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Two upcoming missions will soon take us closer to the Sun than we’ve ever been before, providing our best chance yet at uncovering the complexities of solar activity in our own solar system and shedding light on the very nature of space and stars throughout the universe. Together, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s (the European Space Agency) Solar Orbiter may resolve decades-old questions about the inner workings of our nearest star....

Through the UK Space Agency, the Government is set to invest £60 million in the development of the SABRE – a British-designed rocket engine which could revolutionize the fields of propulsion and launcher technology, and significantly reduce the costs of accessing space. ABRE has the potential to create 21,000 high value engineering and manufacturing jobs; maximize the UK’s access to a conservatively estimated £13.8 billion launcher market over the next thirty years; and provide economic benefits from spill-over technology markets....

Using ultrasound waves, MIT engineers have found a way to enhance the permeability of skin to drugs, making transdermal drug delivery more efficient. This technology could pave the way for noninvasive drug delivery or needle-free vaccinations, according to the researchers. “This could be used for topical drugs such as steroids — cortisol, for example — systemic drugs and proteins such as insulin, as well as antigens for vaccination, among many other things,” says Carl Schoellhammer, an MIT graduate student in chemical engineering and one of the lead authors of a recent paper on the new system....

Crews working on the largest U.S. experiment designed to directly detect dark matter completed a major milestone last month, and are now turning their sights toward startup after experiencing some delays due to global pandemic precautions. U.S. Department of Energy officials on September 21 formally signed off on project completion for LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ: an ultrasensitive experiment that will use 10 metric tons of liquid xenon to hunt for signals of interactions with theorized dark matter particles called WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles....

“Some microbial lipids are widely used to reconstruct past climates. They have always been surrounded by mystery, as we did not know which microbes were making them and under which conditions. This lack of information limits the predictive power of these molecules to reconstruct past environmental conditions,” says Sahonero. Her study demonstrates which bacteria produce these lipids and how they have evolved their lipid-based outer layer to adapt to changing environments, further advancing our ability to reconstruct and predict climate change in greater detail....

This protein complex is the photosystem I, which is known as a single protein complex (monomer) in plants. Professor Michael Hippler of the University of Münster and Professor Alexey Amunts of the University of Stockholm led a team of researchers that demonstrated for the first time that two photosystem I monomers in plants may come together as a dimer and described the molecular structure of this new kind of molecular machine....

The periodic table of the elements, principally created by the Russian chemist, Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907), celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. It would be hard to overstate its importance as an organizing principle in chemistry – all budding chemists become familiar with it from the earliest stages of their education. Given the table’s importance, one might be forgiven for thinking that the ordering of the elements were no longer subject to debate....

Squaring the circle Today’s optical fibers usually have a solid glass core, so there’s no air inside. Light can travel along the fibers but loses half of its intensity after 15 kilometers. It keeps weakening until it can hardly be detected at 300 kilometers. So to keep the light moving, it has to be amplified at regular intervals. Thévenaz’s approach is based on new hollow-core optical fibers that are filled with either air or gas....

Former graduate student Megan Holmes and her advisor Tina Waliczek delved into this complex topic, evaluating whether horticultural programs or exposure to horticultural settings can help to reduce the probability of recidivism. Their findings are detailed in the article ‘The Effect of Horticultural Community Service Programs on Recidivism’ available now in HortTechnology, an open-access journal published by the American Society for Horticultural Science. Waliczek explains, “We became interested in this study because of observations made in our own campus garden where offenders often serve out community service sentences....

Some people are actually able to bottle their success, and Mark Kurz SM ’95 is one of the lucky few. Kurz is at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 as a manufacturing supply chain leader at Corning, the New York-based pioneer in glass science and manufacturing technology. Corning produces Valor Glass vials, a primary mode of delivery for vaccines as part of the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed. In his role as director of Corning’s Pharmaceutical Technologies manufacturing and operations, Kurz oversaw a four-fold acceleration of production capacity for vials....

