Einstein’s understanding of gravity, as outlined in his general theory of relativity, predicts that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass or composition. This theory has passed test after test here on Earth, but does it still hold true for some of the most massive and dense objects in the known universe, an aspect of nature known as the Strong Equivalence Principle? An international team of astronomers has given this lingering question its most stringent test ever....

Led by CRISPR pioneers Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield, a team has used a rare form of CRISPR to engineer custom bacteriophages, a development that could aid in the treatment of drug-resistant infections and allow researchers to control microbiomes without the use of antibiotics. The research, published in Nature Microbiology, represents a significant achievement as the engineering of bacteriophages has long been a challenge for the scientific community. “Bacteriophages are some of the most abundant and diverse biological entities on Earth....

Jim Olson, pediatric neuro-oncologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, came across a report that described a scorpion toxin that binds to brain tumors, but not to healthy cells. By linking a synthetic version of this protein to a molecule that glows in near IR light, researchers think that they might have found a way to illuminate tumorous cells. The compound was injected into the tail vein of a mouse, whose body harbored a transplanted human tumor....

Personnel safety relies on protective equipment which, unfortunately, still leaves much to be desired. For example, high breathability (i.e., the transfer of water vapor from the wearer’s body to the outside world) is critical in protective military uniforms to prevent heat-stress and exhaustion when soldiers are engaged in missions in contaminated environments. The same materials (adsorbents or barrier layers) that provide protection in current garments also detrimentally inhibit breathability. To tackle these challenges, a multi-institutional team of researchers led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist Francesco Fornasiero has developed a smart, breathable fabric designed to protect the wearer against biological and chemical warfare agents....

The discovery of intact specimens of coccolithophores, micrometer-sized marine plankton encased in discs of carbonate, is somewhat rare, since most that are found are just fossilized remains of partial skeletons. This has allowed scientists to image them, right to their intracellular vesicles, using an electron scanning microscope. The images were presented at the Third International Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World in Monterey, California. There is a growing concern that the current acidification of the oceans, which is driven by climate change, will reduce the abundance of calcium carbonate in the waters, making it difficult for algae to form microscopic plating, which is essential to their survival....

The groundbreaking research was published on June 7, 2021, in the journal Nature Communications. Jun Yao, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and an adjunct professor in biomedical engineering, led the research with his longtime collaborator, Derek R. Lovley, a Distinguished Professor in microbiology. Both of the key components of the microsystem are made from protein nanowires, a “green” electronic material that is renewably produced from microbes without producing “e-waste....

Imagine standing in the grocery store, looking at a pile of bananas. On your side of the pile, the manager has posted yesterday’s newspaper flyer, showing bananas at 62¢ per pound — so that’s what you pay at the register. But on the other side of the pile, there’s an up-to-the-minute screen showing that the price of bananas has now dropped to 48¢ per pound — so that’s what the guy over there pays....

Smart traffic signs combining Doppler radar and video with acoustic and weather sensors can track traffic volume and alert drivers in real-time to hazards ahead. Ever get caught up in a pileup or have a near miss with one during bad weather? Researchers in Poland have created smart road signs that use built-in Doppler radar, video, and acoustic radar and weather stations to monitor road traffic and conditions to warn drivers in real-time of hazards and prevent collisions on highways....

When Solar Orbiter blasted into space on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 10, the teams behind the €1.5 billion mission did not anticipate that within weeks, the spread of COVID-19 would evict them from their high-tech control rooms, making the challenging process of commissioning the spacecraft’s instruments even harder. In normal circumstances, many of the project’s scientists and engineers would have gathered at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany....

Traditional electronic chips suffer from substantial ‘Joule heat,’ which occurs due to the flow of an electric current producing high temperatures. It is caused by rapid motion and frequent collision among moving charges inside the devices. This severe issue not only causes a large amount of power dissipation, but also hinders the chip’s processing speed and limits the number of chips that can be incorporated into appliances. “We always encounter such problems and inconveniences when using our phones, computers, and other electronic devices....

