created

He has not created a superhero, but radiation has given healing powers to the most unexpected material: to concrete

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It is difficult to imagine a world without concrete. This material has been fundamental in the history of mankind And it is still a pillar in modern construction. Although we are exploring more sustainable alternatives such as woodthere are constructions in which the concrete remains the clear protagonist. An example is nuclear power plants, which need to be resistant and well isolated. And a new study has investigated The effect of nuclear radiation on concrete. The most surprising thing is that radiation bombardment has an effect … curative. The study. The researchers at the University of Tokyo were not looking for a U -cement Self -backreparable concretebut the impact of nuclear radiation on concrete. Being the main structural material and armor in nuclear centrals and reactors, there is a concern about how radiation influences the aging of that armor. Specifically, the objective was to verify what is the impact on quartz, a common material in the rock that is used in the mixture of concrete, regardless of the part of the world in which that mixture is manufactured, and measure the impact on quartz It can help us understand how radiation affects the structure of the building. The good news is that, in theory, these concrete structures are more stable in the long term of what was believed, since radiation induces relaxation processes in quartz that allow some recovery of their internal structure. Irradia the quartz. To carry out the study, the effects of the irradiation of neutrons in different types of quartz were investigated. The synthetic, metacuarcita, sandstone and granodiorite quartz were irradiated at a temperature between 45 and 62 degrees Celsius, with a damage by displaced atom that ranged between 0.01 and 0.23 units. IPPEI Maruyama is one of those responsible for the investigation and Comment That the flow of neutron radiation “distorts the crystalline structure, causing amorphization and expansion.” This would be something negative because it implies that the material is not stable, but the surprising thing is that, due to the role of silicon and oxygen within the quartz grains, a healing process is triggered that mitigates the expansion of the volume of the material induced by Radiation. Self -repair. “At the same time there is a phenomenon in which distorted crystals recover and the expansion decreases,” says Maruyama. This is something that depends on the size of mineral crystals within concrete. For example, the largest grains showed a lower expansion, so the degradation of the concrete, which is one of the current concerns when building and maintaining nuclear centrals, could be less severe than what was thought. Likewise, the researcher confirms that “a lower radiation rate allows more time for self -reparation”, allowing nuclear energy plants to “operate safely for longer periods of time” of which it was expected initially. Next steps. There are still questions to be resolved, since the same team comments that they have a task ahead. The University of Tokyo’s team has been studying the impact of radiation on concrete since 2008, but confirms that it is an expensive field of study, so carrying out extensive research is not easy. Now, with this finding, Maruyama is confident that they will continue to explore the impact of nuclear radiation beyond quartz to, for example, see if that expansion phenomenon occurs in other minerals that make up the concrete. The objective is not only to predict how cracks are formed due to the expansion of minerals that are being bombarded by radiation, but how to select the best materials to create a much more resistant concrete for future nuclear energy plants. Beyond the centrals. We will have to see the next steps of the researchers to strengthen those first opinions of the study, but it is evident that getting a self -realistic concrete is an obsession. Due to CO2 emissions during its productionto what Its maintenance is very expensive Since it is ending world -sand reserves, having a material that repairs itself is something that different teams throughout the planet have been investigating for years. And progress has been made, such as mixtures with sugar either coffee that allow some self -repair of concrete. We will see, yes, what takes to use that new concrete on a day -to -day basis. Image | SAM300292 In Xataka | We use both cement that has become a serious problem. Solution: replace it with garbage

Some researchers claim to have created an AI as good as those of Openai and Deepseek for $ 50. And the data is real

