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Many solids and liquids are made up of particles that interact with each other at close distances, leading to the creation of “quasiparticles.” Quasiparticles are stable excitations that act as weakly interacting particles. The concept of quasiparticles was introduced in 1941 by Soviet physicist Lev Landau and has since become a crucial tool in the study of quantum matter. Some well-known examples of quasiparticles include Bogoliubov quasiparticles in superconductivity, excitons in semiconductors, and phonons....

Enzymes are naturally existing biocatalysts of great potential for application in sustainable chemistry. Yet, controlling enzyme reactions at atomic level is still a challenge in biology. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology provide novel tools to study enzyme catalysis, which allow them to direct the incorporation of ‘naked hydrogen atoms’ into substrates. Chemical reactions require the controlled incorporation, removal or change of atoms and atomic bonds in molecules....

A newly published paper describes two ways of reversing autism-like symptoms in a new mouse model of the condition. The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can affect up to 1 in 110 people and although a few drugs have shown promise in mouse models, none of them have been able to treat the core social deficits common in human ASD patients. Nahum Sonenberg, from McGill University in Montreal, and his team created a new model of mouse autism and then were able to reverse its symptoms....

In collaboration with an international research team, University of Copenhagen researchers have for the first time mapped telomerase, an enzyme that has a kind of rejuvenating effect on normal cell aging. The findings have just been published in Nature Genetics and are a step forward in the fight against cancer. Mapping the cellular fountain of youth – telomerase. This is one of the results of a major research project involving more than 1,000 researchers worldwide, four years of hard work, DKK 55 million from the EU and blood samples from more than 200,000 people....

“Addiction to alcohol remains one of the most significant mental health problems throughout the world. A major challenge is to understand how ethanol, or alcohol, changes behavior and the brain during the descent into addiction,” Das reported. Developing tolerance is a critical step in that descent. “If a person becomes tolerant of one drink, he will have another and maybe another. If we could stop alcohol from binding into MUNC 13-1 it will help problem drinkers in reducing tolerance....

But scientists believe kelp forests are being threatened by climate change. Now, researchers from UCLA and seven other universities have an improved tool for tracking these shifting ecosystems, the largest of which is about 5 miles long. With new funding from NASA, the team recently relaunched Floating Forests, a website that enables volunteer citizen-scientists to scan hundreds of thousands of satellite images for places where the tops of kelp forests skim the ocean surface....

Early massive galaxies—those that formed in the three billion years following the Big Bang—should have contained large amounts of cold hydrogen gas, the fuel required to make stars. But scientists observing the early Universe with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted something strange: half a dozen early massive galaxies that ran out of fuel. The results of the research are published today in Nature....

Based on observations of newly-forming stars, scientists know that the solar system began as a disc of dust and gas surrounding the centrally-growing sun. The gas condensed to solids which accumulated into larger rocky bodies like asteroids and mini-planets. Over a period of 100 million years these mini-planets collided with one another and gradually accumulated into the planets we see today, including the Earth. Although it is widely understood that Earth was formed gradually, from much smaller bodies, many of the processes involved in shaping our growing planet are less clear....

Over the last decade, several high-profile scientific studies have reported that tropical fish living in coral reefs are adversely affected by ocean acidification caused by climate change — that is, they behave oddly and are attracted to predators as levels of carbon dioxide dissolved from air pollution increase. But now new research suggests that isn’t the case. In fact, in the most exhaustive study yet of the impacts of ocean acidification on the behavior of coral reef fish, headed up in Australia and co-authored by two Université de Montréal researchers, it turns out fish behavior is not affected at all....

Published on February 28 in the journal Nature Communications, the study describes the discovery of a previously unknown, separate lineage of elephant bird that roamed the wet, forested landscapes on the northeastern side of Madagascar—a discovery made without access to any skeletal remains. It’s the first time that a new lineage of elephant bird has been identified from ancient eggshells alone, a pioneering achievement that will allow scientists to learn more about the diversity of birds that once roamed the world and why so many have since gone extinct in the past 10,000 years....

