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The Plot Of The Week - Multiple Pentaquark Candidates

The Plot Of The Week - Multiple Pentaquark Candidates

Apr 10 2019 | comment(s)

It is a bit embarrassing to post here a graph of boring elementary particle signals, when the rest of the blogosphere is buzzing after the release of the first real black hole image from the Event Horizon collaboration. So okay, before going into pentaquarks, below is the image of the black hole at the center of M87, a big elliptical galaxy 54 million light years away.


40 Years Later, Jean-Pierre Luminet's Black Hole Image Looks Surprisingly Accurate

40 Years Later, Jean-Pierre Luminet's Black Hole Image Looks Surprisingly Accurate

Apr 10 2019 | comment(s)

Published in 1979 in Astronomy and Astrophysics, it had a worldwide impact, especially since this type of object was still highly theoretical. 
It was not an artist's view but an image based on the then supposed physical properties of a black hole and its gas disc, such as its rotation rate and temperature, and on Einstein's general theory of relativity. 
Supermassive Black Hole At The Heart Of The Messier 87 Galaxy Revealed

Supermassive Black Hole At The Heart Of The Messier 87 Galaxy Revealed

Apr 10 2019 | comment(s)

An international team of over 200 scientists has captured the first direct images of a black hole. They accomplished this remarkable feat by coordinating the power of eight major radio observatories on four continents, to work together as a virtual, Earth-sized telescope.

In a series of papers published today in a special issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team has revealed four images of the supermassive black hole at the heart of Messier 87, or M87, a galaxy within the Virgo galaxy cluster, 55 million light years from Earth.

All four images show a central dark region surrounded by a ring of light that appears lopsided — brighter on one side than the other.

The Black Hole Image from M87 IS AMAZING … At Least To Us

The Black Hole Image from M87 IS AMAZING … At Least To Us

Apr 10 2019 | comment(s)

The Image presented at a press conference today by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration is the result of collaboration between numerous scientists around the world lead by EHT director Shep Doeleman.  They were able to do this using the technique known as very long baseline interferometry (VLBI).  

This technique creates an instrument with the highest possible angular resolution ( smallest angle of separation between objects where we can distinguish the features). Using this technique astronomers were able to see the details of an object light years away. 

Messier 87 — First Black Hole Image

Messier 87 — First Black Hole Image

Apr 10 2019 | comment(s)

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole.

Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

Absurd Blog Post At Arctic News Predicts 10 °C Rise In Global Temperatures By 2026 - QUADRATIC To EXTRAPOLATE!

Absurd Blog Post At Arctic News Predicts 10 °C Rise In Global Temperatures By 2026 - QUADRATIC To EXTRAPOLATE!

Apr 09 2019 | comment(s)

Am debunking this page because it makes a scary prediction of a 10 °C rise by 2026. It is very very silly. By far the silliest post I’ve seen on climate change, and that’s saying something, I’ve seen some ridiculous posts, but this takes the biscuit. I can’t find out anything about Sam Carana who runs this blog, but he would flunk high school maths and physics if he gave material like this in answer to exam questions.

This is not about the IPCC report which is often misunderstood as saying something similar. For the journalistic misunderstandings of the 2017 IPCC report see my

FDA Approves Dovato (dolutegravir And Lamivudine) For HIV-1

FDA Approves Dovato (dolutegravir And Lamivudine) For HIV-1

Apr 08 2019 | comment(s)

Approximately a million people in the U.S. are living with HIV and up to 15 percent may not even know they are infected. In Februrary, the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services announced a new initiative, Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America, to reduce new infections by 75 percent in the next five years and by 90 percent in the next ten years, averting more than 250,000 HIV infections in that span.
Vitamin C May Protect Cells From Hexavalent Chromium? No, But You're Safe From It Anyway

Vitamin C May Protect Cells From Hexavalent Chromium? No, But You're Safe From It Anyway

Apr 08 2019 | comment(s)

In the movie "Erin Brockovich", actress Julia Roberts portrayed a clerk who got energy company PG&E worried enough about a jury being scared of science they wrote her boss a giant check. Because Hollywood is in California, the state government was motivated to declare the compound harmful and put in tighter restrictions.

The concern from the science community was that no one was being harmed. It's a slippery slope from demonizing a scary sounding chemical in water to doing the same thing to vaccines or weedkillers. Which is exactly what has happened, and California has led the way in both cases.
Bayer Releases All Glyphosate Safety Studies Used By European Food Safety Authority

Bayer Releases All Glyphosate Safety Studies Used By European Food Safety Authority

Apr 08 2019 | comment(s)

Every regulatory body in the world has found that the weedkiller glyphosate is only harmful for plants. And huge studies of over 50,000 farmers have found the same.
18 Percent Of Multiple Sclerosis Patients Misdiagnosed

18 Percent Of Multiple Sclerosis Patients Misdiagnosed

Apr 08 2019 | comment(s)

With a tricky disease like multiple sclerosis, where symptoms and MRI testing results can look like other conditions, such as stroke, migraines and vitamin B12 deficiency, it's common to be misdiagnosed with other things first. A new analysis of patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis before being referred to two major Los Angeles medical centers flipped the script; it found that 18 percent didn't have the autoimmune disease at all.  

