Posts

Cygnus X-1, a binary star system first discovered in 1964, comprises one of the closest black holes to Earth. New observations of this black hole, the first ever detected, have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe’s most mysterious objects. An international team, including researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), recently found that the stellar-mass black hole in the Cygnus X-1 binary system has a mass 21 times the mass of the Sun and rotates at a speed close to the speed of light....

The timing of the Middle Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles and the feedback mechanisms between climatic shifts and earth-surface processes are still poorly understood. This is largely due to the fact that chronological data of sediment archives representing periglacial, but also potentially warmer climate periods, are very sparse until now. “The Quaternary sediments in central Germany are perfect archives to understand the climate shifts that occurred in the region during the last 450,000 years,” says co-author Tobias Lauer, a geochronologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology....

The Hubble constant — the rate at which the Universe is expanding — is one of the fundamental quantities describing our Universe. A group of astronomers from the H0LiCOW collaboration, led by Sherry Suyu (associated with the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, the ASIAA in Taiwan, and the Technical University of Munich), used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes[1] in space and on the ground to observe five galaxies in order to arrive at an independent measurement of the Hubble constant....

The study examined the effects of mammography screens on breast-cancer incidence between 1976 and 2008 in women in the USA over 40 years of age. The researchers concluded that over one million women that were diagnosed with breast cancer would have never developed any symptoms. It’s estimated that in 2008 over 70,000 women had such breast cancer tumors diagnosed, which accounts for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed in women 40 and older....

After more than a decade and a half of research, a team of neuroscientists, physicists, and engineers from various institutions have finally uncovered the workings of the specialized synapses. This breakthrough will pave the way for further research that has the potential to enhance treatments for vertigo and balance disorders, which affect up to one-third of Americans over the age of 40. The new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes the workings of “vestibular hair cell-calyx synapses,” which are found in organs of the innermost ear that sense head position and movements in different directions....

Researchers at ASU’s Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery are exploring new technologies that could pave the way to clean, sustainable energy to help meet daunting global demand. In new research appearing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), the flagship journal of the ACS, lead author Brian Wadsworth, along with colleagues Anna Beiler, Diana Khusnutdinova, Edgar Reyes Cruz, and corresponding author Gary Moore describe technologies that combine light-gathering semiconductors and catalytic materials capable of chemical reactions that produce clean fuel....

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in translating optical technologies — such as fiber optics and free-space lasers — into tiny optical or “photonic” integrated circuits. Using light rather than electricity for integrated circuits permits sending and processing information at speeds that would be impossible with conventional electronics. Researchers say silicon photonics — optical circuits based on silicon chips — are one of the leading platforms for such technologies, thanks to their compatibility with existing microelectronics....

Vaccine developed at MedUni Vienna delivers promising data. The preclinical data for a vaccine developed at MedUni Vienna to protect against SARS-CoV-2 indicates that it is effective against all SARS-CoV-2 variants known to date, including omicron — even in those who have not yet built up any immunity as a result of vaccination (non-responders). The data from the study were recently published in the leading journal Allergy. The antigen-based vaccine developed at MedUni Vienna, under the leadership of Rudolf Valenta from the Center for Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology, targets the receptor binding domains (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and induced a robust and uniform RBD-specific IgG antibody response in animal models and in human tests....

The holiday-suicide myth is the long-perpetuated false claim that the suicide rate rises during the year-end holiday season. In some news coverage through the 2021-22 holidays the holiday-suicide myth persisted, according to U.S. media data collected and analyzed by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, although the U.S. suicide rate increased in 2021 after two years of declines, the average daily suicide rate during the holiday months remained among the lower rates of the year....

The antibody solution being tested in the ITAC trial is anti-coronavirus hyperimmune intravenous immunoglobulin, or hIVIG. The antibodies in anti-coronavirus hIVIG come from the liquid portion of blood, or plasma, donated by healthy people who have recovered from COVID-19. These antibodies are highly purified and concentrated so that the anti-coronavirus hIVIG consistently contains several times more SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies than typically found in the plasma of people who have recovered from COVID-19....

