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The New Zealand-based researcher and astrophysics lecturer’s co-authored paper, titled “Magnetically gated accretion in an accreting ‘non-magnetic’ white dwarf” has been published in the latest issue of Nature (14 December). A white dwarf is what stars like the Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel. White dwarfs are dense objects roughly the same size as Earth but with as much mass as the Sun. They accrete, or grow, by sucking in mass from the outer layers of their companion stars....

The goal would be to make the low-cost device available to high schools, budget-pressed laboratories and other organizations whose research might otherwise be limited by access to conventional lab-grade electroporators. Plans for the device, known as the ElectroPen, are being made available, along with the files necessary for creating a 3D-printed casing “Our goal with the ElectroPen was to make it possible for high schools, budget-conscious laboratories and even those working in remote locations without access to electricity to perform experiments or processes involving electroporation,” said M....

On the night of July 20, 2012, the laser system of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA), which is nearing completion at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), delivered a petawatt of power in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a pulse rate of one hertz – one pulse every second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, a quadrillion watts, and a femtosecond is 10-15 second, a quadrillionth of a second....

Bioengineers have created three-dimensional brain-like tissue that functions like and has structural features similar to tissue in the rat brain and that can be kept alive in the lab for more than two months. As a first demonstration of its potential, researchers used the brain-like tissue to study chemical and electrical changes that occur immediately following traumatic brain injury and, in a separate experiment, changes that occur in response to a drug....

In a new study, Romain Vullo and colleagues describe this new species of manta-like planktivorous shark, dubbed Aquilolamna milarcae, from the creatures’ fossilized remains discovered in northern Mexico. The findings reveal an unexpectedly early evolutionary experimentation with underwater flight among sharks predating the rise of similar traits in manta rays and devilfish by more than 30 million years. Elasmobranchs — the highly successful group of cartilaginous fishes including sharks, skates and rays — first appeared in Earth’s oceans roughly 380 million years ago and have since evolved to fill a diverse array of ecological roles....

A potential treatment for various brain disorders involves the use of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs)—unique molecules capable of regulating RNA and modifying protein synthesis—by directly administering them into the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord. However, this method of injection frequently leads to significant side effects. In a recent study published in the journal Molecular Therapy—Nucleic Acids, scientists from Japan have discovered that the adverse effects associated with antisense oligonucleotide therapy are due to imbalances in brain calcium levels....

The new study, published in the MDPI Journal C, details the research experiments carried out in producing carbon nanotubes which could have the potential to solve some of the problems associated with their large-scale production such as: The high cost of preparing a suitable surface for chemical growth.The difficulties in scaling up the process, as only single surface growth processes have been previously available. The research team discovered that the large surface area of newspapers provided an unlikely but ideal way to chemically grow carbon nanotubes....

This natural color image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 31, 2005, at a distance of approximately 20,556 miles (33,083 kilometers) from Titan. The view looks toward the north polar region on the moon’s night side. Part of Titan’s sunlit crescent is visible at right. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15, 2017. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency....

Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini mission have firm evidence of an ocean inside Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which might be as salty as the Earth’s Dead Sea. The findings are published in this week’s edition of the journal Icarus. “This is an extremely salty ocean by Earth standards,” said the paper’s lead author, Giuseppe Mitri of the University of Nantes in France. “Knowing this may change the way we view this ocean as a possible abode for present-day life, but conditions might have been very different there in the past....

Some public health officials have suggested restricting nitrites and nitrates as food additives, however, their effect on metabolic issues and type 2 diabetes in humans is unexplored. To study the connection, researchers used data from 104,168 participants in the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort. The NutriNet-Santé study is an ongoing, web-based cohort study initiated in 2009. Participants aged fifteen and older enroll voluntarily and self-report medical history, sociodemographic, diet, lifestyle, and major health updates....

A study from Keck Medicine of USC published on January 10, 2023, in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology gives people extra motivation to reduce fast-food consumption. The study found that eating fast food is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a potentially life-threatening condition in which fat builds up in the liver. Researchers discovered that people with obesity or diabetes who consume 20% or more of their daily calories from fast food have severely elevated levels of fat in their liver compared to those who consume less or no fast food....

Our universe is filled with gobs of galaxies, bound together by gravity into larger families called clusters. Lying at the heart of most clusters is a monster galaxy thought to grow in size by merging with neighboring galaxies, a process astronomers call galactic cannibalism. New research from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is showing that, contrary to previous theories, these gargantuan galaxies appear to slow their growth over time, feeding less and less off neighboring galaxies....

Astronomers faced this puzzle when they aimed Hubble at the spheroidal galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, or DF2. It looks like a denizen of intergalactic space that is the closest thing there is to nothing, but is still something. It’s physically larger than our Milky Way, but its loose beehive swarm of stars is so thinly scattered that Hubble sees right through it, capturing myriad background galaxies. The missing “bottom of the iceberg” for DF2 is the lack of dark matter....

While the focus has been largely on vaccines, you might have also heard Pfizer is trialing a pill to treat COVID-19. It almost sounds too good to be true. Indeed, the results are very preliminary — but it’s a promising approach. Where most antiviral agents we’ve tried to treat COVID-19 target the inflammatory and immune response resulting from infection, Pfizer’s pill directly targets SARS-CoV-2 — the virus itself. Mounting our defense against the virus Much of the illness associated with COVID-19 is due to the intense inflammatory and immune response that can occur with an infection....

New research shows how genetic variations linked to severe cases of COVID-19 affect our immune cells. The study, led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), is one of the first in-depth look at the connections between COVID-19 severity and gene expression in many types of immune cells. This work could guide the development of new COVID-19 therapies to boost immune cell function. Among their findings, the researchers report that a gene in a cell type called non-classical monocytes, which are part of the body’s “first responder” team of innate immune cells, could be a potential target for COVID-19 therapies....

In 2020, cases of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders increased by 28% and 26%, respectively. Women were affected more than men, and younger people were more affected than older age groups. Countries with high COVID-19 infection rates and major reductions in the movement of people – a consequence of measures such as lockdowns and school closures – had the greatest increases in prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders....

COVID-19 antibodies preferentially target a different part of the virus in mild cases of COVID-19 than they do in severe cases, and wane significantly within several months of infection, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford Medicine. The findings identify new links between the course of the disease and a patient’s immune response. They also raise concerns about whether people can be re-infected, whether antibody tests to detect prior infection may underestimate the breadth of the pandemic and whether vaccinations may need to be repeated at regular intervals to maintain a protective immune response....

This slice of Mars, seen here as imaged by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), shows signs of various intriguing processes. A scattering of impact craters, formed as incoming bodies from space collided with Mars’ surface, can be seen to the left of the frame; the floor of the largest and uppermost basin spans about 40 kilometers, and contains some fractures and markings that formed just after the crater itself....

Crews working on the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter search experiment were at the peak of installation activity a mile deep at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota when the COVID-19 outbreak led SURF officials to limit activities to essential operations. Earlier this month the SURF site began a transition back toward increased operations. On May 6, SURF officials moved to allow day-shift operations for science and surface projects, applying additional safety protocols to protect the health of staff, researchers, and others....

Last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics celebrated the fundamental interest of quantum entanglement, and also envisioned the potential applications in “the second quantum revolution” — a new age when we are able to manipulate the weirdness of quantum mechanics, including quantum superposition and entanglement. A large-scale and fully functional quantum network is the holy grail of quantum information sciences. It will open a new frontier of physics, with new possibilities for quantum computation, communication, and metrology....