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The microscope features an excellent time resolution allowing for both the study of dynamic processes and 3D imaging. In contrast to most quantum gas microscopes, this imaging scheme offers an enormous depth of field and is, therefore, not restricted to two-dimensional systems. The researchers plan to use their new and powerful tool to extend our studies of cold ion-atom hybrid systems and intend to push the collision energies in these systems to the ultracold regime....

Beijing, the host city for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, is situated on the northern edge of the North China Plain, near the meeting of the Xishan and Yanshan ranges. (Shan means “mountain” in Chinese.) Bordering the city on three sides, mountains have a long history of shielding Beijing from roving invaders from the steppe regions to the northwest. In the modern context, the mountains make Beijing a viable host for the winter Olympics by providing slopes suitable for alpine skiing, snowboarding, bobsledding, luge, and skeleton....

Scientists from the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at The University of Tokyo demonstrated a method for coupling a magnetic sphere with a sensor via the strange power of quantum entanglement. They showed that the existence of even a single magnetic excitation in the sphere could be detected with a one-shot measurement. This work represents a major advancement toward quantum systems that can interact with magnetic materials....

The nationwide study of data from Japan, chosen for its superior monitoring, population density, and relative air quality, is believed to be by far the largest of its kind. It provides comprehensive evidence of the relationship between PM2.5 and cardiac arrests, using a sample three times larger than all previous research combined and demonstrating the impacts on groups such as the elderly. The study led by the University of Sydney concludes that worldwide, standards should be tightened; the implications also point to the need for cleaner energy sources....

CfA astronomer Junko Ueda is a member of a team of fifteen astronomers who used the ALMA submillimeter telescope facility, with its superb spatial imaging capabilities, to study the outflow in the luminous galaxy NGC 6240, known to be a luminous merger in its late stages. Its double nuclei, separated by a modest two thousand light-years, has already been seen at wavelengths from the X-ray to the radio. The astronomers used one of the spectral lines from the abundant molecule carbon monoxide to probe the inner region of the galaxy....

ALMA has revealed the telltale signs of eleven low-mass stars forming perilously close — within three light-years — to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, known to astronomers as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). At this distance, tidal forces driven by the supermassive black hole should be energetic enough to rip apart clouds of dust and gas before they can form stars. The presence of these newly discovered protostars (the formative stage between a dense cloud of gas and a young, shining star) suggests that the conditions necessary to birth low-mass stars may exist even in one of the most turbulent regions of our galaxy and possibly in similar locales throughout the universe....

Researchers report that people 65 and older who contracted COVID-19 were substantially more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease in the year following their COVID diagnosis. Furthermore, the highest risk was observed in women at least 85 years old. The study was published on September 13, 2022, in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, According to the findings, the risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease in older people nearly doubled (0.35% to 0....

Despite 300 years of research, and a recent renaissance in the study of their biological make-up, the mysterious, marauding teleosauroids have remained enduringly elusive. Scientific understanding of this distant cousin of present-day long-snouted gharials has been hampered by a poor grasp of their evolutionary journey – until now. Unknown species Researchers from the University of Edinburgh have identified one previously unknown species of teleosauroid and seven of its close relatives – part of a group that dominated Jurassic coastlines 190 to 120 million years ago....

Ancient DNA recovered from a series of skeletons in central Germany up to 7500 years old has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe. The study, published today in Nature Communications, reveals a dramatic series of events including major migrations from both Western Europe and Eurasia, and signs of an unexplained genetic turnover about 4000-5000 years ago. The research was performed at the University of Adelaide’s Australian Center for Ancient DNA (ACAD)....

Discouraged, researchers placed the mystery worm in a “wastebasket” genus called Palaeoscolex, and interest in the lowly critter waned for the next 50 years. That all changed recently when Paul Jamison, a teacher from Logan, Utah, and private collector, and his student Riley Smith were hunting fossils in the Spence Shale in Utah, a 506-million-year-old geologic unit housing a plethora of exceptionally preserved soft-bodied and biomineralized fossils. (Paleontologists call such a mother lode of fossils a “Lagerstätte....

