Now that passion has earned him an unusual scientific honor. Researchers have named a newly identified snake species from New Guinea Lielaphis slashi, or Slash’s groundsnake.

“As a long time herpephile, I am extremely honored and humbled to have Lielaphis slashi from New Guinea named after me. It is really exciting, I never would have imagined this moment would arrive,” says Slash.

A Childhood Connection to Slash

For Sara Ruane, the Field Museum’s Associate Curator of Herpetology and senior author of a paper in Zootaxa describing the species, the name also has a personal connection.

“Guns N’ Roses has been one of my favorite bands since I was in first grade, and by fifth grade, I had already told my teacher that I wanted to be a herpetologist — a scientist who studies reptiles — when I grew up,” says Sara Ruane, the Field Museum’s Associate Curator of Herpetology and senior author of a paper in Zootaxa describing the new species. “So when I was twelve years old and got my copy of Reptiles Magazine in the mail and it had a picture of Slash holding his pet reticulated python on the cover, I thought, ‘This guy is so cool.'”

Years later, after Ruane became a scientist who sometimes has the opportunity to assign official names to newly recognized reptile species, she returned to that old magazine interview.

“I reread his interview, and he talked about how much he loves museums and zoos and natural history, and about how when he was a kid, he’d go outside and look for snakes — it was all stuff that I really related to, and it made me think that he’d be a great person to name a new species after,” says Ruane.

Her opportunity eventually came in the form of a reddish-brown snake measuring 28 inches long that had been collected in the forests of New Guinea.

A Mysterious Snake From New Guinea

New Guinea is the world’s second-largest island, behind Greenland. Located just north of Australia, the island is divided between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Its tropical forests support enormous biological diversity, much of which remains poorly documented by scientists.

During fieldwork one night in 2006, Chris Austin, a professor and curator of herpetology at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, encountered a snake in New Guinea that he did not recognize.

“These New Guinea groundsnakes are nocturnal, so the best way to find them is at night. They are typically found just after sunset at the base of large trees where they are looking for something to eat,” says Austin, a co-author of the paper describing the new species. “When working at night in New Guinea you need to be very careful as there are several highly venomous species that look very similar to the non-venomous groundsnakes.”

After completing her doctorate, Ruane worked with Austin at LSU in 2016. The two began collaborating to better understand New Guinea’s poorly studied snakes, and they have continued working together on the group ever since.

Genetics Reveal a New Species

At first glance, the snake did not obviously appear to represent a species new to science. Laboratory work, however, revealed important differences.

“Using multiple cutting-edge genetic analyses, we found that L. slashi is genetically distinct from other similar snakes in the same genus,” says Tianqi Huang, the study’s first author and a post-doctoral researcher at the Field Museum with Ruane. “The combination of physical characteristics, like differences in numbers of scales when compared with other species, and the genetic evidence is what led us to realize that it is an entirely new species. We also used ecological modeling to show that L. slashi‘s preferred habitat is different from similar snakes.”

The researchers combined genetic evidence with physical traits, including differences in scale counts, to distinguish L. slashi from related snakes. Ecological modeling also indicated that the new species favors a different type of habitat than similar members of the genus.

What Slash’s Groundsnake Eats

Scientists still know relatively little about the behavior and ecology of Slash’s groundsnake.

“It’s incredibly hard to observe snakes in the wild before they slither away, so our knowledge about L. slashi is limited,” says Ruane.

Its anatomy does provide some hints about how it may live and feed.

“Snakes in this genus often have large teeth in the back of their mouths, which New Guinea groundsnakes may use to grab on to and eat small, slippery-scaled lizards and the eggs of other reptiles; this snake isn’t grasping and squeezing its prey like a boa constrictor,” says Ruane.

Although Guns N’ Roses has been called the “most dangerous band in the world,” its reptilian namesake is not dangerous to people. L. slashi does not produce venom capable of seriously harming a human.

Threats to New Guinea’s Forests

Slash’s groundsnake may pose little danger to humans, but human activity could threaten the species and many other animals living in New Guinea’s forests.

“The habitats that Slash’s groundsnake is from are under threat from industries like coffee farming and mining,” says Ruane. “That’s part of why describing the species that live there is important. Every species should be recognized in order for us to better understand how ecosystems work, how everything fits into the environment. We can’t conserve animals or other living things that we don’t know about.”

By formally identifying species such as L. slashi, scientists can build a clearer picture of New Guinea’s biodiversity and better understand which organisms may be at risk as their habitats change.

This study was contributed to by Tianqi Huang (Field Museum and Rutgers University), Chris Austin (Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science), Justin Bernstein (Slippery Rock University and the American Museum of Natural History), Bulisa Iova (Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery), Jackson Roberts (Virginia Museum of Natural History), Jeffrey Frederick (University of Kentucky), and Sara Ruane (Field Museum).

