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The researchers have potentially resolved a long-standing question about the evolution of galaxies, using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate their research. Since the invention of the Hubble Sequence, a system for categorizing galaxy shapes, in 1926, astronomers have been continually improving our comprehension of galaxy evolution and morphology as our technology progresses. By the 1970s, researchers had confirmed that lone galaxies tend to be spiral-shaped, and those found in clusters of galaxies were likely to be smooth and featureless, known as elliptical and lenticular (shaped like a lens)....

According to a new study led by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle, depression has surpassed asthma as the largest contributor to ‘years lived with disabilities’ for youths aged 10-14. The scientists published their findings in the journal The Lancet. The estimation of years lived with disabilities (YLD) was used as a collective metric to see how much a particular disorder deprives the population of healthy years of life during a specific window of time....

It also triggered a monstrous tsunami with mile-high waves that scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles from the impact site on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, according to a new University of Michigan-led study that was published online on October 4 in the journal AGU Advances. The research study presents the first global simulation of the Chicxulub impact tsunami to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Additionally, U-M scientists reviewed the geological record at more than 100 sites worldwide and discovered evidence that supports their models’ predictions about the tsunami’s path and power....

Most of the FRBs that have been found come from outside of the Milky Way. Recent observations of an FRB originating from a Galactic magnetar (a type of neutron star beloved to have an extremely strong magnetic field) indicate that some FRBs come from magnetars. However, the origin of the cosmological FRBs, especially those that actively repeat, remains unclear. Thus far, the constraints to the physical parameters of the environments close to FRBs are still weak....

NASA is developing and demonstrating technologies to service and repair satellites in distant orbits. Robotic spacecraft — likely operated with joysticks by technicians on the ground — would carry out the hands-on maneuvers, not human beings using robotic and other specialized tools, as was the case for spacecraft like the low-Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. This photograph looks closely at one of the tools that could be used for satellite servicing in the future: the Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot (VIPIR), a robotic, articulating borescope equipped with a second motorized, zoom-lens camera that would help mission operators who need robotic eyes to troubleshoot anomalies, investigate micrometeoroid strikes, and carry out teleoperated satellite-repair jobs....

Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Geophysical Monograph Series. Researchers from Royal Holloway, together with Sandia National Laboratories and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe, have found evidence that rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth’s climate and terminated the Clovis culture....

The evidence shows that cloth masks, particularly those with several layers of cotton cloth, block droplet, and aerosol contamination of the environment, which may reduce transmission of COVID-19. “The point is not that some particles can penetrate the mask, but that some particles are stopped, particularly outwardly, from the wearer,” said first author Catherine Clase, associate professor of medicine at McMaster University and a nephrologist of St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton....

At roughly three minutes long, this animated video walks you through the evolution of the moon from its first formation 4.5 billion years ago, to its current state. Evolution of the Moon From year to year, the moon never seems to change. Craters and other formations appear to be permanent now, but the moon didn’t always look like this. Learn about how the moon evolved from its early state to how it looks today in this animation....

The scarcity of observations in the Arctic, caused by its severe climate and extensive sea ice coverage, has resulted in a relatively small amount of data being gathered from that region. Therefore, the climate models used to predict the Arctic’s future have not been as thoroughly calibrated as those employed in other regions of the world. Two recent scientific studies involving researchers from the University of Gothenburg compared the results of the climate models with actual observations....

New research published in the Journal of Applied Ecology from University of Connecticut assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Sarah Knutie shows that feeding bluebirds can have a significant impact on parasitic nest flies feeding on baby bluebirds. Parasitic flies can be found in the nests of many bird species, and some can have significant impacts on nestling survival. The flies lay eggs in the nests, and once the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the blood of nestlings by drilling holes through the young birds’ skin....

Understanding Anemia Adam Goldfarb, MD, and his colleagues made the discovery while seeking to better understand why iron-restricted anemias cause the body to create insufficient numbers of vital red blood cells. Members of the research team were working independently on what would prove to be key pieces of the puzzle, but it was only when they put them together that they could see the big picture. Shadi Khalil, an MD/Ph.D. student who worked in Goldfarb’s lab, was examining bone marrow cells when he noticed something intriguing about them....

