A New Map of the Universe, Painted With Cosmic Neutrinos | Science Says People Who Adopt This Simple Habit Wind Up With Bigger Brains | The world’s most liveable cities in 2023 | Paris and Berlin compromise on reform of the electricity market

View online | Unsubscribe (one-click).
For inquiries/unsubscribe issues, Contact Us

A New Map of the Universe, Painted With Cosmic Neutrinos - WIRED

Of the 100 trillion neutrinos that pass through you every second, most come from the sun or Earth’s atmosphere. But a smattering of the particles—those moving much faster than the rest—traveled here from powerful sources farther away. For decades, astrophysicists have sought the origin of these “cosmic” neutrinos. Now, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has finally collected enough of them to reveal telltale patterns in where they’re coming from.

In a paper published in June in Science, the team revealed the first map of the Milky Way in neutrinos. (Usually our galaxy is mapped out with photons, particles of light.) The new map shows a diffuse haze of cosmic neutrinos emanating from throughout the Milky Way, but strangely, no individual sources stand out. “It’s a mystery,” said Francis Halzen, who leads IceCube.

The results follow an IceCube study from last fall, also in Science, that was the first to connect cosmic neutrinos to an individual source. It showed that a large chunk of the cosmic neutrinos detected so far by the observatory have come from the heart of an “active” galaxy called NGC 1068. In the galaxy’s glowing core, matter spirals into a central supermassive black hole, somehow making cosmic neutrinos in the process.

Continued here

Want to accelerate software development at your company? See how we can help.

Science Says People Who Adopt This Simple Habit Wind Up With Bigger Brains - Inc.com

In recent years, we've seen all kinds of common, simple behaviors that researchers say might contribute to, or at least be associated with, memory, leanring and brain health.

Now, scientists who combed the data compiled in the U.K. Biobank study say they've identified another behavior worth considering: an association between the habit of taking short, daytime naps, and less brain volume shrinkage as people age.

Writing in the journal Sleep Health (thank you, browser history), researchers from University College, London and Uruguay's University of the Republic looked at data from adults aged 40 to 69, "and found a causal link between habitual napping and larger total brain volume," according to an official statement.

Continued here

Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium

The world’s most liveable cities in 2023 - The Economist

LIVING CONDITIONS in cities across the world have fully recovered from the deterioration caused by the covid-19 pandemic, EIU’s latest liveability index shows. It rates living conditions in 173 cities across five categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Cities in the Asia-Pacific region have rebounded the most. The index also suggests that life in cities is a bit better than at any time in the past 15 years. Our charts below show which cities topped the ranking.

The liveability survey was designed to help companies calculate hardship allowances for staff who were moving to a new—and possibly less tolerable—city. As a by-product, it also provides a snapshot of the most, and least, desirable cities to live in, at least if you’re an expat. Vienna, with its excellent mix of stability, culture and entertainment, and reliable infrastructure, tops the ranking for the fourth time in five years. Copenhagen, a similarly sized city with many of the same characteristics, is second. Melbourne, a fixture at the top of the ranking in the past, comes in third. In all, nine of the top ten cities are small to mid-sized; all ten, and indeed most of the top 50, are in rich countries. Big cities with high levels of crime, congestion and density tend to fare less well. London—down 12 places from a year ago—comes in 46th and New York is down ten spots to 69th.

Wellington and Auckland have climbed 35 and 25 places compared with a year ago; Hanoi is up 20 and Kuala Lumpur jumped 19 positions. Post-pandemic improvements in education and health-care scores across Asia, Africa and the Middle East were the main reasons for this year’s rise in living standards.

Continued here

Paris and Berlin compromise on reform of the electricity market - The Economist

When Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz met for a couple of days of talks along with their top ministers in Hamburg earlier this month, the French president and the German chancellor tried to present a united front. They munched Fischbrötchen (fish sandwiches) with their wives and took a tour of Hamburg harbour. The two-day meeting was meant to reset the most important bilateral relationship within the EU, one that had become increasingly troubled owing to a host of acrimonious disagreements on defence, EU budget rules and energy policies.

The visit seemed to go well. The tandem even made progress on perhaps the most tricky dossier, a reform of the EU electricity market that is meant to ease the burden of price spikes for European households and businesses and to bolster Europe’s competitiveness against America and China. Yet behind the scenes France and Germany continued to argue. That went on until the very day of a meeting of EU energy ministers on October 17th. And even though they managed to strike a compromise, there is plenty of bad blood. Paris sees the deal as a French victory; the Germans insist that their views largely prevailed.

The core of the row is over how EU members can subsidise their industries in the face of the hefty increases in energy prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. France wants to extend to all its 56 nuclear power plants instruments called “contracts for difference” (CfD). These are guarantees issued by the government that oblige it to stump up for the difference if market prices turn out lower than an agreed “strike price”, but let it pocket the extra if the market price is higher. Berlin wants cfds to be an incentive for investment in renewable energy that should be applied only to new plants. It worries that their use for France’s nuclear fleet will deter investment in renewables.

Continued here

You are receiving this mailer as a TradeBriefs subscriber.
We fight fake/biased news through human curation & independent editorials.
Your support of ads like these makes it possible. Alternatively, get TradeBriefs Premium (ad-free) for only $2/month
If you still wish to unsubscribe, you can unsubscribe from all our emails here
Our address is 309 Town Center 1, Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059 - 93544947