Caltech researchers have now developed a device that uses one beam of light to redirect another in just 74 femtoseconds (74 quadrillionths of a second). That is roughly the amount of time light needs to travel across the width of a human hair.

“Steering light with light is very challenging because light typically interacts very weakly with matter. Using optical meta-surfaces (ultrathin carefully nanoengineered sheets), we can up the interaction strength to make this possible with much higher efficiency,” says Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech.

The researchers report their findings in a paper recently published in Nature Nanotechnology. Lead author Claudio Hail carried out the research while he was a postdoctoral scholar in Atwater’s Caltech lab. He is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.

Why Conventional Light Steering Has a Speed Limit

Many existing technologies for steering or modulating light depend on changing the electronic properties of a material. Examples include liquid-crystal panels used in projectors and optical chips found in telecommunications systems.

In these devices, electrons are pushed into higher energy states before returning to lower ones and releasing their excess energy. That relaxation takes time, creating a bottleneck that usually limits light modulation to nanosecond or picosecond timescales (trillionths of a second).

Atwater’s team took a different approach by eliminating the need for an electrical signal. Instead, the researchers used a powerful beam of light, known as the pump, with a carefully designed pattern that temporarily altered the optical behavior of a material.

A second, weaker beam, called the probe, then passed through that material. Its direction changed according to the pattern created by the pump beam.

Using the Optical Kerr Effect

The system relies on a phenomenon known as the optical Kerr effect. When an intense beam of light passes through a material, it can briefly produce a very small change in the material’s refractive index, which describes how much light slows down and bends as it travels through that material.

The effect comes from changes in the motion of electrons within their orbitals, regions around an atom’s nucleus where electrons have a high probability of being located. Crucially, the electrons are not pushed into separate, longer-lasting excited states.

As a result, the change can appear and vanish almost as quickly as the light pulse itself. There is no need to wait for excited electrons to fall back to lower energy levels.

On its own, though, the optical Kerr effect is too weak to redirect a beam of light by an amount that would be useful in practical devices.

Nanoscale Silicon Pillars Amplify the Effect

To strengthen the response, the researchers created a meta-surface from a thin film of amorphous silicon. The surface was covered with nanoscale pillars, each smaller than the wavelength of the pump’s light.

By carefully choosing the size and spacing of these pillars, the team caused light to remain inside the meta-surface slightly longer and circulate within it instead of simply passing straight through.

That additional interaction time amplified the small refractive index change in the silicon. The resulting effect became strong enough to redirect the probe beam.

Using this design, the researchers steered light by angles of up to 13 degrees in as little as 74 femtoseconds. They also showed that the modulation speed was limited by the duration of the pump pulse (which was also 74 femtoseconds).

Even Faster Light Control May Be Possible

The researchers say the current speed limit comes from the laser pulses used to operate the system, not from the fundamental properties of the meta-material itself.

That leaves open the possibility of making the process even faster. With further development, the technology could reach timescales relevant to emerging photonic concepts including time crystals and synthetic time-varying optical materials.

The paper is titled “Ultrafast, reconfigurable all-optical beam steering and spatial light modulation.” Along with Hail and Atwater, Lior Michaeli is also an author of the paper. He completed the work as a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and is now an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tel Aviv University.

The work was supported by funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and its Meta-Imaging Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Fellowship program, and the Breakthrough Foundation. The Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech provided infrastructure and support for the work.

“As a result of exquisite planning by our orbital dynamics team, brilliant execution by the operations team, and a precise launch from SpaceX, Roman has fuel for at least 22 years of potential science operations,” said Jamie Dunn, center director at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Several factors are behind that dramatic extension. Roman used far less fuel than expected during its first course correction, carried additional propellant at launch, and is projected to conserve even more during its second mid-course correction and orbital insertion.

Roman Was Originally Designed for 10 Years

Roman was built around a five-year primary mission and a five-year extended mission, giving it a total fuel budget intended to support 10 years of operations. Because propellant is the spacecraft’s main consumable resource, every kilogram saved during its journey can potentially translate into additional years of scientific observations.

First Maneuver Could Add Four Years

Roman carried out its first burn on Aug. 31, adjusting its path toward the observatory’s eventual orbit. Since then, the mission team has been studying how the maneuver affected Roman’s long-term fuel outlook.

The results were better than expected. The maneuver was completed with more than 99% accuracy and consumed less than 10% of the fuel reserved for it. Roman used about 40 pounds (18 kilograms), compared with the planned allocation of 441 pounds (200 kilograms).

Those savings alone could provide roughly four additional years of potential science operations.

