Posts

A planetary nebula forms when a dying star ejects its outer layer of gas, creating a colorful, shell-like structure distinctive to planetary nebulae. NGC 6543, or the Cat’s Eye Nebula, is one of the most complex planetary nebulae known. It is just over 3,000 light-years away from Earth, and can be seen in the constellation Draco. The Cat’s Eye Nebula has also been seen in great detail by the Hubble Space Telescope, exhibiting a complicated structure of knots, spherical shells, and arc-like filaments....

The authors noted that if SARS-CoV-2 were to infect and spread among wild mammals, it could potentially cause disease in some populations, in turn further endangering already threatened species. Also, if SARS-CoV-2 could be sustainably transmitted among some mammalian populations or communities, this would create new animal reservoirs that could repeatedly source new outbreaks in humans and other animals. The researchers urge people to take sanitary precautions when in direct or indirect contact with wild or feral mammal species to prevent human-to-wildlife SARS-CoV-2 transmission....

Reference: “Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago” by Michael R. Wilczynska, John K. Webb, Matthew Bainbridge, John D. Barrow, Sarah E. I. Bosman, Robert F. Carswell, Mariusz P. Dąbrowski, Vincent Dumont, Chung-Chi Lee, Ana Catarina Leite, Katarzyna Leszczyńska, Jochen Liske, Konrad Marosek, Carlos J. A. P. Martins, Dinko Milaković, Paolo Molaro and Luca Pasquini, 24 April 2020, Science Advances.DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9672 In a paper published in the prestigious journal Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant....

Hot Jupiters – giant gas planets that race around their host stars in extremely tight orbits – have become a little bit less mysterious thanks to a new study combining theoretical modeling with observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. While previous studies mostly focused on individual worlds classified as “hot Jupiters” due to their superficial similarity to the gas giant in our own solar system, the new study is the first to look at a broader population of the strange worlds....

Before COVID-19-specific vaccines became available, many public health experts and immunologists suggested immunizing vulnerable populations with other vaccines to provide some degree of protection. “We know that unrelated vaccines have these heterologous effects, and a reasonable person could tell you that if you used them during a pandemic, it would benefit,” said Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, an associate professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine and lead author on the new paper....

For 15 years, scientists have been baffled by the mysterious way water flows through the tiny passages of carbon nanotubes — pipes with walls that can be just one atom thick. The streams have confounded all theories of fluid dynamics; paradoxically, fluid passes more easily through narrower nanotubes, and in all nanotubes it moves with almost no friction. What friction there is has also defied explanation. In an unprecedented mashup of fluid dynamics and quantum mechanics, researchers report in a new theoretical study published today (February 2, 2022) in Nature that they finally have an answer: ‘quantum friction....

Every organ in the body is capable, to some extent, of repairing itself after an injury. As part of this process, scar tissue forms and then recedes to make room for normal tissue when healing is complete. However, when healing is disrupted — whether by chronic injury or disease — the cells that make up scar tissue can go rogue, continuously dividing and spreading until the scar eventually strangles the organ it was intended to help heal, which can lead to organ failure....

Specifically, the researchers designed new optics for an ultrafast sensor called a streak camera that resolves images from ultrashort pulses of light. Streak cameras and other ultrafast cameras have been used to make a trillion-frame-per-second video, scan through closed books, and provide depth map of a 3-D scene, among other applications. Such cameras have relied on conventional optics, which have various design constraints. For example, a lens with a given focal length, measured in millimeters or centimeters, has to sit at a distance from an imaging sensor equal to or greater than that focal length to capture an image....

The calories that children and adolescents consumed from ultraprocessed foods jumped from 61% to 67% of total caloric intake from 1999 to 2018, according to a new study from researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University. Published August 10, 2021, in JAMA, the study analyzed dietary intake from 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide. “Some whole grain breads and dairy foods are ultraprocessed, and they’re healthier than other ultraprocessed foods....

In 2016, scientists from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, came to the ESRF, the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France, the brightest synchrotron light source, for an exceptional study: to scan the complete skeleton of a small, 200-million-year-old plant-eating dinosaur. The dinosaur specimen is the most complete fossil ever discovered of a species known as Heterodontosaurus tucki. The fossil was found in 2009 in the Eastern Cape of South Africa by study co-author, Billy de Klerk of the Albany Museum, Makhanda, South Africa....

