Lithium-ion batteries use toxic, heavy metals which can impact the environment when they are extracted from the ground and are difficult to dispose of safely. Cobalt is one of those heavy metals, used in battery electrodes. Part of the problem is that lithium and cobalt are not abundantly available, and supplies are dwindling. Using organic materials are the way forward and that has scientists like Professor Thomas Baumgartner of the Faculty of Science and his team busy developing and testing new molecules to find the right ones to replace the rare metals currently in use....

First evidence of inflammatory micro clots in blood of individuals suffering from Long COVID: This may be the cause of some of the lingering symptoms experienced by individuals with Long COVID. New research indicates that an overload of various inflammatory molecules, literally “trapped” inside insoluble microscopic blood clots (micro clots), might be the cause of some of the lingering symptoms experienced by individuals with Long COVID. This unexpected finding was made by Prof Resia Pretorius, a researcher in the Department of Physiological Science at Stellenbosch University (SU), when she started looking at micro clots and their molecular content in blood samples from individuals with Long COVID....

Video Transcript: Have you ever heard that something called the ozone layer is thinning? Or that your aerosol hairspray is what’s causing it? Or that it leads to more severe sunburns and UV rays? This is referring to the ozone hole. But what exactly does it all mean? Welcome to ozone 101. The ozone holes proper name is actually the Antarctic ozone hole because when it forms it forms over Antarctica....

The analysis of the weapons used by the indigenous people of the Gilbert Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, which primarily use shark teeth, indicate that at least three species of shark have disappeared from the waters near the islands. Joshua Drew, a conservation biologist at Columbia University in New York, studied the weapons housed in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, and presented his findings at the 2012 Ecological Society of America’s Annual Meeting in Portland last week....

In four papers published December 4 in Nature, researchers describe strange space phenomena and a flood of new data that will help us understand everything from the nature of stars to improving our forecasting of solar storms that can affect electronics on Earth. Sidling up to the nearest star that humans can reach, the Parker Solar Probe learned new information about two types of major space weather events. It also saw the first signs of the zone around the sun where cosmic dust disappears—predicted decades ago, but never seen—as well as an entirely new phenomenon: bizarre “switchbacks” in the solar wind that flows off the surface of the sun....

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease. It is much more common in older age, with a population prevalence of 4% at age 80 compared to 1% at age 60. It is a brain disorder that causes unintended or uncontrollable movements, such as shaking, rigidity, and difficulty with balance and coordination. Symptoms usually begin gradually and worsen over time, with cognitive decline common at later stages....

The Blue Ring Nebula, which perplexed scientists for over a decade, appears to be the youngest known example of two stars merged into one. In 2004, scientists with NASA’s space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they’d seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas with a star at its center. In the GALEX images, the blob appeared blue — though it doesn’t actually emit light visible to the human eye — and subsequent observations revealed a thick ring structure within it....

Physicists from Einstein’s hometown Ulm and from Hannover have taken on the challenge of investigating the intersections of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. For this very purpose, they draw on the famous twin paradox that is a direct consequence of the theory of relativity. In the journal Science Advances, the researchers have now published the theoretical foundations for an experiment that tests a quantum-mechanical variant of the twin paradox....

It’s been enormously successful, and NASA extended its mission in March. However, it is also facing its challenges from the harsh conditions on Mars and the fact that it has been in operation far longer and flown many more flights than expected. Now it has a new challenge to overcome – one of its navigation sensors has stopped functioning. In its new winter operations paradigm, Ingenuity is effectively shutting down during the night, letting its internal temperature drop to about minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees Celsius) and letting the onboard electronics reset....

Despite significant advancements in DNA technology and analysis, the origin, evolution, and spread of the plague remain challenging to pinpoint. The plague is responsible for the two largest and most deadly pandemics in human history. However, the ebb and flow of these, why some die out and others persist for years has confounded scientists. In a paper published today in the journal Communications Biology, McMaster researchers use comprehensive data and analysis to chart what they can about the highly complex history of Y....