The results showed that nearly 18 percent of patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis before being referred to two major Los Angeles medical centers for treatment actually had been misdiagnosed with the autoimmune disease. The patients spent an average of four years being treated for MS before receiving a correct diagnosis.
Accelerating The Search For Dark Matter With Machine Learning

Accelerating The Search For Dark Matter With Machine Learning

Apr 07 2019 | comment(s)

Yes, this is supposedly a particle physics blog, not a machine learning one - and yet, I have been finding myself blogging a lot more about machine learning than particle physics as of late. Why is that? 
Well, of course the topic of algorithms that may dramatically improve our statistical inference from collider data is of course dear to my heart, and has been so since at least two decades (my first invention, the "inverse bagging" algorithm, is dated 1992, when nobody even knew what bagging was). But the more incidental reason is that now _everybody_ is interested in the topic, and that means all of my particle physics and astroparticle physics colleagues. 
Event Horizon Telescope Image: An Interesting Nothingness?

Event Horizon Telescope Image: An Interesting Nothingness?

Apr 06 2019 | comment(s)

Media hyped black hole images will show a whole lot of nothing.  Look at the simulations put out by the research team showing what they expect to find, nothing, at least at the location of the black hole.   Which is just fine.  A black hole is a region of space time from which light cannot escape.  The escape velocity for their gravitational field exceeds the speed of light.  In relativistic terms their effect on space time is such that falling towards the center of the black hole is as inevitable as the flow of time in the forward direction. As such the base standard expectation of a black hole image is to see nothing.   

Europeans Keep Telling Peru To Preserve The Rainforest The Way Europe Wants But Nevertheless Peru Persisted

Europeans Keep Telling Peru To Preserve The Rainforest The Way Europe Wants But Nevertheless Peru Persisted

Apr 05 2019 | comment(s)

University of Bonn environmentalists and economists say Peru's National Forest Conservation Program needs to do more ro protect the rainforest.

Peru, on the other hand, is navigating the shackled man problem(1); that developed countries want the rest of the world to limit progress now that rich economies are already doing well. So in 2010 they launched a program to protect the rainforest but Europeans criticize that its effect is still too small. Further, they want Peru to enact three more stringent measures and if governments in Europe agree Peru has to at least consider it because they are held hostage by international governments funding the program.
Leishmaniosis: Dog To Dog Transmission Without Biting Reported

Leishmaniosis: Dog To Dog Transmission Without Biting Reported

Apr 05 2019 | comment(s)

Canine leishmaniosis is a potentially fatal infection caused by the parasite Leishmania infantum, carried by the female sand fly and transmitted in its bite. It is zoonotic, so can be passed on to people but dogs have been known to pick up the infection after being bitten or wounded by another infected dog.

That's rare, and in the UK cases to-date have only been associated with blood transfusion, breeding programs, or overseas travel but a 3 year old neutered male shih tzu cross, which had been with its owner since a puppy and had none of the known risk factors for infection, was recently diagnosed with leishmaniosis in Hertfordshire.

Alcohol Does Not Prevent Strokes

Alcohol Does Not Prevent Strokes

Apr 05 2019 | comment(s)

Blood pressure and stroke risk increase steadily with sedentary lifestyle, obesity and of course the biggest risk is age. Many want to optimize their time living to prevent debilitating injuries and epidemiologists are happy to find a statistical correlation for everything; that is why some embrace supplements, some embrace organic food, and some embrace alcohol use.

Gun Shootings Lead To More Gun Purchases

Gun Shootings Lead To More Gun Purchases

Apr 05 2019 | comment(s)

For a recent paper, researchers examined monthly data on U.S. background checks for gun purchases and permits from November 1998 through April 2016, looking for purchasing trends after shootings during that time. 

When media coverage highlighted shootings, they found there were increases in handgun purchases. Only after high-fatality shootings were there decreases. The authors segmented results by the shooter’s race/ethnicity, the region where the shooting occurred, if a shooting was school related, fatalities, if it was a handgun or rifle, automatic or semiautomatic, the extent of media coverage level, and state political affiliation.
The Plot Of The Week - ATLAS Dilepton Resonance Search

The Plot Of The Week - ATLAS Dilepton Resonance Search

Apr 04 2019 | comment(s)

For the tenth anniversary of this blog being hosted by Science 2.0, which is coming in a few days, I decided to reinstall the habit I once had of weekly picking and commenting on a result from high-energy physics research, a series I called "The Plot Of The Week". These days I am busier than I used to be when this blog started being published here, so I am not sure I will be able to keep a weekly pace for this series; on the other hand I want to make an attempt, and the first step in that direction is this article.
Ageism Is Rampant In England, And Discrimination Against Seniors Is Causing Health Issues

Ageism Is Rampant In England, And Discrimination Against Seniors Is Causing Health Issues

Apr 03 2019 | comment(s)

Ageism, discrimination against the elderly, has been reported in The Lancet Public Health journal as a problem for 25 percent of older people in England. And that is not truly old people, even those in their 50s face it. The repercussions are not just emotional, the study links the discrimination to worse health outcomes.
Papaya Sugarcane May Be On Its Way

Papaya Sugarcane May Be On Its Way

Apr 03 2019 | comment(s)

The Rainbow Papaya in Hawaii is a great example of how biology solved a devastating problem that nature created and chemicals could not fix. It put GMOs, the successor to mutagenesis, on the map worldwide, and today billions of meals have been served using GMO science.

An Electrochemical Way To Make Lead Pipes Safe Forever

An Electrochemical Way To Make Lead Pipes Safe Forever

Apr 03 2019 | comment(s)

Though lead levels across America are far safer than even a generation ago, the lack of a solid answer on what the safe level is leads to concern that leaching, such as from water pipes, could be harmful. 

As the crisis in Flint, Michigan a few years ago showed, the public can be put in a panic easily, and politicians will use public health concern for advantage, even after their decisions to stop using the science that had protected the public caused the problem.