While the demand for ever-smaller electronic devices has spurred the miniaturization of a variety of technologies, one area has lagged behind in this downsizing revolution: energy-storage units, such as batteries and capacitors. Now, Richard Kaner, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Maher El-Kady, a graduate student in Kaner’s laboratory, may have changed the game....

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of deaths using prescription opioids climbed by more than 16% between 2019 and 2020, and they account for about 18% of all opioid overdose deaths. The research, which was published in JAMA Network Open, examines two sizable patient groups that include an equal number of men and women between the ages of 18 and 93 who had tooth extractions at the Institute’s Howitt Urgent Dental Care clinic in Rochester, New York....

The star, named HD 163296, is located 330 light-years from Earth and formed over the last six million years. It is surrounded by a disc of dust and gas — a so-called protoplanetary disc. It is within these discs that young planets are born. Using a radio telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, researchers were able to detect an extremely faint signal showing the existence of a rare form of carbon monoxide — known as an isotopologue (13C17O)....

Air pollution — especially ozone air pollution which is increasing with climate change — accelerates the progression of emphysema of the lung, according to a new study led by the University of Washington, Columbia University and the University at Buffalo. While previous studies have shown a clear connection of air pollutants with some heart and lung diseases, the new research published August 13 in JAMA demonstrates an association between long-term exposure to all major air pollutants — especially ozone — with an increase in emphysema seen in lung scans....

“These mineral transformations greatly hinder the movements of rock in the mantle,” explains Professor Frank Brenker from the Institute for Geosciences at Goethe University in Frankfurt. For example, mantle plumes – rising columns of hot rock from the deep mantle – sometimes stop directly below the transition zone. The movement of mass in the opposite direction also comes to standstill. Brenker says, “Subducting plates often have difficulty in breaking through the entire transition zone....

Somewhat more than 4000 planets orbiting stars outside our solar system are known so far. Of these so-called exoplanets, about 96 percent are significantly larger than our Earth, most of them more comparable with the dimensions of the gas giants Neptune or Jupiter. This percentage likely does not reflect the real conditions in space, however, since small planets are much harder to track down than big ones. Moreover, small worlds are fascinating targets in the search for Earth-like, potentially habitable planets outside the solar system....

A peculiar example of a celestial body, known as a brown dwarf, with unusually red skies has been discovered by a team of astronomers from the University of Hertfordshire’s Center for Astrophysics Research. The scientists published their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Brown dwarfs straddle the line between stars and planets. They are too big to be considered as planets; yet they do not have sufficient material to fuse hydrogen in their cores to fully develop into stars....

“Non-O blood types have previously been linked to a risk of early stroke, but the findings of our meta-analysis showed a stronger link between these blood types with early stroke compared to late stroke, and in linking risk mostly to blood type A,” said study author Braxton D. Mitchell, PhD, MPH, of University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Specifically, our meta-analysis suggests that gene variants tied to blood types A and O represent nearly all of those genetically linked with early stroke....

The St. Patrick Bay ice caps on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, have disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) scientists and colleagues predicted via a 2017 paper in The Cryosphere that the ice caps would melt out completely within the next five years, and recent images from NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) have confirmed that this prediction was accurate....

A thrilling chapter in the exploration of the solar system will soon conclude, as NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft makes its final close flyby of the ocean-bearing moon Enceladus. Cassini is scheduled to fly past Enceladus at a distance of 3,106 miles (4,999 kilometers) on Saturday, December 19, at 9:49 a.m. PST (12:49 p.m. EST). Although the spacecraft will continue to observe Enceladus during the remainder of its mission (through September 2017), it will be from much greater distances — at closest, more than four times farther away than the December 19 encounter....

Professor Rais Latypov says “The vertical rate at which magma chambers grow via magma emplacement is highly debated. Based on high-precision zircon dating and surface deformation measurements, most plutons are currently thought to be emplaced very slowly (a few cm/year). Such slow rates are, however, difficult to reconcile with the existence of large, well-differentiated intrusions which appear to form only if emplacement rates are very high. A key question we tried to address is which rate of magma emplacement is required to keep the growing chamber entirely molten?...

What would happen if you took two galaxies and mixed them together over millions of years? A new image including data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals the cosmic culinary outcome. Arp 299 is a system located about 140 million light years from Earth. It contains two galaxies that are merging, creating a partially blended mix of stars from each galaxy in the process. However, this stellar mix is not the only ingredient....

According to the research, which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications, higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have boosted the biomass, or wood volume, of American forests. The research discovered that increasing carbon levels consistently caused an increase in wood volume in 10 distinct temperate forest groups throughout the country, despite the fact that other factors like climate and pests may somewhat influence a tree’s volume. This indicates that trees’ rapid growth is helping to protect the Earth’s ecosystem from the effects of global warming....

The research, led by University of Queensland PhD student Isaac Brito-Morales, looked at how ocean life was responding to climate change. “We used a metric known as climate velocity which defines the likely speed and direction a species shifts as the ocean warms,” Mr. Brito-Morales said. “We calculated the climate velocity throughout the ocean for the past 50 years and then for the rest of this century using data from 11 climate models....

There has been a steady increase in protests in the United States and Great Britain since 2011, which, as Peter Turchin and other scientists suggest, is the result of a predictable 50-year cycle of socio-political dynamics that has culminated with a surge of violence. This cycle was identified by Russian experts in cliodynamics and structural-demographic theory. Back in 2010, they predicted the current course of events. And now they have been able to verify their mathematical models....

Argonne computational resources supported the largest comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 genome sequences in the U.S. and helped corroborate growing evidence of a protein mutation. Before COVID-19 first entered the United States in March, Houston Methodist Hospital had already begun preparations to test for and sequence the virus on a large scale, given the news coming out of Wuhan, China. Between March 5, when the first case turned up in metropolitan Houston, and July 7, physician/researchers at Houston Methodist sequenced the genome of over 5,085 strains of the virus....

A provocative new study looks at the resource utilization and technological strategies that would be needed to make a Mars population of one million people food self-sufficient. A detailed model of population growth, caloric needs, land use, and potential food sources showed that food self-sufficiency could be achieved within 100 years. The study is published in New Space: The Journal of Space Entrepreneurship and Innovation, a peer-reviewed journal by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc....

In severe cases of COVID-19, damage can spread beyond the lungs and into other organs, such as the heart, liver, kidney and parts of the neurological system. Beyond these specific sets of organs, however, the virus seems to lack impact. Ernesto Estrada, from the University of Zaragoza and Agencia Aragonesa para la Investigación Foundation in Spain, aimed to uncover an explanation as to how it is possible for these damages to propagate selectively rather than affecting the entire body....

Temple researchers have identified the first genome to transmit the coronavirus. In the field of molecular epidemiology, the worldwide scientific community has been sleuthing to solve the riddle of the early history of SARS-CoV-2. Since the first SARS-CoV-2 virus infection was detected in December 2019, tens of thousands of its genomes have been sequenced worldwide, revealing that the coronavirus is mutating, albeit slowly, at a rate of 25 mutations per genome per year....

If that’s not cringeworthy enough, after running additional computer simulations, they’ve concluded that flushing urinals does likewise. In Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, the group shares its work simulating and tracking virus-laden particle movements when urinals are flushed. The researchers’ work clearly shows public restrooms can be dangerous places for potentially becoming infected from a virus, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other work has shown that both feces- and urine-based virus transmission is possible....