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Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China’s CO2 emissions. The independent estimates, rooted in part in measurements of pollutants both at the sources and in the air, may be the most accurate totals to date....

A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School describe the first case of a so-called “functional cure” in an HIV-infected infant. The finding, the investigators say, may help pave the way to eliminating HIV infection in children. A report on the case is being presented on Sunday, March 3, at the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta....

According to biomedical engineers at the University of Cincinnati, interstitial fluid, which is the fluid that surrounds cells, tissues, and organs in the body, could be a valuable resource for early disease detection or long-term health monitoring. In a paper published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, they outlined the potential advantages and technological challenges of using interstitial fluid. “Why we see it as a valuable diagnostic fluid is continuous access....

“We tested cosmic ray effects on the atmosphere for about two weeks. When solar explosions reduce the cosmic ray flux reaching Earth, they temporarily reduce the production of small aerosols. The aerosols are molecular clusters in the air that normally grow to seed the water droplets of low-level clouds. This, in turn, reduces the cloud cover, which is known to affect climate,” says senior researcher. Henrik Svensmark, lead author of the study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports....

However, Yale researchers have found that three distinct circuits connecting to different brain regions are involved in making good decisions, bad ones, and determining which of those past choices to store in memory, they report June 25 in the journal Neuron. The study of decision-making in rats may help scientists find the roots of flawed decision-making common to mental health disorders such as addiction, the authors say. “Specific decision-making computations are altered in individuals with mental illness,” said Jane Taylor, professor of psychiatry and senior author of the study....

Murphy’s recommendation follows the new updated guidelines from Centers for Disease Control, which recommended K-12 schools should separate students wearing masks at least 3 feet. “There’s no reason we can’t expand this to outside of the schools,” said Murphy, a professor of infectious diseases at Feinberg. “We must keep the masks, though. That is crucial.” The 3-foot mark is the critical distance at which secretion droplets — which travel in an arc — have already begun their descent to the ground and fallen below the nose and mouth of a passerby....

Rotational movement in nature is very rare, while at the same time ubiquitous in our civilization. While we can build a variety of rotary motors, they usually consist of many elements and it makes their miniaturization difficult. However, there is a group of materials that enable construction of small, moving, and/or mobile devices — liquid crystal elastomers (LCE). Research on these materials focuses mainly on design of LCE shape and its change upon laser illumination (e....

A new analysis of topographic and gravity data from Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons, indicates that Titan’s icy outer crust is twice as thick as has generally been thought. Scientists have long suspected that a vast ocean of liquid water lies under the crust. The new study suggests that the internally generated heat that keeps that ocean from freezing solid depends far more on Titan’s interactions with Saturn and its other moons than had been suspected....

Led by Bo Cederwall, Professor of Experimental Nuclear Physics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, an international research team identified new rotational states in the extremely neutron-deficient, deformed, atomic nucleus 88Ru. The results suggest that the structure of this exotic nuclear system is heavily influenced by the presence of strongly-coupled neutron-proton pairs. “Such a structure is fundamentally different from the normal conditions observed in atomic nuclei, where neutrons and protons interact in pairs in separate systems, forming a near-superfluid state,” Cederwall says....

Published online on December 7 in the Journal of Pineal Research, the study found that UW students fell asleep later in the evening and woke up later in the morning during — of all seasons — winter, when daylight hours on the UW’s Seattle campus are limited and the skies are notoriously overcast. The team behind this study believes it has an explanation: The data showed that in winter students received less light exposure during the day....

A major challenge to this vision is that qubits are extremely sensitive to their environment, even the vibrations of nearby atoms can disrupt their ability to remember information. So far, researchers have relied on extremely low temperatures to quiet vibrations but, achieving those temperatures for large-scale quantum networks is prohibitively expensive. Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the University of Cambridge have developed a quantum memory solution that is as simple as tuning a guitar....

New fossil evidence reveals that turtles share a recent common ancestor with birds and crocodiles. There’s a twist in the turtle timeline. Thanks to new fossil evidence, paleontologists are able to prove that turtles share a recent common ancestor with birds and crocodiles. The discovery may settle a longstanding argument among scientists about the origins of turtles. At issue is the evolution of the turtle’s skull. Genetic analysis of molecular sequence data consistently places turtles in a group with birds and crocodilians....

Rather like David versus Goliath, it appears that Saturn’s tilt may in fact be caused by its moons. This is the conclusion of recent work carried out by scientists from the CNRS, Sorbonne University and the University of Pisa, which shows that the current tilt of Saturn’s rotation axis is caused by the migration of its satellites, and especially by that of its largest moon, Titan. Recent observations have shown that Titan and the other moons are gradually moving away from Saturn much faster than astronomers had previously estimated....

If the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines aren’t enough to convince you that face shields alone shouldn’t be used to stop the spread of COVID-19, then maybe a new visualization study will. To increase public awareness about the effectiveness of face shields alone as well as face masks with exhalation valves, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science used qualitative visualizations to test how face shields and masks with valves perform in impeding the spread of aerosol-sized droplets....

New research by University of Kent astrophysicists reveals vital clues about the role recycling plays in the formation of life in our universe. By investigating the different stages in the life journey of stars and gaining new knowledge about their evolutionary cycle, scientists at the Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science have discovered more about a crucial stage in the emergence of life in our universe. Their research reveals for the first time how matter discarded as stars die is recycled to form new stars and planets....

Granular gases are one of the few examples where this scientific mystery can be observed. These systems are widely spread in nature in the form of aerosols and smoke on the Earth, or in the form of interstellar dust, planetary rings, and proto-planetary discs in space. The stunning ‘heating by cooling’ effect corresponds, in physical terms, to a negative heat capacity. Aggregating granular gases is the second object in the world, after gravitating systems, which manifests this astonishing property....

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) found surprisingly energetic activity in what they otherwise considered a “boring” galaxy, and their discovery provides important insight on how supermassive black holes can have a catastrophic effect on the galaxies in which they reside. “It appears that a supermassive black hole is explosively heating and blasting around the gas in this galaxy and, as a result, is transforming it from an actively star-forming galaxy into one devoid of gas that can no longer form stars,” said Chris Harrison, the lead-author of the study, from The Center for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University in the U....

Long banned from food products, lead is a potent neurotoxin considered unsafe in any quantity. A related analysis published recently confirms for the first time that turmeric is likely the primary contributor to elevated blood lead levels among Bangladeshis surveyed. “People are unknowingly consuming something that could cause major health issues,” said the papers’ lead author Jenna Forsyth, a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “We know adulterated turmeric is a source of lead exposure, and we have to do something about it....

Probiotic supplements may enhance weight loss and improve the metabolic health of obese children following a diet and exercise plan, according to research presented today at the 58th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting. The findings of this small trial suggest that probiotic supplements may help obese children lose bodyweight and also reduce their risk of future metabolic conditions, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Obesity in childhood and adolescence represents a major, growing, health problem worldwide, which can lead to the development of expensive, serious, and debilitating complications, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes....

The researchers note that women are still underrepresented in the surgical profession internationally and call for more opportunities for female surgeons to help lessen gender-based inequity. Despite the fact that the number of female doctors has increased globally in recent years, women continue to be a minority in the surgical field. For instance, in Canada, the US, and the UK, female general surgeons made up 28% (2019), 22% (2019), and 33% (2017), respectively, of all surgeons....