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The cost of training of models of artificial intelligence (IA) More advanced is in the spotlight. And it is understandable that it is so. The irruption of the Chinese company model Deepseekwhich presumably has A moderate training costhas questioned the strategy and investments deployed so far by OpenAi, Google or Microsoft, among other companies. A brief review before moving forward: those responsible for Deepseek argue that the infrastructure they have used to train their agglutin model 2,048 chips H800 of Nvidia. And also that this process with 671,000 million parameters has cost 5.6 million dollars. However, some analysts defend that these figures do not reflect reality. The report prepared by SEMIANALYSIS He maintains that, in reality, the infrastructure used by Deepseek to train his AI model approximately 50,000 NVIDIA GPU with Hopper MicroAritecture. According to Dylan Patel, AJ Kourabi, Doug O’Laughlin and Reyk Knuhttsen, at least 10,000 of these chips are GPU H100 of Nvidia, and at least another 10,000 are GPU H800. The remaining chips, according to these analysts, are the cuts cut H20. The ‘S1’ model takes more firewood On January 31, a group of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington, both in the US, published in the repository of open access scientific articles Arxiv A text in which it claims to have managed to train an AI model with reasoning capacity and benefits comparable to those of OPENAI or DEPEEEK O1 models facing an investment of just under $ 50. A boat soon seems impossible. With that money a priori it is absolutely unfeasible to train an artificial intelligence model. And less an advanced and capable of competing from you to you with those of OpenAi or Deepseek. However, it is true. To understand how they have achieved it We need to investigate the strategy they have devised. On the one hand, those 50 dollars represent the cost of renting the cloud computing infrastructure to which they have resorted to carry out the training. It makes sense if the time invested is very moderate. ‘S1’ has been elaborated from the free qwen2.5-32b model developed by the Chinese laboratory Qwen But there is something else. Something very important. His reasoning model, which they have called S1, has been elaborated from the free artificial intelligence model QWEN2.5-32B developed by the Chinese Laboratory Qwen, alibaba. And its reasoning process is inspired by the GEMINI 2.0 Flash Thinking Google model. They have not left zero at all. An interesting note: the S1 model is available in GITHUB together with the data and code used by these scientists to train it. On the other hand, the training process lasted less than 30 minutes using only 16 NVIDIA H100 chips belonging to the cloud computing network used by these researchers. From here comes the cost of Somewhat less than 50 dollars. However, there is another data that is worth not overlooked: the S1 Reasoning Model has been generated by distillation of the Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking experimental model. Distillation is, in broad strokes, an automatic learning technique that allows the knowledge base to be transferred from a large and advanced model to a much smaller and efficient. This strategy saves many resources, although it does not serve to create models from scratch. Beyond the caraded 50 dollars of cost, the really important thing is that, as we have just verified, it is possible to put to tuning models of very competitive facing a much more restrained investment than those made by the large technology companies so far. Image | Luis Gomes More information | Arxiv | GITHUB In Xataka | Samsung is preparing to give TSMC a bars where it hurts most: the manufacture of the chips for ia

In the 90s Japan he created his own “Truman show.” A real one, starring a naked, alone and famel

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“The only person who really understands what Tuman felt, for what happened, it’s me.” The phrase is Volume Hamatsuaka ‘Nasubi’, a 49 -year -old Japanese comedian, and the Truman who refers to is not The former president from the US or the author of ‘In cold blood’ nor any other character of flesh and blood that has used that name ever. No. Nasubi talks about the truman who plays Jim Carrey in The movie 1998 directed by Peter Weir in which the adventures and misadventures of a man who star in a Telerreality program is narrated Without having the slightest idea. If you have seen it, you know how delusional your argument is. If not, there goes a quick summary: Truman Burbank is a thirty -year -old who leads his whole life as the star of a very popular reality whose existence does not know. Everything in his life is false, pure dare, figures and script. Your family, actors. His friends, actors. His work and home, a set. All 100% designed material for Prime Time. Although he doesn’t know so that he reality Be much more real. With such a story the logical thing would be to think that Nasubi exaggerates when he says that he is “The only person” capable of empathize “really” with the character of Truman; But the truth is that he knows what he is talking about. The Japanese comedian was not born and grew up on a television set, but at the end of the 90 realityin his country as popular as bloody and crazy. And without knowing it. Last year his experience was rescued in a documentary, ‘The Contest’directed by Clair Titley, and now recovers it ABC News To probably remind us one of the most delusional stories in television history. An aspiring famous comedian Nasubi’s case started in 1998 with a stroke of luck. Throughout his childhood he had aspired to become A famous comedian In Japan, so a good day decided to appear at the casting of a reality of the country entitled ‘Hisunu! Denpa Shōnen ‘. There he met another twenty loop comedians who had to choose between several cards. In Nasubi’s, who was about 22 years old, put “winner”. A luck. Or so he believed. The fact is that this card gave him the right to make the producers put a headphones, they bandaged his eyes and put him in a car without giving him explanations. “Then they took me to a room and forced me to undress completely because they wanted me to start from scratch. They took all my clothes“, Relatize ABC News. In it tiny apartment In which they left him alone and in leather he found a woner, a phone, a ball, blank postcards, a radio, a television without connection, a pillow, a gas burner, a shower and the services fair and essential for survive. And for fair we talk about heating, running water and electricity. Nothing else. No clothes. No food or bottled water. And of course Nothing company In his peculiar confinement. What explained to him? What was the goal? Nasubi was only told a part of the project. Incomplete and, so it is deduced from His testimonydiffuse enough so that he did not know what he participated in. The idea was that the young man complete a challenge that consisted of surviving with what he won in the raffles of magazines and radio programs. Hence the postcards, the ball and the magazines. The contest would end when the symbolic sum of one million yen (around 6,100 euros to the current change). If that happened they would give him a cash prize; Although what Nasubi really ambition was the other promise of the contest: launch your comedian career. Were you guarantee that it was to achieve it? None. The young man was given a camera with which he had to be recorded more or less Every two hours And I also knew that I was being filmed. With all that material, they explained, a comic program could then be mounted that perhaps (and only perhaps) would be broadcast on Japanese television. The promise was enough for Nasubi to continue without having an exact idea of What was really doing with videos. The promise of the prize and fame sufficient. After all ‘Hisunu! Denpa Shōnen ‘ It was a popular program that was broadcast on Nippon TV between 1998 and well entered 2002. If I wanted to leave at some point, Nasubi had the open apartment door. No one prevented him from crossing her. But he didn’t. Apart from the obvious motivation, which had been left totally naked, one of the questions that have been asked since then is why he moved on. The young man Recognize ABC News that “felt silent pressure.” “The person I was talking with was a very famous television producer, so I thought it would be better for my future in the entertainment industry not to go against him. I was trying to make me a name.” “I think there are many reasons,” explained last year to the BBC Tiley, director of the documentary on Nasubi. “One is very stoic and that is due to its place of origin, Fukushima, and her parents, who were very strict. He is also a very loyal person. He did not want to get into trouble and He was very young and naive. It is still incredibly confident. There is also that samurai spirit of ‘I will prevail and endure’ “. Endured. What if he endured. Nasubi was 15 months Living only in that apartment, naked, subsisting with what he earned by participating at a distance in magazine or radio raffles. The young man He came to recognize to To This American Life that during the first days he lost so many kilos that the producers ended up intervening to bring bread and water. Although that help lasted little. Only until he started earning money. What I got however It didn’t always serve … Read more

