Category Archives: Singularity

New research highlights a troubling problem with concepts of a cyclical universe that experiences infinitely alternating periods of rapid expansion and contraction, known as 'bouncing universe' models.

These bouncing universe models suggest the cosmos has no beginning, eliminating the need for a troubling singularity prior to the initial period of rapid inflation commonly known as the Big Bang needed by 'beginning of time' models.

University at Buffalo researchers say a newly suggested bouncing universe recipe that attempts to deal with the problem of entropy the measure of unusable energy in the universe, which can only increase suffers from a problem that has plagued previous models of endless inflation and contraction. It still needs a beginning.

Related: The Big Bang: What really happened at our universe's birth?

"People proposed bouncing universes to make the universe infinite into the past, but what we show is that one of the newest types of these models doesn't work," University of Buffalo physicist Will Kinney said in a statement. (opens in new tab) "In this new type of model, which addresses problems with entropy, even if the universe has cycles, it still has to have a beginning."

This means that proponents of cyclical models of the universe may have to go back to the drawing board.

The leading theory of the universe's origins is so-called 'cosmic inflation.' This suggests that before time began all the energy in the cosmos was contained in a singularity an infinite dimensionless point not described by the laws of physics.

This ended with a period of rapid inflation the Big Bang that saw the universe expand and cool, thus allowing the formation of matter first atoms of hydrogen, then heavier elements, and eventually stars and galaxies.

The problem is, while this theory is very good at describing the universe as it ages from fractions of a second until the cosmic structure we see today, around 13.8 billion years later, it can't describe the conditions of the singularity that existed before this inflation was kick-started. Or even what kick-started it.

This issue is eliminated by a bouncing universe because if periods of inflation and collapse are infinite, then there was no beginning and thus no need to explain what preceded it. This would see the universe undergo similar inflation as suggested by the cosmic inflation model, but then 'springing back' on itself in a 'Big Crunch' of sorts.

Each new inflation period would, therefore, begin from the 'wreckage' of a previous period of expansion rather than a singularity. But, Kinney thinks that bouncing universes come with their own unique problems.

"Unfortunately, it's been known for almost 100 years that these cyclic models don't work because disorder, or entropy, builds up in the universe over time, so each cycle is different from the last one. It's not truly cyclic," the UB researcher said. "A recent cyclic model gets around this entropy build-up problem by proposing that the universe expands a whole bunch with each cycle, diluting the entropy."

Kinney said that this new bouncing universe model tries to stretch everything out to get rid of cosmic structures such as black holes thus returning the universe to its original homogenous state before another bounce begins.

"We showed that in solving the entropy problem, you create a situation where the universe had to have a beginning. Our proof shows in general that any cyclic model which removes entropy by expansion must have a beginning," he said, adding one bouncing universe may survive this assessment. "Our proof does not apply to a cyclic model proposed by Roger Penrose, in which the universe expands infinitely in each cycle. We're working on that one."

Kinney's collaborator is UB physics Ph.D. student, Nina Stein. She highlighted the problem the duo had with a bouncing universe: "The idea that there was a point in time before which there was nothing, no time, bothers us, and we want to know what there was before that scientists included.

"But as far as we can tell, in models that address entropy, there must have been a 'beginning.' There is a point for which there is no answer to the question, 'What came before that?'"

This means, for now, the mystery of what existed before the universe and time itself remains and will be hotly debated by cosmologists for some time to come.

"There are a lot of reasons to be curious about the early universe, but I think my favorite is the natural human tendency to want to know what came before," Stein said. "Across cultures and histories, humans have told stories about creation, about 'in the beginning.' We always want to know where we came from."

Kinney and Stein's findings are discussed in a paper published in the June edition of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. (opens in new tab)

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'Bouncing' universe theory still can't explain what came first - Space.com

In recent years, technology has worked wonders helping blind or visually impaired people regain their sight, perhaps most notably via the use of CRISPR gene editing to cure inherited blindness. Now a different technology has been used to cure a different cause of blindness. A paper published last week in Nature Biotechnology describes a bioengineered cornea that restored sight to 20 people, 14 of them previously blind, in an initial clinical trial.

The cornea is the outermost layer of the eye. Its a transparent film-like tissue that covers the iris and pupil, and it both protects the eye and helps focus the light we see.

Keratoconus is a condition where the cornea starts to lose collagen, growing thinner and cone-shaped and eventually impairing vision. Injuries from impact or scraping, as well as bacterial or fungal infections, can also damage the cornea, causing its normally-clear surface to become cloudy and leading to visual impairment or blindness.

Corneal blindness is one of the leading causes of blindness globally, accounting for over five percent of cases where people lose their sight. Corneal transplants are one solution, but in addition to a shortage of donors (particularly in low-income countries, where these conditions are most common), recipients must take immunosuppressants to keep their bodies from rejecting the transplanted cornea.

A research team at Linkping University and LinkoCare Life Sciences in Sweden have come up with what appears to be a highly viable alternative.

The team used collagen protein extracted from pig skin as the base for an artificial cornea. Pig skin may sound unappealing as the source of something that goes in peoples eyes, but the researchers chose it for a few different reasons: besides having a structure similar to that of human skin, pig skin is a byproduct from the food industry (that means its abundant and cheap) and is already used for medical applications, including glaucoma surgery and as a wound dressing.

The researchers purified the extracted collagen then placed it in a cornea-shaped hydrogel scaffold, using chemical crosslinking to reinforce the collagen and keep it from degrading (the crosslinkers are water-soluble and end up rinsing out of the implant during its manufacture).

