News at a glance: More success for fusion, medical tests under scrutiny, and a grizzly reintroduction

PHYSICS Fusion experiment beats previous energy record Lightning has struck a second time for physicists using lasers to achieve nuclear fusion, in which two atomic nuclei combine into one while releasing enormous amounts of energy. On 30 July, the 192 lasers of the stadium-size National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory instantaneously crushed a tiny capsule filled with heavy isotopes of hydrogen. In doing so, they prompted a fusion reaction that produced more energy than the laser beams deposited onto the target. The new results, presented by NIF scientists at a conference last week, mark the second time in 8 months that NIF has achieved “energy gain.” NIF’s December 2022 experiment released 3.15 megajoules (MJ) of fusion energy— the equivalent of about three sticks of dynamite, and 54% more energy than went into the target. In the July test, a shot yielded 3.88 MJ, an 89% surplus. The results will help researchers learn which factors separate powerful blasts from duds—a possible step toward one day making fusion a reliable energy source. INFECTIOUS DISEASE Flu shot to drop vanished strain An influenza virus variant that circulated widely before the COVID-19 pandemic has disappeared, leading an expert group that advises the World Health Organization (WHO) to recommend last week that it no longer be included in flu vaccines. The strain, known as Yamagata, has not been detected...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news