When we hear the word dinosaur, most of us probably immediately think of giant animals with massive bodies, long necks and tails, and tiny heads. These “quintessential dinosaurs” actually represent one prominent subgroup of the Dinosauria, the so called Sauropoda (‚long-necked dinosaurs‘ in popular culture). Sauropods were truly amazing animals, and included the largest land-living animals known, with body lengths of up to 40 m and weights of 70 tons or more....

A new comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the role of black carbon, aka soot, in the climate system found that the direct warming effect of black carbon could be about twice that of previous estimates. Soot is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming and its influence on climate has been greatly underestimated, according to the first comprehensive analysis of the problem. The landmark study, co-led by the University of Leeds and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, says the direct warming effect of black carbon, the term used by scientists to describe soot, could be about twice previous estimates....

The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases. Credit: ESO This spectacular and unusual image shows part of the famous Orion Nebula, a star formation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. It combines a mosaic of millimeter-wavelength images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-meter (98-foot) telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shown in blue....

Located about 11,000 light-years from Earth, Cas A (as it’s nicknamed) is the glowing debris field left behind after a massive star exploded. When the star ran out of fuel, it collapsed onto itself and blew up as a supernova, possibly briefly becoming one of the brightest objects in the sky. (Although astronomers think that this happened around the year 1680, there are no verifiable historical records to confirm this....

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted an eruption of dust around a young star, possibly the result of a smashup between large asteroids. This type of collision can eventually lead to the formation of planets. Scientists had been regularly tracking the star, called NGC 2547-ID8, when it surged with a huge amount of fresh dust between August 2012 and January 2013. “We think two big asteroids crashed into each other, creating a huge cloud of grains the size of very fine sand, which are now smashing themselves into smithereens and slowly leaking away from the star,” said lead author and graduate student Huan Meng of the University of Arizona, Tucson....

Using “lab on a chip” technology, Stanford engineers have created a microlab half the size of a credit card that can detect COVID-19 in just 30 minutes. Throughout the pandemic, infectious disease experts and frontline medical workers have asked for a faster, cheaper and more reliable COVID-19 test. Now, leveraging the so-called “lab on a chip” technology and the cutting-edge genetic editing technique known as CRISPR, researchers at Stanford have created a highly automated device that can identify the presence of the novel coronavirus in just a half-hour....

Engineers at Stanford have devised a new way to generate electricity from sewage, using naturally occurring “wired microbes” as mini power plants, producing electricity as they digest plant and animal waste. In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-authors Yi Cui, a materials scientist, Craig Criddle, an environmental engineer, and Xing Xie, an interdisciplinary researcher, call their invention a microbial battery. They hope it will be used in places such as sewage treatment plants, or to break down organic pollutants in the “dead zones” of lakes and coastal waters where fertilizer runoff and other organic waste can deplete oxygen levels and suffocate marine life....

Astronomers have modeled how the change in gravitational forces in the system as a result of the star becoming a white dwarf will cause its planets to fly loose from their orbits and bounce off each other’s gravity, like balls bouncing off a bumper in a game of pinball. In the process, they will knock nearby debris into their dying sun, offering scientists new insight into how the white dwarfs with polluted atmospheres that we see today originally evolved....

Professor Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the origin of the universe, which he worked on in collaboration with Professor Thomas Hertog from KU Leuven, has been published today in the Journal of High Energy Physics. The theory, which was submitted for publication before Hawking’s death earlier this year, is based on string theory and predicts the universe is finite and far simpler than many current theories about the big bang say....

A new study has implications for how the world might be better protected against future volcano collapses. An international study led by Monash scientists has discovered how volcanoes experience stress. The study, published recently in Scientific Reports, has implications for how the world might be better protected against future volcano collapses. Volcanic collapse is the worst-case scenario during volcanic crises. It can trigger dangerous tsunamis or devastating pyroclastic flows (for example Mount Saint Helens)....