The overall system presents the unusual sight of a thick hoop of gas and dust circling at right angles to the binary star orbit. Until now this setup only existed in theorists’ minds, but the ALMA observation proves that polar discs of this type exist, and may even be relatively common. The new research is published today (14 January 2019) by Royal Society University Research Fellow Dr. Grant M. Kennedy of the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics and Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability in Nature Astronomy in a paper entitled “A circumbinary protoplanetary disc in a polar configuration....

Just as a graph can be made of people with different heights and weights, astronomers compare stars using their luminosities and temperatures. The HRD is a “family portrait” of the stars in the Galaxy, where stars such as the Sun, Altair, Alpha Centauri, Betelgeuse, the north star Polaris and Sirius can be compared. The newly discovered gap cuts diagonally across the HRD and indicates where a crucial internal change occurs in the structures of stars....

The low rate of star formation in the CMZ has puzzled astronomers for decades. Because the physical conditions there differ from those in normal giant molecular clouds, astronomers generally have concluded that the responsibility must lie with some combination of their properties, in particular the high values of gas density, temperature, pressure, motion, and magnetic field strength. CfA astronomers Qizhou Zhang, Cara Battersby, and Eric Keto, and their colleagues used the Submillimeter Array (SMA) to undertake a large and comprehensive study of the CMZ in search of answers....

Using ESA’s Herschel Space Oobservatory, astronomers have discovered that a molecule vital for creating water exists in the burning embers of dying Sun-like stars. When low- to middleweight stars like our Sun approach the end of their lives, they eventually become dense, white dwarf stars. In doing so, they cast off their outer layers of dust and gas into space, creating a kaleidoscope of intricate patterns known as planetary nebulas....

We’ve all asked ourselves the big questions at times: “How big is the universe?” or “How and when did galaxies form?” Astronomers take these questions very seriously, and use fantastic tools that push the boundaries of technology to try and answer them. Professor Nobunari Kashikawa from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo is driven by his curiosity about galaxies. In particular, he sought the most distant one we can observe in order to find out how and when it came to be....

Using a continent-spanning telescope, an international team of astronomers has peered to the edge of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. For the first time, they have measured the black hole’s “point of no return” — the closest distance that matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole. A black hole is a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape....

More than three quarters of new, emerging or re-emerging human diseases are caused by pathogens from animals, according to the World Health Organization. But a widely accepted theory of risk reduction for these pathogens – one of the most important ideas in disease ecology – is likely wrong, according to a new study co-authored by Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellow James Holland Jones and former Woods-affiliated ecologist Dan Salkeld....

It all began as biologist and associate professor Ana Sofia Reboleira of the National Natural History Museum was scrolling through Twitter. There, she stumbled upon a photo of a North American millipede shared by her US colleague Derek Hennen of Virginia Tech. She spotted a few tiny dots that struck her well-trained eyes. “I could see something looking like fungi on the surface of the millipede. Until then, these fungi had never been found on American millipedes....

Laser Engineering at Osaka University have successfully used short, but extremely powerful laser blasts to generate magnetic field reconnection inside a plasma. This work may lead to a more complete theory of X-ray emission from astronomical objects like black holes. In addition to being subjected to extreme gravitational forces, matter being devoured by a black hole can be also be pummeled by intense heat and magnetic fields. Plasmas, a fourth state of matter hotter than solids, liquids, or gasses, are made of electrically charged protons and electrons that have too much energy to form neutral atoms....

Tea is one of the most popular drinks in the world. Previous research has shown a link between tea drinking and a decreased risk of death in communities where green tea is the most commonly consumed form of tea. In contrast, published studies in populations where black tea use is more prevalent yield inconsistent results. Using data from the U.K. Biobank, researchers from the National Institutes of Health undertook a study to investigate the links of tea consumption with all-cause and cause-specific death....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Biology Letters. The maneuvers, including the pirouette, enables the whales to position their jaws underneath their pray and take the biggest possible mouthful before the krill scatter, states Jeremy Goldbogen, a zoologist at the Cascadia Research Collective in Washington. The 360º strategy has been previously observed in other animals. Spinner dolphins revolve through the air and are thought to be shaking off suckerfish pests that hang on their bodies and alligators engage in death rolls, clasping their jaws around their victims while rolling rapidly to subdue and dismember them....

