This historic image of Neptune was taken twenty-five years ago by NASA’s Voyager 2 Spacecraft. NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first glimpse of Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989. This picture of Neptune was produced from the last whole planet images taken through the green and orange filters on the Voyager 2 narrow angle camera. The images were taken on August 20, 1989, at a range of 4....
Hollow-core optical fibers combine the free-space propagation performance of the most advanced interferometers with the length scales of modern optical fibers by guiding light around bends in an air or vacuum filled core. Researchers are engaging with industry partners, collaborating with the National Physical Laboratory, and exploiting a UK network in the Airguide Photonics program as they further expand the impact of the discovery. Professor Francesco Poletti, Head of the Hollow Core Fibre Group, says: “By eliminating the glass from the center of the fiber, we have also eliminated the physical mechanisms by which the polarization purity of an input beam can be degraded....
It is estimated that about three million Americans suffer from opioid use disorder, and every year more than 80,000 Americans die from overdoses. Opioid drugs, such as heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, and morphine, activate opioid receptors. Activating mu-opioid receptors leads to pain relief and euphoria, but also physical dependence and decreased breathing. The latter is what leads to death in the case of a drug overdose. Preclinical studies have shown that blocking kappa-opioid receptors may offer a promising pharmacological approach to treating opioid dependence....
A model helps researchers look at optimal ways to mine phosphate rock sustainably. If you wanted to really mess with the world’s food production, a good place to start would be in Morocco. They don’t grow much here, but it is home to mines containing most of the world’s known reserves of phosphate rock, the main source of the nutrient phosphorus. Most of us across the globe, most days, will eat some food grown in fields fertilized by phosphate rock from these mines....
1. What is Evusheld, and how does it work? Evusheld is the first FDA-authorized drug to prevent COVID-19 in high-risk people who aren’t adequately protected by vaccination alone. Data from a preliminary study that has not yet been peer reviewed showed Evusheld reduced the risk of symptomatic COVID-19 by 77% in unvaccinated high-risk adults. When the immune system is exposed to a foreign protein – for example, by infection or vaccination – it produces antibodies in response to the potential threat....
A clinical trial of college students, including those at UC San Diego, will try to answer that question, and whether vaccinated persons might still pose an infection risk to others. COVID-19 vaccines were designed to reduce the likelihood that infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus would lead to severe outcomes, such as hospitalization and death. In that sense, all of the currently approved vaccines — Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson — have proven comparably effective....
The presence of the black hole disc in such a low-luminosity active galaxy has astronomers surprised. Black holes in certain types of galaxies such as NGC 3147 are considered to be starving as there is insufficient gravitationally captured material to feed them regularly. It is therefore puzzling that there is a thin disc encircling a starving black hole that mimics the much larger discs found in extremely active galaxies. Of particular interest, this disc of material circling the black hole offers a unique opportunity to test Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity....
The galaxy images, magnified through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, reveal a tangled web of misshapen objects punctuated by exotic patterns such as rings and arcs. The odd shapes are due largely to the foreground lensing galaxies’ powerful gravity distorting the images of the background galaxies. The unusual forms also may have been produced by spectacular collisions between distant, massive galaxies in a sort of cosmic demolition derby. “We have hit the jackpot of gravitational lenses,” said lead researcher James Lowenthal of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts....
In this new Hubble image two objects are clearly visible, shining brightly. When they were first discovered in 1979, they were thought to be separate objects — however, astronomers soon realized that these twins are a little too identical! They are close together, lie at the same distance from us, and have surprisingly similar properties. The reason they are so similar is not some bizarre coincidence; they are in fact the same object....
The new study, led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, analyses the impact of smoke particles on air quality in the United States. Their research shows that human-ignited fires account for more than 67% of small smoke particles called PM2.5 in the United States. These particles are known to degrade air quality, causing respiratory illnesses and premature death. The level of fire activity in the US is on the rise....
