A team at Daimler Trucks North America have just been awarded the first license for an autonomous commercial vehicle on the roads of the United States. The license was granted in Nevada, a state known for its progressive attitudes to self-driving vehicles.
Daimler’s Antonio Edgar and Steve Nadig take Jack Stewart for a spin with ‘Highway Pilot’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02rcqpb?ocid=socialflow_facebook
A multi-antibiotic-resistant strain of deadly typhoid fever has spread from Asia to Africa, where it might have reached epidemic proportions, warned an international research team in a study published in the journal Nature Genetics on May 11.
The 74 researchers from nearly two dozen countries, who performed one of the most comprehensive genetic analyses ever conducted on a human infectious agent, concluded that a strain of Salmonella Typhi known as H58 poses an “ever-increasing public health threat.”
“H58 is displacing other typhoid strains, completely transforming the genetic architecture of the disease and creating a previously underappreciated and on-going epidemic,” the researchers said in a statement.
People contract typhoid fever through food or beverages contaminated with urine or fecal matter from infected people, some of whom may be asymptomatic carriers. The disease’s symptoms are vague, including fever, chills, headaches, and constipation, which can make diagnosis difficult. When left untreated, it leads to death in about 20 percent of cases.
Although there is a vaccine against the disease, its high cost prevents its use in the poorer countries where typhoid fever is more common. Instead, people in those countries typically treat the disease with antibiotics or even seek to prevent it by taking antibiotics before they become ill.
This widespread antibiotic use has favored the evolution of a potent strain of S. Typhi that is resistant to all frontline antibiotics as well as many newer drugs such as ciprofloxacin and azithromycin, the researchers found. They genetically sequenced 1,832 separate samples of the bacteria collected from 63 countries from 1992 to 2013. A full 47 percent of the samples came from the H58 multidrug resistant strain. The data showed that in recent years, H58 has actually been pushing out other strains, some of which had been dominant in their regions for hundreds of years.
“We were all amazed at what we saw,” said researcher Gordon Dougan of the Sanger Institute. “When you see the data, it’s pretty stark. It’s very convincing that it’s becoming the dominant strain. This is one of the first pictures we’ve had of how antimicrobial resistance is impacting on the way we treat infectious diseases, and how we will have to tackle them.”
The analysis showed that H58 emerged in South Asia approximately 30 years ago and spread from there to the rest of Asia as well as Fiji and eastern and southern Africa. The strain has apparently crossed to Africa from Asia several times in the past few years, and it appears to have already have caused previously unreported epidemics in several African nations.
“The most striking thing to me is that typhoid was previously considered a disease of Asia, not Africa,” Dougan said. “This has transformed the global epidemiology. This beast can get into a new area and it’s at an advantage, because a lot of competition is wiped out by antibiotics.
Various S. Typhi strains have always been able to trade genetic material as they pass from person to person, and this process has led to antibiotic resistance since at least the 1970s, said researcher Kathryn Holt of the University of Melbourne. In the past, however, these traits were short-lived. In H58, they seem to have become permanent, “which means multiple antibiotic resistant typhoid is here to stay,” she said.
Even conventional typhoid is already a major global killer, the researchers warned.
“This is killing 200,000 people a year and no one is really noticing,” said co-author Nick Feasey of the Liverpool Tropical School of Tropical Diseases.
Typhoid fever spreads readily following major disasters, and the researchers expressed concern that H58, which is found in Kathmandu, could cause a wave of new infections following the recent massive earthquake in Nepal.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049717_epidemic_Typhoid_fever_superbug.html#ixzz3aT1BgeIz
What does it mean to be a perfectionist? In truth, there’s no simple answer to that question, yet Dr. Joachim Stoeber, a professor at the University of Kent, has illuminated some of the traits that go hand-in-hand with each of the three types recognized by psychologists. His new study finds the kind of perfectionist known as other-oriented — those who want others to meet impossibly high standards — tend to be narcissistic and antisocial with a mean-spirited sense of humor.
In fact, they “show unique positive relationships with the Dark Triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and unique negative relationships with nurturance, intimacy, and social development goals,” Stoeber noted in his study.
Run!
