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Numerous assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have shown that since clouds reflect sunlight and maintain lower temperatures, aerosols, which are increasing as a result of human activity, might have a significant impact on climate change. However, it is challenging to measure the cooling effect of aerosols on clouds, which has resulted in substantial uncertainty in climate change projections. The new research, led by the University of Exeter in collaboration with national and international academic partners as well as the UK Met Office, investigated this using the 2014 Icelandic volcanic eruption....

University of California, Riverside research sheds new light on earthquake that killed 9,000 people. A new understanding of a fault that caused a deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake can help scientists better understand where and when the next big one will hit. For decades, scientists have debated the structure of the Main Himalayan Thrust — the fault responsible for a 2015 earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people, injured 22,000, and destroyed 600,000 homes in Gorkha, Nepal....

The unexpected slowing of NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft — the so-called “Pioneer Anomaly” — turns out to be due to the slight, but detectable effect of heat pushing back on the spacecraft, according to a recent paper. The heat emanates from electrical current flowing through instruments and the thermoelectric power supply. The results were published on June 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters. “The effect is something like when you’re driving a car and the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward,” said Slava Turyshev, the paper’s lead author at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California....

This dramatic pairing shows two galaxies that couldn’t look more different as their mutual gravitational attraction slowly drags them closer together. The “penguin” part of the pair, NGC 2336, was probably once a relatively normal-looking spiral galaxy, flattened like a pancake with smoothly symmetric spiral arms. Rich with newly-formed hot stars, seen in visible light from Hubble as bluish filaments, its shape has now been twisted and distorted as it responds to the gravitational tugs of its neighbor....

A visual treat in the sky … And a NASA tech demo hitches a ride to space … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Artemis I Moon Rocket and Spacecraft Arrive at Launch Pad Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center moved the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to launch pad 39B ahead of NASA’s uncrewed Artemis I flight test around the Moon and back....

Super sources of a climate-warming greenhouse gas … And images of Earth from a passing spacecraft … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars A strong marsquake recorded by NASA’s InSight lander on December 24, 2021, was caused by a massive meteoroid strike that excavated boulder-size chunks of ice from the Martian surface. Evidence of this is seen in before-and-after images of the impact site from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter....

Viruses make copies of themselves during an infection, and new research sheds light on one of the coronavirus molecules that is important for this process, providing a potential drug target that could work for Covid-19 and other coronavirus outbreaks too. Coronaviruses exploit our cells so they can make copies of themselves inside us. After they enter our cells, they use our cell machinery to make unique tools of their own that help them generate these copies....

An opinion piece published in The BMJ — a peer-reviewed medical journal by the British Medical Association — written by Nina Schwalbe in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, calls for a national vaccine strategy now that COVID-19 vaccines are available. Schwalbe writes that a lack of clarity on a distribution plan sets unrealistic expectations among the public and could undermine public trust....

The framework, created by Chandross and Argibay of Sandia National Laboratories, does not require fit parameters. It relies on the connection between ultimate strength and thermodynamics and was able to accurately predict the ultimate strengths of nearly 20 different metals.” The new model could improve research and development in many industries by allowing scientists to better understand the potential maximum achievable strengths of alloys and explore new design alternatives. Reference: “The Ultimate Strength of Metals” by Michael Chandross and Nicolas Argibay, 25 March 2020, Physical Review Letters....

The 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), such as freon used in older air conditioners. But these replacement compounds, thought to be a better alternative, degrade into products that do not break down in the environment and have instead continually increased in the Arctic since about 1990. York University Assistant Professor Cora Young of the Faculty of Science explains how they found chemicals in ice cores from the high Arctic that increased dramatically beginning in the 1990s, just after the Montreal Protocol went into effect....

Neuroscientists believe that the disorder illuminates the inner workings of the human brain and its innate number sense. The sense is as innate as vision or hearing, yet scientists disagree over its cognitive and neural basis. Brain Butterworth, a neuroscientist, is hoping to develop treatments for dyscalculia using learning software. If dyscalculia is a deficiency of basic number sense and not memory, attention or language, then fostering the roots of the number sense could help dyscalculics....

Using previous study data, researchers sought to determine what characteristics of meals were important for determining how many calories were eaten. They found that three meal characteristics consistently led to increased calorie intake across four different dietary patterns: meal energy density (i.e., calories per gram of food), the amount of “hyper-palatable” foods, and how quickly the meals were eaten. Protein content of the meals also contributed to calorie intake, but its effect was more variable....

Terahertz waves (THz) sit between microwaves and infrared in the light frequency spectrum, but due to their low-energy scientists have been unable to harness their potential. The conundrum is known in scientific circles as the terahertz gap. Being able to detect and amplify THz waves (T-rays) would open up a new era of medical, communications, satellite, cosmological, and other technologies. One of the biggest applications would be as a safe, non-destructive alternative to X-rays....

Despite the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), reports show that many health care workers contracted the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which raises substantial concerns about the effectiveness of the PPE. Highly sought after PPE used in hospitals and other health care settings is critical in ensuring the safety of those on the frontline of COVID-19, but only if they are used properly. A physician from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine and collaborators from the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson and the Indiana University School of Medicine conducted a novel training technique to reinforce the importance of using proper procedures to put on and take off PPE when caring for patients during the pandemic....

The most direct and strongest evidence for the accelerating universe with dark energy is provided by the distance measurements using type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) for the galaxies at high redshift. This result is based on the assumption that the corrected luminosity of SN Ia through the empirical standardization would not evolve with redshift. New observations and analysis made by a team of astronomers at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), together with their collaborators at Lyon University and KASI, show, however, that this key assumption is most likely in error....

Many people are trying to reduce their plastic use, but some tea manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction: replacing traditional paper teabags with plastic ones. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have discovered that a soothing cup of the brewed beverage may come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics shed from the bags. The possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently unknown, the researchers say....

The rise of coronavirus variants has highlighted the huge influence evolutionary biology has on daily life. But how mutations, random chance and natural selection produce variants is a complicated process, and there has been a lot of confusion about how and why new variants emerge. Until recently, the most famous example of rapid evolution was the story of the peppered moth. In the mid-1800s, factories in Manchester, England, began covering the moth’s habitat in soot, and the moth’s normal white coloring made them visible to predators....

A new study shows that medium-sized predators all but disappeared late in dinosaur history wherever Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives rose to dominance. In those areas—lands that eventually became central Asia and Western North America—juvenile tyrannosaurs stepped in to fill the missing ecological niche previously held by other carnivores. The research conducted by Thomas Holtz, a principal lecturer in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology, verified previous anecdotal reports of a dramatic drop-off in diversity of medium-sized predator species in communities dominated by tyrannosaurs....

The study, published today, September 13, 2019, in the journal Science, is the first experiment to track the effects of a neonicotinoid pesticide on birds in the wild. The study found that white-crowned sparrows who consumed small doses of an insecticide called imidacloprid suffered weight loss and delays to their migration—effects that could severely harm the birds’ ability to survive and reproduce. “We saw these effects using doses well within the range of what a bird could realistically consume in the wild—equivalent to eating just a few treated seeds,” said Margaret Eng, a post-doctoral fellow in the USask Toxicology Center and lead author of the study....