We
hope this issue of SVConnections finds you well. The cancellation of the
2020 TechCon was a necessary step in keeping the SVC community safe.
Our focus has now turned to planning for the 2021 TechCon.
Click here
or the banner below to view the 2021 Call for Papers.
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In Locked Down Spain, a Physicist's Disease Model Research Turns Strikingly Real
Yamir Moreno studies how human networks spread COVID-19 and other diseases.
Yamir
Moreno is a physicist at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, where he
is also director of the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of
Complex Systems. For about 20 years, he has applied the tools of physics
to improve models of disease spread. He was among the pioneering
researchers who first incorporated knowledge about humans’ contact
networks and everyday movements to make epidemic models more realistic.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
Image credits:
Image courtesy of Yamir Moreno.
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Combatting Coronavirus, AI Helps Make Good Antibiotics, And The Sun’s Surface
A month worth of cool science stories, summed up.
In this
monthly science recap, Alistair Jennings from Inside Science sums up
some of the most interesting science topics from the past month.
Scientists sequence the coronavirus genome, which will help develop
treatments for the disease. Also, researchers from MIT trained a neural
network to recognize molecules that might make good antibiotics. And a
new telescope, 10,000 feet up in the mountains of Hawaii has taken the
most detailed images ever of the sun’s surface.
WATCH VIDEO.
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What Is A Boger Fluid?
It bounces, but it breaks likes glass and can flow like a liquid.
Remember
Silly Putty? That thick, elastic lump of goop that you could stretch
and squash every which way? For most of us, it’s a fond childhood
memory.
WATCH VIDEO.
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Researchers Look to Improve Leak Detection for the World’s Aging Water Pipes
In North America, water companies may lose up to 50% of water before it ever reaches customers.
Across
the United States, underground labyrinths of leaky pipes lose more than
a trillion gallons of water a year -- and the problem is mirrored
around the world. "It’s a huge problem, especially in the cities," said
Daniel Tartakovsky, a professor of energy resources engineering at
Stanford University in California. Tartakovsky and his former student
Abdulrahman Alawadhi from the University of California, San Diego have
proposed a way to improve a traditional method of detecting these leaks.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
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Visualizing Twitter Echo Chambers
Researchers examined some of the oldest rocks in western Greenland to probe the beginnings of today’s continents.
Scientists believe the way the Earth’s tectonic plates began shifting
and crashing into each other billions of years ago played a huge role in
how our planet evolved and life developed. Similar processes may also
play out on other planets. For Earth, the problem is, the remaining bits
of the earliest continents that would solve that primeval jigsaw puzzle
lie more than 100 miles below ground.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
Image credits
:
Baumann et al.
, Physical Review Letters
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UAVs Fly With Bats
Scientists fly the friendly skies with unmanned aerial vehicles to study bat behavior.
Bats
are most active after sundown. That’s when they start to leave their
roosts -- caves, rock crevices, old buildings, bridges, mines or trees.
It can be a spectacular site when bats come out at night, swarming the
sky by the millions. But this nighttime ritual also comes with questions
from scientists who study bats -- how do bats use their echolocation to
avoid collisions with each other at high speeds, and fly so close
together in such high numbers? To find some answers, researchers are
sending UAVs up in the air to fly with bats and collect data on their
unique behaviors.
WATCH VIDEO.
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Lizards in Different Cities Evolve the Same Way
Genetic differences between forest lizards and city lizards show evolution can play out the same way again and again.
In
a famous thought experiment, the late evolutionary biologist Steven J.
Gould once asked: If you could play the tape of life over again from the
beginning, would it come out the same way? "It's this question about
the roles of fate and chance in shaping the world that we live in," said
Shane Campbell-Staton, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA
.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
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Bold Fish Maintain Ecosystem With Their Waste
Study of fish personalities highlights the importance of wildlife as individuals, not just species.
People
have unique personalities, and that's part of what makes them special
and important. Aparently, the same is true of fish.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
Image credits:
Rafael Saldaña via
Flickr
Rights information:
CC BY 2.0
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Weird Waves: From Wildfires to Heart Arrhythmia
What
links a wildfire raging across a forest to the electric signals
rippling through our hearts? Enter the world of waves in excitable
media.
If
you've ever tried to stick tape to a dusty surface, you know the
dilemma most spiders face when trying to catch moths. Moth wings are
covered in tiny scales that slough off at a touch, allowing moths to
escape dangers such as spider webs. But some spiders have evolved a
special glue that instantly soaks under the scales and down to the base
of the wing, locking everything together into a solid mass.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
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Experts Warn That Some Marathoners May Be Pushing Themselves Too Hard
Review
study examines why people are suffering heart attacks during high
intensity and endurance exercises such as marathons and triathlons.
In
the ancient Greek legend, the messenger Pheidippides ran from the
battlefield of Marathon to Athens -- a distance of more than 20 miles --
to bring news of the Greek's victory over the Persians in the battle of
Marathon. Then he collapsed and died.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
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The Hot and Cold of Growing Old
A
special imaging technique takes pictures of blood flow under the skin,
revealing how and why some elderly suffer poor blood flow.
In
2003, the hottest summer in more than 400 years hit Europe, killing
70,000 people. Most of the victims were elderly. People are more
affected by temperature as they age -- the summers feel hotter and the
winters feel colder. But why are heatwaves so dangerous to older people?
And what can we do to minimize deaths from the next record-breaking
summer? As global warming makes temperature extremes more likely, it's
as important as ever to understand how humans beat the heat.
WATCH VIDEO.
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Far Away Planets May Appear Fluffier Than They Are
Puzzling planets with the apparent density of cotton candy probably have rings, according to a new study.
Scientists
have begun to spot a growing number of planets beyond our solar system.
Astronomers call a portion of them "super-puffs" because they are far
less dense than Saturn or any other known world. But the conundrum could
be solved if the astronomers simply reconsider the planets' shapes and
include rings on them, according to a new study.
READ FULL ARTICLE.
Image credits
:
Robin Dienel
Rights information
:
Courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science
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The Spitzer Space Telescope Signs Off
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OUR MISSION
Striving to MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the lives of our students.
One
of the SVC’s long-term goals has always been to support charitable,
educational, and scientific activities. As its first initiative, the
Foundation created a scholarship program aimed at supporting
enterprising students and practitioners who have an interest in
furthering their education in the field of vacuum coating
technology.
The
Foundation also grants travel awards to students to attend and present
technical papers at the annual SVC Technical Symposium. Since its
inception, both programs have awarded over $250,000 in scholarships to
students from the United States, Canada, China, Lithuania and Spain.
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Society of Vacuum Coaters | PO Box 10628, Albuquerque, NM 87184
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