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In the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets in orbit around other stars. One type of these so-called ‘exoplanets‘ is the super-Earths that are thought to have a high proportion of rock but at the same time are significantly bigger than our own world. Now a new study led by Helmut Lammer of the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences suggests that these planets are actually surrounded by extended hydrogen-rich envelopes and that they are unlikely to ever become Earth-like....

The surface feature identified as a “relict glacier” is one of many light-toned deposits (LTDs) found in the region. Typically, LTDs consist mainly of light-colored sulfate salts, but this deposit also shows many of the features of a glacier, including crevasse fields and moraine bands. The glacier is estimated to be 6 kilometers long and up to 4 kilometers wide, with a surface elevation ranging from +1.3 to +1.7 kilometers....

Males of essentially any age, on the other hand, have a greater propensity to deposit fat around the major organs in their abdominal cavities. This is called visceral fat, or visceral adiposity adiposity, and is known to be far more inflammatory. And, before females reach menopause, males are considered at much higher risk for inflammation-related problems from heart attack to stroke. “When people think about protection in women, their first thought is estrogen,” says Alexis M....

The research published to be published today, September 15, 2019, in Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology examined whether there were any effects of taking acetaminophen (also called paracetamol and known by the common brand names Tylenol and Panadol) in mid-pregnancy and the behavior of the offspring between the ages of 6 months and 11 years, with memory and IQ tested up until the age of 17. Acetaminophen is commonly used to relieve pain during pregnancy and is recommended as the treatment of choice by the NHS....

Can the length of strands of DNA in patients with heart disease predict their life expectancy? Researchers from the Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City, who studied the DNA of more that 3,500 patients with heart disease, say yes it can. In the new study, presented Saturday, March 9 at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session in San Francisco, the researchers were able to predict survival rates among patients with heart disease based on the length of strands of DNA found on the ends of chromosomes known as telomeres—the longer the patient’s telomeres, the greater the chance of living a longer life....

A photonic crystal or nanoantenna, a 2D structure with periodic arrangement of nano-sized particles, is being developed as a cutting-edge optical control technology. Upon exposure to light, combining a nanoantenna with a phosphor plate produces a harmonious mix of blue and yellow light. White LEDs have already been improved upon in the form of white laser diodes, or LDs, which consist of yellow phosphors and blue LDs. While the blue LDs are highly directional, the yellow phosphors radiate in all directions, resulting in an undesired mixing of colors....

The substance – also known as “oobleck” in tribute to a Dr. Seuss story – makes for great party tricks, but researchers believe it could have a lot more practical applications, such as using it to make protective gear. The phenomenon happens when liquid is mixed with other substances made of small particles (about 10 microns each). Corn starch is most commonly used because it’s cheap and mass-produced. Researchers believe the solid state is created when the suspended particles gather at the point of impact, but there are still many questions about how and why it behaves the way it does....

Video transcript: [SAM] So in case you missed it, millions of acres in the west are on fire right now. [DR. KALMUS] Our house is in the middle of smoke. We’ve had smoke for like the last five days. So if you look at the AQI and look at the PM2.5, which is the little tiny particles you can convert that into numbers of cigarettes per day, it’s been approaching sometimes like the health equivalent of smoking a pack a day of cigarettes....

During the height of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, there were satellites in orbit around the Earth whose sole purpose was to keep an eye out for the telltale gamma-ray signature of an atomic explosion. From time to time, these satellites would send an alert to their controllers who would no doubt scramble to find out what the eyes above had seen. Only in these cases, there was no evidence of a nuclear explosion, and through repeated observations from multiple satellites, it seemed the signals were not coming from Earth but were, in fact, coming from outer space....

M51, whose name comes from being the 51st entry in Charles Messier’s catalog, is considered to be one of the classic examples of a spiral galaxy. At a distance of about 30 million light-years from Earth, it is also one of the brightest spirals in the night sky. A composite image of M51, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, shows the majesty of its structure in a dramatic new way through several of NASA’s orbiting observatories....

