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Now, a team of astronomers, led by Radboud University Ph.D. student Sara Issaoun, have finally been able to see through these clouds and study what makes the black hole glow. Issaoun completed this work while participating in the Predoctoral Program at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA. “The source of the radiation from Sgr A* has been debated for decades,” says Michael Johnson of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard and Smithsonian (CfA)....

By implanting electrodes and a data logger directly into the creatures, scientists have achieved the remarkable accomplishment of recording brain activity from octopuses while they move around freely. Published online in the journal Current Biology on February 23, the study represents a critical step forward in figuring out how octopus brains control their behavior, and could provide clues to the common principles needed for intelligence and cognition to occur. “If we want to understand how the brain works, octopuses are the perfect animal to study as a comparison to mammals....

In an ongoing endeavor to enhance opioid pain medications, scientists from the United States and China utilized cryoEM technology to determine the comprehensive structures of the entire family of opioid receptors when bound to their natural peptides. Further structure-informed biochemical studies were conducted to gain a deeper comprehension of the peptide-receptor selectivity and drug signaling mechanisms. The findings, published in the journal Cell, offer a comprehensive structural framework that should assist drug developers in creating safer drugs for the alleviation of severe pain....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. These mobile apps can help boost weight loss, if they are used as part of a comprehensive strategy. Researchers at Northwestern University studied 70 overweight men, with the average age of 58. Some of the men were asked to log their eating and activity using pen and paper, while others were given a mobile app developed by the researchers and their behavior was monitored by a coach, providing short, telephone-based check-ins periodically....

Now that so many of us are covering our faces to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, how well do face recognition algorithms identify people wearing masks? The answer, according to a preliminary study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is with great difficulty. Even the best of the 89 commercial facial recognition algorithms tested had error rates between 5% and 50% in matching digitally applied face masks with photos of the same person without a mask....

Scientists characterize previously unknown gut reactions. Strictly speaking, humans cannot digest complex carbohydrates — that’s the job of bacteria in our large intestines. UC Riverside scientists have just discovered a new group of viruses that attack these bacteria. The viruses, and the way they evade counterattack by their bacterial hosts, are described in a paper published in Cell Reports. Bacterioides can constitute up to 60% of all the bacteria living in a human’s large intestine, and they’re an important way that people get energy....

Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft show a concentration of high-altitude haze and a vortex materializing at the south pole of Saturn’s moon Titan, signs that the seasons are turning on Saturn’s largest moon. “The structure inside the vortex is reminiscent of the open cellular convection that is often seen over Earth’s oceans,” said Tony Del Genio, a Cassini team member at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y. “But unlike on Earth, where such layers are just above the surface, this one is at very high altitude, maybe a response of Titan’s stratosphere to seasonal cooling as southern winter approaches....

This ring, while not wielding power over Middle Earth, may help scientists better understand what happens when galaxies smash into one another in catastrophic impacts. In this new composite image of the galaxy AM 0644-741 (AM 0644 for short), X-rays from Chandra (purple) have been combined with optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). The Chandra data reveal the presence of very bright X-ray sources, most likely binary systems powered by either a stellar-mass black hole or neutron star, in a remarkable ring....

“Urbanization and population growth will create a vast demand for the construction of new housing and commercial buildings — hence the production of cement and steel will remain a major source of greenhouse gas emissions unless appropriately addressed,” says the study’s lead-author Galina Churkina who is affiliated to both the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in the US and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany (PIK)....

Ice is a highly complex substance with multiple polymorphic modifications that keep growing in number as scientists make discoveries. The physical properties of ice vary greatly, too: for example, hydrogen bonds become symmetric at high pressures, making it impossible to distinguish a single water molecule, whereas low pressures cause proton disorder, placing water molecules in many possible spatial orientations within the crystal structure. The ice around us, including snowflakes, is always proton-disordered....

While some mass media outlets are dismissing the obvious global climate change, nature isn’t. The hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa), the subspecies angustissima in South Australia, has lost width in its leaves by more than 2mm in the past 127 years, which is a 40% decrease. The findings were published in the journal Biology Letters. Other studies have documents these kinds of shifts in species ranges as well as the timing of natural cycles, like plant flowering and bird migration, all of a result of global warming....

The discovery has sparked concerns about the potential impact of rapid ocean warming on plankton distribution, as they may be compelled to migrate away from the tropics, resulting in adverse consequences for marine ecosystems. This could have detrimental effects on key fish species like tuna and billfish, as well as on coastal communities that rely on them. The study was recently published in the journal Nature. Using microfossils to track the history of a group of zooplankton called Foraminifera, the researchers found that the last time Earth was this warm – just before global cooling began 8 million years ago – tropical plankton populations lived in waters more than 2,000 miles from where they are today....

Roughly 60% of mined cobalt is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The element is often recovered as a byproduct from mining copper and nickel, meaning that demand and pricing for those other metals affect the availability of cobalt. Half of the current supply of cobalt is incorporated into cathodes for lithium-ion batteries, and many of those batteries are used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. Demand for these vehicles and their batteries is growing swiftly: In 2018, the global electric car fleet numbered in excess of 5....

Marine litter is among the most urgent global pollution issues. Marine scientist Nikoleta Bellou and her team at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have published an overview study of solutions for prevention, monitoring, and removal in the renowned scientific journal Nature Sustainability. They found that reducing ocean pollution requires more support, integration, and creative political decisiveness. Plastic bottles drifting in the sea; bags in the stomachs of turtles; COVID-19 masks dancing in the surf: few images are as unpleasant to look at as those that show the contamination of our oceans....

A computer model that can identify the best molecular candidates for removing carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen and other greenhouse gases from power plant flues has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of California (UC) Berkeley and the University of Minnesota. The model is the first computational method to provide accurate simulations of the interactions between flue gases and a special variety of gas-capturing molecular systems known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)....

When SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, first appeared, it was a single variant. Over time, the coronavirus evolved and new variants emerged including Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Omicron. Unfortunately, researchers found that vaccines and therapeutics were sometimes far less effective against some of these variants. But why? In a new study, scientists investigated the physical basis for why approved antibody therapeutics are not working in neutralizing the recent COVID-19 variants of concern, such as Omicron and its subvariants....

Some of the planet’s tiniest inhabitants may help address two of society’s biggest environmental challenges: how to deal with the vast quantities of organic waste produced and where to find clean, renewable energy. According to César Torres and Sudeep Popat, researchers at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, certain kinds of bacteria are adept at converting waste into useful energy. These microorganisms are presently being applied to the task, through an innovative technology known as a microbial fuel cell or MFC....

For every two deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S., a third American dies as a result of the pandemic, according to new data publishing today (October 12, 2020) in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, shows that deaths between March 1 and August 1 increased 20% compared to previous years — maybe not surprising in a pandemic. But deaths attributed to COVID-19 only accounted for 67% of those deaths....

Video transcript: Well here we are at the Kennedy Space Center, literally four days away from launching Perseverance to Mars. But we’re also gonna have Ingenuity with it. We’re gonna fly a helicopter on another world for the first time in human history. So many exciting things happening. And we want you to come with us on this experience, not just for the launch, but for the entire mission, because there is so much discovery ahead of us....

Face masks slow spread of COVID-19; types of masks, length of use matter. The use of face masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19 has been widely recommended by health professionals. This has triggered studies exploring the physics of face mask use and disease transmission, as well as investigations into materials, design, and other issues affecting the way face masks work. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, investigators looked at research on face masks and their use and summarized what we know, to date, about the way face masks filter or block the virus....