Surgeons in India and Iran implanted the engineered corneas into 20 patients, 14 of whom were completely blind and 6 of whom had impaired vision as a result of keratoconus. The doctors used a minimally-invasive surgical technique, making a laser incision in the existing cornea and inserting the implant rather than removing the cornea and sewing in a replacement. The technique resulted in reduced inflammation and faster healing in recipients, as well as immunosuppressant eye drop use for just eight weeks (as compared to a year or more with traditional cornea transplants).

The team monitored the recipients for 24 months, noting no complications or adverse events. On the contrary, the implant caused their corneas to return to normal thickness and curvature, and the 14 participants who were blind before the operation had their vision restored. Those who werent blind moved from severe visual impairment to low or moderate vision.

Three patients even ended up with 20/20 vision, and others were able to wear contact lenses to improve their sight (the damaged shape of their corneas prevented them from wearing contacts before the implant).

The team notes that its results are comparable to those of standard corneal transplants, but with a simpler surgical technique and no need for human donors. Theres some room for improvement yet; the implant was only manufactured in two thicknesses for this pilot study, but making customized implants (such as in cases where someones cornea has a non-uniform or tapered thickness) could improve outcomes even more. And while two years is a sufficient time frame to know that the transplants restored patients sight, the artificial tissues integration and stability will need to be monitored over a longer term.

The bioengineered corneas join a slowly but surely growing list of body parts that science has been able to synthetically recreate, from 3D printed ears to custom-grown bones, or is working on recreating, like kidneys. Progress is incremental, but that doesnt make it any less amazing.

The teams next aim is to do a larger clinical trial involving 100 or more participants in Europe and the US, and to get the ball rolling on regulatory approval from the FDA.

Image Credit: Thor Balkhed/Linkoping University

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In a Pilot Trial, Bioengineered Corneas Gave 14 Blind People Their Sight Back - Singularity Hub

This weekends stories include Tony Robbins, Sergey Brin Become Robots The Telepresence Revolution to Spruce Trees have Arrived in the Arctic Tundra a Century Ahead of Schedule, and much more.

New Evidence Suggests Giant Asteroid Impacts Created Earths Continents, reports Singularity Hub. We still dont have firm answers to some basic questions about continents: how did they come to be, and why did they form where they did? In new research published in Nature, we studied ancient minerals from Western Australia and found tantalizing clues suggesting the giant impact hypothesis might be right.

The Coming California Megastorm -The vapor plume will be enormous, hundreds of miles wide and more than 1,200 miles long, and seething with ferocious winds, reports The New York Times. It will be carrying so much water that if you converted it all to liquid, its flow would be about 26 times what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico at any given moment.

Earth-sized alien worlds are out there. Now, astronomers are figuring out how to detect life on them. To do so will require a purpose-built space telescope and a parasol the size of a baseball diamond, reports Science.org. Stephen Kane says he and his colleagues are trying to figure out what we can expect to see when we can finally directly image an exoplanet. Their exercise shows that even a precious few pixels can help scientists make the ultimate diagnosis: Does a planet harbor life?

The One Critical Mistake Alien Hunters Keep Making Life on other worlds might look nothing like it does on Earth. So we need to start taking more eccentric ideas about biology seriously, reports the Daily Beast. Astronomers are lining up to take turns to use NASAs new James Webb Space Telescope to inspect planets for biosignatures. The priority, in this first year of JWSTs operations, is the seven possible Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, 40 light-years from Earth.

Is There Life in the TRAPPIST-1 Star System? Twice as Old as Our Solar System reports The Daily Galaxy.

Michio Kaku: Well Make Contact with Aliens in This Century

Tony Robbins, Sergey Brin Become Robots The Telepresence Revolution, reports Singularity Hub. People at the Xprize fundraiser in San Francisco were immediately attracted to the robots and loved talking to them. During the course of the evening, participants spoke to individuals from Argentina, Washington DC, and Canada all via telepresence. Telepresence robots are going to be an awesome addition to our technology fueled lives.

Earth spinning faster and recording its shortest-day ever is no reason to panic, scientists say, reports CBS News. While the Earth on June 29 did indeed record its shortest day since the adoption of the atomic clock standard in 1970 at 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours scientists say this is a normal fluctuation. Still, news of the faster rotation led to misleading posts on social media about the significance of the measurement, leading some to express concern about its implications.

Antarctica has lost far more ice than we once thought, reports meteorologist Scott Sutherland for The Weather Network.

Spruce trees have arrived in the Arctic tundra a century ahead of schedule, reports Quartz.com. As climate change decimates forests in places like Europe and the American west, boreal trees are moving into the Arctic.

Quantum Computers Could Crack Bitcoin. Heres What It Would Take, reports Singularity Hub. Modern encryption schemes rely on fiendishly difficult math problems that would take even the largest supercomputers centuries to crack. But the unique capabilities of a quantum computer mean that at sufficient size and power these problems become simple, rendering todays encryption useless. Thats a big problem for cybersecurity, and it also poses a major challenge for cryptocurrencies, which use cryptographic keys to secure transactions

The Race to Remake the $2.5 Trillion Steel Industry With Green Steel--In the city of Woburn, a suburb just north of Boston, a cadre of engineers and scientists in white coats inspected an orderly stack of brick-sized, gunmetal-gray steel ingots on a desk inside a neon-illuminated lab space. What they were looking at was a batch of steel created using an innovative manufacturing method, one that Boston Metal, a company that spun out a decade ago from MIT, hopes will dramatically reshape the way the alloy has been made for centuries.