Trained sniffer dogs can accurately detect airport passengers infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, finds research published today (May 16, 2022) in the open access journal BMJ Global Health. According to the researchers, this form of detection is likely to be very important not just in the early phases of a pandemic when other resources may not yet be accessible, but also in helping to contain an ongoing epidemic....

A team of researchers, led by Dr. Benjamin Pope from UQ’s School of Mathematics and Physics, applied cutting-edge statistics to data from millennia-old trees, to find out more about radiation ‘storms’. “These huge bursts of cosmic radiation, known as Miyake Events, have occurred approximately once every thousand years but what causes them is unclear,” Dr. Pope said. “The leading theory is that they are huge solar flares. We need to know more, because if one of these happened today, it would destroy technology including satellites, internet cables, long-distance power lines, and transformers....

Enormous troughs that reach across the asteroid Vesta may actually be stretch marks that hint of a complexity beyond most asteroids. Scientists have been trying to determine the origin of these unusual troughs since their discovery just last year. Now, a new analysis supports the notion that the troughs are faults that formed when a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta’s south pole. The research reinforces the claim that Vesta has a layered interior, a quality normally reserved for larger bodies, such as planets and large moons....

While COVID-19 has severely impacted everyone’s daily lives, its societal and economic impact will be present for generations. It has prompted urgent responses in many sectors that could be models for rapidly developing real-world solutions that can improve efforts focused on prevention of chronic health conditions. Dramatic transformation in health care research is needed to align with the disruption of cardiovascular care and heart health caused by the COVID-19 pandemic....

A new study proposed a scheme to achieve ultrahigh reduced transition temperature, up to Tc/TF ~ 1, in two-component atomic Fermi gases, a system that mimic high Tc superconductors, via a tunable pairing interaction strength, using mixed dimensions where one component is in a deep one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice with a large lattice spacing, while the other remains in 3D free space. Quantum atomic Fermi gases have provided an ideal prototype for studying the physics of high Tc superconductivity, including the underlying pairing mechanism and the unusual pseudogap phenomena, which have been at the heart of debate in the field of high Tc superconductivity....

New research, led by the University of Leeds, has quantified the importance of different development factors to improvements in physical health on an international scale. Because a country’s energy use is highly correlated with life expectancy at any single point in time, it has generally been assumed that growth in energy use is required for increases in life expectancy. However, the findings of the new research revealed an unexpected paradox....

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified an unexpected origin of bacteria causing infections – hospitalized patients themselves. Through their study on mice, they discovered that even when no bacteria are present in the bladder, urinary tract infections (UTIs) can still occur after the insertion of sterile tubes, known as catheters, into the urinary tract. These catheters are commonly utilized in hospitals to empty the bladders of individuals undergoing surgery....

Richard Johnston and colleagues used non-invasive X-ray microCT imaging to reveal the skull of the cat to be around half the size of the external mummified wrappings. Its morphology suggests that the remains likely belong to an Egyptian domestic cat. Analysis of images of the teeth and skeleton indicate that the cat was less than five months old and may have purposefully had its neck broken at the time of death or during the mummification process to keep the head in an upright position....

The Army’s vaccine has potential to offer broad protection from SARS-CoV-2, and may be adapted to protect from other coronaviruses. A unique vaccine to protect against COVID-19 began clinical testing on April 6, 2021, at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. Scientists developed a nanoparticle vaccine, based on a ferritin platform, which offers a flexible approach to targeting multiple variants of SARS-COV-2 and potentially other coronaviruses as well....

In a new study in the journal Nature [1], an IBM Research-led collaboration describes an exciting breakthrough in a 140-year-old mystery in physics — one that enables us to unlock the physical characteristics of semiconductors in much greater detail and aid in the development of new and improved semiconductor materials. To truly understand the physics of semiconductors, we first need to know the fundamental properties of the charge carriers inside the materials, whether those particles are positive or negative, their speed under an applied electric field, and how densely they are packed in the material....