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A long-standing theory contends that the period’s initial cooling was maintained by “sea-ice to ocean feedbacks”; as the sea ice expanded, ocean currents slowed, which in turn decreased the flow of warm water from the south. The University of Exeter conducted a new study that examined how the ocean has changed and responded to external changes over the last few centuries using the shells of quahog clams, which can survive for several hundred years....

Living in extreme conditions requires creative adaptations. For certain species of bacteria that exist in oxygen-deprived environments, this means finding a way to breathe that doesn’t involve oxygen. These hardy microbes, which can be found deep within mines, at the bottom of lakes, and even in the human gut, have evolved a unique form of breathing that involves excreting and pumping out electrons. In other words, these microbes can actually produce electricity....

A research team at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Harvard Medical School (HMS) reports a new kind of genome analysis that could identify large fractions of the population who have a much higher risk of developing serious common diseases, including coronary artery disease, breast cancer, or Type 2 diabetes. These tests, which use information from millions of places in the genome to ascertain risk for five diseases, can flag a greater likelihood of developing the potentially fatal conditions well before any symptoms appear....

In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers tested how five different types of mask materials impacted the spread of droplets that carry the coronavirus when we cough or sneeze. Every material tested dramatically reduced the number of droplets that were spread. But at distances of less than 6 feet, enough droplets to potentially cause illness still made it through several of the materials. “A mask definitely helps, but if the people are very close to each other, there is still a chance of spreading or contracting the virus,” said Krishna Kota, an associate professor at New Mexico State University and one of the article’s authors....

This new infrared image from ESO’s VISTA telescope shows the globular cluster 47 Tucanae in striking detail. This cluster contains millions of stars, and there are many nestled at its core that are exotic and display unusual properties. Studying objects within clusters like 47 Tucanae may help us to understand how these oddballs form and interact. This image is very sharp and deep due to the size, sensitivity, and location of VISTA, which is sited at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile....

“Meteoroids and other projectiles in space can change the atmosphere and surface of any planet through impact,” said University of Maryland Geology Associate Professor Nicholas Schmerr, a co-author of the paper. “We’ve seen this on Earth, where these objects can hurtle through the atmosphere, hit the ground, and leave behind a crater. But before this, we’ve never been able to capture the dynamics of an impact on Mars, where there’s a much thinner atmosphere....

A robotics platform designed by Toronto researchers to screen thousands of COVID-19 samples at once has the potential to revolutionize how labs track the spread of viruses and other pathogens, according to new findings. The study, out today (March 3, 2021) in Nature Communications, found that the next-generation, ultra-high-throughput sequencing platform, called C19-SPAR-Seq, designed by researchers from the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) at Sinai Health, has a sensitivity rate greater than 95 percent in positive cases during peak onset....

In an in-depth study of how COVID-19 affects a patient’s brain, National Institutes of Health researchers consistently spotted hallmarks of damage caused by thinning and leaky brain blood vessels in tissue samples from patients who died shortly after contracting the disease. In addition, they saw no signs of SARS-CoV-2 in the tissue samples, suggesting the damage was not caused by a direct viral attack on the brain. The results were published as a correspondence in the New England Journal of Medicine....

The deadly confrontation is the first time the snake’s feeding habits have been observed by experts. Although it is known that closely similar species love centipedes, T. oolitica is so rare that no one was sure what it consumed until now. The interlocked pair was CT scanned by Florida Museum of Natural History researchers, who recently reported their findings in the journal Ecology. “I was amazed when I first saw the photos,” said co-author Coleman Sheehy, the Florida Museum’s herpetology collection manager....

In a new study published on August 26, 2021, in the journal Nature Communications Physics, researchers led by Volker Sorger, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the George Washington University, reveal a new nanophotonic analog processor capable of solving partial differential equations. This nanophotonic processor can be integrated at chip-scale, processing arbitrary inputs at the speed of light. The research team also included researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and City College of New York....

