Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience.

The question of what generates conscious experience has mesmerized thinkers since the dawn of humanity, yet its origins remain a mystery. The topic of consciousness has gained traction in recent years, thanks to the development of large language models that now arguably pass the Turing test, an operational test for intelligence. However, intelligence and consciousness are not related in obvious ways, as anyone who suffers from a bad toothache can attest-pain generates intense feelings and absorbs all our conscious awareness, yet nothing particularly intelligent is going on. In the hard sciences, this topic is frequently met with skepticism because, to date, no protocol to measure the content or intensity of conscious experiences in an observer-independent manner has been agreed upon. Here, we present a novel proposal: Conscious experience arises whenever a quantum mechanical superposition forms. Our proposal has several implications: First, it suggests that the structure of the superposition determines the qualia of the experience. Second, quantum entanglement naturally solves the binding problem, ensuring the unity of phenomenal experience. Finally, a moment of agency may coincide with the formation of a superposition state. We outline a research program to experimentally test our conjecture via a sequence of quantum biology experiments. Applying these ideas opens up the possibility of expanding human conscious experience through brain-quantum computer interfaces.

Energy Exchanges in Saturn's Polar Regions From Cassini Observations: Eddy-Zonal Flow Interactions.

Saturn's polar regions (polewards of ∼63° planetocentric latitude) are strongly dynamically active with zonal jets, polar cyclones and the intriguing north polar hexagon (NPH) wave. Here we analyze measurements of horizontal winds, previously obtained from Cassini images by Antuñano et al. (2015), https://doi.org/10.1002/2014je004709, to determine the spatial and spectral exchanges of kinetic energy (KE) between zonal mean zonal jets and nonaxisymmetric eddies in Saturn's polar regions. Eddies of most resolved scales generally feed KE into the eastward and westward zonal mean jets at rates between 4.3 × 10-5 and 1.4 × 10-4 W kg-1. In particular, the north polar jet (at 76°N) was being energized at a rate of ∼10-4 W kg-1, dominated by the contribution due to the zonal wavenumber m = 6 NPH wave itself. This implies that the hexagon was not being driven at this time through a barotropic instability of the north polar jet, but may suggest a significant role for baroclinic instabilities, convection or other internal energy sources for this feature. The south polar zonal mean jet KE was also being sustained by eddies in that latitude band across a wide range of m. In contrast, results indicate that the north polar vortex may have been weakly barotropically unstable at this time with eddies of low m gaining KE at the expense of the axisymmetric cyclone. However, the southern axisymmetric polar cyclone was gaining KE from non-axisymmetric components at this time, including m = 2 and its harmonics, as the elliptical distortion of the vortex may have been decaying.

Wave number selection in the presence of noise: Experimental results.

In this study, we consider how the wave number selection in spherical Couette flow, in the transition to azimuthal waves after the first instability, occurs in the presence of noise. The outer sphere was held stationary, while the inner sphere rotational speed was increased linearly from a subcritical flow to a supercritical one. In a supercritical flow, one of two possible flow states, each with different azimuthal wave numbers, can appear depending upon the initial and final Reynolds numbers and the acceleration value. Noise perturbations were added by introducing small disturbances into the rotational speed signal. With an increasing noise amplitude, a change in the dominant wave number from m to m ± 1 was found to occur at the same initial and final Reynolds numbers and acceleration values. The flow velocity measurements were conducted by using laser Doppler anemometry. Using these results, the role of noise as well as the behaviour of the amplitudes of the competing modes in their stages of damping and growth were determined.

Thermal structure and dynamics of Saturn's northern springtime disturbance.

