Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have figured out why taking broad-spectrum antibiotics over a long period of time can lead to severe secondary bacterial infections. The findings, published in Nature Medicine, show that ‘good’ bacteria in the gut keep the immune system primed to fight infection from invading pathogenic bacteria. Altering the dynamic between resident and foreign bacteria—via antibiotics, for example—compromises an animal’s immune response. “One of the complications of antibiotic therapy is secondary infection,” says senior author Jeffrey Weiser, MD, professor of Microbiology and Pediatrics. “... We suggest that if the immune system is on idle, and you treat someone with broad-spectrum antibiotics, then the system is de-primed and will be less efficient at responding quickly to new infections.”
?Fundamental Forces and Chopping Wood

Q Gravity is the force we are most familiar with, yet it remains the most mysterious. What makes it so?
A We are familiar with two force fields in day-to-day life: electromagnetism and gravity. The first deals with charged bodies and unlike gravity it can be both attractive and repulsive; so it doesn’t increase just because you add more and more material, because matter on the whole is electrically neutral. Gravity, on the other hand, is always attractive, which means that its effect is accumulative. As a result, gravitational systems have a tendency to collapse as they get more and more massive, and there is an inherent instability to gravitational systems. Moreover, if you consider the implications of Einstein’s formula E=Mc2, energy and mass are interrelated, so even energy exerts gravity, and in turn the gravitational field of matter also exerts gravity. As a result, gravity is the only non-linear classical force and is very difficult to work with.
Q What is the basis for the idea that gravity is not a fundamental force?
A The idea of gravity as an emergent force is a very old one, none of us working in the field today can claim full credit for it; it goes back to Andrei Sakharov who first suggested that gravity, like elasticity, is a manifestation of more fundamental properties of space-time microstructure. A solid body can have elasticity, which is an emergent phenomenon involving a large number of atoms, even though it makes no sense to talk of elasticity for an atom.
But the specific model that Sakharov came up with turned out to be inadequate because in a sense it was very primitive—but it left many of us fascinated with the idea. Then, in 1995, Ted Jacobson came up with an idea that looked interesting. My approach to this problem was different. I wanted to show first, using known features of general relativity itself, that gravity can be emergent. I showed in 2002 that the Einsteinian gravity equations actually reduce to the first law of thermodynamics in special cases. It led me to study if this may be true in more general cases, and between 2002 and 2010, I have studied different facets of this idea. I could show that the equations describing any reasonable theory of gravity reduce to a thermodynamic identity, and could be obtained from an entropy maximisation principle. These results convinced me that thermodynamics is more basic than gravity. My ideas have won prizes from the Gravity Research Foundation, US, four times between 2002 and 2008, including the First Prize in 2008.
Q You have been working in the field for over a decade, yet the idea has attracted attention in the popular press only after a paper by Dutch string theorist Erik Verlinde. Why should this be so?
A For several years, there have been two competing approaches to gravity, string theory and loop quantum theory (LQG). I have close friends in both groups, and both these communities were quite aware of my work but did not know what they could do with it. I felt they should be taking this approach more seriously, which was happening but rather slowly. I personally prefer to take these ideas to the popular press after they are recognised by the peer group, and was planning to do it after the recent Infosys award, which cited this work. Verlinde’s paper appeared just at this time. It is good that a string theorist as well as a LQG person, Lee Smolin, are now taking interest in the thermodynamic approach. Anything that draws attention to these ideas is good!
Verlinde’s paper is in two logical parts. One part derives Einstein’s equations from thermodynamic arguments. This is not new, and I had done this a long time ago. In the second part, and this is the part he seems most excited by, he has derived Newton’s law of motion out of entropic considerations. Unfortunately, I do not agree with this part, and I think it involves faulty, circular reasoning. Nevertheless, it has generated popular interest in this work. Hopefully, it will spur more work in the area, but in the right direction.
Q Does not your approach preclude several string theoretic models of gravity, in particular any that depend on the existence of a fundamental particle such as the graviton?
A To a certain extent, yes, but not completely. In my approach, in which you think of gravity as analogous to elasticity of space-time, gravitons are analogous to phonons which are the quanta of sound waves that can propagate through an elastic solid. But phonons tell us nothing about the atomic substructure of matter! In the same way gravitons will have some intermediate role to play, but they are not going to provide us with a fundamental understanding of space-time structure. There are, however, other aspects of string theory which could be usefully merged with my approach, so I don’t see these two as completely contradictory. For example, my approach indicates a natural way of extending Einstein’s theory to higher dimensions purely from thermodynamic considerations, which is in resonance with string theory’s use of higher dimensions.
