Sep 7, 2020 02:52 AM
New evidence that the quantum world is even stranger than we thought
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-evidence-q...ought.html
INTRO: New experimental evidence of a collective behavior of electrons to form "quasiparticles" called "anyons" has been reported by a team of scientists at Purdue University... (MORE)
Mathematicians Report New Discovery About the Dodecahedron
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathemati...-20200831/
INTRO: Even though mathematicians have spent over 2,000 years dissecting the structure of the five Platonic solids — the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron — there’s still a lot we don’t know about them. Now, a trio of mathematicians has resolved one of the most basic questions about the dodecahedron.
Suppose you stand at one of the corners of a Platonic solid. Is there some straight path you could take that would eventually return you to your starting point without passing through any of the other corners? For the four Platonic solids built out of squares or equilateral triangles — the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron and icosahedron — mathematicians recently figured out that the answer is no. Any straight path starting from a corner will either hit another corner or wind around forever without returning home. But with the dodecahedron, which is formed from 12 pentagons, mathematicians didn’t know what to expect.
Now Jayadev Athreya, David Aulicino and Patrick Hooper have shown that an infinite number of such paths do in fact exist on the dodecahedron. Their paper, published in May in Experimental Mathematics, shows that these paths can be divided into 31 natural families... (MORE)
Some beetles can be eaten by a frog, then walk out the other end (digestive chemistry defenses)
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/a...-other-end
EXCERPTS: For most insects, the sticky, slingshot ride straight into a frog’s mouth spells the end. But not for one stubborn water beetle. It doesn’t succumb to the frog’s digestive juices. Instead, the Regimbartia attenuata will travel down the frog’s throat, swim through the stomach and slide along the intestines. Afterward, it climbs out the frog’s butt, alive and well ... this new research is the first to document prey actively escaping out the backside of a predator.
[...] The beetle’s aquatic lifestyle likely prepared it to survive digestion, Sugiura now says. It has a streamlined, but sturdy, exoskeleton. This may shield the insect from digestive juices. The beetle can also breathe underwater via air pockets tucked under its hardened wings. This likely prevents suffocation...(MORE - details)
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-evidence-q...ought.html
INTRO: New experimental evidence of a collective behavior of electrons to form "quasiparticles" called "anyons" has been reported by a team of scientists at Purdue University... (MORE)
Mathematicians Report New Discovery About the Dodecahedron
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathemati...-20200831/
INTRO: Even though mathematicians have spent over 2,000 years dissecting the structure of the five Platonic solids — the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron — there’s still a lot we don’t know about them. Now, a trio of mathematicians has resolved one of the most basic questions about the dodecahedron.
Suppose you stand at one of the corners of a Platonic solid. Is there some straight path you could take that would eventually return you to your starting point without passing through any of the other corners? For the four Platonic solids built out of squares or equilateral triangles — the cube, tetrahedron, octahedron and icosahedron — mathematicians recently figured out that the answer is no. Any straight path starting from a corner will either hit another corner or wind around forever without returning home. But with the dodecahedron, which is formed from 12 pentagons, mathematicians didn’t know what to expect.
Now Jayadev Athreya, David Aulicino and Patrick Hooper have shown that an infinite number of such paths do in fact exist on the dodecahedron. Their paper, published in May in Experimental Mathematics, shows that these paths can be divided into 31 natural families... (MORE)
Some beetles can be eaten by a frog, then walk out the other end (digestive chemistry defenses)
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/a...-other-end
EXCERPTS: For most insects, the sticky, slingshot ride straight into a frog’s mouth spells the end. But not for one stubborn water beetle. It doesn’t succumb to the frog’s digestive juices. Instead, the Regimbartia attenuata will travel down the frog’s throat, swim through the stomach and slide along the intestines. Afterward, it climbs out the frog’s butt, alive and well ... this new research is the first to document prey actively escaping out the backside of a predator.
[...] The beetle’s aquatic lifestyle likely prepared it to survive digestion, Sugiura now says. It has a streamlined, but sturdy, exoskeleton. This may shield the insect from digestive juices. The beetle can also breathe underwater via air pockets tucked under its hardened wings. This likely prevents suffocation...(MORE - details)