Over the past couple of decades, psychologists have drawn a more nuanced picture of those who strive for flawlessness. In 1991, Hewitt and Flett’s model of perfectionism identified multidimensional aspects of this personality trait and differentiated three main forms: self-oriented, socially-prescribed, and other-oriented perfectionists. Self-oriented perfectionists set exceedingly high standards for themselves and strive to meet them. By contrast, socially prescribed perfectionists feel the high standards they wish to meet have been set by others; this type of perfectionist believes acceptance by others is conditional upon meeting such standards.
While both types tend to be highly self-critical, many studies suggest the latter style of perfectionism may be self-destructive as their attempt at flawlessness is likely to mesh with neuroticism, maladaptive coping, and negativity.
Yet, one final style of perfectionism also exists: those who are other-oriented, as the name indicates, expect others to be perfect and they become critical when others fail to meet such expectations.
“Like most personality characteristics, other-oriented perfectionism is what we call normally distributed,” Stoeber told Medical Daily. “Most people have medium levels of other-oriented perfectionism, a few have high levels of other-oriented perfectionism, and a few low levels.” He further explained that there’s overlap between the three forms with some people, though primarily displaying one type, have elements of the other two types. “Perfectionism can be what we call domain-specific,” Stoeber also said, so that “some people are perfectionistic only in certain domains of life.”
Past studies have linked those who fit into the other-oriented category with off-putting behaviors. Naturally researchers have wondered, What other characteristics go along with this trait? For the current study, Stoeber examined 229 university students to investigate how the three forms of perfectionism relate to humor, emotionality, self-interest, and self-regard, among other key traits.
What he discovered helps to more clearly differentiate the three types of perfectionists.
The self-oriented perfectionists showed an interest in others. They preferred affiliative humor — jokes that boost positive social feelings — and shy away from mean-spirited wit. Importantly, they lacked callous or uncaring traits and also showed themselves to be less competitive in nature.
Socially-prescribed perfectionists, by contrast, made self-depreciating jokes and ranked low on the scale of self-esteem and self-regard. Additionally, they tended to be unemotional and also a bit antisocial.
Far more antisocial were the other-oriented perfectionists, who enjoyed making jokes at the expense of others and generally displayed callousness. At the same time, they had high self-regard and a sense of superiority, and so found it difficult to fit into a wider social circle.
“The findings provide further evidence that [other-oriented perfectionism] is a ‘dark’ form of perfectionism positively associated with narcissistic, antisocial, and uncaring personality characteristics,” wrote Stoeber in his conclusion.
Interestingly, some past studies have linked perfectionism, no matter its flavor, with problematic family functioning and harsh early experiences, which may include childhood bullying (physical or verbal) and unsympathetic, punitive parenting. Seems we all would be wise to remember the word personality comes from the Latin persona, which simply means “mask.”
Source: Stoeber J. How other-oriented perfectionism differs from self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism: Further findings. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. 2015.
Three type 2 diabetes drugs — canagliflozin (Invokana), dapagliflozin (Farxiga), and empagliflozin (Jardiance) — may lead to ketoacidosis, the FDA warned today.
The sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are designed to lower blood sugar in patients with diabetes, but the FDA is investigating a connection between the drugs and dangerously high acid levels in the blood. They are also looking at whether changes will need to be made to the prescribing information, they said in the warning, which is posted online.
“Healthcare professionals should evaluate for the presence of acidosis, including ketoacidosis, in patients experiencing these signs or symptoms,” the FDA said. “Discontinue SGLT2 inhibitors if acidosis is confirmed, and take appropriate measures to correct the acidosis and monitor sugar levels.” The signs and symptoms listed included difficulty breathing, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, confusion, and unusual fatigue or sleepiness.
The FDA is issuing the warning after they searched their database of adverse event complaints, they said in an announcement. From March 2013 to June 2014 there were 20 cases of DKA reported, most of them with type 2 diabetes as the indication. Hospitalization was required in all of the cases, and the median time to onset was 2 weeks after starting the drug.
“I would encourage that these cases be studied so we can learn the scenarios behind them so they can be broadcast,” said Farhad Zangeneh, MD, medical director of Endocrine, Diabetes and Osteoporosis Clinic, in an interview with MedPage Today. “The important thing here it is good to know as much info as available.”
But he added that we should look at the background before issuing a general warning against the class. He manages hundreds of patients with the three SGLT2 inhibitors, he said, and has never had any problems. He suggested starting with low doses and making sure that patients are always well hydrated, have no renal problems, and get their lab work done.