Q You combine your interest in science with pursuits that can loosely be termed ‘spiritual’. Are these not at odds? What do you make of the assault on religion by someone like Richard Dawkins?
A Dawkins has erected a straw man and knocked it down. I have no respect for this. It is very easy to knock down a particular class of models for God and religion. Russell and others, for example, have already done this a long time ago and far more effectively.
My take is that my concept of fundamental reality does not require any support from science or vice-versa. The two things lie in different domains and represent different types of knowledge. One is by its nature introverted, an inner knowledge, and the other is extroverted. Together, they complement each other.
Q Where does this other knowledge come from?
A The idea of direct experience lies beyond Aristotelian logic. It is born out of a personal knowledge—say, through a meditative experience. It is not translatable into the normal grammar of ideas, but nothing in ordinary logic precludes its existence.
Q Once you step beyond Aristotelian logic, what keeps you interested in physics? Does it not then become just a game?
A There was an enlightened Zen master who was asked what he did before enlightenment, and he replied, “I used to fetch water and chop wood.” And asked what he does now after gaining enlightenment, he said he fetches water and chops wood. Nothing external changes. Doing physics is like chopping wood and fetching water!
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A study by Texas AgriLife Research scientists shows Viagra can aid foetal development in female sheep. Viagra (sildenafil citrate), which is used to treat male erectile dysfunction, enhanced blood flow in pregnant female sheep, helping send vital amino acids and other nutrients needed in foetal development. “The study’s results not only will assist with solving foetal development problems in other livestock, but possibly in humans,” says Dr Guoyao Wu, animal nutritionist and Senior Faculty Fellow in the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University. “Viagra acts like nitric oxide to relax smooth muscle cells of blood vessels and, in turn, allow for increased uterine blood flow,” Wu says. “For pregnant mammals, Viagra can enhance the supply of nutrients from the mother to the foetus via utero-placental blood flow.” The findings were published in a recent edition of The Journal of Nutrition.
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A new theory suggests the Moon was formed after a natural nuclear explosion in the Earth’s mantle rather than after the impact of a massive object with the Earth, as previously thought. Two scientists have come up with this new explanation. They believe the Moon broke away from the Earth because of a nuclear explosion on Earth itself. Their idea is based on the fission theory which was first outlined in the 19th century.The fission theory suggested that the Earth and Moon were both created out of the same blob of spinning molten rock—with a part becoming separated which later became the moon. However, aside from an impact, scientists couldn’t explain how the blob which became the moon spun off. Rob de Meijer at University of the Western Cape and Wim van Westrenen at VU University in Amsterdam believe the Moon was blasted out of the Earth by a nuclear explosion on our planet.
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You seem to suggest with good reason that Steven Hawkings' Universe, his latest commercial foray on Discovery Channel errs in emphasizing gravity as the prime mover of cosmology. That is, he does so despite news of Guth's 2009 Newton Prize for posstulating the primal dispersal of strong molecular forces that exceed magnetism's attraction-repulsion potential by a factor of four and dwarfs gravity's attraction times 10. Guth's theory that strong force dispersion was the first event of the Big Bang provides not only the eventual "stickman" shape of present/ultimate galactic density but is the organizing force of elemental plasma dispersed in the preceding trillionth of a second (a) provides a force field that organizes elemental plasma into the Bohr format and furthermore (b) accounts for so-called "dark matter/energy" as Occam's razor.
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What Guth calls the “transition states” demonstrates ice, water and steam bumped to higher energy levels demonstrating elsewhere as the glowing of hearth embers
Otherwise on cable/satellite, Steven Hawkings’ latest commercial dispersion of his “Universe” on Discovery Channel emphasizes gravity as the prime mover of cosmology. He does so erroneously in the realization of Alan Guth’s award of the coveted 2009 “Newton Prize” for postulating the primal dispersal of strong molecular forces that exceed magnetism attraction-repulsion potential by a factor of four; the attraction of gravity by 10. The perfusion of the universe by the first event in the nano-trigger trillionth of a second post-Bang dispersing strong force provides not only the eventual “stick-man” shape of distortion in the present/ultimate galactic density but is the organizing force of elemental plasma into the Bohr format.
