Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in an international collaboration led by Canadians, used microwave spectroscopy – one of the most sensitive techniques for probing the structure of atoms – to manipulate antihydrogen. Their work is published today in the prestigious journal, Nature.

Hydrogen is considered the fundamental building block of physics; by comparing it with its antimatter counterpart, scientists hope to answer a crucial question: if antimatter and matter were created in equal amounts during the Big Bang, where did all the antimatter go?

91ŃÇÉ« physics graduate students Chanpreet Amole and Andrea Capra worked on the experiment and are co-authors on the Nature paper, along with their supervisor, Professor Scott Menary. The collaboration, dubbed ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus experiment), includes scientists from Canada, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Sweden, the UK and the US. Five Canadian institutions are represented: University of Calgary, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, 91ŃÇÉ« and TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle and nuclear physics lab.

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dukga7Amm79o%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/ukga7Amm79o/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=400 height=300 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]

Amole and Capra logged 50-hour weeks at CERN in Geneva, preparing the antihydrogen sample and assisting with measurements.

“Every day was a learning experience,” says Amole. “At CERN, you get to work with some of the top minds in the world. Many times, [one of the scientists] would casually walk in and strike up a conversation on some very complex, yet interesting physics phenomenon that would just blow your mind.”

The experiment involved confining anti-atoms in a magnetic trap and irradiating them with microwaves. Precise tuning of the microwave frequency and magnetic field enabled researchers to hit an internal resonance that made atoms literally jump out of the trap and reveal information about their properties. Researchers at SFU designed the apparatus for this latest experiment, working closely with PhD candidates Mohammad Ashkezari of SFU and Tim Friesen from the University of Calgary. Meanwhile, researchers from the Vancouver-based TRIUMF laboratory and 91ŃÇÉ« teased faint signals from a sophisticated detector system, pinpointing matter-antimatter annihilation events.

Menary, professor in 91ŃÇɫ’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, , says the current experiment represents the collaboration’s biggest milestone to date.

“It was a scientific tour de force just to trap the antihydrogen atoms. Now we’re actually doing physics with them. This, in my mind, is an even bigger achievement,” he says.

ALPHA-Canada researchers played a key role in two other recent antimatter milestones: in November 2010, ALPHA scientists successfully trapped antihydrogen atoms for the first time, and in June 2011, they demonstrated they could hold on to them for 1,000 seconds.

“For decades, scientists have wanted to study the intrinsic properties of antimatter atoms in the hope of finding clues that might help answer fundamental questions about our universe,” says lead author Mike Hayden, physicist with SFU. “In the middle of the last century, physicists were developing and using microwave techniques to study ordinary atoms like hydrogen. Now, 60 or 70 years down the road, we have just witnessed the first-ever microwave interactions with an anti-atom.”

The post Historic Canadian-led experiment brings scientists one step closer to understanding universe appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Theatre Glendon theatre students are pushing the boundaries of audience interaction in their upcomingĚý production,Ěý , opening Feb. 28.

Inspired by the Occupy movement and adapted from Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade by student Dan Pelletier, this play explores class struggle and questions the nature of revolution. Directed by Glendon theatre instructor and award-winning director Aleksandar Lukac, it will take its audiences deep into the struggles of the 99 per cent.

Here’s the unusual bit. Every performance will be on the Internet. And – a very big and – viewers will be invited to send comments via and about the production. Those comments will be projected in real time onto the tent city set, raw and uncensored, and the student actors will answer them on stage during the performance.

“This hasn’t been done before that I know of,” says Lukac. Known for mounting , especially in his native Serbia, Lukac has alerted Toronto theatre companies about this experiment so they can witness what happens. The tweets and Facebook messages “will be a distraction or a help. Once we open the gate anything can pass through. It will show who’s watching, anyway.”

The play runs Feb. 28 through March 3 at Theatre Glendon, Glendon campus, at 7pm. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students. Call the box office for tickets: 416-487-6822.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Occupy movement inspires interactive Glendon production appeared first on Research & Innovation.

“Your ability to recognize objects and your ability to recognize scenes are independent,” says Steeves.Ěý

Their study is published in the December issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience – “TMS to the Lateral Occipital Cortex Disrupts Object Processing but Facilitates Scene Processing”.

Left: Psychology Professor Jennifer Steeves applies rTMS stimulation toĚýPhD candidate Caitlin Mullin. Images of Mullin's brain can be seen on the adjacent screenĚý

The finding discounts an earlier theory that scene perception relies on the recognition of individual objects and instead finds that the gist of a scene can be ascertained by its spatial layout alone.

Steeves and Mullin conducted two experiments. Both showed that when the ability to see objects is impaired, the brain can still determine what it’s looking at by taking in the scene. But what surprised the researchers is that when object recognition was temporarily knocked out, the ability to categorize scenes, such as distinguishing a forest from a cityscape, increased.

“It’s like you can see the forest better when you can’t see the trees,” says Steeves, who heads up the Perceptual Neuroscience LabĚýin 91ŃÇÉ«'s . “We didn’t expect this at all. The stimulationĚýmust be releasing some inhibitory process in people's brains.”

The experiments involved nine individuals with healthy brains. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was applied to the left lateral occipital cortex (LO), the object processing area of the brain just behind each ear, to disrupt object processing. This was done while showing the subjects pictures of scenes and objects.

Right: Jennifer Steeves

The idea was to see how the LO contributed to the perception of scenes. The rTMS momentarily scrambled the neurons in the LO, preventing the subject from recognizing the objects, but they were able to categorize the scenes more quickly and accurately than before. The first experiment involved using a longer disruption time for object processing than that used in the second experiment.

“There was a split second interruption to the brain in the second experiment,” says Steeves. Still, the second experiment confirmed the findings of the first. “It’s a really robust effect. The TMS showed us that even though the two functions are independent, they still work together.”

Steeves and Mullin are now doing research find out what other parts of the brain are affected when rTMS is applied to specific areas. “We’re finding so far that stimulating one region can have an effect on other areas,” says Mullin.

The research is part of the nuts and bolts of mapping the brain, which could have implications down the road in helping people with brain injuries or informing computer modelling. “What’s nice is we’re learning about networks in the brain,” says Steeves. And that is where it all starts.

The experiments were funded through grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Research Fund and the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Study finds people can see the forest without the trees appeared first on Research & Innovation.