Many doctors prescribe SGLT2 inhibitors off-label to type 1 diabetes patients, said Zangeneh, but in that case, the patients should at least be “super-patients” — they should be well controlled, hand-picked, excellent carb-counters.
“Certainly this report warrants a closer look at these cases to find out the exact details of the individual scenarios,” he added.
In one of the studies presented here, researchers led by Foiqa Chaudhry, MD, an endocrinology fellow at the University of Florida, described two cases of DKA that developed after the patients were taking SGLT2 inhibitors. An 18-year-old female presented with persistent vomiting and abdominal pain for the last 24 hours. She’d had type 2 diabetes since she was 8, but had never had ketoacidosis.
She had started taking metformin and canagliflozin 3 weeks earlier, and her primary care physician increased the dosage from 100 mg to 300 mg one week earlier. She was treated for diabetic ketoacidosis with an insulin drip and an IVF, and was eventually discharged.
In the other case, a 55-year-old man presented with dizziness. It was found that he had recently started taking glipizide and dapagliflozin. He was treated for mild DKA and sent home. The authors of the paper said that the safety of SGLT2 therapy warrants further study.
“In the cases presented, given the degree of poor baseline glycemic control, it is concerning if these agents propagated the state of dehydration thus accelerating the development of DKA,” they wrote. “As such, it is suggested that more specific counseling be given to patients regarding hydration status when being started on this class of medications.”
In an email to MedPage Today, Chaudhry said, “Though causality cannot be established with case reports alone, in our care of two patients with type 2 DM [diabetes mellitus] who developed hyperglycemic DKA — which happened to be temporally related to the use of SGLT2 inhibitor therapy — one must at least be vigilant about monitoring the volume status in these patients to avoid the potential complication of DKA.”
And in a late-breaking trial of 10 type 1 diabetes patients on insulin, liraglutide, and dapagliflozin, one of the patients developed DKA, according to the researchers, who were led by Nitesh Kuhadiya, MD, at the University of Buffalo.
“This is the first study demonstrating that the addition of dapagliflozin to insulin and liraglutide in patients with T1D results in a significant improvement in glycemia,” they wrote. “However, care would have to be exercised in terms of the reduction in insulin dose and thus the occurrence of euglycemic DKA.”
The FDA said that the cases they analyzed were atypical because glucose levels were only mildly elevated at less than 200 mg/dL in some reports. With type 1 diabetes patients who have DKA, these levels are usually greater than 250 mg/dL, they noted.
They added that, in most of the cases, a high anion gap metabolic acidosis was accompanied by higher blood or urine ketones. “Potential DKA-triggering factors that were identified in some cases included acute illness or recent significant changes such as infection, urosepsis, trauma, reduced caloric or fluid intake, and reduced insulin dose,” they wrote. “Potential factors, other than hypoinsulinemia, contributing to the development of a high anion gap metabolic acidosis identified in the cases included hypovolemia, acute renal impairment, hypoxemia, reduced oral intake, and a history of alcohol use.”
But they noted that for half of the cases, there was no triggering factor that was listed.
One other late-breaking study found that dapagliflozin improved beta-cell function and insulin sensitivity in 24 patients with type 2 diabetes. Lead author Carolina Solis-Herrera, MD, a resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said that there was no evidence of DKA in their trial.
“We did not find that in our study, but it’s definitely something that should be looked into,” she told MedPage Today.
The FDA asked healthcare professionals to report adverse events and side effects from these products to their MedWatch program.
The developer of a bionic pancreas came here to deliver good — if early — news, and he did just that before a rapt audience.
Edward Damiano, PhD, of Boston University, revealed the partial results at the annual meeting of the the American Academy of Clinical Endocrinologists and said that his team is planning a large, year-long, randomized trial of the device.
The artificial pancreas — which automatically regulates insulin levels and dispenses glucagon and insulin according to an algorithm — improved glycemic control and led to less hypoglycemia in a small, short-term trial of adults and in a separate trial of pre-teens.
“We want a technology that adapts to the spontaneity of life,” said Damiano, who added that the device could change the way type 1 diabetes patients care for themselves until a cure is found. “It does this while simultaneously unburdening people from management decisions and worrying about being wrong.”