The international team led by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge produced a breathtakingly detailed diagram tracing every neural connection in the brain of a larval fruit fly, an archetypal scientific model with brains comparable to humans. The work, likely to underpin future brain research and to inspire new machine learning architectures, appears today (March 10, 2023) in the journal Science. “If we want to understand who we are and how we think, part of that is understanding the mechanism of thought,” said senior author Joshua T....

Gathering the latest advancements in optical fiber telecommunications technology towards practical petabit-class backbone networks. The first 1 Petabit per second switching demonstration using spatial division multiplexingPrototype optical network testbed using multicore optical fibers and large-scale spatial optical switchingProgress to the practical realization of ultra-high capacity petabit per second backbone networks The Network System Research Institute at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: Hideyuki Tokuda, Ph.D.) has developed and demonstrated the first large-scale optical switching testbed capable of handling 1 Petabit per second optical signals....

Both obesity and diabetes are common, serious, and costly in the United States. More than one-third of U.S. adults are affected by these two conditions. Among patients who have obesity and diabetes, bariatric surgery can lead to remission of both of these diseases. “However, which population could have the most benefit from the surgery, and the possible impact of diabetes on the success of their weight-loss surgery is still unknown,” said lead researcher Elif A....

This study, according to researchers, is the first to examine whether the anti-inflammatory properties of green tea may have a protective effect against the health risks associated with metabolic syndrome, a disease that affects more than three million Americans each year. “There is much evidence that greater consumption of green tea is associated with good levels of cholesterol, glucose, and triglycerides, but no studies have linked its benefits in the gut to those health factors,” said Richard Bruno, senior study author and professor of human nutrition at The Ohio State University....

An evolution revolution has begun after scientists extracted genetic information from a 1.77 million-year-old rhino tooth – the largest genetic data set this old to ever be confidently recorded. Researchers identified an almost complete set of proteins, a proteome, in the dental enamel of the now-extinct rhino and the resulting genetic information is one million years older than the oldest DNA sequenced from a 700,000-year-old horse. The findings by scientists from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, and St John’s College, University of Cambridge, are published today (September 11) in Nature....

A team led by Oxford University scientists has overcome a key problem of growing graphene – a one-atom-thick layer of carbon – when using an established technique called chemical vapor deposition, that the tiny flakes of graphene form with random orientations, leaving defects or ‘seams’ between flakes that grow together. The discovery, reported in a paper published in the journal ACS Nano, reveals how these graphene flakes, known as ‘domains’, can be lined up by manipulating the alignment of carbon atoms on a relatively cheap copper foil – the atomic structure of the copper surface acts as a ‘guide’ that controls the orientation of the carbon atoms growing on top of them....

A “heart attack on a chip” — a device that could one day serve as a testbed to develop new heart drugs and even personalized medicines — has been developed by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering. “Our device replicates some key features of a heart attack in a relatively simple and easy-to-use system,” said Megan McCain, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, who developed the device with postdoctoral researcher Megan Rexius-Hall....

Until now, scientists had assumed that there are about 80 so-called open reading frames (ORFs) in the genome of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). These are the locations in the genome where the information in the DNA is read and translated into proteins. It is now clear that there are a lot more — namely 284 ORFs. These are translated from hundreds of novel viral transcripts, which have now also been identified....

T cells belong to the adaptive immune system, which recognizes foreign antigens and specifically fights pathogens. Different T cells perform different functions in this process. So-called T helper cells secrete cytokines that attract other immune cells to the site of infection and trigger inflammation there. However, T helper cells can also counteract inflammation. Better understanding these mechanisms helps in the development of therapeutics against pathogens or autoimmune diseases. “We found a cytokine in a subset of T helper cells, the Th17 cells, that was previously known to be part of the innate immune system,” explains study leader Christina Zielinski....