Posts

IRAS 16293-2922B is a very young star — a protostar — perhaps only about ten thousand years old. Slightly smaller in mass than our Sun, it is still deeply embedded in its surrounding natal material, and apparently is even accreting some of that material onto a circumstellar disk that rings the protostar. In the past decade, it has become possible to study such extremely early stages of star formation thanks to submillimeter and infrared telescopes that can peer through the heavy obscuration of dust in the birth clouds....

A new study published in the journal Performance Enhancement & Health has discovered that anabolic-androgenic steroid use among young people is linked with severe side effects. The research, which analyzed data from over 2,700 adolescents and young adults in Canada, also found that the practice is relatively prevalent, with as many as 25% of users experiencing symptoms of dependence. The large-scale study analyzed data from over 2,700 adolescents and young adults from the Canadian Study of Adolescent Health Behaviors....

Although there are over 200 impact structures known to exist, this study is the first to find evidence of an impact crater on the Iberian Peninsula. The finding is the product of 15 years of research conducted by an international team of scientists from the University of Almeria, the Astrobiology Center of Madrid, the University of Lund, and the University of Copenhagen. Prof Sánchez Garrido said: “We believe that the impact event occurred around 8 million years ago....

As a result, the outermost electrons in highly charged ions are more strongly bound to the atomic nucleus than in neutral or weakly charged atoms. This makes highly charged ions less affected by external electromagnetic fields, but more sensitive to the fundamental effects of special relativity, quantum electrodynamics, and the atomic nucleus. “Therefore, we expected that an optical atomic clock with highly charged ions would help us to better test these fundamental theories”, explains Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) physicist Lukas Spieß....

With colleagues at the Space Telescope Science Institute and other institutions, astronomers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison used the Hubble Space Telescope to analyze the stream of gas. By identifying the chemical makeup of the gas, known as the Leading Arm of the Magellanic Stream, the researchers identified one branch as coming from the Small Magellanic Cloud. The results show that the Large Magellanic Cloud is winning a gravitational tug of war with its smaller partner and will help refine models of the complex orbit controlling the dwarf galaxies’ motion....

In addition to being an impressive observational achievement, the detection provides insight into the early stages of the evolution of supernova remnants and the cosmic magnetism within them. “The magnetism we’ve detected is around 50,000 times weaker than a fridge magnet,” says Prof. Bryan Gaensler. “And we’ve been able to measure this from a distance of around 1.6 million trillion kilometers.” “This is the earliest possible detection of the magnetic field formed after the explosion of a massive star,” says Dr....

“Right now, policymakers generally assume that polystyrene lasts forever in the environment,” says Collin Ward, a marine chemist at WHOI and lead author of the study. “That’s part of the justification for writing a policy that bans it. One of our motivations for this study was to understand if polystyrene actually does last forever. We’re not saying that plastic pollution isn’t bad, just that the persistence of polystyrene in the environment may be shorter and likely more complicated than we previously understood....

In a two-month-long research effort that concluded in late August, two researchers from Cairo University in Egypt brought 32 bone samples and two soil samples to study using X-ray and infrared light-based techniques at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS). The ALS produces various wavelengths of bright light that can be used to explore the microscopic chemistry, structure, and other properties of samples. Their visit was made possible by LAAAMP — the Lightsources for Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Middle East Project — a grant-supported program that is intended to foster greater international scientific opportunity and collaboration for scientists working in that region of the globe....

As evidence mounts for the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infecting various animals, scientists at UCL say a global effort is needed to reduce the risk of the virus later returning to people. In a comment piece for The Lancet Microbe, researchers write that if the virus becomes common in an animal population that lives near people, such as pets or livestock, there would be a risk that another outbreak could occur even if the virus is eradicated in people in the area....

“By satellite tracking turtles traveling to small, isolated oceanic islands, we show that turtles do not arrive at their targets with pinpoint accuracy,” says Graeme Hays of Australia’s Deakin University. “While their navigation is not perfect, we showed that turtles can make course corrections in the open ocean when they are heading off-route. These findings support the suggestion, from previous laboratory work, that turtles use a crude true navigation system in the open ocean, possibly using the earth’s geomagnetic field....

