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The idea behind the hypothesis occurred to Esme Fuller-Thomson, professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (FIFSW) after learning about recent research conducted in South India. This study newly identified a link between schizophrenia and a variant of the gene NAPRT1, which lowers the body’s ability to use niacin, or Vitamin B3, which naturally occurs in meat, poultry, fish, and eggs. “When I read this study a light bulb went on in my head,” says Fuller-Thomson, who published the hypothesis in the journal Schizophrenia Research this month with doctoral student, Rukshan Mehta....

A key question the program and the company have been assessing is whether the astronauts will climb aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft before or after SpaceX fuels the Falcon 9 rocket. NASA has made the decision to move forward with SpaceX’s plan to fuel the rocket after the astronauts are in place. While the agreement makes this plan the baseline for operations, it is contingent upon NASA’s final certification of the operation....

In the center of the cloud of gas, and completely dwarfed by the nebula, are the dying remnants of a red giant. During the final convulsive phase in the evolution of these stars, huge clouds of gas are ejected from the surface of the star before it emerges from its cocoon as a white dwarf. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the tiny remnant star then causes the surrounding gas to glow like a fluorescent sign....

The black hole is part of a binary system called V404 Cygni, located about 7,800 light-years away from Earth. The black hole is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the Sun — into a disk around the invisible object. This material glows in X-rays, so astronomers refer to these systems as “X-ray binaries.” On June 5 2015, Swift discovered a burst of X-rays from V404 Cygni....

Global plastic pollution remains one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time. A new OECD report shows that plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, while 50% ends up in landfills, 22% evades waste management systems, and 19% is incinerated. In response to this pollution crisis, several countries have set targets to eliminate all single-use plastics and to make plastic packaging 100% recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025....

“Video games may represent a serious risk to some children with arrhythmic conditions; they might be lethal in patients with predisposing, but often previously unrecognized arrhythmic conditions,” explained lead investigator Claire M. Lawley, MBBS, Ph.D., The Heart Centre for Children, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, Sydney, Australia. “Children who suddenly lose consciousness while electronic gaming should be assessed by a heart specialist as this could be the first sign of a serious heart problem....

The research team looked at all research on the effects of cannabis use on illicit opioid use during methadone maintenance therapy, which is a common treatment for opioid use disorder, and found six studies involving more than 3,600 participants. However, a meta-analysis of the studies found cannabis use didn’t reduce illicit opioid use during treatment nor did it retain people in treatment. The study was published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal....

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) pioneered the study of the link between irregularities in the immune system and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism a decade ago. Since then, studies of postmortem brains and of individuals with autism, as well as epidemiological studies, have supported the correlation between alterations in the immune system and autism spectrum disorder. What has remained unanswered, however, is whether the immune changes play a causative role in the development of the disease or are merely a side effect....

In the most comprehensive study of its kind, new insights into the importance of early-life factors on lung health have been unveiled. The research was led by the Universities of Essex and Bristol. The researchers hope the findings, published today (March 2, 2023) in the European Respiratory Journal, will pave the way to developing predictive tools for respiratory health and reduce healthcare inequality by targeting early-life interventions for people at higher risk....

The study, which was published on September 6, 2019, in the journal JAMA Network Open, also highlights a cluster of factors, including lack of insurance and the prevalence of gun shops, that are associated with high suicide rates. Researchers at The Ohio State University evaluated national suicide data from 1999 to 2016, and provided a county-by-county national picture of the suicide toll among adults. Suicide rates jumped 41 percent, from a median of 15 per 100,000 county residents in the first part of the study to 21....

Certain primordial stars—those between 55,000 and 56,000 times the mass of our Sun, or solar masses—may have died unusually. In death, these objects—among the Universe’s first-generation of stars—would have exploded as supernovae and burned completely, leaving no remnant black hole behind. Astrophysicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the University of Minnesota came to this conclusion after running a number of supercomputer simulations at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota....

Led by Northwestern University, a team of astrophysicists has uncovered new evidence that at least some long GRBs can result from neutron star mergers, which were previously believed to produce only short GRBs. After detecting a 50-second-long GRB in December 2021, the team began searching for the long GRB’s afterglow, an incredibly luminous and fast-fading burst of light that often precedes a supernova. But, instead, they uncovered evidence of a kilonova, a rare event that only occurs after the merger of a neutron star with another compact object (either another neutron star or a black hole)....

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) achieved a technological breakthrough for solar cells previously thought impossible. The scientists successfully integrated an aluminum source into their hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) reactor, then demonstrated the growth of the semiconductors aluminum indium phosphide (AlInP) and aluminum gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP) for the first time by this technique. “There’s a decent body of literature that suggests that people would never be able to grow these compounds with hydride vapor phase epitaxy,” said Kevin Schulte, a scientist in NREL’s Materials Applications & Performance Center and lead author of a new paper highlighting the research....

Researchers from the University of Leeds were monitoring air quality to determine whether soot created by fires and fireworks, known as black carbon, could help to create ice in clouds. They found soot in the atmosphere around Guy Fawkes Night events was around 100 times its normal level. Ice occurs naturally in clouds, but tiny particles of desert dust, soil dust, fungus, and bacteria swept high into the air can cause supercooled water droplets in clouds to freeze around them....

About half the world’s coral has been lost due to warming seas that make their world hostile. Instead of vivid and floral, coral bleach pale as temperatures rise. This happens because the peculiar animal cohabitates with algae, which expel under stress. When that happens, coral lose their color and a life partner that sustains them, so they starve. Yet, hope occurs in aquariums at the USC campus near downtown Los Angeles and at the Australian Institute of Marine Science....

A Second COVID-19 Wave Could Be Avoided if Social Distancing and the Use of Face Masks Are Maintained A model developed by ISGlobal shows that deconfinement must be gradual and that individual behavior is a key factor. Individual behavior has a significant effect on preventing a large second wave of COVID-19 infections. In fact, maintaining social distancing and other interventions such as the use of face masks and hand hygiene could remove the need for future lockdowns, according to a modeling study performed by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation....

How Supercomputers Helped Link Quantum Entanglement to Cold Coffee Theoretical physicists from Trinity have found a deep link between one of the most striking features of quantum mechanics – quantum entanglement – and thermalization, which is the process in which something comes into thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. Their results were published on January 31, 2020, in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. We are all familiar with thermalization – just think how your coffee reaches room temperature over time....

A critical preflight test for Artemis I … The first trip to space for a NASA astronaut … And new Webb Space Telescope images of neighbors in our solar system … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! A Critical Preflight Artemis I Demonstration Test On September 21, teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center conducted a cryogenic demonstration test with the Space Launch System, or SLS rocket for NASA’s upcoming uncrewed Artemis I flight test around the Moon....

Honoring our fallen heroes … Working on a nuclear option for space travel … And the next crewed mission to the space station … A few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Day of Remembrance: Honoring Our Fallen Heroes NASA’s annual Day of Remembrance observance at Arlington National Cemetery took place on January 26. The event honors the astronauts of Apollo 1; space shuttles Challenger and Columbia; and others who lost their lives in support of NASA’s mission of exploration and discovery....

If you have heart disease or risk factors for heart disease, you already know about the increased risk of heart attack and stroke. But did you know that coming down with the flu can substantially increase the risk of a serious or even fatal cardiac event? Or that getting the influenza vaccine can substantially reduce that risk, even if you do wind up contracting the seasonal virus? Probably not, if annual influenza vaccination rates are any indication, especially if you’re under the age of 65....