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OSIRIS-REx is an unprecedented effort to investigate what makes up asteroids like Bennu and how they move through space. But, as those leaping particles show, the mission has already delivered a few surprises. “We’ve been studying asteroids for a long time and no one had ever seen this phenomenon before—these little particles getting shot off of the surface,” said Daniel Scheeres, distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences....

Scientists at the University College London have discovered that an individual’s perception of time does seem to slow when they prepare to make a physical action. The study indicates that in professional athletes, this capacity might be increased. The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Getting ready to pick up a ball, or smash it, affects the way that the brain processes information....

The team’s results represent one of the largest arrays of quantum bits, known as qubits, that scientists have been able to individually control. In the same issue of Nature, a team from the University of Maryland reports a similarly sized system using trapped ions as quantum bits. In the MIT-Harvard approach, the researchers generated a chain of 51 atoms and programmed them to undergo a quantum phase transition, in which every other atom in the chain was excited....

In a paper published today by Science, a research team led by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) describes optical measurements of the insulator-to-metal transition in fluid hydrogen, resolving discrepancies in previous experiments and establishing new benchmarks for calculations used to construct planetary models. The multi-institution team included researchers from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), University of Edinburgh, University of Rochester, Carnegie Institution of Washington, University of California, Berkeley and The George Washington University....

Superconductivity is the basis of high-tech. Materials that are able to conduct electricity in full without any power losses due to the absence of resistance are used in cyclotrons, magnetic trains, power lines, and super-sensitive magnetometers (devices used to measure the Earth’s magnetic field). Still, the main issue with superconductivity is that it is expressed at temperatures slightly above absolute zero (-273°C). If a material is superconductive around -70°C (-94°F), it is aiming at a record....

It was just eight years ago that the IceCube detector, a research center located at the South Pole to detect neutrinos emanating from the cosmos, was commissioned. Three years later, it began to register the first momentous results. The detection of high-energy neutrinos by IceCube made viable completely new options for explaining how our universe works. “These neutrinos with their considerable energy are cosmic messengers we have never encountered before and it is extremely important that we understand exactly what they are telling us,” explained Dr....

An international research team, led by Monash University, has discovered for the first time the mystery behind the formation of ‘coffee rings’ by examining the contact angle of droplets onto a surface, and how they dry. The research collaboration involving Monash University and Cambridge University also developed a mathematical model that is capable of predicting when a coffee ring could be observed in hard spherical particle systems. Professor Gil Garnier, Director of BioPRIA (Bioresource Processing Research Institute of Australia) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Monash University, led an international team to explore how patterns formed from evaporating droplets – a phenomenon that has mystified physicists for years....

Salinity? It’s still worth its salt. Drought? Not thirsty. Heat? No sweat. Cold? It can chill. How about 22 soccer players sprinting, kicking, and sliding their way across it at the 2022 World Cup, all amid the desert climate of the Middle East? Game on. A commercial variety of seashore paspalum has padded every pitch in Qatar. There, it’s withstood every steel-cleated footfall of Messi, Mbappé, and Neymar, every sun-beaten day of temperatures creeping into the high 80s Fahrenheit....

A fossil acquired in a police raid has turned out to be one of the best-preserved flying reptiles ever found, according to a study published on August 25, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Victor Beccari of the University of São Paulo and colleagues. Tapejarids (an Early Cretaceous subgroup of flying reptiles called pterosaurs) are known for their enormous head crests and their abundance in the fossil record of Brazil, but most Brazilian tapejarid fossils preserve only partial remains....

The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are important because poplar plantations cover 9.4 million hectares globally — more than double the land used 15 years ago. Poplars are fast-growing trees that are a source of biofuel and other products including paper, pallets, plywood, and furniture frames. A drawback of poplar plantations is that the trees are also a major producer of isoprene, the key component of natural rubber and a pre-pollutant....