Galaxies such as our own Milky Way are more likely to harbor intelligent, technologically advanced civilizations. Giant elliptical galaxies are not as likely as previously thought to be cradles of technological civilizations such as our own, according to a recent paper by a University of Arkansas astrophysicist. The paper, published May 1 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, contradicts a 2015 study that theorized giant elliptical galaxies would be 10,000 times more likely than spiral disk galaxies such as the Milky Way to harbor planets that could nurture advanced, technological civilizations....

A team of engineers has coated seeds with silk that has been treated with a kind of bacteria that naturally produce a nitrogen fertilizer, to help the germinating plants develop. Tests have shown that these seeds can grow successfully in soils that are too salty to allow untreated seeds to develop normally. The researchers hope this process, which can be applied inexpensively and without the need for specialized equipment, could open up areas of land to farming that are now considered unsuitable for agriculture....

Researchers at Rice University have refined silicon-based lithium-ion technology by literally crushing their previous work to make a high-capacity, long-lived and low-cost anode material with serious commercial potential for rechargeable lithium batteries. The team led by Rice engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and research scientist Madhuri Thakur reported in Nature’s open access journal Scientific Reports on the creation of a silicon-based anode, the negative electrode of a battery, that easily achieves 600 charge-discharge cycles at 1,000 milliamp hours per gram (mAh/g)....

Snacktime with NASA digs into the science behind what’s on your plate from a tasty cheese board, to seafood, to fresh produce, to chips and dip. Food can bring us a sense of home, and it connects people all around the world. With observations from space and aircraft, combined with high-end computer modeling, NASA scientists work together with partner agencies, organizations, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and decision-makers to understand the relationship between the Earth system and the environments that provide us food....

Scientists at the University of Chicago have laid out a comprehensive theory for how our solar system could have formed in the wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead star. Published December 22 in the Astrophysical Journal, the study addresses a nagging cosmic mystery about the abundance of two elements in our solar system compared to the rest of the galaxy. The general prevailing theory is that our solar system formed billions of years ago near a supernova....

Human research is fundamental to understanding how the body adapts to weightlessness with doctors seeking to keep astronauts healthy during long-term missions. Researchers look at the data using a variety of tools to understand the physiological changes the human body goes through in space. NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Thomas Marshburn took turns scanning each other’s spines using the Ultrasound 2 device during the afternoon on Friday. The duo marked their lower back area and scanned the lumber spinal section with real time guidance from doctors on the ground....

“I have been working on proton conducting materials on and off since my PhD,” says Portale. “I find it fascinating to know what makes a material transport a proton so I worked a lot on optimizing structures at the nanoscale level to get greater conductivity.” But it was only a few years ago that he considered the possibility of making them from biological, protein-like structures. He came to this idea together with professor Andreas Hermann, a former colleague at the University of Groningen, now working at the DWI – Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials in Germany....

During the process of star formation, a protostellar disk serves as a means of delivering material to the nascent “protostar” at its core. In the case of high-mass protostars that have already surpassed 8 times the mass of the Sun and continue to grow, it is hypothesized that instead of a steady stream, clusters of material periodically descend from the disk onto the protostar, triggering brief but intense growth spurts....

Just as engineers once compressed some of the power of room-sized mainframes into desktop PCs, so too have Stanford researchers shown how to pack some of the punch delivered by today’s ginormous particle accelerators onto a tiny silicon chip. On a hillside above Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory operates a scientific instrument nearly 2 miles long. In this giant accelerator, a stream of electrons flows through a vacuum pipe, as bursts of microwave radiation nudge the particles ever-faster forward until their velocity approaches the speed of light, creating a powerful beam that scientists from around the world use to probe the atomic and molecular structures of inorganic and biological materials....

The first tentative detection of these echoes, created by a microscopic quantum “fuzz” that surrounds newly formed black holes, has been reported by researchers at the University of Waterloo. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time, caused by the collision of massive, compact objects in space, such as black holes or neutron stars. “According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, nothing can escape from the gravity of a black hole once it has passed a point of no return, known as the event horizon,” explained Niayesh Afshordi, a physics and astronomy professor at Waterloo....