In recent years, environmental problems caused by global warming have become more apparent due to greenhouse gases such as CO2. In natural photosynthesis, CO2 is not reduced directly, but is bound to organic compounds which are converted to glucose or starch. Mimicking this, artificial photosynthesis could reduce CO2 by combining it into organic compounds to be used as raw materials, which can be converted into durable forms such as plastic....

Ashwagandha is an ancient herb with historical roots dating 6000 years back to India’s Ayurvedic system of medicine. It’s an adaptogen, which means it helps the body adapt effectively to stress.[1] Ashwagandha is also beneficial for brain function and potentially helpful for mental afflictions like anxiety and depression. It protects metabolic health and heart health while boosting sexual drive. If you want to reap the benefits of ashwagandha, you can find it as a dried powder or in capsule form....

Astronomers estimate that at the time the Solar system formed, its proto-planetary disk contained the equivalent of about twenty Jupiter-masses of gas and dust. This so-called “minimum mass solar nebula (MMSN)” is derived from the current masses of the rocky planets and calculations of how they formed; a minimum mass is used in case the planet formation mechanism is somehow less efficient than expected. (Some earlier estimates had MMSN values up to about 100 Jupiter-masses....

“It’s kind of like looking at a map of Europe and seeing the dot that’s labeled ‘Paris,’” said University of Chicago astrophysicist Jacob Bean. “You know where it is, but there’s a whole lot that you’re missing about the city.” Scientists are developing new telescopes and instruments to fill in more and more of that picture. Bean led the creation of one such instrument called MAROON-X, which was installed at the Gemini Telescope in Hawaii last year....

Data from NASA instruments aboard the ESA (European Space Agency) Rosetta mission have helped reveal that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has its own far-ultraviolet aurora. It is the first time such electromagnetic emissions in the far-ultraviolet have been documented on a celestial object other than a planet or moon. A paper on the findings was released in the journal Nature Astronomy yesterday, September 21, 2020. On Earth, aurora (also known as the northern or southern lights) are generated when electrically charged particles speeding from the Sun hit the upper atmosphere to create colorful shimmers of green, white, and red....

This makes it difficult to research the early phases of star formation, which would offer clues about the evolution of galaxies and the cosmos. An international research team led by astronomers from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) recently noticed a massive filament of atomic hydrogen gas in our galaxy. This structure, named “Maggie,” is located about 55,000 light-years away (on the other side of the Milky Way) and is one of the longest structures ever observed in our galaxy....

The science results were obtained using SOFIA, a highly modified Boeing 747SP jetliner fitted with a 100-inch (2.5-meter) infrared telescope. SOFIA is an international partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The flying observatory has a suite of seven different instruments – cameras and spectrometers – that are flown into the stratosphere to altitudes as high as 45,000 feet (13.7 km) on missions up to 10 hours in duration....

For the first time, a team of astronomers have imaged in real-time as a red supergiant star reached the end of its life. They watched as the star convulsed in its death throes before finally exploding as a supernova. And their observations contradict previous thinking into how red supergiants behave before they blow up. A team of astronomers watched the drama unfold through the eyes of two observatories in Hawaii: Pan-STARRS on Haleakala, Maui, and the W....

In the absence of significant dementia treatment breakthroughs, reducing the risk of developing the disease would be a welcome step forward, said Dr. Ruth Peters. She is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) and Program Lead for Dementia in The George Institute’s Global Brain Health Initiative. “Given population aging and the substantial costs of caring for people with dementia, even a small reduction could have a considerable global impact,” she said....

Results published in Nature Communications report the first example of a lipid-based “memcapacitor,” a charge storage component with memory that processes information much like synapses do in the brain. Their discovery could support the emergence of computing networks modeled on biology for a sensory approach to machine learning. “Our goal is to develop materials and computing elements that work like biological synapses and neurons—with vast interconnectivity and flexibility—to enable autonomous systems that operate differently than current computing devices and offer new functionality and learning capabilities,” said Joseph Najem, a recent postdoctoral researcher at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, and current assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State....

