Why Pendulum Clocks Mysteriously Sync Up - [LiveScience www.livescience.com]

Why Pendulum Clocks Mysteriously Sync Up

by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor   |   July 23, 2015 10:34am ET

Pendulum clocks swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other. Credit: Henrique Oliveira and Luís Melo View full size image

The 350-year-old mystery of why pendulum clocks hanging from the same wall synchronize over time may finally be solved, scientists say.
In 1665, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, was lying in bed with a minor illness and watching two of his clocks hanging on a wall, said Henrique Oliveira, a mathematician at the University of Lisbon and co-author of a new study detailing the findings. Huygens noticed something odd: No matter how the pendulums on these clocks began, within about a half-hour, they ended up swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other.
The cause of this effect — what Huygens called an "odd kind of sympathy" — remained a mystery for centuries. But recently, scientists analyzing two pendulum clocks hanging from the same beam found that the clocks could influence each other through small forces exerted on the supporting beam. However, "nobody tested properly the idea of clocks hanging on the same wall," Oliveira told Live Science. [5 of the Most Precise Clocks Ever Made]

In conversations over coffee, Oliveira andstudy co-author Luís Melo, a physicist at the University of Lisbon, decided to analyze how two pendulums might interact through an immobile wall, instead of investigating how they might interactthrough a movable beam as had been done in previous research.
The researchers calculated that, as pendulums move back and forth, sound pulses could travel through the wall from clock to clock. These pulses can interfere with the swings of the pendulums, eventually causing them to synchronize.
The investigators tested their idea with experiments involving two pendulum clocks attached to an aluminum rail fixed to a wall. Their results showed that changes in the speed of the pendulum swings coincided with cycles of those sound pulses.
In addition, they plan to expand their model to explain the behavior of other kinds of oscillators, such as the electronic oscillators used to synchronize activity on microchips, Melo said.
Oliveiraand Melo detailed their findings online July 23 in the journal Scientific Reports.
Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Mathematics of Synchronization Phenomena

www.math.kyushu-u.ac.jp/eng/pages/laboratory04.html

In this way, Huygens is said to have discovered synchronization phenomena. We can perform a simple experiment on pendulum synchronization using ...

Portuguese scientists discover why pendulum clocks swing ...

www.theguardian.com › Science › Physics

5 days ago - A new study accounts for the synchronisation of pendulum clocks. ... pendulum clocks hanging from a wall would synchronise their swing over ...

Pendulum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum

A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is ..... It kept time with two synchronized pendulums. The master ..

Daily News & Analysis

Unusual 'pill on a string' could help detect Esophageal cancer Daily News & Analysis  - ‎10 hours ago‎ Researchers have developed a 'pill on a string' that could help doctors detect esophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage.

Unusual 'pill on a string' could help detect Esophageal cancer

Wednesday, 22 July 2015 - 11:36pm IST | Place: London | Agency: PTI

Researchers have developed a 'pill on a string' that could help doctors detect esophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage.

• Image Source: Youtube screen grab

Researchers have developed a 'pill on a string' that could help doctors detect esophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage.
Researchers said that ''cytosponge'' sits within a pill which, when swallowed, dissolves to show a sponge that scrapes off cells when withdrawn up the gullet.
It allows doctors to collect cells from all along the gullet, whereas standard biopsies take individual point samples.
Esophageal cancer is often preceded by Barrett's esophagus, a condition in which cells within the lining of the esophagus begin to change shape and can grow abnormally. Between one and five people in every 100 with Barrett''s esophagus go on to develop esophageal cancer in their life-time, which can be difficult to treat.
At present, Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer are diagnosed using biopsies, which look for signs of dysplasia, the proliferation of abnormal cancer cells.
Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown that variations in mutations across the esophagus mean that biopsies may miss cells with important mutations.
A sample was more likely to pick up key mutations if taken using the Cytosponge, developed by Rebecca Fitzgerald at the Medical Research Council Cancer Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. "The trouble with Barrett's esophagus is that it looks bland and might span over 10cm," said Fitzgerald. "We created a map of mutations in a patient with the condition and found that within this stretch, there is a great deal of variation amongst cells," she said.
"Some might carry an important mutation, but many will not. If you're taking a biopsy, this relies on your hitting the right spot. Using the Cytosponge appears to remove some of this game of chance," she said.
Fitzgerald and colleagues carried out whole genome sequencing to analyse paired Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer samples taken at one point in time from 23 patients, as well as 73 samples taken over a three-year period from one patient with Barrett's esophagus.
The researchers found patterns of mutations in the genome that provided a ''fingerprint'' of the causes of the cancer.
The team found fingerprints which they believe are due to the damage caused to the esophagus by stomach acid splashing onto its walls; the same fingerprints could be seen in both Barrett''s esophagus and esophageal cancer, suggesting that these changes occur very early on the process.
Even in areas of Barrett's esophagus without cancer, the researchers found a large number of mutations in their tissue - on average 12,000 per person (compared to an average of 18,000 mutations within the cancer). Many of these are likely to have been ''bystanders'', genetic mutations that occurred along the way but that were not actually implicated in cancer.
The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Iraqi woman with rare disorder getting treated in Mumbai

Thursday, 23 July 2015 - 8:15am IST | Agency: dna | From the print edition

• dna Correspondent

According to doctors, achalasia cardia is a rare neurodegenerative motility disorder which affects one-nine humans per 1,00,000 population.

A 42-year-old Iraqi woman is undergoing treatment in the city for achalasia cardia, a condition in which the oesophagus fails to propel food down to the stomach and, as a result, food gets deposited at the cardio esophageal junction (where the esophagus meets the stomach). The patient was born with this condition.
According to doctors, achalasia cardia is a rare neurodegenerative motility disorder which affects one-nine humans per 1,00,000 population.
"When the patient came to us, her nutritional state was very poor, as she hadn't consumed food in over two months, with her serum albumin at 2.5. We found that food was getting deposited near the lungs, which resulted in severe chest infection, patchy pneumonitis and yellow infected sputum," said Dr Arun Behl, Onco Surgeon, Fortis Hospital, where she is being treated.
The patient's health was assessed using Esophageal manometry & Upper GI endoscopy and CT scan. She was then put on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) to bring her nutritional levels back to normal. Of the four key blood vessels that carry blood to the stomach, three were severed in the previous operations. The single functional vessel had to be preserved to maintain viability of stomach tube, said Dr Behl.
"Corrective surgery was scheduled and alternative back-up plans were also put in place – replace esophaegus completely with the stomach itself/colonic interposition/jejunum free graft/radial artery forearm flap," said Dr Mohan Koppikar, laparoscopic surgeon.
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