In a study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters this week, scientist Gal Sarid and co-authors describe the discovery of an orbital “gateway” through which many comets pass before they approach our sun. The gateway was uncovered as part of a simulation of centaurs, small icy bodies traveling on chaotic orbits between Jupiter and Neptune. The study team modeled the evolution of bodies from beyond Neptune’s orbit, through the giant planet’s region, and inside Jupiter’s orbit....

Scientists examined DNA from mass grave of plague victims in Germany. While examining DNA from bones of 16th century bubonic plague victims in the German town of Ellwangen, scientists discovered the first evidence that evolution may have driven immunity to the disease among later inhabitants of the city. Scientists examining the remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany have found the first evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes, driven by the disease, may have conferred immunity on later generations from the region....

Well-intentioned “citizen scientists” developing homemade COVID-19 vaccines may believe they’re inoculating themselves against the ongoing pandemic, but the practice of self-experimentation with do-it-yourself medical innovations is fraught with important legal, ethical and public health issues, according to a new paper in the journal Science co-written by a University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign legal expert who studies the policy implications of advanced biotechnologies. As the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the globe, several citizen science groups outside the auspices of the pharmaceutical industry have been working to develop and self-test unproven medical interventions to combat COVID-19....

Drinking more coffee may help reduce the risk of developing gallstones, according to a new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Among 104,493 individuals, those who drank more than six cups of coffee per day had a 23% lower risk of developing symptomatic gallstones compared with individuals who did not drink coffee. Drinking one extra cup of coffee per day was associated with 3% lower risk. Also, individuals with certain genetic variants that have been linked to increased coffee consumption had a lower risk of gallstones....

The scientists published their findings in the Journal of Archaeological Science. There are nearly 1,000 statues littering Easter Island’s 163 square kilometers, with the largest weighing 74 tonnes and standing 10 meters in height. One of the most perplexing facts is how these statues were transported kilometers from the rock quarries where they were carved. It was thought that the Polynesians, who settled Easter Island 800 years ago, had used logs to roll the moai into place, which supports the idea that the Rapa Nui people became so obsessed with statue-building that the deforested much of the island’s forest....

Two important aspects of the propagation of a virus are its ability to enter the host’s cells, that is, to infect the host, and then to replicate in infected cells. As for SARS-CoV-2, the Mpro protein plays an important role in the replication and transcription of the virus. Mpro therefore represents a particularly promising target for blocking the virus itself because a compound that inhibits Mpro blocks the virus. EBSELEN proved to be the most potent inhibitor of Mpro in a study examining approximately 10,000 selected compounds....

All of the orbiting lab’s hatches remained closed until Tuesday morning to give ground specialists additional time to collect data and monitor pressure readings in each module. The rate is still well within segment specifications and presents no danger to the crew or the space station. The station’s atmosphere is maintained at pressure comfortable for the crew members, and a tiny bit of that air leaks over time, requiring routine repressurization from nitrogen tanks delivered on cargo resupply missions....

MIT engineers report today that they have cooked up a material that is 10 times blacker than anything that has previously been reported. The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — microscopic filaments of carbon, like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees, that the team grew on a surface of chlorine-etched aluminum foil. The foil captures more than 99.96 percent of any incoming light, making it the blackest material on record....

The soft robotic sleeve twists and compresses in synch with a beating heart, augmenting cardiovascular functions weakened by heart failure. Unlike currently available devices that assist heart function, Harvard’s soft robotic sleeve does not directly contact blood. This reduces the risk of clotting and eliminates the need for a patient to take potentially dangerous blood thinner medications. The device may one day be able to bridge a patient to transplant or help in cardiac rehabilitation and recovery....

A new image taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the galaxy NGC 1187. This impressive spiral lies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (The River). NGC 1187 has hosted two supernova explosions during the last thirty years, the latest one in 2007. This picture of the galaxy is the most detailed ever taken. The galaxy NGC 1187 is seen almost face-on, which gives us a good view of its spiral structure....