The Study
Damiano was the first speaker at this year’s AACE conference — probably the first biomedical engineer to lead an AACE conference — said Mack Harrell, MD, the president of AACE.
And he played that novel role well: dressed in black shirt and jeans, he paced the stage, liberally using terms like “synergy” and “integration” and topping his presentation with a high-production-value marketing video that touted the bionic pancreas. He also shared pictures of his son — who at 11 months was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
But he also had results from two trials to report. In the first trial, 19 pre-teens at a summer camp in 2014 wore either the device or had normal care for 5 days. In the control group, the mean continuous glucose monitor (CGM) was 168 ± 30 mg/dL; for the group with the device, the mean CGM was 137 ± 11 mg/dL.
The time spent under 60 mg/dL was 2.8% of the time for the control group, and 1.2% for the intervention group. Time over 180 mg/dL was 36% versus 17%.
In the separate trial, Damiano and his colleagues enrolled a group of 38 adults, seven of them in the control group, for 11 days. The patients were at four different medical centers around the country. Those in the control group had a mean CGM of 162 ± 29 mg/dL versus 141 ± 10 mg/dL for the group with the device. Time spent under 60 mg/dL was 1.9% versus 0.6%, and 34% above 180 mg/dL versus 20%.
In both of the studies, the same amount of insulin was used.
The device is an amalgam of several different parts: a Dexcom monitor, two Tandem infusion pumps, and an iPhone accessible algorithm — the user carries the phone. Damiano said he tested kids at summer camp because their active lifestyle would test not only the algorithm, but the durability of the device itself.
“They’re not exactly showing proper respect to this device,” he said.
But Is It Safe?
“You have to realize that there are circumstances in which things can really go wrong,” said Damiano, speaking of the safety and security of the device. “And that you’re dealing with a very vulnerable population.”
In addition to the possibility of glitches or malfunction, app-based medical devices must also worry about cybersecurity. A recent study found that the majority of insulin dosing apps are unreliable and put patients at risk. Nearly a quarter of these apps crashed. Two-thirds carried a risk of giving the wrong dosage recommendations, and there was a lack of transparency with most of the apps. The software on a fully automated bionic pancreas would have to be much more reliable.
And a study by Yogish Kudva, MD, from the Mayo Clinic, and colleagues, found thatcybersecurity is not where it should be for artificial pancreases. “We suggest that, to date, the essential concept of cybersecurity has not been adequately addressed in this field,” concluded the authors of that paper.
Damiano said he agreed. “I don’t think in the med device industry that has been handled particularly well,” he said during a press conference here. “We have a lot of strategies for that, but I think we’re really going to have as cybersecure a system as we can hope to have with the technology that there is now.”
He added that they’ve hired a security expert to help them.
Upcoming Study
The next step is a longer, randomized trial, said Damiano. They are working on a proposal for a year-long study of 480 participants, 160 of whom will belong to a control of usual care. There will be no remote monitoring of the patients, and the primary outcomes will be HbA1c levels and mean CGM levels.
The current plan is to include patients more than 10 years old, said Damiano, though he would like it to be for ages 6 and above. “The FDA is really encouraging us to push that number down,” he said. “They want to test it with as many people as possible. If we do a trial with 2- and 3-year-olds, that’s going to give them peace of mind.”
He said the FDA has been cooperative, contradicting their image that the agency is slow to react.
“They’re taking a very different attitude from what people have expected them to do,” he said. Damiano and his team must build a single device in which all of the components come together in order to move forward. He said that they are working with industry to design the device.
He added that it will be at least 3 years before the device is available. When asked to speculate about the cost, he said it would be slightly more expensive than current devices because it needs two chambers — one for insulin and one for glucagon — at around $8,000 to $9,000.
With the arrival of spring, millions of Canadians have begun their annual ritual of sneezing and wheezing due to seasonal allergies. A research team at the Montreal Children’s Hospital from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) is bringing them hope with a potential vaccine that nudges the immune response away from developing allergies. The findings published in the journal Mucosal Immunology have major clinical implications since allergies and asthma are lifelong conditions that often start in childhood and for which there is presently no cure.
‘Our study, for the first time, offers a potential way of preventing allergies by using a molecule that redirects the immune response away from the allergic response,” says lead author Dr. Christine McCusker, allergist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at McGill University. “This discovery is very promising since the molecule we developed can be administered by a drop into the nose as a spray.”