Nearby stars midlife crisis illuminates the future of our own SunLong magnetic lull on star mimics the Maunder Minimum, when the Suns spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, reports Science.org. From about 1645 to 1715, the spots, now known to be indicators of solar activity, all but disappeared. Gathering sunspot counts and other historical observations, astronomer John Eddy concluded nearly 50 years ago that the Sun had essentially taken a 70-year nap, which he called the Maunder Minimum after an astronomer couple who had previously studied it.

Former SpaceX Engineers Are Launching a Startup Where Robots Make Pizzas in 45 Seconds, reports Singularity Hub. according to Pizza Magazines 2022 Pizza Power Report, (yes, theres actually a publication called Pizza Magazine! Who knew!), American consumers accounted for about a third of global spending on pizza, shelling out $45 billion for cheese-covered pies in 2021.

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Giant Asteroid Impacts Created Earths Continents to Michio Kaku: Well Make Contact with Aliens in This Cent - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries...

Tower of Fantasyis the new open-world MMORPG game developed by Hotta Studio and published byLevel Infinite. While having similarities with Genshin Impact by HoYoverse, the game has shown potential signs of making its way to the players library as soon as thedebut day. Just like other MMO games, Tower of Fantasy also offers a vast map with details and quests at every corner of the game. As a result, it has become quite important to understand all the puzzles and how to solve them. In our Tower of Fantasy guide, we will cover all the exploration tips to solve puzzles and get the best rewards.

Players can find different supply pods on the maps. While its quite common to get Gold as the reward, other rewards are often found with Gold. To open the supply pod, just interact with the pod and it will open up. Oftentimes, enemies guard the supply pods nearby. Unlocking supply pods also helps increase the exploration progress for the area.

Dandelions are present in different places on the map. Dandelions can brake with one hit from any weapon. Black nucleus and dandelion seeds can be found after harvesting the dandelions.

Kerosenia is an interesting plant. It is said that the plant is rooted with petroleum veins underground. If attacked with a weapon with a fire element, it will burn. As soon as the buds are destroyed, you can claim rewards which are usually 1 black nucleus.

Destroyable rocks can be found in different parts of the map. The wall can be broken by equipping and using the relic Missile Barrage.

AI Servants are sometimes a part of the story. They are found guiding the player to the contextual NPC of the specific part of the story.

Chowchow is found in many places on the map. The plant loves to consume water cores. Oftentimes, players can find a water core near Chowchow. By throwing a water core inside Chowchow, the plant rewarded with 1 black nucleus.

Thornvine can be found in different places. Thornvine hides a secret supply pod. Players can only interact with supply pods after destroying the Thornvine. Thornvine can be destroyed by hitting with a weapon with a fire element.

Singularity Rock is often found with enemies nearby. Sometimes, with Hyena elites, sometimes with others. Use the relic Strange cube to push the top off.

Ruins are the leftovers from the Cataclysm. Players can find different types of relics inside the ruins. But different enemies also await for prey to fight with. They can clear each ruin with a total of 3 opportunities for different difficulties. Harder the mode is, the higher the minimum level requirement is.

Tar pits are often present in different locations on the map. Unlike other puzzles, enemies nearby do not guard this. To break it, it needs to be attacked by using a weapon with a fire element. The common reward is a black nucleus inside it.

Glowshrooms are easy to find in different places on the map. Jumping on the grow shrooms in the correct order gives audio and graphic feedback.

This is an interesting puzzle of the game. It unlocks a box that contains rewards and unlocking contributes to increasing world progress. First, start with the tile on the left side of the square in the middle. Then confirm if you have a tile on your left side between two small plants. If it doesnt check out, then you are at the wrong tile.

Re-align yourself to start solving this puzzle. After aligning properly, jump on the tile. Then jump on the tile which will glow. Dont jump on a tile twice as it will result in doing the whole thing again from start.

Training facilities help players in gaining skills in different moves and practicing them. Every training facility offers different amounts of training points. Some pieces of training are locked if the minimum level requirement is not achieved.

Mogden can be found in different parts of the map. Players will often see them watching at the night. During the nighttime, mushroom man becomes violent and attacks the player when he can. But at the end part of the night, players can interact with the mushrooms. They offer a minigame to the player. Mogden fears flame core.

Energy screen is found in places and usually at the entrance. To solve this, the player needs to put in the correct passcode at the terminal.

Lava pits can be found in many places on the maps compared to other rare puzzles. You can solve it by attacking it with an ice-element weapon.

Force Sending Plates can also be found in many places. The way to solve this is to perform an aerial smash attack on the plate with any weapon.

Pillar Induction Stone plates can be found scattered in different places on the map. To solve this, one needs to use the relic Omnium Handcannon.

Telescopes are only a handful and only available in certain places on the map. The way to solve this is to connect the stars in the shape of a constellation. Correct connections are retained, so players can try it again without losing progress.

Abandoned trucks are present in a few places on the map. To solve it, just put in the right passcode at the terminal. After that, the truck gets unlocked.

Concentration rays can be interacted with to transfer energy between them. One concentration ray starts from where one stopped. So the whole thing can be found in the ray is found.

Spliced metal boxes are a few parts that are present near each other. Push the pieces in the correct order to connect the pattern on them.

Earthphyte is found in the greeneries. To solve it, one needs to throw in a matching color flower bud in the Earthphyte.

Nucleus drone has a nucleus underneath it. The way to solve this is to attack it with any weapon. However, due to its nature, it is preferable to use ranged weapons.

The silver cap tree is found only in specific areas of the map. This tree can be interacted with and it gives a mini-game.

