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School spaces with newer furniture show significantly lower levels of hazardous exposures. There are good reasons to be worried about indoor air quality right now, in light of COVID-19. In addition to transmitting infectious agents, indoor spaces can also be a source of harmful chemicals in consumer products. A new analysis of indoor spaces on college campuses finds dust in classrooms and lecture halls harbors high levels of toxic flame retardants used in furniture raising health concerns from everyday exposures....

In an advancement for quantum materials, scientists assessed the ability of techniques called entanglement witnesses to accurately identify pairs of entangled magnetic particles. Entanglement is when one of these particles, or “spins,” mirrors another’s properties and behavior no matter how great the distance between them is. Three entanglement witnesses were evaluated in this research. Of the three, quantum Fisher information (QFI) performed the best, routinely locating entanglement in complex materials....

The findings appear in a recent article published in Nature Materials on December 16,m 2019, led by A. S. McLeod, postdoctoral researcher, Columbia Nano Initiative, with co-authors Dmitri Basov and A. J. Millis at Columbia and R.A. Averitt at UC San Diego. “We have brought a technique from the inter-galactic scale down to the realm of the ultra-small,” said Basov, Higgins Professor of Physics and Director of the Energy Frontier Research Center at Columbia....

G. eremita has been extinct in the wild in Europe for nearly 400 years, and is critically endangered in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Johannes Fritz, a biologist at the University of Vienna, and his team lead an effort to hand-raise the birds, teach them how to migrate from breeding areas north of the Alps in Germany and Austria to wintering grounds in Italy. Goja learned the migration route in 2009 by following an ultralight aircraft....

Genes code for proteins — the building blocks of life. The current definition of a gene only accounts for around 1.5% of our entire DNAVery little is known about the function of regions of DNA outside our genes — termed the ‘dark genome’A Cambridge-led team recently discovered that proteins are produced by over 248,000 regions of the ‘dark genome’, and are disrupted in multiple diseasesNow they have discovered new proteins arising from recently evolved regions of the ‘dark genome’, which could be targeted in the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder...

Extreme heat has descended on the southwestern United States this week, with several states enduring temperatures near and above record highs for June. As temperatures have surged, the region is also dealing with drought and scattered wildfires. The map above shows air temperatures across the continental U.S. during the afternoon on June 15, 2021. The map was derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model and depicts air temperatures at 2 meters (about 6....

A team of scientists that included researchers from UCLA has discovered a novel mechanism of RNA regulation in embryonic stem cells. The findings are strong evidence that a specific chemical modification, or “tag,” on RNA plays a key role in determining the ability of embryonic stem cells to adopt different cellular identities. The team also included scientists from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University. Published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the research reveals that depleting or knocking out a key component of the machinery that places this chemical tag — known both as m6A and N6-methyladenosine — on RNA significantly blocks embryonic stem cells from differentiating into more specialized types of cells....

Star formation lights up a galaxy because many newly formed stars are massive, hot and bright. These young stars are made in dusty clouds of material that obscure their visible light, and so luminous galaxies in our universe are often optically dim. But the dust absorbs the light and re-radiates it at infrared wavelengths, and astronomers can use the infrared from galaxies to infer the rate of star formation activity underway, even without seeing those stars....

After more than a decade of research, led by Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) Emeritus Professor Perry Bartlett and Dr. Dan Blackmore, the team found 35 days of voluntary physical exercise improved learning and memory. “We tested the cognitive ability of elderly mice following defined periods of exercise and found an optimal period or ‘sweet spot’ that greatly improved their spatial learning,” Dr. Blackmore said. The researchers also discovered how exercise improved learning....

In the USA, where the curve of infections has not yet flattened since the beginning of the pandemic, 158,000 people have died from COVID-19 already. And despite the choice by all US states to gradually ease lockdown from late May onwards to save the economy, 14 million Americans have lost their job, while the economic output in the second quarter of 2020 dropped by 9.5%. To help entrepreneurs decide on how they can safely reopen their business, mathematicians and statisticians here develop a model for the spread of infections within companies and the economic payoff of safety measures....