Spearheaded by earth scientists of the University of Cologne, an international team of geologists has found evidence that a large proportion of the elements that are important for the formation of oceans and life, such as water, carbon, and nitrogen, were delivered to Earth very late in its history. Previously, many scientists believed that these elements were already present when the Earth began to form. However, geological investigations have now shown that most of the water in fact was only delivered to Earth when its formation was almost complete....

A Princeton University team has now developed a method for observing bacteria in 3-D environments. They discovered that when the bacteria grow, their colonies consistently form fascinating rough shapes that resemble a branching head of broccoli, far more complex than what is seen in a Petri dish. “Ever since bacteria were discovered over 300 years ago, most lab research has studied them in test tubes or on Petri dishes,” said Sujit Datta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton and the study’s senior author....

For decades it has been thought that a shock wave from a supernova explosion triggered the formation of our Solar System. According to this theory, the shock wave also injected material from the exploding star into a cloud of dust and gas, and the newly polluted cloud collapsed to form the Sun and its surrounding planets. New work from Carnegie’s Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides the first fully three-dimensional (3D) models for how this process could have happened....

In a study published on April 30 in Nature Nanotechnology, Yale researchers outline a strategy to give materials designers the tools they need to make the necessary assessments efficiently and at the beginning of the design process. Engineers traditionally focus on the function and cost of their products. Without the information to consider long-term environmental impacts, though, it is difficult to predict adverse effects, said the researchers, and that lack of information means unintended consequences often go unnoticed until long after the product has been commercialized....

Industrial production of ammonia, primarily for synthetic fertilizer — the fuel for last century’s Green Revolution — is one of the world’s largest chemical markets, but also one of the most energy intensive. Globally, the Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia uses about 1% of all fossil fuels and produces 1% of all carbon dioxide emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change. Now, University of California, Berkeley, chemists have taken a big step toward making ammonia production more environmentally friendly: a “greener” ammonia for “greener” fertilizer....

The molecule that gave rise to life, RNA, has been demonstrated to be important for repairing human genetic material and avoiding mutations that might lead to cancer development. Recent research breakthroughs, such as those reported by Daniel Gómez Cabello’s research team at the University of Seville, propose this compound as a therapeutic target for developing tailored cancer treatment strategies. The RNA polymerase enzyme, the RNA production machine in cells, is required for safely and reliably repairing breaks in human DNA....

But progress in treating chronic illness, where the cause of the problem is often unknown—and, in fact, may no longer even be present — has lagged. Chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease defy easy explanations, let alone remedies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that more than half of adults and one-third of children and teens in the United States live with at least one chronic illness....

The Sun’s magnetic influence stretches billions of miles, far past the orbit of Pluto and the planets, defined by a driving force: the solar wind. This constant outflow of solar material carries the Sun’s magnetic field out into space, where it shapes the environments around Earth, other worlds, and in the reaches of deep space. Changes in the solar wind can create space weather effects that influence not only the planets, but also human and robotic explorers throughout the solar system — and this work suggests that relatively small, previously-unexplored features close to the Sun’s surface could play a crucial role in the solar wind’s characteristics....

Insufficient ß – cell mass is the root cause of all major types of diabetes. When blood glucose levels in the body rise, such as in response to a high-fat diet, β cells respond by creating and releasing more insulin to manage blood glucose levels. Hyperglycemia, or persistently high blood glucose, may, however, hinder the ability of β cells to produce and secrete insulin. This leads to a vicious cycle of rising glucose levels and declining β–cell activity, which eventually ends in the death of β cells, a phenomenon known as glucose toxicity....

On balance, a third of people in the UK have been enjoying the lockdown, while 46% have not been enjoying it and 21% have mixed feelings, finds UCL’s COVID-19 Social Study. The research also shows that 17% of people have not been enjoying lockdown “at all,” whilst only 4% of people have been enjoying it “very much.” Adults aged 30-59 have been enjoying it the most, as have people living with others, those with higher household incomes, people without any prior mental health conditions and those living with children....