Conventional detection of nuclear tests relies on seismic measurements using the networks deployed to monitor earthquakes. But there are no openly available seismic data from stations near this particular test site, meaning that there are big uncertainties in pinpointing the location and size of nuclear explosions taking place there. Dr. Sreejith and his team turned to space for a solution. Using data from the ALOS-2 satellite and a technique called Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR), the scientists measured the changes on the surface above the test chamber resulting from the September 2017 explosion, sited at Mount Mantap in the northeast of North Korea....

Video transcript: A few weeks ago I came down with a fever and started to feel really achy, kind of flowy. I’m feeling a lot better, but I still have this cough that hasn’t totally cleared up. Okay. Did I have COVID-19? I didn’t get tested so I don’t know, but if I did, it might mean that I’m immune, which means I could go to a yoga class, go to those three comedy shows that I had tickets to last month or go to the national Arboretum with Yuca....

Relying on such advanced materials as perovskites and single-walled carbon nanotubes, the new technology responds to heat by transforming from transparent to tinted. As the window darkens, it generates electricity. The color change is driven by molecules (methylamine) that are reversibly absorbed into the device. When solar energy heats up the device, the molecules are driven out, and the device is darkened. When the sun is not shining, the device is cooled back down, and the molecules re-absorb into the window device, which then appears transparent....

Published December 27, the study was led by researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute. Conducted largely in genetic models of obese mice, it shows obesity causes durable and harmful changes to the hematopoietic stem cell compartment – the blood-making factory in our bodies. “There is now an understanding that the blood stem cell compartment is made up of numerous cell subsets,” said Damien Reynaud, Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator....

The previous record for the closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976. As the Parker Solar Probe mission progresses, the spacecraft will repeatedly break its own records, with a final close approach of 3.83 million miles (6.16 million kilometers) from the Sun’s surface expected in 2024. “It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Project Manager Andy Driesman, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland....

In 2014, astrophysicists discovered a spectral line in observational data from the Herschel Space Telescope and tentatively assigned it to the amide ion. It would have been the first proof of the existence of this molecule in space. Physicists within the group of Roland Wester from the Institute of Ion Physics and Applied Physics at the University of Innsbruck have now shown this assumption to be incorrect. Characteristic frequencies In addition to stars, galaxies are populated by regions that contain gigantic dust and gas clouds....

In the last several decades, the ability to cool clouds of atoms using laser light has revolutionized atomic physics, leading to the discovery of new states of matter and better atomic clocks. Laser cooling relies on the fact that photons, or light particles, carry momentum and can exert a force on other objects. These techniques have recently been adapted to slow down, or cool, mechanical oscillators comprised of billions of atoms....

These new materials will be developed and optimized at the picometer scale, which is 1,000 times smaller than a nanometer and a million times smaller than a micrometer (which itself is smaller than the width of a human hair). To undertake this task, scientists will need to be trained in a variety of new tools that can monitor and direct such precisely regulated materials. The work include conceptually developing the materials, producing them, and characterizing their properties....

Barents Sea polar bears fall into two categories: pelagic, which migrate annually to hunt at sea, and coastal, which stay on land to fast or hunt. Changes in sea-ice availability have forced both types of bears to adjust how they find food. In recent decades, pelagic bears have shifted northward as southern ice has receded. Pelagic bears now have farther to migrate, while longer periods without ice have led coastal bears to feed on land-based prey or rely on their fat reserves....

“It’s not just when you’re scrolling on your phone, but any time you put your body in a less-than-optimal position, whether that’s reading a book, working at a desk, or lounging on the couch,” said Nathaniel Melendez, an exercise physiologist at Orlando Health’s National Training Center. “People don’t realize the strain they’re putting on their body when it is not aligned correctly, or just how far corrective exercises and daily adjustments can go toward improving pain and postural issues....