Now imagine construction at a smaller scale — less than 1/100th the thickness of a piece of paper. This is the nanoscale. It is the scale at which scientists are working to develop potentially groundbreaking technologies in fields like quantum computing. It is also a scale where traditional fabrication methods simply will not work. Our standard tools, even miniaturized, are too bulky and too corrosive to reproducibly manufacture components at the nanoscale....

A dumbbell-shaped nanoparticle powered just by the force and torque of light has become the world’s fastest-spinning object. Scientists at Purdue University created the object, which revolves at 300 billion revolutions per minute. Or, put another way, half a million times faster than a dentist’s drill. In addition, the silica nanoparticle can serve as the world’s most sensitive torque detector, which researchers hope will be used to measure the friction created by quantum effects....

The ROC acts as an incubator for robotic development. The lab, which is about the size of a school gymnasium, is lined with long black curtains that, when the lights are turned off, simulate the darkness of space. The entire facility is designed to imitate how robots will look, move and work in space. Listen to the buzzing and whirring of robots that help shape the future of space exploration....

A new report on nearly three million people found that people whose BMI ranked them as overweight had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. Obese people had the greater mortality risk overall, but those at the lowest obesity level, a BMI of 30 to 34.9, were not more likely to die than normal-weight people. The report isn’t the first to suggest this relationship between BMI and mortality, but it’s by far the largest and most carefully done....

As the most powerful space telescope ever built, NASA’s James Webb features unparalleled abilities to observe the most distant galaxies in the Universe, much like a cosmic time machine. In fact, it is said to be 5-10x better than any other telescope at measuring distant galaxies. Now, less than a year after launch and just 5 months after it was fully ready for science, Webb has been used to discover the earliest galaxies confirmed to date....

The crater itself is only 5 meters (16 feet) across, but the streak it started is 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) long! Slope streaks are created when dry dust avalanches leave behind dark swaths on dusty Martian hills. The faded scar of an old avalanche is also visible to the side of the new dark streak. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp....

Astronomers have come to realize that the process of star formation, once thought to consist essentially of just the simple coalescence of material by gravity, occurs in a complex series of stages. As the gas and dust in giant molecular clouds comes together into stars, dramatic outflowing jets of material develop around each, as do circumstellar disks (possibly pre-planetary in nature). Other features are present as well: Astronomers in the 1960s were amazed to discover that these star-forming regions sometimes produce natural masers (masers are the bright, radio wavelength analogs of lasers)....

Ultrafast laser sources are at the heart of an ever-expanding range of fundamental scientific studies and industrial applications, from high-​field-physics experiments with attosecond temporal resolution to micrometer-precision machining of materials. In order to push the envelope even further, repetition rates of several megahertz and average output powers of hundreds of watts are required. A particularly compelling route to realizing such high-power laser pulses is to generate them directly by scaling up the power output from laser oscillators, rather than relying on multi-stage amplifier systems....

A 38-foot-wide dome-shaped radio antenna enclosure, or radome, sits on the rooftop of an MIT Lincoln Laboratory building. Inside the climate-controlled environment, shielded from the New England weather, a steel structure supports a 20-foot diameter, 20,000-pound satellite communications (SATCOM) antenna. Called the Multi-Band Test Terminal (MBTT), the antenna can rotate 15 degrees per second, completing a single revolution in 24 seconds. At this speed, the MBTT can detect and track satellites in medium and low Earth orbit (medium and low refer to the altitude at which the satellites orbit the Earth)....

An accurate, non-invasive, and low-cost method of testing for COVID-19 using samples taken from the screens of mobile phones has been developed by a team led by UCL researchers at Diagnosis Biotech. The study, published in eLife and led by Dr. Rodrigo Young (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology), analyzed swabs from smartphone screens rather than directly from people, and found that people who tested positive by the regular nasal swabbing PCRs were also positive when samples were taken from phone screens....