P. polycephalum rummages through leaf litter and oozes along searching for bacteria, fungal spores and other microbes that it envelops and digests. Although it acts like a colony of cooperative individuals foraging together, it spends most of its life as a single cell containing millions of nuclei, small sacs of DNA, enzymes and proteins. It takes on different appearances depending on where and how it is growing. In the forest, it might fatten into giant yellow blobs or remain a smear of mustard under a leaf....

When light travels through a light-scattering medium, it is dispersed rather than absorbed, resulting in the loss of a clear image of the original object. Such scattering media can include clouds, creating difficulties for astronomers on Earth, and bodily tissue, hindering medical imaging efforts. Previous methods for reconstructing scattered light have required some initial knowledge of the object and the ability to control the wavefront of light illuminating it. This has involved complicated optical elements and high vulnerability to motion and mechanical instability....

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland has uncovered the first inter-species signaling pathway between a host and an arthropod parasite. The pathway involves molecules in the host’s blood triggering the immunity and development of the parasite. The study demonstrates that when ticks feed on blood from mice infected with the Lyme disease-causing bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, a protein from the mouse immune system activates receptors on tick cells, signaling the tick’s organs to develop more quickly and producing an immune response before the bacteria can infect the tick....

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and their collaborators from the University of California, Irvine have created fundamental electronic building blocks out of tiny structures known as quantum dots and used them to assemble functional logic circuits. The innovation promises a cheaper and manufacturing-friendly approach to complex electronic devices that can be fabricated in a chemistry laboratory via simple, solution-based techniques, and offer long-sought components for a host of innovative devices....

Lithium-ion batteries are the engines of our technological present and future. They power portable electronics, such as smartphones and laptops and electric vehicles (EVs), which are growing in popularity. But the increasing use of lithium-ion batteries, especially in automobiles, has outpaced the technology to recycle them. Now, scientists at the ReCell Center — the nation’s first advanced battery recycling research and development center, headquartered at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory — have made a pivotal discovery that removes one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of making recycling lithium-ion batteries economically viable....

This crack was first revealed to be extending in early 2012 after having been dormant for some decades. After several years of desperately clinging on, image data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions visually confirm the calving event. The timing of the calving event, although unexpected, had long been anticipated. Glaciologists have monitored the many cracks and chasms that have formed in the thick Brunt Ice Shelf, which borders the Coats Land coast in the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica, for years....

There are more than 30 million Americans that are classified as obese or extremely obese. A new study shows that they might benefit from surgery that reconstructs the stomach to accommodate less food. Gastric bypass surgery leads to weight loss and improvement of health related problems, and may yield long-term health benefits. The scientists published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Previous studies had shown improvement, but tracked patients for shorter intervals....

In its early years, information theory — which grew out of a landmark 1948 paper by MIT alumnus and future professor Claude Shannon — was dominated by research on error-correcting codes: How do you encode information so as to guarantee its faithful transmission, even in the presence of the corrupting influences engineers call “noise”? Recently, one of the most intriguing developments in information theory has been a different kind of coding, called network coding, in which the question is how to encode information in order to maximize the capacity of a network as a whole....

Though algorithms are increasingly being deployed in all facets of life, a new USC study has found that they fail basic tests as truth detectors. Most algorithms have probably never heard the Eagles’ song, “Lyin’ Eyes.” Otherwise, they’d do a better job of recognizing duplicity. Computers aren’t very good at discerning misrepresentation, and that’s a problem as the technologies are increasingly deployed in society to render decisions that shape public policy, business and people’s lives....