It is estimated that 20 to 30 per cent of the Canadian population suffers from a range of allergies. Recent research reported that one in every 13 Canadians suffers from a significant food allergy. The reasons why allergies develop remain unexplained, but it is believed that all children are born with the potential to develop allergies. Children without allergies make a shift to the non-allergenic immune response when allergens are around. Those who do develop allergies have not shifted by the time they are exposed to the allergen.
Dr. McCusker and her team from the Meakins-Christie Laboratories started to work on a specific molecule – called STAT6 – which is important in the development of allergic response. They thought that if they could inhibit this molecule they would reduce the symptoms of allergic airways disease, such as asthma, in allergic animals. They also hoped to prevent the allergy from developing entirely. To do this, they developed an inhibitor peptide called STAT6-IP that was given to newborn mice by intranasal droplet.
“What’s beautiful about our approach is that you do not have to couple it with a specific allergen, you only use this peptide. It just redirects the immune system away from the allergic response and then it will not matter if the child is exposed to pollen, cats or dogs, because the immune system will not form an aggressive allergic reaction anymore,” adds Dr. McCusker.
“In subjects who have the propensity to develop allergies, their system has made the ‘wrong’ decision somewhere along the line,” she says. “It is like educating the immune system to follow the path we want it to follow.”
Spider silk has long been noted for its graceful structure, as well as its advanced material properties: Ounce for ounce, it is stronger than steel.
MIT research has explained some of the material’s mysteries, which could help design synthetic resources that mimic the extraordinary properties of natural silk. Now, scientists at MIT have developed a systematic approach to research its structure, blending computational modeling and mechanical analysis to 3D-print synthetic spider webs. These models offer insight into how spiders optimize their own webs.
“This is the first methodical exploration of its kind,” says Professor Markus Buehler, head of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), and the lead author of a paper appearing this week in Nature Communications. “We are looking to expand our knowledge of the function of natural webs in a systematic and repeatable manner.”
Coupling multiscale modeling with emerging microscale 3D-printing techniques, the team enabled a pathway to directly fabricate and test synthetic web structures by design. The lessons learned through this approach may help harness spider silk’s strength for other uses, and ultimately inspire engineers to digitally design new structures and composites that are reliable and damage-resistant.
The paper was written by Buehler, along with CEE research scientist Zhao Qin, Harvard University professor Jennifer Lewis, and former Harvard postdoc Brett Compton.
Further unraveling the mysteries of spider silk
The study unearths a significant relationship between spider web structure, loading points, and failure mechanisms. By adjusting the material distribution throughout an entire web, a spider is able to optimize the web’s strength for its anticipated prey.
The team, adopting an experimental setup, used metal structures to 3D-print synthetic webs, and directly integrate their data into models. “Ultimately we merged the physical with the computational in our experiments,” Buehler says.
According to Buehler, spider webs employ a limited amount of material to capture prey of different sizes. He and his colleagues hope to use this work to design real-world, damage-resistant materials of lower density.
The 3D-printed models, Lewis says, open the door to studying the effects of web architecture on strength and damage tolerance — a feat that would have been impossible to achieve using only natural spider webs.
“Spider silk is an impressive and fascinating material,” she says. “But before now, the role of the web architecture had not yet been fully explored.” To investigate the geometric aspects of spider webs through the use of a similar material to silk that can be 3D-printed with uniform mechanical properties was Lewis’ mission.
Buehler’s team used orb-weaver spider webs as the inspiration for their 3-D designs. In each of their samples, they controlled the diameter of the thread as a method of comparing homogeneous and heterogeneous thread thickness.
In simulation, the team created “the ideal environment to test and optimize the web structures” under different loading conditions, and then use synthetic materials to print identical webs, Qin says. “We are on the way to quantifying the mechanism that makes the spider’s web so strong,” he says.
The work revealed that spider webs consisting of uniform thread diameters are better suited to bear force applied at a single point, such as the impact coming from flies hitting webs; a nonuniform diameter can withstand more widespread pressure, such as from wind, rain, or gravity.
The combination of computational modeling and 3D-printing makes it possible to test and optimize designs efficiently.