The “mini-max” ability of strong/weak nuclear forces which paradoxically radiate in a Millefiori vase 300 degrees of mass dispersion in the wake a supernova quantum-tunneled by its relativistic bipolar jets. Difficult-to-comprehend transformation at the epicenter of massive fusion-fueled stellar explosions which sequalae contract/melt/shrink or otherwise defy linguistic description to transform black hole densities into an absolute reduced circumference. The BH residua of nickel-iron ferromagnetic plasma radiate heat, but collimate x-rays, gamma rays at the cone also generating electromagnetism resulting in self-generated angular momentum suggestive of electric motors, accentuating binary configurations that result in magnetic potential that twist infall from accretion disk matter pulled beyond the event horizon about the polar axis producing bi-polar quasar “relativistic jets” 90 degrees from a planar accretion disk. Gravity is deemed the villain by Hawking in all this devising the implosion implicating the dimensional regression from three to two determining the accretion disk and possibly the one-dimensional propagation of the bi-polar jets --
The efficiency of Guth’s conclusion leads to further embodiment where maximum value expansion for strong force is counterbalanced by a weak force as “dark energy” described for physics students in loose acronymic jargon (gluon, etc.) yet arcanely avoiding particle thermodynamics in Schroedinger conservation endothermic.redox exchanges triggers exothermic “blow-outs” much like Newton paralleled attractions of gravity and magnetism whereof Faraday developed the reciprocating electric motor and, ultimately, Tesla developed radio.
Yet it is still likely that gravity may have been a remnant of a prior universe left over from eminent demise of its dematerialized matter of assumedly less complexity; the next, more efficient universe (ours) now possessing strong force-dark energy to more cleverly organize media interaction for weak forces, electromagnetism and, lamely, matterless-gravity, as an orphan from before the Big Bang.
Thus compression into BH structure may have an issue involving strong nuclear force-abundance excluding all lesser particle identities squeezed from the relativistic proportion of a dying star, infers a new state of matter and its thermodynamics as BH “stuff” which may tie into quantum assumptions about Bohr/Heisenberg valence orbits and their dipole significance to radio beaconry in 360 degree pulses save where collimated by the strong force into elliptical carbon figure-8 or collimated orbit around its nucleus whereas maximum expansion conscribes the stability and architecture of spiral galaxies and determinations of cannibalistic activity as well as the direction of gamma ray relativistic jets from within and quasars from the centers of galaxies. All this kinetic distribution is strong-force mediated; perhaps directed. Perhaps the gluon field is the “God field?”
The radio beaconry following Tesla’s 1917 patent later successfully infringed by Marconi in 1924, came at.teleportation per se in his self-termed 1931“Wall of Light” by duplicating precise thermodynamic events at a random location somewhere on the spheric longitudinal propagation of a radio beacon of uploaded prewar complexity. Extending his thought through this “Wall of Light’ mechanism originally enabled Tesla to transmit electric current through a bio-human dipole medium, to an Edison light bulb lit up by shaking hands transferring static electricity. Assumedly Tesla’s discoveries and exploitation of radiant field theory lay parallel to Einstein’s tensor calculations regarding the speed of matter and its thermonuclear consequences--is Strong Force release and dispersion physics, a new field that may enlighten studies of the CERN Hadron.
That is, strong force bond agency as the medium of exchange, the staging “ether” or “phlogiston” through which electromagnetism and gravity interact through a so-called Unified Field weak force-orchestrated ballet, is the same thermodynamic transformation of matter into photons by a star that creates collateral periodic elements as it ages. The “stuff” of water reduces eventually into what remains exclusive of orbital (and possibly nuclear) particles that has no gaps or interstices generated in a transformation engineered by strong force particle fields that quantumly expel particle density at its transitional phases, such as water increasing 10% volume when frozen; exponentially expanded as steam; yet at point whose new plasma colloid or force-field solid aggregate becomes the corpus for said BH associating release of expelled particles as polar relativistic ray jets--within the same kinetic expansion (or arrangement of gravity and magnetic force fields as well as dictate its own subatomic destiny) what Guth calls “transitional phasing.”
