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Intense light activates proteins shown to protect against lung damage in mice, a discovery that could have major therapeutic implications for treating acute lung injury in humans, according to a new study. "Acute lung injury has a mortality rate of 40%," said lead author Tobias Eckle, M.D. "No specific therapy exists, and novel treatment options are needed." Eckle's team, which previously demonstrated that light can protect against cardiovascular disease, housed mice under intense rather than ambient light for seven days. This prompted a strong increase in the trough and peak levels of the pulmonary circadian rhythm protein - Period 2...

The White House is hopeful for a rebound after a strong week, with bipartisan support for backing Ukraine, a strong jobs report, COVID-19 restrictions eased and the confirmation process for its Supreme Court nominee underway. President Biden, who has been plagued by low approval over high inflation and pandemic fatigue, saw his numbers rise in at least one poll after his first State of the Union address.

In a demonstration of Einstein’s E=mc2, collisions of light yielded electrons and positrons "Collide light with light, and poof, you get matter and antimatter. It sounds like a simple idea, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to prove. A team of physicists is now claiming the first direct observation of the long-sought Breit-Wheeler process, in which two particles of light, or photons, crash into one another and produce an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Like a discussion from an introductory philosophy course, the detection’s significance hinges on the definition of the word “real.” Some physicists argue...

Amyloid protein (orange) forms clumps among neurons (blue). Amyloid in the brain is one of the proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but amyloid clumps in other parts of the body can cause other illnesses. _____________________________________________________________________________ New photo-oxygenation catalyst targets amyloid structure, recruits brain immune system cells. A small, light-activated molecule recently tested in mice represents a new approach to eliminating clumps of amyloid protein found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. If perfected in humans, the technique could be used as an alternative approach to immunotherapy and used to treat other diseases caused by similar amyloids. Researchers injected the...

Some Pittsburgh residents may have been wondering why some stars in the night sky have been more difficult to see in recent years. Or why evenings seem less tranquil than they used to? It could be that excessive use of artificial light, called light pollution, is adversely affecting the health of people in the Pittsburgh area. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is attempting to do something about it. On Tuesday the mayor announced a new “Dark Sky Lighting” ordinance for all city parks, facilities and street lights. The term refers to the use of technology to minimize the use of outdoor...

Image showing counter-propagating high-intensity lasers producing gamma radiation. (Toma Toncian) ============================================================================= A new study by scientists has demonstrated how researchers may be able to create an accelerating jet of antimatter from light. A team of physicists has shown that high-intensity lasers can be used to generate colliding gamma photons – the most energetic wavelengths of light – to produce electron-positron pairs. This, they say, could help us understand the environments around some of the Universe's most extreme objects: neutron stars. The process of creating a matter-antimatter pair of particles – an electron and a positron – from photons is called...

Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able to show, there is a class of very special light waves for which this does not apply: for any specific disordered medium—such as the sugar cube you may just have put in your coffee—tailor-made light beams can be constructed that are practically not changed by this medium, but only attenuated. The light beam penetrates the medium, and a light pattern...

(The University of Queensland) =============================================================== Like watching a movie in reverse, physicists have just demonstrated a new technique for the time-reversal of a wave of optical light. That doesn't mean that they have actually reversed the flow of time; rather, they have found a way to induce an optical wave to retrace a forward path in reverse, returning to its point of origin. It's the first time that time reversal of optical waves has been achieved with full control over all of the degrees of freedom of light simultaneously. This would be a massive achievement in and of itself, but...

Join with FReepers around the world to pray for our President DONALD TRUMP, VIce President MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Healthcare Systems and the Media.  “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His Will, He heareth us.” —1 John 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. 

"Supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you could do either through the skin or in some other way," Trump said during the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing. "The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That's, uh, that's pretty powerful."

For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there; Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where. Shakespeare, Sonnet 5Originally posted by Lili, wherever you may find herThe winter solstice occurs in the Northern Hemisphere when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, or 23.5° south latitude; this year that happens at 11:19 PM EST. It is the shortest day of the year so rise early, although it will still be dark, and have your coffee and breakfast before the sun comes up. You cannot afford to...

Those laser pointer lights could hack into your smart home voice assistant. University researchers say they were able to hack Alexa, Google Home, Siri and Facebook Portal by shining lasers at them. The light can trick microphones and make the devices react as if they are receiving audio. The study found light commands can be sent from 360 feet away, from one building to another. The light can also penetrate glass, affecting a device that is left near a window. In one case, a garage door was opened using a laser light. Researchers also say they can use light commands...

Some of the greatest unanswered questions about the nature of the universe are related to light, the vacuum (i.e. space where neither matter nor radiation exists), and their relationship with time. In the past, physicists and philosophers have addressed a variety of complex questions, for instance, what is the nature of the vacuum, and how is the propagation of light connected to the passing of time? Researchers at the University of Konstanz have recently carried out a study exploring the quantum states of light and vacuum fluctuations, as well as their interplay with time. Their paper, published in Nature Physics,...

Beams with highly structured angular momentum are said to have orbital angular momentum (OAM), and are called vortex beams. They appear as a helix surrounding a common center, and when they strike a flat surface, they appear as doughnut-shaped. In this new effort, the researchers were working with OAM beams when they found the light behaving in a way that had never been seen before. The experiments involved firing two lasers at a cloud of argon gas—doing so forced the beams to overlap, and they joined and were emitted as a single beam from the other side of the argon...

A photo recently snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which roams the vast wind-swept expanses of Mars, has captured the sight of a peculiar phenomenon which looks like a flash of white light of unclear origin. The raw image, in black-and-white, was taken by the rover’s right “navcam” on 16 June

Scientists have launched a bid to observe and understand mysterious flashes of light on the surface of the moon. The ‘transient luminous lunar phenomena’ occur several times a week and illuminate parts of the moon’s landscape for a brief period of time before disappearing. Sometimes, a reverse effect which causes the lunar surface to darken has also been observed. Although there are several theories about the lunar mystery lights’ origins, they have not yet been fully explained. Now astronomers from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany have set up a telescope which will use artificial intelligence to automatically detect the...

(The Chicago skyline was seen from 60 miles away across Lake Michigan in St. Joseph, Michigan, at sunset Saturday, May 4, 2019.) ------------------------------------------- Imagine gazing across Lake Michigan expecting to see the setting sun on the horizon, but instead seeing the skyline of a distant city. That's what happened in St. Joseph, Michigan, Saturday evening. This effect, captured on video by Joshua Nowicki, is called fata morgana, which is an optical bending of light by changes in air temperature over bodies of cold water, such as Lake Michigan in the spring. The skyline of Chicago can be seen from a...

Researchers there have developed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light, by adding specific nanoscale patterning to their surface. Scientists have the ability to move and manipulate tiny objects with the use of ‘optical tweezers.’ The tweezers move objects via the radiative pressure from a sharply focused beam of laser light. However, this impressive tool can only move small very small objects a very limited distance. The trick is to create very specific patterns on the object's surface. These nanoscale patterns interact with the light so that the object keeps ‘righting’ itself if disturbed so that it...

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.( John 3:18-20)Unrepentant men hate the light of God; they shun it, run from it and seek to obscure it. They do not want to be...

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.(John 3:19-21)And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all...