Charlotte Pearson’s eyes scanned a palm-sized chunk of ancient tree. They settled on a ring that looked “unusually light,” and she made a note without giving it a second thought. Three years later, and armed with new methodology and technology, she discovered that the light ring might mark the year that the Thera volcano on the Greek island of Santorini erupted over the ancient Minoan civilization. The date of the eruption, which is one of the largest humanity has ever witnessed, has been debated for decades....

A team of international researchers led by the University of Arizona reported last year that they had uncovered the largest and oldest Maya monument – Aguada Fénix. That same team has now uncovered nearly 500 smaller ceremonial complexes that are similar in shape and features to Aguada Fénix. The find transforms previous understanding of Mesoamerican civilization origins and the relationship between the Olmec and the Maya people. The team’s findings are detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour....

“We found carbonized malt in an area with low-temperature ovens located in a separate part of the settlement. The findings are from the 400-600s, making them one of the earliest evidence of beer brewing in Sweden,” says Mikael Larsson, who specializes in archaeobotany, the archaeology of human-plant interactions. Archaeologists have long known that beer was an important product in ancient societies in many parts of the world. Through legal documents and images, it has been found, for example, that beer was produced in Mesopotamia as early as 4,000 BCE....

The possible connection between Arctic sea-ice loss and extreme cold weather — such as the deep freezes that can grip the USA in the winter months — has long been studied by scientists. Observations show that when the regional sea-ice cover is reduced, swathes of Asia and North America often experience unusually cold and hazardous winter conditions. However, previous climate modeling studies have suggested that reduced sea ice cannot fully explain the cold winters....

A study conducted by the University of Granada and the Andalusian School of Public Health has analyzed the main risk factors in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during the national lockdown in Spain, including going out to work or living with patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The authors warn of the need among dog-lovers to take extreme hygiene measures regarding their pets, as it is not yet clear whether the owners were infected because the animal acted as the host for the virus and transmitted it directly, or whether they picked it up indirectly due to the increased exposure of the dog to vehicles of the virus (that is, objects or surfaces where the virus lies)....

A wide range of problems in modern science are solved through quantum mechanical calculations. Some of the examples are research into chemical reactions and the search for stable molecular structures for medicine, pharmaceutics, and other industries. The quantum nature of the problems involved makes quantum computations better suited to them. Classical computations, by contrast, tend to return only bulky approximate solutions. Creating quantum computers is costly and time-consuming, and the resulting devices are not guaranteed to exhibit any quantum advantage....

In new research funded by a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, a team at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory is working to uncover the likely crucial role of a supporting cast member with a stellar-sounding name: the astrocyte. The work could ultimately provide insight into many brain disorders. Astrocytes are at least as abundant in the brain as neurons, but because they don’t spike with electrical impulses like neurons do, they’ve essentially been “invisible” in studies of how brain circuits process information, says Mriganka Sur, the Newton Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at MIT....

In the middle of the 19th century, the massive binary system Eta Carinae underwent an eruption that ejected at least 10 times the sun’s mass and made it the second-brightest star in the sky. Now, a team of astronomers has used extensive new observations to create the first high-resolution 3-D model of the expanding cloud produced by this outburst. “Our model indicates that this vast shell of gas and dust has a more complex origin than is generally assumed,” said Thomas Madura, a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a member of the study team....

University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein has led a team that has discovered and measured the distance to the most distant galaxy ever found. The galaxy is seen as it was at a time just 700 million years after the Big Bang. Although observations with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have identified many other candidates for galaxies in the early universe, including some that might perhaps be even more distant, this galaxy is the farthest and earliest whose distance can be definitively confirmed with follow-up observations from the Keck I telescope, one of a pair of the world’s largest Earth-bound telescopes....

Most astronomers agree that black holes, cosmic entities of such great gravity that nothing can escape their grip, are surrounded by a so-called event horizon. Once matter or energy gets close enough to the black hole, it cannot escape — it will be pulled in. Though widely believed, the existence of event horizons has not been proved. “Our whole point here is to turn this idea of an event horizon into an experimental science, and find out if event horizons really do exist or not,” said Pawan Kumar, a professor of astrophysics at The University of Texas at Austin....