Badly portrayed in Science Channel and Beeb transmissions as BH corpus Strong Force is probably reduced at its ultimate end-use, whose centripetal re-aggregation via galactic cannibalism may trigger a Big Jar resealing the Big Bang. Strong-force manipulation may be an eventual technological goal and probably holds the key to general relativity mechanics, including “worm holing” our way through to other galaxies; but it is well to remember that this “stuff of water” orchestrates dramatic cosmic as well as nano-theater events that valence the periodic table; that support galaxies which would otherwise centrifugally blow apart.
Strong Force stuff is “smart” in popular telephonic entymology. That is, it retains integrity during plasma degrees of freedom elucidating prior dimensions; when a star blows up and spreads plasma in an unshaped explosive sphere, how does magnetite otherwise congeal (for lack of a better colloquial Doonsbury MIT pick-up line)? A radio frequency-like emanation following the plasma of star-baked periodic elements nova-strewn through the galaxy, driven through stellar ironic accumulation secondary to electromagnetic function doubtlessly mediated by Strong Force thermodynamics; how else re-congeal as magnetite unless its strong force component stayed stable within the quark plasma of the nova explosion as it cooled? Is this Einstein’s ‘cosmologic constant?’ Let us hope so!
Conceiving of lepton, boson, meson, quark, muon, nutrino interaction on the quantum thermodynamic scale microscopic molecular bond observations postulating far more stable first and second law thermodynamics monitor tevatronic collision events as trace coefficients whose angles of deflection cursor information erstwhile giving rise to string theory speculation.
The event calendar locating different levels of galactic catastrophe from the most minute aquatic bonding to the hyper nova quasar occur on statistical platforms, like 3-D chess, numerically expanding after three comes time; after time (created by periodicity; angular momentum of stars rising and setting; itself a two-dimensional reduction from globular 360-degree molecular accumulation modeled after 3-D electron shells; formally redacting (yet adding information to) the 5th dimension as a “shell” game that flattens out into a Gallileo “pizza slice” following gravity’s centrifugal Mambo-Italiano disk force field about a solar systemic accretion. A sixth dimension may be visible as relativistic jet behavior at a 90 degree function drawn via magnetic force fields that angularly North-south evacuate all particle information that is not Strong Force,
A similar conceptual platform may occur at nano-circumstance; where diminution of orbit becomes less of a gravity-centrifugal function but because of whatever it is that Strong Force exerts as thermodynamic reality. Thus “M” theory discernment of 11 dimensional informational ‘branes that accumulate events in radiant Tesla expansion, that abut against each other in a foamy fairyland of occurrence--behind the Strong Force Shakespearean plasma arras. We mentioned Galileo; we recommend Newton’s PBS-Nova search for “phlogiston” as the medium for reducing gold from periodic base--revisiting significance in the era of the Big Bang. Right-on again, Oxen! Fight fiercely!
The vastness of the “clumping” propensity of Strong Force explains BH constructions a priori accumulating “stuff” at the heart of galaxies, anchoring stellar drift in a hypermacro demonstration of the nanoscale molecule. Molecular bonds that unbind at Schroedinger endothermic-exothermic rates releases energy from electromagnetic inertia via external valence exchange of electron plus or minus heat (energy levels); while the nucleus remains positive-neutral retaining all its pre-reaction characteristics indelible as Strong Force kinetics that anchors integrity of the periodic table also braids the spirals of galaxies
Thus Guth’s insights are Nobel-statured; yet confirmatory mathematics and applied scholarship may take years to catch up, even Hawking, whose ball-bearing dining hall demonstration of the imperfections of reality totally ignore as gravitas the composition of strong-force/weak-force nuclear bond thermodynamics. An increase in efficiency due to a decrease in entropy along a nano-Kelvin scale demonstrates the Schroedinger equation conservation of energy exchanges as negative heat transfer in BH infall. Formal calorie kinetics only guessed at by both cosmologists and quantum physicists provide a philosopher’s, if not a Rosetta, stone.
The nature of the Strong Force “stuff” begs enumeration only by comparison; it does everything, including impersonate (probably prefiguring or “ghosting“) matter, definitively. A field of non-nuclear plasma exists within parameters largely unobservable because photons are excluded, as are electrons and any negatively charged particles. What a casino! The “gluon” field (any better name you got?) thus projects a token positive charge on “stuff” but massive BH formation at centers of galaxies beget suspicion of eventual ultimate cannibalization of galaxies into one supra-massive final quasar unit recycling “all” the kinetics and dynamics of this universe leading to its own decay constants to be redistributed as the next big bang. Given ‘dark energy’ however the universe seems to end similarly within Hoyle’s steady state providing pure vacuum demising while BH and associated accretia at galaxy levels do not process sufficient mass to trigger a quasar, drift to cinder.