Extra Fuel at Launch Could Add Another Four Years

Roman also began its journey with more propellant available than planners originally expected to need.

Engineers calculated the spacecraft’s fuel requirements using a conservative maximum weight of 21,605 pounds (9,800 kilograms). Roman ultimately weighed just 17,760 pounds (8,056 kilograms) at launch.

Because the spacecraft was lighter, it required less fuel for its mid-course correction. Its lower mass also allowed the team to fill Roman’s propellant tanks to capacity rather than carrying only enough fuel for the original 10-year mission.

That additional fuel could support roughly four more years of operations.

“A spacecraft’s mass changes throughout the design and build process, so we base the propellant budget on a set maximum value so we won’t come up short,” said Alison Rao, the Roman propulsion lead at NASA Goddard. “We track the propellant needed based on actual mass throughout integration and testing as well, to make sure we have wiggle room. Since Roman’s was lower than we budgeted for, we were able to fill the propellant tanks to their capacity rather than only filling them as much as we needed to for the 10-year requirement.”

More Fuel Savings Expected Ahead

Roman’s successful first mid-course correction is also expected to make its second correction much smaller, potentially conserving still more propellant.

Because the first maneuver was so accurate, mission controllers can wait longer before making the follow-up adjustment, which is now scheduled for later this month. That burn will provide the final amount of energy Roman needs to reach its targeted position before entering its permanent orbit around L2.

Roman is expected to arrive at L2 approximately 100 days after launch, around early December.

Current estimates indicate that the second correction and orbital insertion should both require less fuel than originally budgeted. Together, those savings could provide approximately four additional years of potential mission life and leave even more propellant available for future scientific work.

Once Roman settles into its orbit around L2, maintaining its position should require only periodic station-keeping burns about once every 28 days.

“We have taken an important step towards carrying out an exciting experiment on this topic,” says the professor of physics: “We want to measure the gravitational interaction of the muon.”

The familiar matter that makes up people, planets, and nearly everything around us consists of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Physicists classify these particles as belonging to the first generation of matter. Two additional generations also exist, made up of heavier particles. One of them is the muon, a heavier relative of the electron that belongs to the second generation.

Researchers at PSI can create muons and their antiparticles using a large particle accelerator. When a positively charged antimuon combines with a negatively charged electron, the pair forms a neutral atom known as muonium.

Why Physicists Want to Test Muons

The Standard Model of particle physics describes these different generations of particles, but it does not explain why nature has multiple generations in the first place.

“But we physicists do not yet understand why these additional generations exist at all in the first place,” says Soter. “And why are there three in total?”

That mystery raises another important question. Do the heavier particles of the second and third generations respond to gravity in exactly the same way as the lighter particles found in the first generation?

Testing Einstein’s Equivalence Principle

For ordinary matter, objects at the same location in a gravitational field fall at the same rate. Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton recognized this universality of free fall centuries ago. It later became central to Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity through the equivalence principle, which connects gravitational mass with inertial mass.

So far, however, researchers have demonstrated this principle only with ordinary matter or first-generation antimatter. Measuring how muonium behaves under gravity would provide the first test involving a second-generation particle.

“The exotic muonium is very well suited to this because it is a neutral atom,” explains Soter: “After all, to make something fall, you need something neutral.”

Neutrality is essential because gravity is extremely weak compared with electromagnetism. If researchers tried to perform the experiment with a charged particle, stray electromagnetic fields could overwhelm the gravitational effect they are attempting to detect.

Muonium presents another major obstacle. Muons survive for only about 2.2 microseconds before decaying. Earlier methods also produced muonium atoms traveling at different speeds and in many directions, making them poorly suited for extremely precise gravity measurements.

Researchers at PSI have now found a way around that problem.

“We have managed to produce the muonium atoms in a ‘cold’ state, which is what makes the gravity experiment possible in the first place,” says Soter. “In this case, ‘cold’ means that the atoms propagate at similar speeds, almost parallel to one another.”

Superfluid Helium Creates a Controlled Muonium Beam

The team describes its new method for producing muonium in Nature Physics.

“In order to achieve this, we used superfluid helium that had been cooled close to absolute zero at minus 273 degrees Celsius,” explains Jesse Zhang, lead author of the study. “Superfluid helium is what is known as a quantum fluid, in which the individual helium atoms lose their identity, and which does not tolerate any impurities within it.”

The process begins by directing antimuons from PSI’s accelerator into a thin layer of superfluid helium. Inside the helium, the particles slow down. When an antimuon encounters a free electron, the two form a muonium atom with positive chemical potential.

That chemical potential effectively drives the newly formed atom out of the liquid. When it reaches the surface, the chemical potential is converted into kinetic energy, giving the muonium atom a boost that sends it vertically upward.

