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To do so, they looked at hydrogen. Hydrogen molecules – H2 – can be arranged in two different ways, known as parahydrogen and orthohydrogen. The two orientations have distinct energies, so determining the ratio of parahydrogen to orthohydrogen can tell astronomers about the overall temperature. The researchers looked at the concentration of parahydrogen and orthohydrogen at altitudes just above Jupiter’s main cloud deck. They discovered that, around the equator, warm gas is rising into the Jovian atmosphere....

University of New South Wales (UNSW) biomedical and electrical engineers have created a new method for measuring neural activity using light – rather than electricity – which could result in a complete reimagining of medical technology like brain-machine interfaces and nerve-operated prosthetics. According to Professor François Ladouceur of UNSW’s School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, the multidisciplinary team has recently proven in the lab what it proved theoretically just before the pandemic: sensors developed utilizing liquid crystal and integrated optics technology – dubbed ‘optrodes’ – can detect nerve impulses in a living animal body....

The energy and momentum of these electrons, known as a material’s “band structure,” are key properties that describe how electrons move through a material. Ultimately, the band structure determines a material’s electrical and optical properties. The team, at MIT and Princeton University, has used the technique to probe a semiconducting sheet of gallium arsenide, and has mapped out the energy and momentum of electrons throughout the material. The results are published today in the journal Science....

The research team began by studying a prevalent gene variant associated with severe hand osteoarthritis (OA). By analyzing patient samples collected during routine hand surgery and conducting various experimental models, they discovered a crucial molecule, retinoic acid, that was deficient in individuals at high risk for the condition. More than 40% of individuals will develop osteoarthritis (OA) during their lifetime. Hand (OA) is an extremely common form of OA and there are currently no disease-modifying treatments that effectively relieve symptoms or stop deformity and stiffness of the joints....

In a recent study, a group from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior headed by Dina Dechmann found that European moles shrink their brains by 11% before the winter and grow them back by 4% by summer. They are a new group of mammals known for reversibly shrinking their brains through a process known as Dehnel’s phenomenon. The research, however, does more than just add another species to the bizarre repertoire of brain-shrinking animals; it delves into the evolutionary puzzle of what pushes them down this perilous path....

Scientists have known that a region of the brain called the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) plays a role in behaviors related to alcohol use and consumption in general. It’s been less known which precise populations of brain cells and their projections to other brain regions mediate these behaviors. Now, UNC School of Medicine scientists discovered that specific neurons in the CeA contribute to reward-like behaviors, alcohol consumption in particular....

This is the first time scientists have found that melting on the surface impacts the flow of glaciers in Antarctica. Using imagery and data from satellites alongside regional climate modeling, scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that meltwater is causing some glaciers to move at speeds 100 percent faster than average (up to 400m per year) for a period of several days multiple times per year. Glaciers move downhill due to gravity via the internal deformation of ice, and basal sliding – where they slide over the ground beneath them, lubricated by liquid water....

A Northumbria University researcher is part of a team that has produced the first physics-based quantifiable evidence that thinning ice shelves in Antarctica are causing more ice to flow from the land into the ocean. Their findings have been published in Geophysical Research Letters. Satellite measurements taken between 1994 and 2017 have detected significant changes in the thickness of the floating ice shelves that surround the Antarctic Ice Sheet. These shelves buttress against the land-based ice, holding them in place like a safety band....

Researchers at Utrecht University, Erasmus Medical Center and Harbour BioMed (HBM) today reported that they have identified a fully human monoclonal antibody that prevents the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus from infecting cultured cells. The discovery, published online today in Nature Communications, is an initial step towards developing a fully human antibody to treat or prevent the respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly across the globe infecting more than 3....

In the fight against viruses, antibodies have the potential to either block infection or enable infection and make the disease worse, leading to concern about their use as a therapy for COVID-19. In a study published in the journal Cell, Duke investigators demonstrated in mice and monkeys that human antibodies lacked the ability to make SARS-CoV-2 infection worse and, instead, exerted their defensive powers against the infection. The findings help reinforce evidence that antibodies are safe when given as treatments or induced by COVID-19 vaccines....