There are over 200 bones in an adult human skeleton, ranging in size from a couple of millimeters in length to well over a foot. How these bones form and how they are repaired if injured varies, and has posed a challenge for many researchers in the field of regenerative medicine. Two processes involved with human skeletal development help all the bones in our body form and grow. These processes are called intramembranous and endochondral ossification, IO and EO respectively....

An international team of astronomers led by Masaaki Otsuka (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics or ASIAA) has detected the C60 fullerene (molecules of carbon with 60 atoms arranged in patterns resembling a soccer ball) (Note 1) in the dying star M1-11. Data from the Subaru Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the 1.88 m telescope at the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO), and the Japanese infrared astronomy satellite AKARI all contributed to this finding, which takes scientists closer to understanding the prevalence and formation of C60 in space....

The study’s results were published in the journal Atmospheric Environment: X. The researchers measured auxiliary heater (AH) particulate emissions from the preheating of three gasoline and three diesel cars over a period of 30 minutes. Preheating was done outside in sub-zero conditions, which is when the AH manufacturer recommends preheating. According to current emissions standards, using an auxiliary heater for 30 minutes was comparable to driving a car 97 kilometers (60 miles) on gasoline or 20 kilometers (12....

A quarter of the carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere ends up in oceans, where it reacts chemically and makes the water more acidic. This disrupts a variety of marine life, inhibiting some species — including corals, clams, and other mollusks — from forming shells and skeletons. So as the threat of ocean acidification, which has emerged as a companion to climate change, looms large, scientists have become concerned that increasing acidification will jeopardize the health of these crucial carbon-absorbing creatures and add another lifeform to the list of species threatened by pollution....

Zeolites crystals, used among other things for refining petroleum to gasoline and biomass into biofuels, are the most-used catalysts by weight on the planet, and discovering mechanisms of how they form has been of intense interest to the chemical industry and related researchers, say chemist Scott Auerbach and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They hope their advance on a new way to understand zeolite structure and vibrations leads to new, tailor-made zeolites for use in sophisticated new applications....

Genomic study also identified genetic variants linked to a common heart condition in the breed. Recent dog breeding practices have loaded up cavalier King Charles spaniels with disease-causing mutations, including variants linked to the common heart condition, myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD). Erik Axelsson of Uppsala University and colleagues published these new findings on September 2nd in the journal PLOS Genetics. The past 300 years of dog breeding have created an incredible diversity of breeds with various sizes, shapes, and abilities....

Study involved health care personnel, first responders, and essential workers in six states. A new CDC study provides strong evidence that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections in real-world conditions among health care personnel, first responders, and other essential workers. These groups are more likely than the general population to be exposed to the virus because of their occupations. The study looked at the effectiveness of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections among 3,950 study participants in six states over a 13-week period from December 14, 2020 to March 13, 2021....

The new research comes from two separate studies, each using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. Black holes that contain between about one hundred and several hundred thousand times the mass of the Sun are called “intermediate mass” black holes, or IMBHs. This is because their mass places them in between the well-documented and frequently-studied “stellar mass” black holes on one end of the mass scale and the “supermassive black holes” found in the central regions of massive galaxies on the other....

Pretty soon, powering your tablet could be as simple as wrapping it in cling wrap. That’s Illan Kramer’s hope. Kramer and colleagues have just invented a new way to spray solar cells onto flexible surfaces using minuscule light-sensitive materials known as colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) – a major step toward making spray-on solar cells easy and cheap to manufacture. “My dream is that one day you’ll have two technicians with Ghostbusters backpacks come to your house and spray your roof,” says Kramer, a post-doctoral fellow with the Ted Sargent group in The Edward S....

The interplanetary iceberg survived solar heating, so far, and is now becoming closer to the Earth as it starts its long trek back to the outer Solar System. As Comet NEOWISE became one of the few naked-eye comets of the 21st Century, word spread quickly, and the comet has already been photographed behind many famous sites and cities around the globe. Featured, Comet NEOWISE was captured over Lebanon two days ago just before sunrise....