Rusted Iron boxes are quite common in the game. You can open it by only interacting with it. When you open rusted, you can commonly get Iron Boxes, battery, and experience points.

Thats it for all the Exploration Puzzles currently available in Tower of Fantasy. To check out the Passwords for Electronic Lock and Deconstruction Devices, check out our article on the same here.

Did you find our Tower of Fantasy Exploration guide on completing Exploration Puzzles helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

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Tower of Fantasy: The ultimate world exploration guide - GamingonPhone

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.

Discussions about the state of the world too often focus on the first statement: The news highlights what is going wrong, rarely mentioning any positive development.

A pushback on this narrative takes it to the other extreme, which is equally damaging. Solely communicating the progress that the world has achieved becomes unhelpful, or even repugnant, when it glosses over the problems that are real today.

Its hard to resist falling for only one of these perspectives. But to see that a better world is possible we need to see that both are true at the same time: the world is awful and the world is much better.

To illustrate what I mean, I will use the example of one of humanitys biggest tragedies: the death of its children. But the same is true for many of the worlds other problems. Humanity faces many problems where things have improved over time, which are still terrible, and for which we know that things can get better.1

Globally4.3 percent of children die before they are 15 years old. This is the data for 2020, the latest available year.

This means that 5.9 million children die every year16,000 children on any average day, and 11 children every minute.2

Clearly, a world where thousands of tragedies happen every single day is awful.

Historys big lesson is that things change. But it is hard to imagine how dire living conditions once were, and that makes it difficult to grasp just how much the world has changed.

Data can help to bring the scale change to mind. Historians estimate that in the pastaround half of all children diedbefore they reached the end of puberty. This was true no matter where in the world a child was born and it only started to change in the 19th century, just a few generations ago.3

Its hard to imagine, but child mortality in the very worst-off places today ismuchbetter than anytime in the past. Even in the worlds richest countries, the mortality of children was much higher very recently. In Somalia, the country with the highest mortality today, about 14 percent of all children die.4 Just a few generations ago, the mortality rate was more than three times as high, even in the best-off places.5

What we learn from our history is that it is possible to change the world. Unfortunately, long-run data on how living conditions have changed is rarely studied in school and rarely reported in the media. As a result, many areentirely unawareof even the most fundamental positive developments in the world.

But this factthat it is possible to change the world and achieve extraordinary progress for entire societiesis something that everyoneshould know.

Progress over time shows that it was possible to change the world in the past, but do we know that its possible to continue this progress into the future? Or were we perhaps born at that unlucky moment in history at which progress has to come to a halt?

Studying the global data suggests that the answer is no.

One way to see this is to look at the places in the world with the best living conditions today. The best-off places show that extremely low child mortality is not just a possibility, but is already a reality.

The world region where children have the best chance of surviving childhood is the European Union. 99.55 percent of all children born in the EU survive childhood.6

To see how much better the world can be, we can ask what the world would look like if this became the realityeverywhere. What if children around the world would be as well off as children in the EU? Five million fewer children would die every year.7

Of course, the child mortality rate in the EU is still too high, and there is no reason that progress should stop there. Cancers like leukemia and brain tumors kill hundreds of children, even in todays richest countries. We should strive to find ways to prevent these tragic deaths.

However, the largest opportunities to prevent the pain and suffering of children are in the poorer countries. There we know not only that things can be better, but how to make them better.

You can use this research on how to make the world a better place to contribute to this progress yourself. I recommend relying on research published by the nonprofit organization GiveWell.org. GiveWells team spent years identifying the most cost-effective charities so that your donation can have the biggest positive impact on the lives of others. Several of the recommended charities focus on improving the health of children, offering you the opportunity to contribute to the progress against child mortality.

Research on how to prevent child deaths and the fact that child mortality in entire world regions is 10-fold lower than the global average show what is possible.Millionsof child deaths are preventable. We know that it is possible to make the world a better place.

The news often focuses on how awful the world is. There is a large audience for bad news and it is easier to scare people than to encourage them to achieve positive change.

I agree that it is important that we know what is wrong with the world. But, given the scale of what we have achieved already and of what is possible in the future, I think its irresponsible toonlyreport on how awful our situation is.

To see that the world has become a better place does not mean to deny that we are facing very serious problems. To the contrary, if we had achieved the best of all possible worlds, I wouldnt spend my life writing and researching about how we got here. It is because the world is still terrible that it is so important to see how the world became a better place.

I wish we could change our culture so that we take this possibility of progress more seriously. This is a solvable problem: we have the data and the research, but we are currently not using it. The data is often stored in inaccessible databases, the research locked away behind paywalls and buried under jargon in academic papers. WithOur World in Datawe want to change this.

If we want more people to dedicate their energy and money to making the world a better place, then we should make it much more widely known that it is possible to make the world a better place.

This article was originally published on Our World in Dataand has been republished here under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Manuel Sardo / Unsplash

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The World Is Awful. The World Is Much Better. The World Can Be Much Better. - Singularity Hub

It seems like almost everyone has a friend who has recently been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As a GP working in suburban Melbourne, what had been an occasional topic patients broached is now a conversation Im having multiple times a week.

So what has changed, and what does it mean for our health and health system?

ADHD is a developmental condition, present from childhood, broadly involving issues with inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. There is an increasingly recognised subtype characterised by inattention without the other features. The stereotypical presentation is a child who is restless and a bit chaotic in their behaviour and struggling to meet their potential at school.

Where Im seeing growth is not so much among children, but rather among adults. The accepted wisdom is that highly functional adults can compensate for their ADHD until something upsets the apple cart. This might be running up against a task that surpasses their organisational strategies; a move from high school to the more self-directed learning of tertiary study; a shift away from the support structures of living with family; or a loss of the environmental cues and structures that had borne them along.