On September 22, 2017, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic-kilometer neutrino telescope located at the South Pole, detected a high-energy neutrino of potential astrophysical origin. However, the observation of a single neutrino by itself is not enough for IceCube to claim the detection of a source. For that, scientists needed more information. Very quickly after the detection by IceCube was announced, telescopes around the world including VERITAS (which stands for the “Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System”) swung into action to identify the source....

UNC School of Medicine’s Maya Styner, MD, led research showing that the combination of cutting calories and exercising can make bones smaller and more fragile in animals, whereas exercise on a full-calorie diet has a positive impact on bone health. A new study published today in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research shows how bones in mammals are negatively impacted by calorie restriction, particularly by the combination of exercise and calorie restriction....

As of September of this year, there have been more than 2,600 new cases of West Nile virus in the USA, including 118 deaths, which were reported to the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia. While most people have no symptoms of West Nile, some have life-threatening brain inflammation, which leaves survivors with long-term disabilities including paralysis and fatigue. Researchers are investigating the hypothesis that even mild infections might leave another lasting problem, kidney disease....

This multi-layered technology, the coronagraph instrument, might more rightly be called “starglasses”: a system of masks, prisms, detectors, and even self-flexing mirrors built to block out the glare from distant stars — and reveal the planets in orbit around them. NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope opens its eyes in the mid 2020s, it will peer at the universe through some of the most sophisticated sunglasses ever designed. This multi-layered technology, the coronagraph instrument, might more rightly be called “starglasses”: a system of masks, prisms, detectors and even self-flexing mirrors built to block out the glare from distant stars — and reveal the planets in orbit around them....

From a conservation and ecological standpoint, this work also derived the first quantitative estimates of how many fish humpbacks consume in a single feeding event and over time. “Lunge-feeding whales need dense concentrations of prey to forage effectively, yet fish schools could easily disperse and render lunge-feeding ineffective if they sensed a threat,” said David Cade, lead author of the paper about this work, published December 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

The first sign of Alzheimer’s disease is typically memory loss, followed by confusion and difficulty thinking. These symptoms reflect the typical pattern of progressively worsening damage to brain tissues. Toxic clusters of proteins first concentrate in the temporal lobes of the brain — the memory area — before spreading to parts of the brain important for thinking and planning. A new study yields clues as to why certain parts of the brain are particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer’s damage....

Study explains potential causes for Silent Hypoxemia condition in COVID-19 patients. Findings could prevent unnecessary intubation and ventilation. A new research study provides possible explanations for COVID-19 patients who present with extremely low, otherwise life-threatening levels of oxygen, but no signs of dyspnea (difficulty breathing). This new understanding of the condition, known as silent hypoxemia or “happy hypoxia,” could prevent unnecessary intubation and ventilation in patients during the current and expected second wave of coronavirus....

The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has swept the globe, becoming the dominant variant within just a few months. A new study from Boston Children’s Hospital, published on October 26, 2021, in Science, explains why Delta is so easily spread and infects people so quickly, and suggests a more targeted strategy for developing future COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Last spring, study leader Bing Chen, PhD, showed how several earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants (alpha, beta, G614) became more infectious than the original virus....

The paleontologists published their findings in the journal Ichnos: An International Journal for Plant and Animal Traces. The tracks were discovered by Gloria Melanson, an amateur paleontologist, along Nova Scotia’s Joggins Cliffs. The tracks are the smallest fossil vertebrate footprints that have ever been found. The trackway contains about 30 footprints and is less than two inches in length. The actual imprints range from 0.09 to 0.06 of an inch each....

Yale School of Medicine researchers have answered a question millions regularly and plaintively ask themselves: Where did all that fat come from? The research paper, published online on February 24 in the journal Nature Cell Biology, identifies specific cell types that eventually morph into white adipocytes — the cells most people recognize as fat. “Now we can go back into the lab and ask how these cells are activated to actually make the fat,’ said co-author Matthew Rodeheffer, assistant professor of comparative medicine and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, and a researcher at the Yale Stem Cell Center....