April 30, 2024: Today we're covering how writing by hand makes better learners, the strength of the strong nuclear force and the cyber techniques used in election interference. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | A mystery surrounding the strength of "the strong force," which operates only across subatomic distances, binding quarks together inside protons and neutrons, has been solved by a particle physics experimentalist and his theoretical physicist collaborators. The strong nuclear force is one of the four basic forces of nature, along with gravity, the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. By performing an analysis that more experienced physicists might see as pointless, the experimentalist, Alexandre Deur, determined how the strong force changes at long distances ("long," in this case, means the scale of a proton). The intensity of the force had been thought to rise drastically as the distance grew, but Deur's analysis showed that it's a constant.
Why this is so cool: Deur's measurements went against the prevailing wisdom. So, he initially hesitated to present his findings publicly, for fear of ridicule. But he took the risk. Theoretical physicist Stanley J. Brodsky heard Deur speak at a conference and later helped develop a theoretical underpinning to explain Deur's findings. In later collaborations, physicists extended the theory to calculate aspects of quantum chromodynamics—the theory describing how the strong force works—starting from its most basic elements.
What the experts say: The findings "help to reveal the origin of 99 percent of the visible mass in our universe," write Deur, Brodsky and their co-author Craig D. Roberts. This mass comes from atoms, and most of their mass is in their protons and neutrons. But the quarks that make up protons and neutrons have relatively little mass. Most of the missing mass, it turns out, comes from the binding energy of the strong force itself. | | | Students who take notes the traditional way, with pen, pencil or even a stylus on a tablet, learn better. New research points to a mechanism: writing by hand stimulates brain activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory, reports science and tech journalist Charlotte Hu. But the findings do not hold Luddite implications. The problem is relying too heavily on technology, such as increasingly using smartphones to remember tasks and information, taking photos instead of memorizing visual data, or depending on GPS for navigation.
How it works: By drawing and otherwise enacting information, "you have to produce something that's meaningful," says Yadurshana Sivashankar, a cognitive neuroscience graduate student, who was not involved in the new study. As we write, we transform the information, paving and deepening interconnections in the brain, Sivashankar says, making it "much easier to access that information."
What the experts say: Typing yields minimal brain activity in the same areas. This study and others suggest that we type without thinking. "It's very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying. It kind of goes in through your ears and comes out through your fingertips, but you don't process the incoming information," says study co-author Audrey van der Meer. | | | Studies continue to show pluses to writing by hand. Image Source/Getty Images | | | • There are safer ways to bed-share with a baby. | 6 min read | | | • Rat neurons repair mouse brains that lack a sense of smell, enabling them to detect Oreo cookies. | 5 min read | | | • China's moon atlas is the most detailed ever made. | 3 min read | | | The new Moon atlas took more than 100 researchers over a decade to compile. Chinese Academy of Sciences via Xinhua/Alamy | | | • Election interference between nations is on the rise, particularly in the form of "cyber-enabled influence operations" (CEIO), writes cybersecurity researcher Jelena Vićić. Vićić uses this term to describe the use of misinformation as well as mixtures of factually correct information with "fake news." The CEIO approach involves targeting messages online to demographic slices of the public, reinforcing them with trolls posing as insiders. The intention is to change perceptions that lead to changes in voting and other behavior. Ultimately, "manageable points of social disagreement (expected in healthy democracies) can be turned into potentially unmanageable divisions," aka polarization. With about half the globe's population voting in elections this year, CEIOs are highly relevant. Vićić urges democracies to limit cyberspace access to authentic, legitimate users. | 5 min read | | | I've been riding the rails frequently these days for business and pleasure. Insufficient government funding for reliable, safe and attractive U.S. train travel is quite apparent in signal problems, train delays and malfunctioning electronic station doors (although Amtrak has made significant improvements in amenities in recent years). With the planet "on fire" from carbon pollution and U.S. traffic deaths more than double the average rate in other wealthy countries, we clearly need to invest more in trains and public transit, as Scientific American's editors wrote in a recent essay. That said, the pleasures of traveling on our aging train system, to my mind, still beat the misery of traveling trapped in a dangerous car or in a pressurized cabin aloft in the troposphere. | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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