Over the last year, the world’s energy market has been highly volatile. The warmer-than-average winter in Europe helped avoid a gas crisis this year, but the forecast for the next winter is unclear as instabilities persist. More than 20% of global liquefied natural gas exports originate from a single port in Qatar. A new research paper pinpoints the location of what the authors call a “high vulnerability zone,” where an oil spill could cause liquified natural gas export facilities and desalination plants on the coast to be completely shut down for several days....

Allergy to peanut, which is often severe, is one of the most common food allergies in the United States. Although previous studies have shown that peanut oral immunotherapy (OIT)—ingesting small, controlled amounts of peanut protein—can desensitize adults and children and prevent life-threatening allergic reactions, the optimal duration and dose are unknown. In a study that followed participants after OIT successfully desensitized them to peanut, discontinuing OIT or continuing OIT at a reduced dose led to a decline in its protective effects....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Materials. This illusion does have drawbacks. It only works from one direction, and would be difficult to achieve with visible light. The initial invisibility cloaking papers from 2006 sparked a flurry of activity to move the work on to different wavelengths. No effort has been able to achieve a perfect cloak, as was described by the original theory. The structures needed to pull that off are difficult to manufacture, and each attempt has resulted in an approximation to the theoretical idea that results in reflections....

Increased screen time among young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic correlated with a rise in pandemic-related distress, according to research led by investigators at the Saint James School of Medicine on the Caribbean island nation, Saint Vincent. The increase in time spent viewing entertainment on a screen both prior to and during the pandemic was associated with a boost in anxiety scores. Students scored higher than non-students in pandemic-related distress....

The fundamental principle behind the new approach is a way to get the momentum of light particles, called photons, to more closely match that of electrons, which is normally many orders of magnitude greater. Because of the huge disparity in momentum, these particles usually interact very weakly; bringing their momenta closer together enables much greater control over their interactions, which could enable new kinds of basic research on these processes as well as a host of new applications, the researchers say....

At a recent meeting in Naples, Italy, EU ministers have agreed to give the European Space Agency (ESA) €10.1 billion ($13 billion) over the next several years, which is less than the total €12 billion that was considered at the beginning of the meeting. The ministers were able to resolve issues and strike deals on how to replace the Ariane 5 satellite-launching rocket and how to fund Europe’s contribution to the ISS....

This serpentine swirl, captured by the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), has an explosive future ahead of it; it is a Wolf-Rayet star system, and a likely source of one of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe — a long-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB). “This is the first such system to be discovered in our own galaxy,” explains Joseph Callingham of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), lead author of the study reporting this system....

In science the world looks forward to the first image releases of the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope and the third data release for Gaia, both teaching us more about our galaxy and Universe. ESA’s new Mars rover will be launched with the ExoMars mission, and we will also see the maiden flights of Vega-C, Ariane 6 and the Artemis I flight. Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will return to the ISS for her second mission and a new class of astronauts will be presented to the world....

A new study published today in Lancet Public Health has found that front-line healthcare workers with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) have a three-fold increased risk of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, compared to the general population. Those with inadequate PPE had a further increase in risk. The study also found that healthcare workers from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds were more likely to test positive. Using the COVID Symptom Tracker App, researchers from King’s College London and Harvard looked at data from 2,035,395 individuals and 99,795 front-line health-care workers in the UK and US....

The joint ESA-Roscosmos project team evaluated all the activities needed for an authorization to launch, in order to analyze the risks and schedule. With due consideration of the recommendations provided by European and Russian Inspectors General, ExoMars experts have concluded that tests necessary to make all components of the spacecraft fit for the Mars adventure need more time to complete. The primary goal of the mission is to determine if there has ever been life on Mars, and to better understand the history of water on the planet....

“Despite substantial scientific evidence of the high effectiveness, safety, and affordability of the polypill, few such combined products are available, and in the few countries where they are available, use is low,” says Professor Fausto Pinto, President of the World Heart Federation. “This systemic failure is a global tragedy, as many premature deaths from CVD could be avoided,” says Professor Salim Yusuf, Executive Director of the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at McMaster University....

