It's that time of the year, a few days until Christmas and you bought everything on that Amazon wishlist but it doesn't feel all that creative. If you are like me, masks everywhere can be a bit of a downer, so you want things you can order. These are not what I like to call "aspirational" gifts, the kinds of things parents want their children to want in order to feel like better parents. They are all good, I have watched, read, or used them all this year, so they aren't yet another 'how to make a piece of paper turn using flame' experiment science, they are actually enjoyable science. And technology. And science-fiction.

Interference is a fascinating effect, and one which can be observed in a wide variety of physical systems - any system that involves the propagation of waves from different sources. We can observe interference between waves in the sea or in a lake, or even in our bathtub; we can hear the effect of interference between sound waves; or we can observe the fascinating patterns created by interference effects in light propagation. In addition to all that, we observe interference between the amplitudes of quantum phenomena by studying particle physics processes.

There was a time when politicians worried about a "slippery slope" when it came to political actions. While dirty politics by individuals was always assumed - President Lyndon Johnson set the modern standard for that - overt actions by parties were more thoughtful. The reason was simple; once there was a precedent, the other party could do the same thing when they got into power.

That all changed this century.

A bit over a half into my course of particle physics for Masters students in Statistical Sciences I usually find myself describing the CMS detector in some detail, and that is what happened last week.
 
The course

My course has a duration of 64 hours, and is structured in four parts. In the first part, which usually takes about 24 hours to complete, I go over the most relevant part of 20th Century physics. We start from the old quantum theory and then we look at special relativity, the fundaments of quantum mechanics, the theory of scattering, the study of hadrons and the symmetries that lead to the quark model, to finish with the Higgs mechanism and the Standard Model. 

A new study hopes to link long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and metabolic-associated fatty liver disease, a name change from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease because it is associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes.  

People age differently but it is unclear why. Some argue it is mitochondria while others contend it is equally nebulous epigenetics - a broad umbrella term for changes in genes that don't impact DNA but have been correlated to everything from probiotic yogurt to homeopathy.

Because so-called “epigenetic clocks” occur at different times in different people they don't seem like clocks at all. There is little use for a clock that only gives you subjective time. A new study hopes to change that, and argues that one such clock, named “GrimAge”, might be a predictor of lifespan and health.