“This work is an excellent demonstration of how we can exploit designs in nature in the development of novel materials and structures.” says Sandra Shefelbine, an associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University not involved in this work.
Marc Meyers, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California at San Diego, adds: “Biological materials and structures are the new frontier of engineering. This most recent significant contribution by Markus Buehler and colleagues goes beyond the first stage, which is to understand nature, and make significant inroads into creating a bioinspired structure.”
Lewis says that the team now plans to examine the dynamic aspects of webs through controlled impact and vibration experiments. This, she says, will change the printed material’s properties in real time, opening the door to printing optimized, multifunctional structures.
Research conducted by King’s College London and the University of Nottingham found a link between the amount of vitamin E in the body and lung function after being exposed to particle pollution.
Particle matter is one of the main air pollutants believed to be harmful to health.
Their tests highlighted an association between higher exposure to fine particle matter and a lower concentration of vitamin E in the blood.
Dr Ana Valdes, Reader at the University of Nottingham and co-author of the study, said: “Our work builds on a number studies exploring whether some vitamins can counteract the negative effect on lungs caused by air pollution.”
Professor Frank Kelly, Head of the Environmental Research Group at King’s College London and co-author of the study, added: “These new findings are consistent with previous reports which observed lower levels of vitamin E in people with lung conditions such as asthma.
“However, we do not yet fully understand which types of particulate pollution specifically damage the lungs or which vitamins best interfere with this pathway to reduce the level of damage.”
The study is published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Even if you don’t know it by name, everyone is familiar with Newton’s third law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This idea can be seen in many everyday situations, such as when walking, where a person’s foot pushes against the ground, and the ground pushes back with an equal and opposite force. Newton’s third law is also essential for understanding and developing automobiles, airplanes, rockets, boats, and many other technologies.
Although there have been numerous experiments on particles with nonreciprocal interactions, not as much is known about what’s happening on the microscopic level—the statistical mechanics—of these systems.
In a new paper published in Physical Review X, Alexei Ivlev, et al., have investigated the statistical mechanics of different types of nonreciprocal interactions and discovered some surprising results—such as that extreme temperature gradients can be generated on the particle scale.
“I think the greatest significance of our work is that we rigorously showed that certain classes of essentially nonequilibrium systems can be exactly described in terms of the equilibrium’s statistical mechanics (i.e., one can derive a pseudo-Hamiltonian which describes such systems),” Ivlev, at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, toldPhys.org. “One of the most amazing implications is that, for example, one can observe a mixture of two liquids in detailed equilibrium, yet each liquid has its own temperature.”
One example of a system with nonreciprocal interactions that the researchers experimentally demonstrated in their study involves charged microparticles levitating above an electrode in a plasma chamber. The violation of Newton’s third law arises from the fact that the system involves two types of microparticles that levitate at different heights due to their different sizes and densities. The electric field in the chamber drives a vertical plasma flow, like a current in a river, and each charged microparticle focuses the flowing plasma ions downstream, creating a vertical plasma wake behind it.
“Usually, I’m rather conservative when thinking on what sort of ‘immediate’ potential application a particular discovery (at least, in physics) might have,” Ivlev said. “However, what I am quite confident of is that our results provide an important step towards better understanding of certain kinds of nonequilibrium systems. There are numerous examples of very different nonequilibrium systems where the action-reaction symmetry is broken for interparticle interactions, but we show that one can nevertheless find an underlying symmetry which allows us to describe such systems in terms of the textbook (equilibrium) statistical mechanics.”
While the plasma experiment is an example of action-reaction symmetry breaking in a 2D system, the same symmetry breaking can occur in 3D systems, as well. The scientists expect that both types of systems exhibit unusual and remarkable behavior, and they hope to further investigate these systems more in the future.
“Our current research is focused on several topics in this direction,” Ivlev said. “One is the effect of the action-reactionsymmetry breaking in the overdamped colloidal suspensions, where the nonreciprocal interactions lead to a remarkably rich variety of self-organization phenomena (dynamical clustering, pattern formation, phase separation, etc.). Results of this research may lead to several interesting applications. Another topic is purely fundamental: how one can describe a much broader class of ‘nearly Hamiltonian’ nonreciprocal systems, whose interactions almost match with those described by a pseudo-Hamiltonian? Hopefully, we can report on these results very soon.”
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