The lower breast — especially the nipple and surrounding area — gets the most attention from both men and women, according to the study by Piotr Pietruski, MD, PhD, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Prof. W. Orlowski Memorial Hospital, Warsaw. They write, “Thanks to objective analysis of observer’s gaze pattern, eye-tracking technology may provide a better insight into the visual perception of breast esthetics and symmetry.” In the study, 50 male and 50 female observers were asked to assess the aesthetics and symmetry of eight types of female breasts....

The antenna reflector is made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand the spacecraft’s wide temperature fluctuations. The dish spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, standing about as tall as a refrigerator, yet only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms). Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth. At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location....

University of Queensland paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio, in an international collaboration, used AI pattern recognition to re-analyze footprints from the Dinosaur Stampede National Monument, southwest of Winton in Central Queensland. “Large dinosaur footprints were first discovered back in the 1970s at a track site called the Dinosaur Stampede National Monument, and for many years they were believed to be left by a predatory dinosaur, like Australovenator, with legs nearly two meters long,” said Dr....

We are both physician–scientists at the University of Virginia. We care for COVID-19 patients and conduct research to find better ways to diagnose and treat COVID-19. Here we are sharing what physicians have learned over the past eight months treating various stages of this disease. Early in the year, there were few known treatments for people who showed severe COVID-19 symptoms apart from sustaining them on ventilators. Now, several months later, there are a handful of treatments, including drugs, that give doctors far better tools to heal patients, particularly very ill ones....

Previously, it was believed that LncRNAs served no major purpose in cells, but new research now shows that one of these LncRNAs termed ‘LincIRS2’ is important for safeguarding our metabolism as LincIRS2 loss favors the development of metabolic complications in mice. “In my estimate, only the function of less than 100 of the nearly 60,000 LncRNAs encoded in our genomes has been truly understood,” says Jan-Wilhelm Kornfeld, Danish Diabetes Academy (DDA) professor for Molecular Biology of Metabolic Diseases at University of Southern Denmark....

On its way to meet up with the orbiting laboratory and its Expedition 68 crew members, the resupply ship reached preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned. Progress will dock to the space-facing side of the Poisk module two days from now, on Thursday, October 27, at 10:49 p.m. EDT (7:49 p.m. PDT). Live coverage on NASA TV of rendezvous and docking will begin at 10:15 p....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. Researchers used deep sequencing to locate and date more than one million single nucleotide variants. These are locations where a single letter of the DNA sequence is different from other individuals. The genomes of 6,500 African and European Americans were analyzed. The findings confirm that the majority of variants were picked up in the past 5,000 to 10,000 years. The scientists also saw the markers of the diverging migratory history of the two groups....

Researchers at the University of Münster and Forschungszentrum Jülich now, for the first time, demonstrated what is known as energy quantization in nanowires made of high-temperature superconductors — i. e. superconductors, in which the temperature is elevated below which quantum mechanical effects predominate. The superconducting nanowire then assumes only selected energy states that could be used to encode information. In the high-temperature superconductors, the researchers were also able to observe for the first time the absorption of a single photon, a light particle that serves to transmit information....

Locals in this high tundra call the perennial snowbanks munkh mus, or eternal ice. They’re central to lives of the region’s traditional reindeer herders, who depend on the snowy patches for clean drinking water and to cool down their hoofed charges in summer months. Now, a new study led by archaeologist William Taylor suggests that this eternal ice, and the people and animals it supports, may be at risk because of soaring global temperatures....

Simon Fraser University researchers have designed a remarkably fast engine that taps into a new kind of fuel — information. The development of this engine, which converts the random jiggling of a microscopic particle into stored energy, is outlined in research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and could lead to significant advances in the speed and cost of computers and bio-nanotechnologies. SFU physics professor and senior author John Bechhoefer says researchers’ understanding of how to rapidly and efficiently convert information into “work” may inform the design and creation of real-world information engines....