This image, however, is obviously not of a faint star, but of a galaxy called NGC 6902. Before a telescope starts its primary mission it must successfully undertake an event called “first light”: the first time it is used for a scientific observation. Astronomers typically pick well-known objects for this initial test of a telescope’s capabilities, which is half demonstration and half celebration. In this case, the team settled on NGC 6902 as the first-light target for the Ganymede telescope....

Scientists have found evidence for “substantial” monkeypox transmission before symptoms appear or are detected. This is known as pre-symptomatic transmission. The results of this UK study were published by The BMJ on November 2. Researchers estimate that more than half (53%) of transmission occurred in this pre-symptomatic phase and transmission was detected up to a maximum of four days before the onset of symptoms. This means that many infections cannot be prevented by asking individuals to isolate after they notice their symptoms....

Research at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory demonstrates that ultrashort, ultrabright X-ray laser pulses can reveal details of chemically important molecules at room temperature and in their natural state. The technique could aid studies of photosynthesis and industrial catalysts, and opens the door to development of other analytic tools at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source. In the experiments, researchers used a technique known as X-ray emission spectroscopy to learn about the chemical makeup of samples and chemical changes occurring over time....

Activities of neurons are generally completed on a time scale of 10 milliseconds, which makes it hard for conventional microscopes to observe these phenomena directly. This new compressive sensing two-photon microscopy can be applied to 3D imaging of the nerve distribution of living things or to monitoring activities from hundreds of neurons simultaneously. New multi-focus laser scanning method to break the scanning speed limit of two-photon microscope Two-photon microscopy works by delivering ultrafast pulses of infrared laser light to the sample, where it interacts with fluorescent labels to create an image....

In a 16-2 vote on September 17, 2021, an independent committee of physicians, scientists, and public health experts recommended against full approval of the third dose of the vaccine, which now goes by the brand name “Comirnaty.” However, the panel did recommend the shot for Americans age 65 and older or those at high risk for severe COVID-19. In recommending against the shot for the general public, the committee cited reasons such as lack of sufficient safety data in younger age groups as well as indications that the initial doses still seem to be providing robust protection against severe illness leading to hospitalization and death....

On September 14, waves of energy traveling for more than a billion years gently rattled space-time in the vicinity of Earth. The disturbance, produced by a pair of merging black holes, was captured by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. This event marked the first-ever detection of gravitational waves and opens a new scientific window on how the universe works. Less than half a second later, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope picked up a brief, weak burst of high-energy light consistent with the same part of the sky....

The Skin-On interface, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol in partnership with Telecomm ParisTech and Sorbonne University, mimics human skin in appearance but also in sensing resolution. The researchers adopted a bio-driven approach to developing a multi-layer, silicone membrane that mimics the layers present in human skin. This is made up of a surface textured layer, an electrode layer of conductive threads, and a hypodermis layer. Not only is the interface more natural than a rigid casing, but it can also detect a plethora of gestures made by the end users....

Children born to mothers who took fish oil in their pregnancies have been shown to have faster problem-solving skills and better attention focus at age 10, according to findings from a study presented today at the 6th World Congress of Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. This is the first study to examine the long-term effect of maternal supplementation with fish oil and/or 5-MTHF (folic acid) on the resting state network (RSN) functioning (this is ‘resting’ brain activity when a person is not engaged in a cognitive or active task) of children at school age and was funded by the European Union....

Using one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the scientists have simulated the matter distribution of the so-called satellite “dwarf” galaxies. These are small galaxies that surround, for instance, the Milky Way or Andromeda. The researchers focused on a relationship called “radial acceleration relation” (RAR). In disk galaxies, stars move in circular orbits around the galactic center. The acceleration that forces them to constantly change direction is caused by the attraction of matter in the galaxy....

The likely culprit, scientists eventually deduced, was the intrinsic infrared emission from a class of organic molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which, scientists would later discover, are amazingly plentiful; nearly 10 percent of all the carbon in the universe is tied up in PAHs. Even though, as a group, PAHs seemed to be the answer to this mystery, none of the hundreds of PAH molecules known to exist had ever been conclusively detected in interstellar space....