The last three years have seen the classroom, workplace and home amalgamated into one porridgy, ill-defined singularity, with added mental, financial and social stress. Its no wonder people started looking inwards when they didnt immediately bounce back with the end of lockdowns.

There can also be a snowball effect of symptom recognition. With swathes of algorithmic social media where people relate their experiences, or by talking to friends and hearing their stories, its easy to see why people might identify with signs such as reading sentences off a page without absorbing any of it, forgetting a pin number thats been used for a decade or feeling overwhelmed by the noise, sights and smells returning to the grocery store, school or office.

As with most mental health conditions, the defining factor for diagnosis is the degree of dysfunction the person faces. Is their education faltering? Is it impacting their work? Are their relationships suffering?

Dont get me wrong: most of the people who come in wanting to explore an ADHD diagnosis meet the criteria and then some. But where does that leave them? And where does it leave a mental health system where wait times to see a psychiatrist were already teetering on untenable, before living through a global pandemic made us all feel that bit more vulnerable?

The conventional wisdom is that the mainstay of management of ADHD is behavioural and psychological strategies, but when patients come in interested in a diagnosis, theyve often pursued these avenues and are looking at medication options and thats where we hit a snag.

Legislative requirements vary between state and territories, but from a Victorian context, medication requires a diagnosis by a psychiatrist (retrospective to before 18 years of age, if scripts are to be subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme), and either initiation of medication by the psychiatrist or deputisation of a GP through a written plan, that the GP can then use as supporting evidence to apply for a permit to prescribe. These permits can be held for up to two years.

In the halcyon days, I could provide a referral to a psychiatrist with confidence that it was someone whose opinion I valued and trusted, who I had corresponded with professionally and received that most invaluable of endorsements: positive patient feedback.

Now, if my patients have any hope of being seen, Ive increasingly needed to refer to someone I havent worked with before. The path of least resistance for patients is to pursue a diagnostic review through a Medicare item 291, whereby the psychiatrist provides their diagnosis and a plan of action to allow the GP to treat. To meet this demand, a number of telehealth services have sprung up.

The going rate for most of these single-appointment assessments appears to be an out-of-pocket cost of $200-400 already placing it out of the reach of many patients. Depending on the service, costs can be in excess of $1,100. Some such assessments have provided me not with a clear insight into the patients situation and the medication options best suited to them, but rather a list of the medications that are used for ADHD, with a seemingly somewhat cynical view to ticking the box for prescribing requirements.

Im not confident this always leaves me or my patients any better off.

So what advice can I offer? Firstly, caveat emptor do your research, and ask your GP or psychologist which services they have confidence in. Second, the feeling of urgency for action in the I think I might have ADHD presentation can lead to hasty decisions. I encourage you to consider laying your foundation through work with a psychologist, and consider waiting to see a specialist we can vouch for.

Dr Nicholas Hudson is a general practitioner working in South Melbourne

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Where does an overloaded mental health system leave patients with an ADHD diagnosis? - The Guardian

This week Fantagraphics will publish One Beautiful Spring Day, a swirling psychedelic epic from legendary Seattle comic Jim Woodring. The book promises to be a 400-page comics odyssey linking together three earlier booksCongress of the Animals, Fran, and Poochytownalong with 100 new, mesmerizing pages focusing on the unusual life and times of Frank, a character whose stories he's downloaded straight from the heavens (and perhaps from other worlds) for the last 30 years.

In our interview, we talk about his new book, the sounds of silence, and that time I canceled his weekly comic for The Stranger back in the early aughts because, wellwe were all so young.

In the early 2000s I did not understand your work at all. In fact, you might remember me canceling your longstanding weekly one-panel when I became The Strangers art director. You were gracious as ever. In the years since, I have done a major 180, and would like to start this interview with a humble apology.

Well, hell. You were the boss, you didnt owe me anything, you didnt like my feature, and you did let me run one final cartoon. Apology not necessary.

Again, with the graciousness! So, your stories are grounded in dense and totally relatable interpersonal dramas, while simultaneously adrift in some kind of surrealist hallucination. What amount of conscious effort goes towards balancing that duality?

As little as possible. The best Frank stories are the ones I think about the least. I injected my ideas into Congress of the Animals and things went so awry that I had to draw Fran just to set them right.

One Beautiful Spring Day is a compilation of three published works, in one surprisingly cohesive narrative sequence, with 100 pages of brand new content. Fantagraphics is calling it your Magnum Opus and one of the great novels of the 21st Century. Whats your take?

What turned out to be One Beautiful Spring Day was drawn over a span of ten years, in large chunks, which I had no idea would fit together into this final shape.

As Ive always said, the Frank stories come to me as if from another mind; I dont write them so much as receive them and transcribe them whether I know what they are about or not. They are a lot of work but very little struggle.

The three books OBSD is built on are not sequential. Frans title page says Continuing and preceding Congress of the Animals. Poochytowns title page says Discontinuing Congress of the Animals and Fran. Those three books were anomalies because each one ended with an ongoing fluid situation. All previous Frank stories ended with a specific equilibrium restored.

The hundred pages of new material surrounded and recontextualized that uneasy three-book knot, giving them a relationship, shape and story structure they didnt have before. The gross error I made with Congress became something sweet, ethereal and poignant. I learned you could change the past. I learned a lot working on this project.

Its incredible what you manage to say without using any words. Yet, interpersonally (and on stage) you are very articulate and have a definite command of language. Does that seem paradoxical to you in any way?

