cascading effects on water availability and food production around the world,” said lead author Antonios Mamalakis, who recently received a Ph.D. in civil & environmental engineering in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UCI and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

The team made the assessment by examining computer simulations from 27 state-of-the-art climate models and measuring the tropical rain belt’s response to a future scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise through the end of the current century.

Mamalakis said the sweeping shift detected in his work was disguised in previous modelling studies that provided a global average of the influence of climate change on the tropical rain belt. Only by isolating the response in the Eastern and Western Hemisphere zones was his team able to highlight the drastic alterations to come over future decades.

Co-author James Randerson, UCI’s Ralph J. & Carol M. Cicerone Chair in Earth System Science, explained that climate change causes the atmosphere to heat up by different amounts over Asia and the North Atlantic Ocean.

“In Asia, projected reductions in aerosol emissions, glacier melting in the Himalayas and loss of snow cover in northern areas brought on by climate change will cause the atmosphere to heat up faster than in other regions,” he said. “We know that the rain belt shifts toward this heating, and that its northward movement in the Eastern Hemisphere is consistent with these expected impacts of climate change.”

He added that the weakening of the Gulf Stream current and deep-water formation in the North Atlantic is likely to have the opposite effect, causing a southward shift in the tropical rain belt across the Western Hemisphere.

“The complexity of the Earth system is daunting, with dependencies and feedback loops across many processes and scales,” said corresponding author Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, UCI Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering. “This study combines the engineering approach of system’s thinking with data analytics and climate science to reveal subtle and previously unrecognized manifestations of global warming on regional precipitation dynamics and extremes.”

Foufoula-Georgiou said that a next step is to translate those changes to impacts on the ground, in terms of flooding, droughts, infrastructure and ecosystem change to guide adaptation, policy and management.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California – Irvine. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.