Health systems will struggle to cope without steps to stop spread of the virus, warn WHO experts. Nearly a quarter of a billion people across Africa will catch coronavirus during the first year of the pandemic, and up to 190,000 of them will likely die, unless urgent action is taken to control the infection, reveals a predictive modeling study, accepted for publication in BMJ Global Health. These figures indicate a lower rate of exposure and viral spread than in other parts of the world, say the researchers....

This false-color image composed of 15 images taken through three color filters by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, as it passed through the Earth-Moon system on December 8, 1992. When this view was obtained, the spacecraft was 262,000 miles, or 425,000 kilometers, from the Moon and 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) from Earth. The false-color processing used to create this lunar image is helpful for interpreting the surface soil composition. Areas appearing red generally correspond to the lunar highlands, while blue to orange shades indicate the ancient volcanic lava flow of a mare, or lunar sea....

The centers of massive galaxies are among the most exotic regions in the universe. They harbor supermassive black holes, with masses of at least one million, and reaching thousands of millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black holes can cause a great deal of matter to fall toward them, producing the emission of huge quantities of energy before they finally fall into the black hole. In addition during this period (the “active phase” of the galaxy, referred to as an AGN or Active Galactic Nucleus) matter is expelled from outside the black hole in the form of high velocity (relativistic) jets, which can produce violent shocks with the surrounding matter....

Cosmic voids occupy most of the volume of the universe. Unlike clusters of galaxies and other dense structures, which are strongly affected by gravitational effects, not to mention processes associated with galaxy formation, these voids are the most underdense regions of the universe and have relatively simple dynamics. This makes them particularly straightforward probes for constraining cosmological parameters. CfA astronomer David James is a member of the DES Collaboration and one of the co-authors on a new paper analyzing the first data release, with the aim of describing the relationship between the mass and light around cosmic voids....

The quantum computer of the future will be able to carry out computations far beyond the capacity of today’s computers. Quantum superpositions and entanglement of quantum bits (qubits) make it possible to perform parallel computations. Scientists and companies worldwide are engaged in creating increasingly better quantum chips with more and more quantum bits. QuTech in Delft is working hard on several types of quantum chips. Familiar material The core of the quantum chips is made of silicon....

Now MIT engineers have developed a robot designed to extend a chain-like appendage flexible enough to twist and turn in any necessary configuration, yet rigid enough to support heavy loads or apply torque to assemble parts in tight spaces. When the task is complete, the robot can retract the appendage and extend it again, at a different length and shape, to suit the next task. The appendage design is inspired by the way plants grow, which involves the transport of nutrients, in a fluidized form, up to the plant’s tip....

Who says you can’t get hotter with age? Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions have found that, on average, the temperature of galaxy clusters today is 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. That is 10 times hotter than 10 billion years ago, and four times hotter than the Sun’s outermost atmosphere called the corona. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal. “We have measured temperatures throughout the history of the universe,” said Brice Ménard, a Johns Hopkins professor of physics and astronomy....

The scientists led by Yuri Shprits of GFZ and the University of Potsdam report that the power of chorus waves is a million times more intense near the Jovian moon Ganymede, and 100 times more intense near the moon Europa than the average around these planets. These are the new results from a systematic study on Jupiter’s wave environment taken from the Galileo Probe spacecraft. “It’s a really surprising and puzzling observation showing that a moon with a magnetic field can create such a tremendous intensification in the power of waves,” says the lead author of the study Professor Yuri Shprits of GFZ/ University of Potsdam and who is also affiliated with UCLA....

“When I came to medical school, I wanted to find research that was translational, bridging the gaps between basic science and medicine,” Ricciardi says. There’s no doubt she’s found it at the School of Medicine. Ricciardi spends her days in three different labs, bridging gaps and translating research across campus—and disciplines—in the pursuit of her M.D./Ph.D. degrees. Ricciardi’s work is necessarily multifaceted. In the landscape of medical research in general, and at the School of Medicine in particular, the junctions of traditionally disparate fields are yielding prolific harvests....