Posts

When you think of a robot, images of R2-D2 or C-3PO might come to mind. But robots can serve up more than just entertainment on the big screen. In a lab, for example, robotic systems can improve safety and efficiency by performing repetitive tasks and handling harsh chemicals. But before a robot can get to work, it needs energy – typically from electricity or a battery. Yet even the most sophisticated robot can run out of juice....

The red dwarf GJ 3512 is located 30 light-years from us. Although the star is only about a tenth of the mass of the Sun, it possesses a giant planet – an unexpected observation. “Around such stars there should only be planets the size of the Earth or somewhat more massive Super-Earths,” says Christoph Mordasini, professor at the University of Bern and member of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS: “GJ 3512b, however, is a giant planet with a mass about half as big as the one of Jupiter, and thus at least one order of magnitude more massive than the planets predicted by theoretical models for such small stars....

The astronauts of our Crew-2 mission come to Washington …. And investigating the impact of dust on our climate … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Artemis I Moon Rocket Rolled to Launch Pad Ahead of Tanking Test On June 6, teams at our Kennedy Space Center rolled our Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and mobile launcher from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch pad 39B to prepare for the next wet dress rehearsal test attempt ahead of the uncrewed Artemis I flight test....

“These objects need to be considered as potential reservoirs of water and life,” said Prabal Saxena of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the research published in Icarus November 24. “If our study is correct, we now may have more places in our solar system that possess some of the critical elements for extraterrestrial life.” These frigid worlds are found beyond the orbit of Neptune and include Pluto and its moons....

They discovered that crowding in the virtual train made time appear to pass at a slower rate, which may result in rush-hour commutes on public transit feeling longer than rides that take the same amount of time objectively. The research adds to evidence that social context and subjective feelings distort our sense of the passage of time, and may have practical implications for people’s willingness to use public transit, particularly after the pandemic....

Wildlife tracking has revolutionized the study of animal movement and their behavior. Yet, tracking small, flying animals such as desert bats remained challenging. Now a new generation of miniaturized satellite-based tags is allowing unique insights into the life of these mysterious mammals. Researchers used 1 g (0.35 oz) GPS devices to reconstruct the movements of yellow-winged bats, one of two false vampire bats occurring in Africa and one of the few desert bats large enough to carry this innovative technology....

Heart muscle can continue to die even after restoring blood following a heart attack, and scientists have new evidence that one way to help it live is by boosting levels of a tiny RNA that helped the heart form. In their mouse model of this ischemia/reperfusion injury of the heart, they’ve found they can reduce heart muscle death by 40 percent by giving a manmade version of the microRNA miR322, they report in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology....

The Congolese giant toad, a triple cheeseburger-sized prize for any predator, may use its ability to mimic the highly venomous Gaboon viper to escape being eaten. The viper has the longest snake fangs in the world and produces more venom than any other snake. “Our study is based on ten years of fieldwork and on direct observation by researchers lucky enough to see the toad’s behavior first-hand. We’re convinced that this is an example of Batesian mimicry, where a harmless species avoid predators by pretending to be a dangerous or toxic one,” says Dr....

1. Boosts Heart Health Cinnamon has been shown to have a positive effect on cardiovascular health. Studies have found that it can help to lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol levels, and improve blood sugar control. One study found that consuming just 120 milligrams of cinnamon per day for 12 weeks resulted in a significant reduction in blood pressure.[1] Cinnamon contains antioxidants that can help to protect the heart from oxidative stress, which is a major contributor to heart disease....

It was the second day of operations for the GRIP study as NASA Flight Engineer Josh Cassada explored how dexterous manipulation is affected by living and working in weightlessness. He was seated once again inside the Columbus laboratory module performing computerized scientific tasks with a controller device. Researchers will use the data to help design intelligent spacecraft interfaces enabling human missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio watered and photographed tomatoes growing for the Veg-05 space agriculture experiment....

For nearly 40 years, NASA has been measuring how much sunshine powers our home planet. This December, NASA is launching an instrument to the International Space Station to continue monitoring the Sun’s energy input to the Earth system. The Total and Spectral solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS-1) will precisely measure what scientists call “total solar irradiance.” These data will give us a better understanding of Earth’s primary energy supply and help improve models simulating Earth’s climate....

“Nature seems bent on showing us that Earth-like planets are very common. With these two we now know 7 in planetary systems quite near to the Sun” explains Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, an IAC researcher, who is the first author of the study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The newly discovered exoplanets orbit the star GJ 1002, which is at a distance of less than 16 light years from the Solar System....

UCLA has performed its first transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), using a new device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to replace an aortic valve in a patient who was not a candidate for open-heart surgery. The procedure took place on August 9. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is part of a growing trend of hospitals nationwide offering this new minimally invasive procedure. As the U.S. population ages, an increasing number of patients will develop aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the heart’s aortic valve caused by calcium deposits, which impedes blood flow, causing the heart to work harder to pump blood to the body and placing patients at higher risk of heart failure or death....

The interior motions of the Sun are much slower than predicted. Rather than moving at the speed of a jet plane (as previously understood) the plasma flows at a walking pace. The result of this new study, whose lead author is from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, will be published in an upcoming issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)....

The find is reported in the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Discovered in 2006 by breaking open a slab of rock, the fossilized bug split almost perfectly from head to abdomen. The fracture also cracked the pygophore in two. A fossil dealer later sold each half to a different collector, and the researchers tracked them down and reunited them for this study. Being able to see a bug’s genitalia is very helpful when trying to determine a fossil insect’s place in its family tree, said Sam Heads, a paleontologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey and self-described fossil insect-genitalia expert who led the research with Daniel Swanson, a graduate student in entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign....

The pandemic is putting a hurt on the seafood industry, finds the largest study of COVID on U.S. fisheries, which suggests that American fishmongers may flounder — or go belly up — without more government aid. Monthly fresh seafood exports declined up to 43 percent compared to last year, while monthly imports fell up to 37 percent, and catches dropped 40 percent some months, reports the new University of Vermont-led study in Fish and Fisheries journal....

To counteract the effects of damping and noise, researchers from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan have found a way to use artificial intelligence to discover and apply stabilizing pulses of light or voltage with fluctuating intensity to quantum systems. This method was able to successfully cool a micro-mechanical object to its quantum state and control its motion in an optimized way. The research was recently published in the journal Physical Review Research....

Scientists have shown that a large group of viruses, including the influenza viruses and other serious pathogens, steal genetic signals from their hosts to expand their own genomes. The study – a collaboration between the University of Glasgow and researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and published recently in Cell – shows that, by stealing genetic signals from their hosts, viruses can produce a wealth of previously undetected proteins....

Staring at a small patch of sky for more than 50 hours with the ultra-sensitive Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have for the first time identified discrete sources that account for nearly all the radio waves coming from distant galaxies. They found that about 63 percent of the background radio emission comes from galaxies with gorging black holes at their cores and the remaining 37 percent comes from galaxies that are rapidly forming stars....

James Webb Space Telescope Unveils Dark Side of Pre-stellar Ice Chemistry If you want to build a habitable planet, ices are a vital ingredient because they are the main source of several key elements — namely carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur (referred to here as CHONS). These elements are important ingredients in both planetary atmospheres and molecules like sugars, alcohols, and simple amino acids. An international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has obtained an in-depth inventory of the deepest, coldest ices measured to date in a molecular cloud....