Posts

Monday, November 2, 2020, marked 20 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station. Relive a few memorable moments from the unique orbital outpost in this clip covering 20 years of the International Space Station in 60 seconds. Since November 2, 2000, when Crew One took up residence, 240 people including 18 ESA astronauts have lived and worked on the orbital outpost, carrying out essential research to benefit life on Earth....

Concerns have been raised about the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines regarding very rare but potentially fatal side effects related to low blood platelet counts and blood clots. Recently, reports also emerged that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine may cause a rare yet serious side effect: heart inflammation. Concerns about side effects may trigger vaccine hesitancy, which the WHO considers one of ‘Ten threats to global health‘. Securing sufficient acceptance of vaccines is a key challenge in defeating the coronavirus pandemic, both now and in the future....

Developed and constructed over more than 30 years, Webb is a remarkable feat of engineering and technology – with the largest astronomical mirror ever flown in space, sophisticated new scientific instruments, and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Webb is a joint project between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency and will reveal the Universe in a whole new light. Optimized for infrared wavelengths, its detectors will be able to look back to shortly after the very dawn of time, revealing the formation of the first galaxies, as well as study stars and planets in our own Milky Way....

The early analysis of Webb’s First Deep Field image, which depicts some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, was published recently in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The work was conducted by a team of Canadian astronomers, including experts from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science. “JWST was built to find the first stars and the first galaxies and to help us understand the origins of complexity in the universe, such as the chemical elements and the building blocks of life,” says Lamiya Mowla, a post-doctoral researcher at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and co-lead author of the study, which was carried out by the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) team....

“The climate affects the life cycle of species, the number of individuals of a species, the overall number of species, and the composition and distribution of species in an area,” says James D. M. Speed, a professor ​​in the Department of Natural History at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) University Museum. Determining the specific amount of temperature change required to impact different species is a complex task, as it varies greatly among species....

“We know both the ancient history of the Universe and its recent expansion history fairly well, but there’s a troublesome gap in the middle 11 billion years,” says cosmologist Kyle Dawson of the University of Utah, who leads the team announcing today’s results. “For five years, we have worked to fill in that gap, and we are using that information to provide some of the most substantial advances in cosmology in the last decade....

Straight-line constant-speed propagation in free space is a basic characteristic of light. In a recent study published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University discovered the phenomenon of reciprocating propagation of laser pulse intensity in free space. Spatiotemporal couplings have been recently used to produce light with tunable group-velocity, direction, and trajectory in free space. For example, the flying focus (a moving laser pulse intensity in the extended Rayleigh length), where longitudinal chromatism and temporal chirp are combined to control the spectrum-dependent focus-separation in space and spectrum-dependent pulse-location in time, respectively, has arbitrarily tunable propagating group-velocity and direction in space and time....

Good uptake (8 out of 10 people) will likely be needed to achieve herd immunity through vaccination. Governments should consider incentivizing people to get a COVID-19 jab, when the vaccine becomes available, to achieve the required level of herd immunity — which could be up to 80%+ of the population — and stamp out the infection, argues a leading ethicist in an opinion piece accepted for publication in the Journal of Medical Ethics....

Several thousand pounds of important research, crew supplies, and hardware are on their way to the crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) following the 2:20 p.m. EST launch of NASA’s SpaceX 26th commercial resupply services mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, November 26, 2022. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft reached its preliminary orbit and its solar arrays have been deployed. A series of thruster firings are scheduled to allow Dragon to rendezvous with the space station on Sunday, November 27, at 7:30 a....

Moore’s law is an empirical suggestion describing that the number of transistors doubles every few years in integrated circuits (ICs). However, Moore’s law has started to fail as transistors are now so small that the current silicon-based technologies are unable to offer further opportunities for shrinking. One possibility of overcoming Moore’s law is to resort to two-dimensional semiconductors. These two-dimensional materials are so thin that they can allow the propagation of free charge carriers, namely electrons and holes in transistors that carry the information, along an ultra-thin plane....

Binaural beats are an auditory illusion caused by listening to two tones of slightly different frequencies, one in each ear. The difference in frequencies creates the illusion of a third sound — a rhythmic beat. Neurons throughout the brain begin to send electrical messages at the same rate as the imaginary beat. Many unsupported claims surround binaural beats, including that listening to them decreases anxiety, increases focus, and improves mood....

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. A subcategory, called sulfur amino acids, including methionine and cysteine, play various roles in metabolism and health. “For decades it has been understood that diets restricting sulfur amino acids were beneficial for longevity in animals,” said John Richie, a professor of public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. “This study provides the first epidemiologic evidence that excessive dietary intake of sulfur amino acids may be related to chronic disease outcomes in humans....

The findings, published in the journal Nature Medicine on December 8, highlight the need for greater attention at the infection stage to better understand how the processes that begin then eventually lead to long COVID, which could help improve both prevention strategies and treatment options for COVID-19 survivors experiencing persistent symptoms after infection. The research team identified, among other findings, two molecularly distinct subsets of long COVID symptoms with opposing gene expression patterns during acute COVID-19 in plasma cells, the immune system’s antibody-producing cells....

Research confirms unique community of bacteria and immune responses among people who use e-cigarettes. A series of new studies by researchers at NYU College of Dentistry highlights how e-cigarettes alter oral health and may be contributing to gum disease. The latest, published in mBio, finds that e-cigarette users have a unique oral microbiome—the community of bacteria and other microorganisms—that is less healthy than nonsmokers but potentially healthier than cigarette smokers, and measures worsening gum disease over time....

Lung tissue of patients who suffered severely from COVID-19 shows good recovery in most cases. This was revealed by a study carried out by the Radboud university medical center that has now been published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. A striking conclusion is that the group who was referred by a GP did not recover as well as patients who were admitted to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The study, led by pulmonologist Bram van den Borst, included 124 patients who had recovered from acute COVID-19 infections....

New research from Yale University details how magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for many women undergoing breast cancer surgery might identify health problems that would not otherwise impact patients — or lead to “overdiagnosis.” Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the study examined whether preoperative MRI use would allow doctors to identify breast cancer in the opposite breast (the one not affected by the diagnosed cancer) earlier, and therefore reduce the likelihood of advanced diseases in the future....

In a process comparable to squeezing an elephant through a pinhole, researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have designed a way to engineer atoms capable of funneling light through ultra-small channels. Their research is the latest in a series of recent findings related to how light and matter interact at the atomic scale, and it is the first to demonstrate that the material – a specially designed “meta-atom” of gold and silicon oxide – can transmit light through a wide bandwidth and at a speed approaching infinity....

Cassada, designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1), is wearing a suit with red stripes. Rubio, designated extravehicular crewmember 2 (EV 2), is in an unmarked suit. The spacewalk will last approximately seven hours. Coverage of the spacewalk continues on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. Earlier, crew members on the International Space Station prepared for NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio to exit the space station’s Quest airlock for a spacewalk outside of the microgravity laboratory....

Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest since 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Global temperatures in 2018 were 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.83 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Globally, 2018’s temperatures rank behind those of 2016, 2017, and 2015. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record....

Flight 19 was successfully completed on February 7, 2022, at 20:21 PST (Sol 345 of the Perseverance mission, 12:00 LMST Local Mean Solar Time), and placed Ingenuity safely within the designated landing ellipse just above the eastern ridge of the “South Séítah” basin. Flight 19 was a reminder of the challenges and unpredictability of the Martian environment. As discussed in our previous update, Flight 19 was delayed by an unexpected dust storm that caused a significant drop in air density and solar array output....