The Wari empire spread over Peru’s highlands and coastal areas from 600-1050 CE. “People sometimes think of the Inka as the first big empire in South America, but the Wari came first,” says Luis Muro Ynoñán, the study’s corresponding author and a research associate and former postdoctoral scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago. The Wari didn’t leave behind a written record (or at least a system similar to the one we use now)....
Researchers are urging health authorities to immediately recognize the role of airborne transmission of COVID-19 virus droplets from an infected person beyond 1.5m (5 feet) in order to stem the disease’s spread. Airborne transmission of COVID-19 must be taken into accountLikely COVID-19 spread to cruise ship passengers through ventilation system even when passengers confined to their cabinsViable airborne viruses can travel beyond 1.5m (5 feet) on airflow when exhaled by an infected personVirus air transmission research must begin now not retrospectively...
As COVID-19 cases continue to fluctuate around the country, it has become clear that the coronavirus that causes the disease is unlikely to disappear. But navigating the risks can be difficult when conditions differ dramatically between cities, counties, and states—from the rate of infection in each area, to local recommendations on masking and other policies. Assoc. Prof. Emily Landon says learning to live with COVID-19 means learning to accept our vulnerability to infectious diseases—and taking the right steps going forward to protect our health and the health of others....
They learned intriguing new details about the dynamics of baryons, the collection of subatomic particles (including protons and neutrons) that accounts for much of the visible matter in the universe. Most baryons reside in the intergalactic medium (IGM), which is the space in-between galaxies where matter is neither bound to nor tugged upon by surrounding systems. In a new study, Yale postdoctoral associate Nir Mandelker and professor Frank C. van den Bosch report on the most detailed simulation ever of a large patch of the IGM....
Germination is a crucial stage in the life of a plant as it will leave the stage of seed resistant to various environmental constraints (climatic conditions, absence of nutritive elements, etc.) to become a seedling much more vulnerable. The survival of the young plant depends on the timing of this transition. It is therefore essential that this stage be finely controlled. A Swiss team, led by scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), has discovered the internal thermometer of seeds that can delay or even block germination if temperatures are too high for the future seedling....
“The number of confirmed cases in China by day 50 (February 19) of the epidemic, was around 30,000,” said Christopher Dye, visiting professor of zoology and visiting fellow at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. “Our analysis suggests that without the Wuhan travel ban and the national emergency response, there would have been more than 700,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of Wuhan by that date. China’s control measures appear to have worked by successfully breaking the chain of transmission — preventing contact between infectious and susceptible people....
Researchers have been grappling with the question of how much energy societies actually need to satisfy everyone’s most basic needs for many years, but as global scenarios of climate stabilization assume strong reductions in energy demand growth in the face of the climate crisis — especially in developing countries — finding an answer is becoming crucial. In their study published in the journal Nature Energy, IIASA researchers attempted to find out whether meeting everyone’s most basic human needs is, in fact, an impediment for stabilizing climate change....
The results are being presented this week by Kevin Baines, a Cassini team scientist based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science Meeting in Tucson, Arizona. Baines and JPL colleagues Bob Carlson and Tom Momary arrived at their conclusions using a combination of data from Cassini’s December 2000 Jupiter flyby and laboratory experiments. In the lab, the researchers blasted ammonia and acetylene gases — chemicals known to exist on Jupiter — with ultraviolet light, to simulate the sun’s effects on these materials at the extreme heights of clouds in the Great Red Spot....
Breakthrough method for processing nanomaterials heralds advances in quantum computing, nanotechnology. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new method for producing atomically-thin semiconducting crystals that could one day enable more powerful and compact electronic devices. By using specially-treated silicon surfaces to tailor the crystals’ size and shape, the researchers have found a potentially faster and less expensive way to produce next-generation semiconductor crystals for microchips. The crystalline materials produced this way could, in turn, enable new scientific discoveries and accelerate technological developments in quantum computing, consumer electronics, and higher efficiency solar cells and batteries....