When the idea for the first Frank story presented itself it was wordless. It seemed entirely right, aesthetically, even spiritually, so that was that. If there were words they would be idiomatic 20th-Century English, and that didnt seem right at all. I couldnt imagine Frank screaming Ye gods! or anything like that. A bonus was that I didnt have to do hand-lettering. Also no translation problems.

Convenient! Another aspect of wordlessness is that my brain fills up the space with an imagined score. Are you hearing music when you are planning or inking these stories?

Not music, but landscape noises, animal sounds. I can hear those frogs droning.

The singularity of your creative voice is really impressiveespecially considering your 30-year runand I struggle to imagine what influences or inspires you. Can you share anything youre reading, admiring, or compelled by?

The thing that compels my interest more than anything else these days is the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. My mind is drawn to these concepts and loves to play with them. Its also been recently drawn to the huge TASCHEN book of KRAZY KAT color Sunday pages, the Cardiacs album SING TO GOD, and a meticulous, swoon-inducing painting my wife recently completed of creatures and scenarios from her overheated dream journal.

That sounds amazing, will we get to see this swoon-inducing painting?

Well, I can send you a jpeg.

One Beautiful Spring Day By Jim WoodringAug 16, 2022$49.99

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Jim Woodring Discovered a Way to Change the Past - TheStranger.com

While birth and death remain at opposite ends of the spectrum of mortality, theyre united in a bizarre commonality. After all, no one asks for either and, crucially, neither can be reported on from a first-hand point of view. And yet what of re-birth? Or at least that from the perspective of musical shift?

Singularity Zone Vol.1 is the next step of a journey that has seen The Oscillation mutate and grow over their last few albums as they or, at least, sole constant member Demian Castellanos explore the many sonic possibilities that psychedelia can offer. While 2018s UEF found Castellanos experimenting with sequencers and analogue equipment, its follow-up, Wasted Space was a consolidation of that approach with the addition a post-punk sensibility that ramped up the groove. Meanwhile, the righteous howl of rage that ripped from the centre of 2021s Untold Futures was wrapped in dense layers of guitars, squalls, squelches and relentless low-end throb wherein Castellanos appeared to disappear into the musics intensity. His voice became less a vehicle for singing as part of the instrumentation. This, then, was a reflection as much of where he was at as of the ramifications of what wed all experienced over the previous eighteen months.

With Castellanos now relocated from London to the Czech countryside, his new environment has clearly had a positive effect on him and his music. Replacing the aggression and frustration of his most recent releases with a warm and fragrant beauty, Singularity Zone Vol.1 , The Oscillations eighth full length album, explores the possibility of sound collages, drones, expansive washes of sound, and a shared aesthetic with Autotelia, the project hed partnered on with the late Tom Relleen. It is both a re-birth and the next logical step for him to take.

As evidenced by the gorgeously alluring synth sweeps, breaths and bass pulses of opener I Am, Castellanos is not only a student and graduate of the celebrated Berlin School, hes also a standard bearer. This is music that soothes like a balm as it envelopes the senses to signal the first step of an incredible voyage. Indeed, with each step, Castellanos slowly yet methodically increases the intensity with a sensitivity that simultaneously teases and seduces. Witness Mind Unveiled where the guitars turn up the heat yet blend seamlessly with the soundscapes that burn at the tracks core. Jem Doultons subtle yet insistent work on the toms and cymbals never threatens to overwhelm; instead they compliment the sounds that surround them.

The six pieces of music that make up Singularity Zone Vol.1 are best experienced in a single sitting. An expedition into inner and outer space, this is a breathtaking experience that displays another facet of this restless and creative psychedelic explorer.

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Reviews | The Oscillation - The Quietus

In the city of Woburn, Massachusetts, a suburb just north of Boston, a cadre of engineers and scientists in white coats inspected an orderly stack of brick-sized, gunmetal-gray steel ingots on a desk inside a neon-illuminated lab space.

What they were looking at was a batch of steel created using an innovative manufacturing method, one that Boston Metal, a company that spun out a decade ago from MIT, hopes will dramatically reshape the way the alloy has been made for centuries. By using electricity to separate iron from its ore, the firm claims it can make steel without releasing carbon dioxide, offering a path to cleaning up one of the worlds worst industries for greenhouse gas emissions.

An essential input for engineering and construction, steel is one of the most popular industrial materials in the world, with more than 2 billion tons produced annually. This abundance, however, comes at a steep price for the environment. Steelmaking accounts for 7 to 11 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, making it one of the largest industrial sources of atmospheric pollution. And because production could rise by a third by 2050, this environmental burden could grow.

That poses a significant challenge for tackling the climate crisis. The United Nations says significantly cutting industrial carbon emissions is essential to keeping global warming under the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. To do so, emissions from steel and other heavy industries will have to fall by 93 percent by 2050, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.

Facing escalating pressure from governments and investors to reduce emissions, a number of steelmakersincluding both major producers and startupsare experimenting with low-carbon technologies that use hydrogen or electricity instead of traditional carbon-intensive manufacturing. Some of these efforts are nearing commercial reality.

What we are talking about is a capital-intensive, risk-averse industry where disruption is extremely rare, said Chris Bataille, an energy economist at IDDRI, a Paris-based research think tank. Therefore, he added, its exciting that theres so much going on all at once.

Still, experts agree that transforming a global industry that turned over $2.5 trillion in 2017 and employs more than 6 million people will take enormous effort. Beyond the practical obstacles to scaling up novel processes in time to reach global climate goals, there are concerns about China, where over half the worlds steel is made and whose plans to decarbonize the steel sector remain vague.