Where however quotients of BH mass is limited by the size of accretion one possible outcome transition may release kinetic energy if overloaded. These on hypermega scales that represent either higher degrees of freedom if not dimensional multiplicity, are at the same time governed by the same energy release principles as in the minute quantum eruptions of Schroedinger chemistry heat exchange as its structural medium and power source. The “stuff” of strong force has meticulous presence to arrange molecular kinetics and nuclear bind complexity, pretty much underwriting the other resulting less dense “stuff” now called matter.
This level of omniscience of Strong Force “stuff” is past intelligent to the point of planning; it is self-predictive, stores and expels energy but does not deflect photon light yet lenses it; is thus survivable and measurable to the point that it either mimics the behavior of matter or vice-versa; creates buoyancy for galaxies superseding Newton inertia. Its effect on quantum complexity includes itself as not only the canvas but its painter and excludes almost everybody without a degree from CalTech or MIT in physics or chem from probity. More importantly it defines the unified field. Its ubiquity is nature itself seeking greater complexity and its discovery less propinquity than necessity: something had to be holding the more or less tepid Bohr nucleus at mass-positive stasis.
Particle decay such as the changing of uranium to lead by throwing off a proton means releasing gluonic density that stores raw energy that gets quantified as electrons and photons but disappears from the scopes not because of its field strength evident in bonds, valence structure and galactic spiral, but because of its density-- which evades detection as mass = dark matter.
The pie chart developed as illustration to Guth’s entry in Wikipedia grants dark energy as 74% dark matter as 20% and observable photometry/electrolysis and tare-weight mechanics make up the last 6% of the quantifiable universe with magnetism being the dominant player.
In effect, electromagnetic potential, interestingly in a unipolar single-charged entity is suggested by Guth as a constituent of the singularity constant which monopolar repulsion appears to act as a steppingstone to positronic anti-matter deletion which, among the energy releases opposed by different sign monopoles could provide the trigger to the Big Bang. Thus magnetism is somewhat the evil genius that releases the force of the atom at Almagordo by realistically tearing apart the “Velcro” effect, as Kaku put it recently, and releasing the “raw” energy of thermonuclear detonation opportunizing its chain reaction by releasing the valance bond and proto-neutron density mix fueling plasma release with the potential of the external nitro-oxygen atmosphere and ambient environs. Energy is itself “raw” but can only be expressed passing through medium, consuming it converting cooler ambient to near-thermonuclear temperatures that disorganize the degrees of freedom. The translation within what Guth calls the “transition states” demonstrates ice, water and steam bumped to higher energy level demonstrating elsewhere as the glowing of hearth embers. What enlarges the volume of a piece of wood while reducing its volume during kinetic release? The medium is carbon cellulose; the “raw” energy moving through it is “dark” in itself as the raw “ding an sich”of energy is immeasurable by instruments such as thermometers, dynamometers, scales, centrifugal g-force compaction and the like yet steers the properties of the substance medium within its measurable degrees of freedom. This also in the first 10-32 second of the Big Bang.
Plasma dispersion, given the size limitation astrophysics assigns to super massive BH phenomena regulated as proportional to accretion disk mass, suggests a BH mass-quasar concentration of galaxies incorporated by cannibalism, could ignite a regional Big Bang in primal vacuum increased by the galactic feasting, was probably fueled by what “dark” components must achieve as a galactic stellar mass coefficient linked to a BH thermodynamic constant, related to the cosmological constant of Einstein, as a monopolar trigger.
The problem with physics is that inadequate verbalization is inferred from tensor calculus derivatives of Einstein as deriving from Madam LaCasse and her enlargement of mass equation by the square of itself, devolved the neo-spatial distortions of String theory following Gauss and Goedel geometries; there has been more than reasonable dissemination by again Hawking in his Brief History of Time nostrum. Again, Kaku, as well as the Beeb Sc, Nova, Discovery Channel and National Geographic. And now finally, Guth! And yet so little is understood about what is known!
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