3C 273 is the nearest high-luminosity quasar to Earth, about two billion light-years away, and shining with the power of more than about three thousand Milky Way galaxies. Since its discovery in 1963 it has been extensively studied at many wavelengths. It is bright and very variable from the radio wavelengths to the X-ray and gamma-rays, and has rapidly moving jets of charged particles. One of the major theoretical challenges for 3C 273 has been explaining the origins of the various kinds of dramatic activities seen....

MIT researchers have designed an optical filter on a chip that can process optical signals from across an extremely wide spectrum of light at once, something never before available to integrated optics systems that process data using light. The technology may offer greater precision and flexibility for designing optical communication and sensor systems, studying photons and other particles through ultrafast techniques, and in other applications. Optical filters are used to separate one light source into two separate outputs: one reflects unwanted wavelengths — or colors — and the other transmits desired wavelengths....

A single dose of the Sputnik V vaccine may elicit significant antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2, finds a study published on July 13, 2021, in the journal Cell Reports Medicine. “Due to limited vaccine supply and uneven vaccine distribution in many regions of the world, health authorities urgently need data on the immune response to vaccines to optimize vaccination strategies,” says senior author Andrea Gamarnik (@GamarnikLab) of the Fundación Instituto Leloir-CONICET in Buenos Aires, Argentina....

According to a new study, many people underestimate how much they will change in the future. The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. Many of the choices that people make rest on assumptions. The psychologists devised a series of online experiments, in which more than 19,000 people participated. Adults between 18 and 68 filled out a questionnaire, scoring themselves on basic personality traits. The researchers asked them to do it again, answering as if they would have done 10 years ago or as they would do 10 years from now....

Physicists have directly imaged Landau Levels – the quantum levels that determine electron behavior in a strong magnetic field – for the first time since they were theoretically conceived of by Nobel prize winner Lev Landau in 1930. Using scanning tunneling spectroscopy – a spatially resolved probe that interacts directly with the electrons – scientists at institutions including the University of Warwick and Tohoku University have revealed the internal ring-like structure of these Landau Levels at the surface of a semiconductor....

The researchers examined the behavior of matter on the atomic and subatomic scales – known as “quantum matter” – where a large number of particles interact with each other. This latest discovery reveals a new state of quantum matter called a “Rydberg polaron,” a relatively giant particle containing many atoms that behaves in some ways like a single massive particle. The experiment, initiated by the theoretical work at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and Harvard Physics, was performed in the laboratory of Thomas Killian at Rice University, where the electrons were given so much energy, on the verge of being pulled away from the nucleus....

Using an experimental dune ‘racetrack’, the researchers observed that two identical dunes start out close together, but over time they get further and further apart. This interaction is controlled by turbulent swirls from the upstream dune, which push the downstream dune away. The results, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, are key for the study of long-term dune migration, which threatens shipping channels, increases desertification, and can bury infrastructure such as highways....

The ocean can store much more heat than the atmosphere. The deep sea around Antarctica stores thermal energy that is the equivalent of heating the air above the continent by 400 degrees. Now, a Swedish-led international research group has explored the physics behind the ocean currents close to the floating glaciers that surround the Antarctic coast. “Current measurements indicate an increase in melting, particularly near the coast in some parts of Antarctica and Greenland....

“According to a 2020 market research analysis, Americans spend an estimated $50 billion on dietary supplements annually, and many are marketed for ‘heart protection’ or ‘cholesterol management’. Yet there is minimal-to-no research demonstrating these benefits,” said study author Luke J. Laffin, M.D. “Some people also believe supplements are as effective or more effective than cholesterol-lowering statin medications.” Laffin is co-director of the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio....

The evidence for this potentially record-breaking speed comes, in part, from the features highlighted in this composite image. X-ray observations from Chandra (green) and XMM-Newton (purple) have been combined with infrared data from the 2MASS project and optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey (colored red, green and blue, but appearing in the image as white). The large area of diffuse X-rays seen by XMM-Newton was produced when a massive star exploded as a supernova, leaving behind a debris field, or supernova remnant known as SNR MSH 11-61A....