Its certainly not an easy fix to decarbonize an industry like this, said Bataille. But theres no choice. The future of the sectorand that of our climatedepends on just that.

Modern steelmaking involves several production stages. Most commonly, iron ore is crushed and turned into sinter (a rough solid) or pellets. Separately, coal is baked and converted into coke. The ore and coke are then mixed with limestone and fed into a large blast furnace where a flow of extremely hot air is introduced from the bottom. Under high temperatures, the coke burns and the mixture produces liquid iron, known as pig iron or blast-furnace iron. The molten material then goes into an oxygen furnace, where its blasted with pure oxygen through a water-cooled lance, which forces off carbon to leave crude steel as a final product.

This method, first patented by English engineer Henry Bessemer in the 1850s, produces carbon-dioxide emissions in different ways. First, the chemical reactions in the blast furnace result in emissions, as carbon trapped in coke and limestone binds with oxygen in the air to create carbon dioxide as a byproduct. In addition, fossil fuels are typically burned to heat the blast furnace and to power sintering and pelletizing plants, as well as coke ovens, emitting carbon dioxide in the process.

As much as 70 percent of the worlds steel is produced this way, generating nearly two tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of steel produced. The remaining 30 percent is almost all made through electric arc furnaces, which use an electrical current to melt steellargely recycled scrapand have far lower CO2 emissions than blast furnaces.

But because of the limited scrap supply, not all future demand can be met this way, said Jeffrey Rissman, an industry program director and head of modeling at the San Francisco-based energy and climate policy firm Energy Innovation. With the right policies in place, recycling could supply up to 45 percent of global demand in 2050, he said. The rest will be satisfied by forging primary ore-based steel, which is where most emissions come from.

So if the steel industry is serious about its climate commitments, he added, it will have to fundamentally reshape the way the material is madeand do so fairly quickly.

One alternative technology being tested replaces coke with hydrogen. In Sweden, Hybrita joint venture between the steelmaker SSAB, the energy supplier Vattenfall, and LKAB, an iron ore produceris piloting a process that aims to repurpose an existing system called direct reduced iron. The process uses coke from fossil fuels to extract oxygen from iron ore pellets, leaving a porous iron pellet called sponge iron.

The Hybrit method instead extracts the oxygen using fossil-free hydrogen gas. The gas is created through electrolysis, a technique that uses an electric currentin this case, from a fossil-free energy sourceto separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. (Most pure hydrogen today is made with methane, which produces CO2 when burned.) The resulting sponge iron then goes into an electric arc furnace, where its eventually refined into steel. The process releases only water vapor as a byproduct.

This technology has been known for a while, but its only been done in the lab so far, said Mikael Nordlander, head of industry decarbonization at Vattenfall. What we are doing here is to see if it can work at [the] industrial level.

Last August, Hybrit reached its first milepost: SSAB, which produces and sells the end product, delivered its first batch of fossil-free steel to the automaker Volvo, which used it in vehicle prototypes. It is also planning a plant for commercial-scale production, which it aims to complete by 2026.

Another Swedish venture, H2 Green Steel, is developing a similar commercial-scale hydrogen steel plant with the help of $105 million raised from private investors and companies including Mercedes-Benz, Scania, and IMAS Foundation, an organization linked to Ikea. The company plans to begin production by 2024 and produce 5 million tons of zero-emissions steel annually by the end of the decade. Other companies testing hydrogen-powered steelmaking include ArcelorMittal, Thyssenkrupp, and Salzgitter AG in Germany; Posco in South Korea; and Voestalpine in Austria.

Electricity can also be used to reduce iron ore. Boston Metal, for example, has developed a process called molten oxide electrolysis, in which a current moves through a cell containing iron ore. As electricity travels between both ends of the cell and heats up the ore, oxygen bubbles up (and can be collected), while iron ore is reduced into liquid iron that pools at the bottom of the cell and is periodically tapped. The purified iron is then mixed with carbon and other ingredients.

What we do is basically swapping carbon for electricity as a reducing agent, explained Adam Rauwerdink, the companys senior vice president of business development. This allows us to make very high-quality steel using way less energy and in fewer steps than conventional steelmaking. As long as power comes from fossil-free sources, he added, the process generates no carbon emissions.

He said the company, which currently runs three pilot lines at its Woburn facility, is working to bring its laboratory concept to the market, using $50 million raised last year from an investor group including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by Bill Gates, and the German carmaker BMW. A commercial-scale demonstration plant is expected to be up and running by 2025.

I feel all these solutions have their place, depending on location, resource availability, and targeted product, said Sridhar Seetharaman, a professor of materials science and engineering at Arizona State University. However I do not think for now any one alone will give you a silver bullet to meet the demand.

Hydrogen has a bit of a head start being based on an established system and its also ahead in commercialization, said Bataille, the IDDRI energy economist. But achieving a net-zero steel industry will take more carbon-free pathways, so I think there will be enough room in the market for all of them in the end.

Although greener steelmaking processes appear to be gaining momentum, there remain a number of serious challenges to confront. Chief among them is the massive expansion in renewable energy infrastructure that an industry-wide shift to these new methods would entail, said Thomas Koch Blank, senior principal at the Colorado-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. He estimates that the world would need up to three times the currently installed solar and wind energy sources to electrify the existing primary steel production.

Another barrier is cost. Switching to electricity or hydrogen would require vast amounts of capital spending to erect new plants and retrofit old ones. In the case of the clean hydrogen method, the price tag for steel will increase largely because steel producers are located close to low-cost coking coal rather than low-cost hydrogen, pointed out Koch Blank. These upfront costs will likely drive up the price of both steel and the end products, at least in the beginning.