Humans have taken spiders into space more than once to study the importance of gravity to their web-building. What originally began as a somewhat unsuccessful PR experiment for high school students has yielded the surprising insight that light plays a larger role in arachnid orientation than previously thought. The spider experiment by the US space agency NASA is a lesson in the frustrating failures and happy accidents that sometimes lead to unexpected research findings....

Companies that make commercial solar cells are happy if they can achieve 20 percent efficiency when converting sunlight to electricity; an improvement of even 1 percent is seen as major progress. But nature, which has had billions of years to fine-tune photosynthesis, can do much better: Microorganisms called green sulfur bacteria, which live deep in the ocean where there’s hardly any light available, manage to harvest 98 percent of the energy in the light that reaches them....

After ten million years of traveling through space, the star evolved into a yellow supergiant, the object that we see today. Its journey took it 1.6 degrees across the sky, about three times the diameter of the full moon. The star will continue speeding through space until it too blows up as a supernova, likely in another three million years or so. When that happens, heavier elements will be created, and the resulting supernova remnant may form new stars or even planets on the outer edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud....

The discovery of Nova Delphini 2013, along with the data collected about it, could well sharpen or reshape our understanding of the nature of such blasts. The research appears online in the journal Nature. Novae are found in solar systems with two closely orbiting stellar objects. The gravity from one star, a white dwarf, pulls in hydrogen from the atmosphere of another star, a red giant. This buildup of extra matter on the white dwarf’s surface eventually causes a nuclear detonation....

A team of Penn State astronomers has obtained very precise measurements of a pair of stars that are orbited by a planet — like the stellar system of the fictional planet Tatooine in the movie Star Wars. The orbits of the stars and planet in the system, named Kepler-16, are aligned so that they eclipse or transit each other when observed from Earth. These new measurements will aid astronomers in understanding how stars and planetary systems form....

Patients with COVID-19 show a variety of symptoms associated with respiratory organs – such as coughing, sneezing, shortness of breath, and fever – and the disease is transmitted via tiny droplets that are spread mainly through coughing and sneezing. One third of the patients however also have gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea and diarrhea. In addition, the virus can be detected in human stool long after the respiratory symptoms have been resolved....

Scientists are still a long way from being able to treat Alzheimer’s Disease, in part because the protein aggregates that can become brain plaques, a hallmark of the disease, are hard to study. The plaques are caused by the amyloid beta protein, which gets misshapen and tangled in the brain. To study these protein aggregates in tissue samples, researchers often have to use techniques that can further disrupt them, making it difficult to figure out what’s going on....

Consumer-grade EEG headsets might be great for gaming, but a new study has found that sensitive personal information, like PIN numbers and credit card data, could be gleaned from the brainwaves of users wearing these headsets. Researchers presented their findings at the USENIX 2012 Security Symposium 2012. The team of security experts from Oxford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Geneva state that they were able to deduce the digits of PIN numbers, birth months, and areas of residence from subjects wearing the headsets who were presented with images of ATM machines, debit cards, people, maps, and random numbers....

A team of researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has observed branched flow of light for the very first time. The findings are published in Nature and are featured on the cover of that journal’s July 2, 2020 issue. The study was carried out by Ph.D. student Anatoly (Tolik) Patsyk, in collaboration with Miguel A. Bandres, who was a postdoctoral fellow at Technion when the project started and is now an Assistant Professor at CREOL, College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida....

This novel approach, using solution-processed perovskite, is intended to revolutionize a variety of everyday objects such as solar cells, LEDs, photodetectors for smartphones and computer chips. Solution-processed perovskites are the next generation materials for solar cell panels on rooftops, X-ray detectors for medical diagnosis, and LEDs for daily-life lighting. The research team included a pair of graduate students and one undergraduate student who are mentored by Jianbo Gao, group leader of Ultrafast Photophysics of Quantum Devices (UPQD) group in the College of Science’s Department of Physics and Astronomy....