Cancer occurs when cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other organs. Cancer cells are quite different from normal ones. Cancer cells are known for their remarkable adaptability to varied settings in the body as well as drug treatments. They resemble stem cells or cells at an early stage of development in this regard. The prospect of artificially maturing (or, more accurately, differentiating) breast cancer cells as a strategy to transform them into a more normal kind of cell has been explored by researchers at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel....

In recent years, robots have gained artificial vision, touch, and even smell. “Researchers have been giving robots human-like perception,” says MIT Associate Professor Fadel Adib. In a new paper, Adib’s team is pushing the technology a step further. “We’re trying to give robots superhuman perception,” he says. The researchers have developed a robot that uses radio waves, which can pass through walls, to sense occluded objects. The robot, called RF-Grasp, combines this powerful sensing with more traditional computer vision to locate and grasp items that might otherwise be blocked from view....

A new study focused on the interior of Saturn’s icy moon Mimas suggests its cratered surface hides one of two intriguing possibilities: Either the moon’s frozen core is shaped something like a football, or the satellite contains a liquid water ocean. Researchers used numerous images of Mimas taken by NASA’s Cassini mission to determine how much the moon wobbles as it orbits Saturn. They then evaluated several possible models for how its interior might be arranged, finding two possibilities that fit their data....

The scientists published their findings in the Journal of Optics. The technique used by the scientists involves embossing tiny raised or indented patterns on the metal’s surface, altering the way that it absorbs or reflects light, thus changing its color to the naked eye. Nikolay Zheludev, who leads the nanophotonics and metamaterials research team at Southampton University, states that gold can now be made red or green or a multitude of other hues....

Scientists at University of California San Francisco have detected 109 chemicals in a study of pregnant women, including 55 chemicals never before reported in people and 42 “mystery chemicals,” whose sources and uses are unknown. The chemicals most likely come from consumer products or other industrial sources. They were found both in the blood of pregnant women, as well as their newborn children, suggesting they are traveling through the mother’s placenta....

In a study of the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the researchers found that the gene has a key role in helping cells to remove waste products via structures known as lysosomes. When the gene is mutated, these unwanted substances build up inside cells. The researchers believe that if this also happens in neurons of human ALS patients, it could account for some of those patients’ symptoms. “Our studies indicate what happens when the activities of such a gene are inhibited — defects in lysosomal function....

The new species, Homo luzonensis is named after Luzon Island, where the more than 50,000 year old fossils were found during excavations at Callao Cave. Co-author and a lead member of the team, Professor Philip Piper from The Australian National University (ANU) says the findings represent a major breakthrough in our understanding of human evolution across Southeast Asia. The researchers uncovered the remains of at least two adults and one juvenile within the same archaeological deposits....

Digital testing method could yield new information on virus, course of disease. “It’s like having your brain tickled through your nose.” “Longest five seconds of my life.” “Not for the faint-hearted.” The swab to take the COVID-19 test, known as a nasopharyngeal swab, is not a pleasant experience. To obtain a thorough sample, health care workers need to scrape deep in the nasal cavity. More concerningly, the swab sticks themselves fell in short supply during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis in the U....

Because of their origin, these islands have never been connected to the mainland, thereby it is extremely difficult for species to cross the ocean and populate them. One such species – the South American guppy (Poecilia vivipara) – is a small freshwater fish which looks nowhere equipped to cross the distance between the mainland and the Fernando de Noronha oceanic archipelago in Northeast Brazil. Nevertheless, the research team of Ph....

Two X-ray space observatories, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, have teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a black hole with a mass 2 million times that of our sun. The supermassive black hole lies at the dust- and gas-filled heart of a galaxy called NGC 1365, and it is spinning almost as fast as Einstein’s theory of gravity will allow....