motd - 07/##/2024
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07/29/2024 Tips to increase iPhone battery life:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-improved-my-iphones-battery-life-by-changing-these-10-settings/
1. Disable the always on display, haptic feedback, Siri,
notifications, AirDrop, Live Activities, lock screen
widgets, and background refresh
2. Reduce refresh rate (Settings->Accessibility->Motion->Limit Frame Rate)
3. Enable optimized charging (Settings->Battery->Battery Health & Charging)
4. Use low power mode
I use all of these (except #2, which my iPhone doesn't
support). For #4, I have a Shortcut to automatically switch
to lower power mode when the battery falls below ~ 90%, see:
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/auto-enable-low-power-mode-iphone/
https://mashable.com/article/how-to-enter-low-power-mode-on-iphone-automatically
07/29/2024 Ice-0:
https://www.sci.news/physics/ice-0-13136.html
07/29/2024 Art imitates life:
https://www.gateworld.net/news/2024/07/real-life-crisis-sidelined-stargates-daniel-jackson/
07/26/2024 A diamond *much* bigger than the Ritz?
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-fortune-of-hidden-diamonds-could-be-concealed-inside-mercury
07/23/2024 How many children did Lady Macbeth have?
https://lifeandletters.substack.com/p/how-many-children-had-lady-macbeth
"We know Lady Macbeth had a child at some point ... [a]nd we
know that Macbeth is concerned about his 'fruitless crown,'
the perennial problem of succession in the absence of an
heir. 'Why does Lady Macbeth allude to a dead infant?' or
'Why are the Macbeths childless?' are perfectly sensible
questions to ask, and many literary scholars have written
very good articles about them. It's the 'how many' that
makes the question ridiculous, demanding a degree of
precision the play will never provide."
07/23/2024 On the (long) road to element 120:
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-element-door-heavier-atoms.html
"[A]n international team of researchers led by Berkeley Lab's
Heavy Element Group announced that they have made known
superheavy element 116 using a titanium beam, a breakthrough
that is a key stepping stone towards making element 120."
07/23/2024 New lattice QCD calculation may resolve the muon g-2 anomaly:
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/calculation-solves-muon-g-2-puzzle/
07/22/2024 Heparin may help prevent necrosis around snakebite wounds:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/common-blood-thinners-could-combat-snakebites-preventing-tissue-damage-and-amputations-study-finds-180984747/
07/22/2024 Nuclear spin anomaly resolved:
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-scientists-debated-anomaly-nuclei.html
"[Previous] measurements found that for fast rotations, for
example in nuclei like neon-20 or chromium-48, the energy
for spinning changes unexpectedly. Scientists attributed
this to an anomalous increase in the moment of inertia
for fast rotations, likely due to the nuclear matter
bulging out. Earlier models suggested that fast-rotating
nuclei ultimately become spheres, but newer models have
found deformed shapes. Now, large-scale simulations of
atomic nuclei have revealed surprising new explanations
of the elusive physics of fast-spinning nuclei.
...
[New s]imulations d[id] not find the anomalous increase.
Instead, they reveal[ed] a change in the interior of the
nucleus. ... [The simulations showed that] several
competing shapes emerge, some prolate and some oblate, which
on average appear spherical."
07/19/2024 Spelling the elements:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/07/17/misc-91/
Arsenic: Ar-Se-Ni-C
Ar-Se-N-I-C
Astatine: As-Ta-Ti-Ne
Bismuth: Bi-Sm-U-Th
B-I-Sm-U-Th
Carbon: C-Ar-B-O-N
Ca-Rb-O-N
Copper: Co-P-P-Er
C-O-P-P-Er
Iron: Ir-O-N
Krypton: Kr-Y-Pt-O-N
Neon: Ne-O-N
Oganesson: O-Ga-Ne-S-S-O-N
O-Ga-N-Es-S-O-N
Phosphorous: P-H-O-S-P-Ho-Ru-S
P-H-O-S-P-H-O-Ru-S
P-H-Os-P-Ho-Ru-S
P-H-Os-P-H-O-Ru-S
P-Ho-S-P-Ho-Ru-S
P-Ho-S-P-H-O-Ru-S
Silicon: Si-Li-Co-N
Si-Li-C-O-N
S-I-Li-C-O-N
S-I-Li-Co-N
Silver: Si-Lv-Er
S-I-Lv-Er
Tennessine: Te-N-Ne-S-S-I-Ne
Te-N-N-Es-Si-Ne
Te-N-N-Es-S-I-Ne
Tin: Ti-N
Xenon: Xe-N-O-N
Xe-No-N
07/19/2024 Inverse Pythagorean theorem:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/07/19/inside-out-4/
07/17/2024 git commit messages are optional:
https://schpet.com/note/git-commit-messages-are-optional
$ git commit --allow-empty-message -m ""
07/17/2024 The last common ancestor lived ~ 4.2B years ago:
https://www.sci.news/biology/last-universal-common-ancestor-13093.html
07/15/2024 The Gallium Anomaly:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-could-explain-the-gallium-anomaly-20240712/
"Using a nuclear reactor at the McClellan Nuclear Research
Center at the University of California, Davis,
[researchers] irradiated 'very pure germanium material,'
... producing germanium-71. They then analyzed the
samples over 80 days to see how long it took the atoms to
decay.
They arrived at a half-life of 11.468 days, extremely
close to the 1985 measurement, ruling the half-life out as
the explanation for the gallium anomaly.
...
Another proposed explanation was that physicists had
miscalculated the probability of neutrinos from the source
interacting with the gallium. But in September 2023,
[other researchers] also ruled out this possibility.
...
Th[is] leaves physicists in an uncomfortable position.
Either there is still some error that no one has thought
of, or, as [one researcher] put it, 'something unusual is
going on with neutrinos.'"
07/14/2024 Alternatives to OpenBSD's strlcpy(3):
https://nrk.neocities.org/articles/not-a-fan-of-strlcpy
07/14/2024 WinNT For New World Macs:
https://github.com/Wack0/maciNTosh
07/05/2024 Durandal has disappeared:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology-news-history-archaeology/durandal-sword-stolen-0021035
Maybe he is heading to Lh'owon?
07/02/2024 Exciting nucleons with lasers:
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-physicists-laser-atom-nucleus-enable.html
"By embedding a thorium atom within a highly transparent
crystal and bombarding it with lasers, [a research] group
has succeeded in getting the nucleus of the thorium atom
to absorb and emit photons like electrons in an atom do."
See also: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/s75
07/01/2024 Our solar system may have originally been toroidal:
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-shape-of-the-solar-system-has-changed-dramatically-scientists-say
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