“So we’re using the chemical potential as an atomic cannon,” explains Zhang.

The muonium atoms must pass through the quantum liquid without collisions and at a predictable speed. Their lifetime is so short that any significant delay would prevent them from reaching the surface before they decay.

“For our experiments, we also rely on PSI’s particle accelerator, which generates the world’s most intense, continuous muon beams,” says Soter. “Thanks to this high-quality source, a great many muonium atoms can be produced.”

Watching Gravity Shift an Atomic Pattern

The researchers are now building an instrument known as an interferometer to measure how Earth’s gravity affects the muonium beam.

The device takes advantage of the wave properties of atoms to produce an interference pattern. Earth’s gravitational pull should cause an extremely small shift in that pattern. Measuring the displacement would allow the researchers to determine how gravity acts on the muon.

“We hope to be able to test the method for the first time with the atomic beam this year, and if all goes well, the actual gravity experiment should follow in two or three years’ time,” as Soter relates.

The new beam could also make much more precise laser spectroscopy experiments with muonium possible. Those measurements could improve scientists’ understanding of the muon’s mass and fundamental physical constants, another long-term goal of the research group.

Could the Experiment Reveal a Fifth Force?

If muonium responds to gravity differently from ordinary matter, the implications could be profound.

“That would indeed be surprising, and, in addition to other theories, it could point to the existence of a fifth force,” as Soter outlines.

Modern physics recognizes four fundamental interactions: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong interaction, and the weak interaction. Scientists have repeatedly proposed the possibility of an additional fifth force, but no such force has ever been confirmed.

Discovering one is not the main objective of Soter’s experiment. The immediate goal is more fundamental: determining whether one of Einstein’s central principles also holds for a different generation of particles.

“I am completely open-minded,” she says. “I simply want to measure, for the first time, whether the equivalence between gravitational and inertial mass also applies to the second generation of particles — this alone is quite an inspiring piece of work.”

This research is supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research Muoniverse.

Atrial fibrillation is a common heart rhythm condition in older adults and also affects many people living with Alzheimer’s disease. Doctors often prescribe blood thinners to these patients to reduce the chance of blood clots and stroke. Earlier research has suggested that anticoagulant treatment may lower the risk of developing dementia, but far less is known about whether these drugs influence cognitive decline after Alzheimer’s disease has already been diagnosed.

“There are reasons to believe that the treatment could have a positive effect on cognition, for example by improving blood flow and reducing small-scale damage in the brain,” says Maria Eriksdotter, professor at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, and senior consultant in geriatric medicine at Karolinska University Hospital, who led the study.

Comparing Newer and Older Blood Thinners

Researchers analyzed information from SveDem (Swedish Register for Cognitive Disorders/Dementia), a national quality registry, and included 7,308 people diagnosed with both atrial fibrillation and Alzheimer’s disease.

Participants were placed into three matched groups. One group received newer anticoagulants known as NOACs, another was treated with the older blood thinner warfarin (Waran), and the third did not receive any anticoagulant medication.

To track changes in thinking and memory over time, researchers used the standardized Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).

Slower Cognitive Decline With NOACs

People taking NOACs showed a significantly slower decline in cognitive function than those treated with warfarin or those who received no anticoagulant medication.

The difference amounted to slightly more than 0.2 MMSE points per year. While that change is relatively small over a single year, the researchers say it could become more meaningful if it continues over a longer period.

“The difference is modest for an individual patient from one year to the next, but over a longer period even such an effect could influence how cognitive function develops. Our findings suggest that NOAC treatment may also be significant for cognition in this patient group,” says Nanbo Zhu, researcher at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet.

Lower Risks of Stroke and Other Complications

The potential benefits were not limited to cognition. Compared with people who did not receive anticoagulants, those treated with NOACs also had lower risks of death, stroke, blood clots and fractures.

Warfarin was also associated with lower risks of death, stroke, and blood clots. However, people taking warfarin had a higher risk of major bleeding.

Why the Findings Need Caution

The researchers emphasize that the study has important limitations. Because it was observational, the results cannot prove that NOACs directly caused the slower cognitive decline or the other health benefits seen in the data.

Some factors that could affect both which treatment a patient received and how their health changed over time could not be fully evaluated. The researchers also note that some participants may have switched from one medication to another during the follow-up period.

The study was funded by, amongst others, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Brain Foundation, CIMED, ALF project funding and Karolinska Institutet funds. Maria Eriksdotter has participated as a consultant in one-off meetings with BioArctic AB, Roche, Eli Lilly, Biogen/Eisai and Novo Nordisk, and has given lectures at symposia sponsored by Roche and BioArctic/Eisai. No other conflicts of interest are reported.