Saturn's slow seasonal evolution was disrupted in 2010-2011 by the eruption of a bright storm in its northern spring hemisphere. Thermal infrared spectroscopy showed that within a month, the resulting planetary-scale disturbance had generated intense perturbations of atmospheric temperatures, winds, and composition between 20° and 50°N over an entire hemisphere (140,000 kilometers). The tropospheric storm cell produced effects that penetrated hundreds of kilometers into Saturn's stratosphere (to the 1-millibar region). Stratospheric subsidence at the edges of the disturbance produced "beacons" of infrared emission and longitudinal temperature contrasts of 16 kelvin. The disturbance substantially altered atmospheric circulation, transporting material vertically over great distances, modifying stratospheric zonal jets, exciting wave activity and turbulence, and generating a new cold anticyclonic oval in the center of the disturbance at 41°N.

From state terrorism to state errorism: post-Pinochet Chile's long search for truth and justice.

Patio 29 lies in the northern sector of Santiago's General Cemetery. To the naked eye, it is a grim unweeded field of some twelve hundred rusted tin crosses. But to the families of the 1,197 detained-disappeared during Augusto Pinochet's brutal dictatorship, Patio 29 is both a site of horror and a site of hope. Its story begins in September-December 1973 when 320 early victims of the repression were brought there in makeshift wooden crates that held as many as three bodies each, and buried in unmarked graves. A few years later, two hundred of those graves were exhumed by the military, and the remains presumably cremated. For another decade, the mass grave remained silent, yielding few of its secrets to the families' demands to know: Where are they? Today, nineteen years into the so-called transition to democracy, Patio 29--the most important single finding in relation to Chile's detained-disappeared-still refuses to reveal the identities of those victims, pressing upon the government of Michelle Bachelet a new question: Who are they? First state terror, now state error have conspired to make Patio 29 one of Chile's principal horror-cum-hopescapes.

In vivo adenovirus-mediated gene transduction into mouse endometrial glands: a novel tool to model endometrial cancer in the mouse.

OBJECTIVE: The lack of an endometrial epithelium-specific promoter has slowed down the development of technically advanced mouse models of endometrial cancer. The aim of this study was to test whether direct in vivo adenoviral-mediated gene delivery can be used to circumvent this problem. METHODS: Adenoviruses expressing the LacZ reporter gene or the Cre recombinase were injected into the left horn of the mouse uterus. Histochemistry and immunohistochemistry were used to detect expression of the reporter gene as well as targeted deletion of a floxed allele. RESULTS: Our data demonstrate that in vivo direct injection of adenoviruses can efficiently target the endometrium in the mouse, specifically transducing genes to the glandular epithelial component. CONCLUSIONS: This approach will allow the generation of more refined and genetically defined mouse models of endometrial cancer. Endometrial gland-specific transient expression of recombinases, such as Cre, may thus be employed to delete engineered alleles of tumor suppressor genes and to activate the expression of latent oncogenes.

Sloping convection: A paradigm for large-scale waves and eddies in planetary atmospheres?

In laboratory studies and associated theoretical and numerical work covering a very wide range of conditions (as specified by the key dimensionless parameters of the systems used) the phenomenon of sloping convection in rotating fluids can manifest itself in one of several spatial forms (waves, closed eddies, and combinations thereof), but all with strong local gradients (fronts, jet streams) and exhibiting various types of temporal behavior [steady, periodic vacillation, aperiodic (geostrophic) turbulence]. These general properties were first discovered in cylindrical (annular) systems, but they do not depend critically on geometry; differences between spherical and cylindrical systems are largely to be found in quantitative details. In all cases, the raison d'e tre of sloping convection is horizontal advective transfer, a process accompanied by upward advective heat transfer, which affects and may control vertical potential density gradients. It has been argued that sloping convection is the basic dynamical process underlying a wide variety of large-scale flow phenomena seen in planetary atmospheres (e.g., irregular waves in the Earth's atmosphere, regular waves in the Martian atmosphere, the Jovian Great Red Spot and other long-lived eddies seen in the atmospheres of the giant planets). In this review the extent to which this paradigm is upheld in the atmospheres of the major planets by recent work is discussed.