We have just created a new unconventional superconductor by combining materials that are not superconductors

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Since the discovery of superconductivity does something more than a centurymaterials with these types of characteristics have obsessed physicists. It is no wonder, since it is one of the more exotic phenomenabut also with enormous practical potential. The reason? They are materials that, when under certain temperature conditions, conduct electricity without resisting. Since there is no resistance, there is no loss of energy, but they also have other peculiarities such as “Meissner effect” which eliminates the flux of the magnetic field inside a magnet, allowing it to levitate above a superconductor. The problem is that conventional superconductors show their ‘superpowers’ at extremely low temperatures, requiring liquid helium to cool. That is why the scientific community has spent decades exploring the world of unconventional superconductors. They are those based on iron, some heavy metals and organic materials, many of them with complex crystalline structures and unusual electronic properties, but the most important thing is that the critical temperature is higher. And that is precisely what they have uncovered researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University. New unconventional superconductor By combining zirconium with different proportions of iron and nickel, researchers have been able to create a new superconductor that features a dome-shaped phase diagram. This means that it is a non-conventional superconductor, which implies that, to appreciate its potential, it is not necessary to lower the temperature extremely with liquid helium, but rather with liquid nitrogen. Superconductor structure It still requires a low critical temperature, but it is easier to maintain this temperature with liquid nitrogen. Furthermore, what is really relevant is that, for the first time, it has been demonstrated that a polycrystalline alloy of iron, nickel and zirconium has superconducting properties, something that neither iron nor nickel zirconide, which are not superconductors in crystalline form, have. . This advance is interesting because understanding and studying the unconventional superconductors It is crucial in order to push the temperature limit at which they can operate without losing their faculties, facilitating their arrival in practical applications such as advanced electronic devices, transport systems or superconducting cables. Furthermore, understanding the mechanisms behind unconventional superconductivity can lead to the discovery of superconducting materials at room temperature. This is the current goal of physics and it is something that we have been researching for yearssince it would be quite a revolution transmit electricity and energy without loss and without having to dissipate heat. The applications of room temperature superconductivity are immense. For example, facilitating the creation of nuclear fusion reactorselectric motors and any type of electrical system much more efficient. Also, accelerate quantum computing, particle accelerators, energy storage in superconducting coils, magnetic levitation devices or the possibility of transmitting electricity immediately, even with sources very far from cities. And steps have been taken in this regard, such as the superconductor that could operate at a comfortable 14.5 degrees Celsius. The problem with this superconductor was that it needed a pressure of 39 million psi, which would be equivalent, more or less, to 2.65 million times normal atmospheric pressure. An outrage, wow, but the good thing is that the industry is dedicated to evolving these unconventional superconductors and it seems that they are getting closer to being useful on a daily basis. Of course, there is still a way to go. Images | Eurekalert, Julien Bobroff In Xataka | This magnetic field experiment shatters all records. And in the process paves the way to nuclear fusion

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