The seven cardiovascular and brain health factors, known as the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7, are: being active, eating better, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, maintaining a healthy blood pressure, controlling cholesterol, and having low blood sugar. “Since we now know that dementia can begin in the brain decades before diagnosis, it’s important that we learn more about how your habits in middle age can affect your risk of dementia in old age,” said Pamela Rist, ScD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology....

Men twice as likely to fall victim, with young people, Black, and Native American women, and LGBTQ individuals also at high risk. During the COVID-19 pandemic men were twice as likely as women to fall victim to online extortionists threatening to publish explicit photos, videos, and information about them. That’s according to a new, first-of-its-kind study published in the peer-reviewed journal Victims & Offenders. Young people, Black and Native American women, and LGBTQ individuals were also at higher risk of this cyber-enabled crime (known as sextortion), the survey of more than 2,000 adults in the US showed....

The prevailing cosmological model assumes that the Universe has cooled off since the Big Bang – and still continues to do so. The model also describes how the cooling process should proceed, but so far it has only been directly confirmed for relatively recent cosmic times. The discovery not only sets a very early milestone in the development of the cosmic background temperature, but could also have implications for the enigmatic dark energy....

We are two astronomers who work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – or SETI. In our research, we try to characterize and detect signs of technology originating from beyond Earth. These are called technosignatures. While scanning the sky for a TV broadcast of some extraterrestrial Olympics may sound straightforward, searching for signs of distant, advanced civilizations is a much more nuanced and difficult task than it might seem....

33 metabolic compounds linked to dementia could be key to new methods of diagnosis and treatment. Researchers have identified 33 metabolic compounds that are linked to dementiaSeven metabolites were found at higher levels in patients with dementia, compared to healthy elderly peopleThese metabolites are believed to be toxic to neurons and could hint at a possible cause for dementia26 metabolites were found at lower levels in patients with dementia, compared to elderly people with no health conditionsThese metabolites are believed to protect neurons against damage from free radicals, help maintain energy reserves and provide nutritionSupplements that raise the levels of these metabolites could be a potential new treatment for dementia...

The air is getting chillier, pumpkins are perched on porches and kids across the country are planning their spooky costumes. As a professor of pediatric nursing and a mom to four young children, I know the excitement and anxiety that pandemic holidays bring to children and parents alike. Halloween 2020 brought creative ways to trick or treat while minimizing the spread of infection (candy catapult, anyone?). But scientists have since determined that the risk of transmission of COVID-19 via candy wrappers is low....

A new study from a team of clinical psychologists at the University of Kansas suggests eating added sugars – common in so many holiday foods – can trigger metabolic, inflammatory and neurobiological processes tied to depressive illness. The work is published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. Coupled with dwindling light in wintertime and corresponding changes in sleep patterns, high sugar consumption could result in a “perfect storm” that adversely affects mental health, according to the researchers....

The snow monkey (Japanese macaque Macaca fuscata) is native to the main islands of Japan, except Hokkaido. The most northerly living non-human primate find that snow cover limits the availability of their preferred foods in the Kamikochi area of Chubu Sangaku National Park of the Japanese Alps. With favorite foods difficult to find, the snow monkeys run low on energy and face death by starvation, but groundwater-fed streams flow during the winter with a constant water temperature of about 5 0C and are easily accessible for Japanese macaques to search for alternative live food....

Geophysicists, geologists, and geochemists from throughout the world have been working together to understand why this plate boundary behaves as it does, producing both imperceptible silent earthquakes, but also potentially major ones. A study published today (July 7, 2021) in the journal Nature offers new perspective and possible answers. Scientists knew that the ocean floor at the northern part of the island, where the plates slide slowly together, generates the small, slow-moving earthquakes called slow slip events — movements that take weeks, sometimes months to complete....

Invasive mosquitoes carrying exotic diseases have made their entry into Europe. Diseases generally absent from Europe, like chikungunya and dengue fever have appeared around the continent. Europe’s entomologists and public-health experts have joined forces to try and defend the region. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm has released new guidelines that should help most European countries develop some kind of mosquito surveillance, which had become unnecessary after malaria was eradicated....