According to Rissman, the analyst in San Francisco, legislation on both the supply and the demand side could help offset those higher costs and encourage more investment in greener technologies. Governments, he said, could incentivize the use of low-carbon steel for building and infrastructure by requiring state-funded projects to use low-carbon versions of designated construction materials. They could also enforce policies that make it more expensive to buy from countries where rules on emissions are less stringent. That will help domestic producers stay competitive as the market for clean steel grows and new production processes achieve economies of scale, said Rissman.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock is China, where about 90 percent of steel production is achieved using blast furnaces. In September 2020, President Xi Jinping announced that the country aims to become carbon neutral by 2060. In a bid to reduce pollution from domestic steel mills, which account for roughly 15 percent of the nations overall carbon emissions, Beijing has also pledged to achieve peak steel emissions by 2030. Even so, 18 new blast-furnace projects were announced in China just in the first six months of 2021, according to the Helsinki-based research group Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Steel is one of the most important and challenging industries to decarbonize, said Rissman, so global coordination on it would help greatly.

Back in Boston, Rauwerdink, surveying Boston Metals factory lines, agreed. Its a fantastic challenge that were up against, he said. But, he added, We are showing that solutions existand work.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Tineck elezrny / Wikimedia Commons

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The Race to Remake the $2.5 Trillion Steel Industry With Green Steel - Singularity Hub

Atomic clocks, combined with precise astronomical measurements, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer, and scientists dont know why.

This has critical impacts not just on our timekeeping, but also things like GPS and other technologies that govern our modern life.

Over the past few decades, Earths rotation around its axiswhich determines how long a day ishas been speeding up. This trend has been making our days shorter; in fact, in June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so.

But despite this record, since 2020 that steady speedup has curiously switched to a slowdowndays are getting longer again, and the reason is so far a mystery.

While the clocks in our phones indicate there are exactly 24 hours in a day, the actual time it takes for Earth to complete a single rotation varies ever so slightly. These changes occur over periods of millions of years to almost instantlyeven earthquakes and storm events can play a role.

It turns out a day is very rarely exactly the magic number of 86,400 seconds.

Over millions of years, Earths rotation has been slowing down due to friction effects associated with the tides driven by the moon. That process adds about 2.3 milliseconds to the length of each day every century. A few billion years ago an Earth day was only about 19 hours.

For the past 20,000 years, another process has been working in the opposite direction, speeding up Earths rotation. When the last ice age ended, melting polar ice sheets reduced surface pressure, and Earths mantle started steadily moving toward the poles.

Just as a ballet dancer spins faster as they bring their arms toward their bodythe axis around which they spinso our planets spin rate increases when this mass of mantle moves closer to Earths axis. And this process shortens each day by about 0.6 milliseconds each century.

Over decades and longer, the connection between Earths interior and surface comes into play too. Major earthquakes can change the length of a day, although normally by small amounts. For example, the Great Thoku Earthquake of 2011 in Japan, with a magnitude of 8.9, is believed to have sped up Earths rotation by a relatively tiny 1.8 microseconds.

Apart from these large-scale changes, over shorter periods weather and climate also have important impacts on Earths rotation, causing variations in both directions.

The fortnightly and monthly tidal cycles move mass around the planet, causing changes in the length of day by up to a millisecond in either direction. We can see tidal variations in length-of-day records over periods as long as 18.6 years. The movement of our atmosphere has a particularly strong effect, and ocean currents also play a role. Seasonal snow cover and rainfall, or groundwater extraction, alter things further.

Since the 1960s, when operators of radio telescopes around the planet started to devise techniques to simultaneously observe cosmic objects like quasars, we have had very precise estimates of Earths rate of rotation.

A comparison between these estimates and an atomic clock has revealed a seemingly ever-shortening length of day over the past few years.

But theres a surprising reveal once we take away the rotation speed fluctuations we know happen due to the tides and seasonal effects. Despite Earth reaching its shortest day on June 29 2022, the long-term trajectory seems to have shifted from shortening to lengthening since 2020. This change is unprecedented over the past 50 years.

The reason for this change is not clear. It could be due to changes in weather systems, with back-to-back La Nia events, although these have occurred before. It could be increased melting of the ice sheets, although those have not deviated hugely from their steady rate of melt in recent years. Could it be related to the volcanic explosion in Tonga injecting huge amounts of water into the atmosphere? Probably not, given that occurred in January 2022.

Scientists have speculated that this recent, mysterious change in the planets rotational speed is related to a phenomenon called the Chandler wobblea small deviation in Earths rotation axis with a period of about 430 days. Observations from radio telescopes also show that the wobble has diminished in recent years; the two may be linked.

One final possibility, which we think is plausible, is that nothing specific has changed inside or around Earth. It could just be long-term tidal effects working in parallel with other periodic processes to produce a temporary change in Earths rotation rate.

Precisely understanding Earths rotation rate is crucial for a host of applications navigation systems such as GPS wouldnt work without it. Also, every few years timekeepers insert leap seconds into our official timescales to make sure they dont drift out of sync with our planet.

If Earth were to shift to even longer days, we may need to incorporate a negative leap secondthis would be unprecedented, and may break the internet.

The need for negative leap seconds is regarded as unlikely right now. For now, we can welcome the news thatat least for a whilewe all have a few extra milliseconds each day.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Length of Earth's Days Has Been Mysteriously Increasing, and Scientists Don't Know Why - Singularity Hub