A target trial emulation study found that in an elderly population of U.S. veterans with high comorbidity burden, mRNA vaccine efficacy at preventing infection with COVID-19 was substantially lower than previously reported but effectiveness against death was very high. These finding suggest that complementary infection mitigation efforts remain important for pandemic control, even with vaccination. The study is published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The real-world effectiveness of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in ethnically and racially diverse populations across the entire United States is not well characterized, especially in more vulnerable populations, such as elderly persons with high comorbidity burden....

The MUSE HUDF Survey team, led by Roland Bacon of the Center de recherche astrophysique de Lyon (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1/ENS de Lyon), France, used MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) to observe the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a much-studied patch of the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace). This resulted in the deepest spectroscopic observations ever made; precise spectroscopic information was measured for 1600 galaxies, ten times as many galaxies as has been painstakingly obtained in this field over the last decade by ground-based telescopes....

Unlike humans and other mammals, which become less fertile with age, naked mole-rats can reproduce throughout their remarkably long lifespans. A new study, published today (February 21, 2023) in the journal Nature Communications, sheds light on unique processes that bestow the rodents with what seems like eternal fertility, findings that could eventually point to new therapies for people. “Naked mole-rats are the weirdest mammals,” said lead author Miguel Brieño-Enríquez, M....

The study comes from the lab of USC stem cell researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and offers a novel solution to suppress cancer from metastasizing into the lungs. It’s positive news for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) – the deadliest type – that comprises 20 percent of breast cancer cases and is particularly difficult to treat. Researchers are intensely interested in finding new treatments for TNBC....

A new study from Columbia Engineering and Harvard identified the critical physiological importance of suitable temperatures for butterfly wings to function properly, and discovered that the insects exquisitely regulate their wing temperatures through both structural and behavioral adaptations. Contrary to the common belief that butterfly wings consist primarily of lifeless membranes, the new study demonstrated that they contain a network of living cells whose function requires a constrained range of temperatures for optimal performance....

On Greenland’s ice sheet, a vast icy landscape crisscrossed by turquoise rivers and dotted with melt water lakes, a small cluster of orange camping tents popped up in late July. The camp, home for a week to a team of researchers, sat by a large, fast-flowing river. Just a kilometer downstream, the river dropped into a seemingly bottomless moulin, or sinkhole in the ice. The low rumble of the waters, the shouted instructions from scientists taking measurements, and the chop of the blades of a helicopter delivering personnel and gear was all that was heard in the frozen landscape....

In 2022, that moon will be the target of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first full-scale demonstration of an asteroid deflection technology for planetary defense. The DART spacecraft will execute a kinetic impact, deliberately crashing into the asteroid to change its motion in space. To mark this historic mission, Didymos B is getting an official name of its own: Dimorphos. “Upon discovery, asteroids get a temporary name until we know their orbits well enough to know they won’t be lost....

NASA powered up its third RS-25 engine hot fire test of the new year on February 24, on the Fred Haise Test Stand at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Operators fired the engine past recent testing at the 111% power level up to 113% for a period of time. NASA is testing RS-25 engines to help power the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on future deep space missions....

A “ride out” team will remain in a safe location at Kennedy throughout the storm to monitor center-wide conditions as part of NASA’s hurricane preparedness protocol. After the storm passes, this team will conduct an assessment of facilities, property, and equipment. Once it is deemed safe for additional employees to return to Kennedy, engineers will extend platforms to re-establish access to the rocket and spacecraft. Artemis managers will review options on the extent of work that will be conducted in the VAB before returning to the launch pad or identifying the next opportunity for launch....

While the black holes appear on a scale reflecting their masses, all are depicted using spheres larger than their actual size. Cygnus X-1, with the largest companion star shown, is the first black hole ever confirmed and weighs about 21 times more than the Sun. But its surface – called its event horizon – spans only about 77 miles (124 kilometers). The enlarged spheres also cover up visible distortions produced by the black holes’ gravitational effects....