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+--- Thread: Hawking at it again + First proof of multiverse? + Mathematics 2 improve human health (/thread-1960.html)
Hawking at it again + First proof of multiverse? + Mathematics 2 improve human health - C C - Feb 3, 2016
Stephen Hawking Reith lecture: Mini black holes could provide world electricity demand
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stephen-hawking-reith-lecture-mini-black-holes-could-provide-world-electricity-demand-1541716
EXCERPT: Stephen Hawking has said that mini black holes could potentially provide enough energy to supply the world's electricity demands – but could also destroy the planet. He made these comments as part of the BBC's Reith lectures. The special series on black holes looks at the physicist's ideas about these collapsed stars from which nothing can escape....
Detecting Parallel Universes Hidden Inside Back Holes — The First Proof of the Multiverse?
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2589
EXCERPT: It’s hard to say what’s the most exciting element of this new paper on parallel universes, the inflationary multiverse, and black holes, by Tufts cosmologist (and FQXi member) Alex Vilenkin and colleagues. Is it the idea that black holes hide baby universes inside them — inflating their own spacetimes — connected to our universe by wormholes? Could it be that, according to the authors, astronomers may soon be able to find evidence to confirm this crazy notion? Perhaps it’s the fact that this paper could be presenting the first way to find definitive evidence that an inflationary multiverse of parallel worlds exists. Oh yes, and the authors also say that such black holes could have seeded supermassive black holes — the origin of which remains a mystery — *and*, in some of the scenarios they’ve looked at, they could comprise dark matter, the invisible stuff that makes up most of the matter in the universe. Phew! No wonder the paper by Vilenkin along with Jaume Garriga, at the University of Barcelona, and Jun Zhang also at Tufts, is almost 50 pages long...
Using mathematics to improve human health
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160202143136.htm
RELEASE: Scientists at the Universities of York and Torino have used mathematics as a tool to provide precise details of the structure of protein nanoparticles, potentially making them more useful in vaccine design.
Working with a world-leading group at the University of Connecticut in the USA, who pioneered the development of self-assembling protein nanoparticles (SAPNs) for vaccine design, they have used advanced mathematical calculations to create a complete picture of the surface morphology of these particles. The research is published in the Biophysical Journal.
The nanoparticles self-assemble symmetrically using protein building blocks to create cage or shell-like architectures, which serve a range of functions such as storage, catalysis and structural scaffolding, or as enclosures for viral genomes. But electron microscopy and neutron scattering data has limited effectiveness for researchers attempting to classify the morphology of the nanoparticles.
Using mathematics to predict the geometries of nanoparticles can help scientists to select those whose structures are the most advantageous for the design of new vaccines. The constant need for vaccine development as new strains of disease evolve has generated a world market worth $56 billion a year.
The new study focused on a class of artificial SAPNs designed by Professor Peter Burkhard, a structural biophysicist at the University of Connecticut. When chemically attached to antigens from pathogens, nanoparticles can create simple, potent and cost-effective vaccines. Clinical tests on a malaria vaccine designed in this way are due to start soon.
Researchers at York and Torino, led by biophysicist Professor Reidun Twarock, of the University of York's York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis and the Departments of Mathematics and Biology, used a mathematical tool called tiling theory to predict the symmetric classification of different particle morphologies of SAPNs. They adapted the tiling approach Professor Twarock previously pioneered in the context of virology to model protein nanoparticles with a mixture of local five- and three-fold symmetry axes.
Professor Twarock said: "We have developed a mathematical approach that allows you to identify the surface structures of these nanoparticles that you cannot get from experimentation alone. Mathematics plays an important role here because it acts like a microscope and helps to give researchers insights they couldn't get experimentally."
Professor Burkhard added: "The protein nanoparticles show great promise as future vaccine carriers and our malaria vaccine will be tested in a clinical setting within the next year. Understanding the geometric principles of the self-assembly to nanoparticles is essential for the successful design and development as vaccines."