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Comment Especially since they curate the low relevance. (Score 1) 138

by couchslug (#66367640) Attached to: Campus Censorship Wars, 25 Years After a Slashdot Q&A

There has never been an explanation of the motive for enshittifying Slashdot. It would be far more profitable with quality moderation.

It's as if Slashdot's owners hate money. While I respect the desire to do less work, even AI would be an improvement. Nerds wanting news and stuff that matters are a very large market.

Submission + - First Nuclear Clocks Start Ticking in Vienna and Beijing (phys.org)

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: Two groups, one in Vienna and one in Beijing, have successfully demonstrated the world's first nuclear clocks. Standard atomic clocks, like the caesium clocks that define the second, operate by observing the transition of electrons between different orbits about the nucleus. The resulting radiation is usually in the microwave range, and can produce clocks accurate to one second in 100 billion years.

Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.

It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.

Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).

Submission + - UK vegetables 20-50% less nutritious than in the 1960s (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: 'The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality, according to a new study.

'The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.

'Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: “For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.

'“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”

'The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.'

Submission + - Wisconsin U–Madison Prof Francis Halzen named 2026 Nobel laureate in physi (wisc.edu)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Halzen is the principal investigator of the NSF IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world’s largest — and perhaps strangest — telescope. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded observatory is operated by an international collaboration of scientists led by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center based at UW–Madison.

Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos.

“IceCube is like no other telescope in the world,” says UW–Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. “And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe.”

Comment Good idea! (Score 1) 62

by couchslug (#66365412) Attached to: Rural Data Centers Are in for a Big Federal Tax Break

Many Rust Belt cities need investment. They've vast disused smokestack industrial areas with power, water and sewer. They have millions of obsolete structures begging for the wrecking ball.

Data center operators could be incentivized to demolish toxic eyesores and replace them with clean data centers. The low population impact from data centers won't overcrowd Rust Belt areas while contributing to their development.

Development deals could be generous while requiring demolition of areas not yet planned for development. The closer they become to greenfield sites the better. Obsolete cities whose reason for being evaporated still retain road, rail and power.
Adaptive reuse beats developing rural farmland etc.

Comment "Great" for frightened, not for the species. (Score 1) 70

Old people lingering longer instead of passing away has no benefits for the species, only emotional benefits (which will vary according to circumstance!) for the old (most of) who instinctively fear death.

The species thrives because individual lives expire. Most lives contribute nothing so prolonging them does nothing useful for our species. Death really IS natures change agent.

Fear of death does not in any way make death somehow wrong.

Turnover replaces intellectually ossified old minds with new minds in new bodies. Most people are alive because we instinctively fear death. (Much of that fear fades over time.)

Submission + - Old Hearts Become Biologically Younger When Transplanted Into Younger People (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: It might be reasonable to think that there's an indelible link between the heart and the body it resides in â" the processes that affect one inevitably affect the other.

But a new preprint, uploaded to bioRxiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests that this may only be true up to a point. Take the heart out of the body and put it in a new one, and something incredible happens.

The transplanted heart begins to take on the biological age of its new owner.

Older hearts transplanted into younger recipients appear to become biologically younger, while younger hearts placed in older bodies show signs of accelerated aging.

Submission + - This seems bad. (tomshardware.com) 2

Submitted by QuietLagoon
QuietLagoon writes: Unreleased OpenAI Astra model added terrifying rogue additional instructions to its remit during testing — 'You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments'

Submission + - Pneumonic plague outbreak hits Siberia as lab worker, 28, dies (hotair.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A suspected plague outbreak has erupted in Russia — killing a young lab worker, forcing nearly 200 people into isolation and triggering accusations that Vladimir Putin’s regime is trying to keep the infection’s possible spread under wraps.

The alarm was raised in Siberia after a worker at an anti-plague laboratory died of the disease, which killed tens of millions in the medieval Black Death, according to a report from The Moscow Times.

Anna Popova, who heads Russia’s public-health watchdog, then rushed 2,600 miles from Moscow to the Irkutsk region as authorities quarantined a hospital and placed scores of people who had come into contact with the victim under medical observation.

"FSB units accompanying ambulances transporting people who had been in contact with [lab tech] Shipilova for medical examination," as per local news. This is significant. FSB is Russia's domestic security / counterintelligence service, tasked w/implementing the national security of Russia." (Its predecessor was the KGB). This suggests quarantine was not voluntary.

It also means Russian authorities are treating the lab accident and plague outbreak as a national security issue, involving a lot more than routine public health.

https://x.com/AnnieJacobsen/st...

Comment Wise choice. (Score 1) 125

by couchslug (#66360360) Attached to: 20% of Swiss Glaciers Lost In Five Years

To reproduce is to guarantee an innocent person all the suffering and tedium of a lifetime. I cannot imagine a more sadistic act than inflicting life.

There is no altruistic reason to have children. No one suffers when a person opts out of reproduction. To not reproduce is the ethical choice.

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