Replicons mimic nearly every aspect of the viral life cycle. Their RNA has all the information the virus needs to replicate and make copies of itself, but lacks instructions for making spikes, the proteins that enable the virus to enter and infect human cells. Once introduced to cells in a dish, a replicon makes progeny that are unable to spread to neighboring cells. “With this system, scientists will be able to investigate SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, test drugs against it, and evaluate neutralizing antibodies, all in a faster way and in lower biosafety settings,” says Nobel Laureate Charles M....

The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has been hotly debated. This debate has caused substantial difficulties in the Australia-China relationship, with a call by Foreign Minister Marise Payne for another inquiry into its origin being considered by China as a hostile act. What’s not in doubt is the closest relatives of the virus are found in bats. How, where and when the virus spilled over into humans is the contentious issue....

Small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on February 15, so close that it will pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office can accurately predict the asteroid’s path with the observations obtained, and it is therefore known that there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth. Nevertheless, the flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close....

Dinosaurs are cool. That’s not up for debate. But, even though the ancient lizards have been extinct for 65 million years, there’s still plenty of exciting, new research challenging the things we think we know about dinosaurs. Over the past few years alone, a slew of studies have uncovered details about prehistoric life previously unknown to science. Triceratops had a badass relative named Hellboy Scientists reporting in Current Biology recently discovered a new species of dinosaur, Regaliceratops peterhewsi (nicknamed “Hellboy” for the “devilishly hard” labor of excavating its skull and for its resemblance to the comic book superhero of the same name)....

LED light bulbs are popular because of their low energy consumption, long lifespan, and ability to turn on and off quickly. Inside the bulb, an LED chip converts electrical current into high-energy light, including invisible ultraviolet (UV), violet, or blue wavelengths. A cap that is placed on the chip contains multiple phosphors — solid luminescent compounds that convert high-energy light into lower-energy visible wavelengths. Each phosphor emits a different color, and these colors combine to produce a broad-spectrum white light....

Chaos Leads Scientists to New Understanding of Centuries’-Old Quandary It’s been nearly 350 years since Sir Isaac Newton outlined the laws of motion, claiming “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” These laws laid the foundation to understand our solar system and, more broadly, to understand the relationship between a body of mass and the forces that act upon it. However, Newton’s groundbreaking work also created a pickle that has baffled scientists for centuries: The Three-Body Problem....

This spring, due to limited national supplies of N95 face masks, hospitals across the country asked the public and private companies to donate personal protective equipment (PPE), including many different types of masks, to be sure healthcare workers were protected while caring for patients. With so many options, infection prevention experts at the UNC Medical Center set out to gather evidence on the fitted filtration efficiency of dozens of different types of masks and mask modifications, including masks sterilized for reuse, expired masks, novel masks sourced from domestic and overseas sources, and homemade masks....

CAR-T immunotherapy, in which T cells are modified in the laboratory to express chimeric antigen receptors, CARs, that in turn target surface proteins on cancer cells, has been most effective in the treatment of patients with B-cell leukemia or lymphoma. But this new research, conducted in mouse models, points to the potential for using CAR-T therapy effectively against solid tumors as well. “We know that CAR T cells are safe for patients with solid tumors but so far they have not been able to cause significant tumor regression in the overwhelming majority of people treated,” said Jonathan S....

Scientists using computer modeling to study SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, have discovered the virus is most ideally adapted to infect human cells — rather than bat or pangolin cells, again raising questions of its origin. In a paper published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, Australian scientists describe how they used high-performance computer modeling of the form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the beginning of the pandemic to predict its ability to infect humans and a range of 12 domestic and exotic animals....

A newly published study from the University of Chicago reveals that the common gut bacteria Clostridia prevent sensitization to allergens in a mouse model, paving the way for probiotic therapies to treat food allergies. The presence of Clostridia, a common class of gut bacteria, protects against food allergies, a new study in mice finds. By inducing immune responses that prevent food allergens from entering the bloodstream, Clostridia minimize allergen exposure and prevent sensitization — a key step in the development of food allergies....