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More precisely, some specific features of cave art may provide clues about how our symbolic, multifaceted language capabilities evolved, according to a new paper co-authored by MIT linguist Shigeru Miyagawa. A key to this idea is that cave art is often located in acoustic “hot spots,” where sound echoes strongly, as some scholars have observed. Those drawings are located in deeper, harder-to-access parts of caves, indicating that acoustics was a principal reason for the placement of drawings within caves....

“We’ve developed a new process for rapidly screening all of the edits made by CRISPR, and it shows there may be many more unintended changes to DNA around the site of a CRISPR repair than previously thought,” said Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of ChristianaCare’s Gene Editing Institute and the principal author of the study. The study describes a new tool developed at the Gene Editing Institute that in just 48 hours can identify “multiple outcomes of CRISPR-directed gene editing,” a process that typically required up to two months of costly and complicated DNA analysis....

Although most optical and computer chips are made of silicon, there is increasing interest in SiC because it exhibits better thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties than silicon while also being biocompatible and operating at wavelengths from the visible to infrared. In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters, researchers led by Ali Adibi from the Georgia Institute of Technology detail how they integrated a microheater and an optical device called a microring resonator onto a SiC chip....

The brightest spots on the dwarf planet Ceres gleam with mystery in new views delivered by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. These closest-yet views of Occator crater, with a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, give scientists a deeper perspective on these very unusual features. The new up-close view of Occator crater from Dawn’s current vantage point reveals better-defined shapes of the brightest, central spot and features on the crater floor....

In response, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, convened a monkeypox emergency committee to track the evolving situation. At the committee’s first meeting on June 23, 2022, the members believed that the “multi-country outbreak” might be stabilizing as case counts had plateaued in several countries. However, after thousands more cases of monkeypox were diagnosed in dozens of countries in July, it became clear that the outbreak had not leveled off....

According to a recent study from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, the immune system may benefit from a measure of stress. The study was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This one of the few studies showing that chronic stress could have beneficial effects instead of negative effects,” said senior author Fabio Cominelli, professor of medicine and pathology and associate dean for program development at the School of Medicine....

The number of potentially habitable planets is greater than previously thought, according to a new analysis by a Penn State researcher, and some of those planets are likely lurking around nearby stars. “We now estimate that if we were to look at 10 of the nearest small stars we would find about four potentially habitable planets, give or take,” said Ravi Kopparapu, a post-doctoral researcher in geosciences. “That is a conservative estimate,” he added....

However, recent research has shown highly encouraging results in assisting students to learn to read. Individualized challenges that cater to each student’s level are crucial in this process. A one-size-fits-all approach to teaching is not effective, as many students struggle to keep up. “The previous study round included 48 students who took part in our approach, and every one of them cracked the reading code,” says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Psychology....

The researchers published their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine. The development of this vaccine began almost 25 years ago with the US military. Since 2001, the continuing development has been done by a public–private venture between the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and the London-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). There were eleven research centers in seven African countries in this phase III trial, which involved the vaccination and monitoring of thousands of children....

The first burst of new, precision ICL measurements appeared in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal in April 2019. Another appeared more recently in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In a surprise finding of the latter, DES physicists discovered new evidence that ICL might provide a new way to measure a mysterious substance called dark matter. The source of ICL appears to be rogue stars, those not gravitationally bound to any galaxy....

An explosion is a complex event involving quickly changing temperatures, pressures, and chemical concentrations. In a paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing, a special type of infrared laser, known as a swept-wavelength external cavity quantum cascade laser (swept-ECQCL), is used to study explosions. This versatile instrument has a broad wavelength tuning range that allows the measurement of multiple chemical substances, even large molecules, in an explosive fireball....

In MIT 2.C161, George Barbastathis demonstrates how mechanical engineers can use their knowledge of physical systems to keep algorithms in check and develop more accurate predictions. Machine-learning algorithms are often referred to as a “black box.” Once data are put into an algorithm, it’s not always known exactly how the algorithm arrives at its prediction. This can be particularly frustrating when things go wrong. A new mechanical engineering (MechE) course at MIT teaches students how to tackle the “black box” problem, through a combination of data science and physics-based engineering....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[1] The researchers studied five lakes near mining and upgrading operations around Fort McMurray, Alberta, and another lake 90 kilometers northwest. They found that the levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are carbon-based compounds, some of which can be toxic or carcinogenic, in lake sediments have been on the rise since the 1960s. By 2011, PAH levels in these lakes ranged from 2....

Researchers have developed a way to coax bacteriophages – harmless viruses that eat bacteria – into linking together and forming microscopic beads. Those beads can safely be applied to food and other materials to rid them of harmful pathogens such as E. coli O157. Each bead is about 20 microns, (one 50th of a millimeter) in diameter and is loaded with millions of phages. The McMaster engineering team behind the invention has created a spray using nothing but the microbeads....

The cosmic infrared background is the collective infrared radiation emitted by cosmic sources throughout the history of the universe, including sources inaccessible to current telescopes. The latter category, for example, includes the very first generation of stars, currently a subject of intense investigations. Because of the relative uniformity of this background, which is faint and might be interpreted as instrumental noise, fluctuations in it can often be more readily discerned than the actual background level itself....

Amyloid fibrils are largely composed of the peptide Amyloid beta, which is produced when enzymes, including gamma secretase, make cuts to the amyloid precursor protein found in high concentrations the membrane of brain cells. C1 is a covalent gamma-secretase inhibitor that blocks the active site on the precursor protein where gamma-secretase would bind to transform it into amyloids, rather than — as traditional enzyme inhibitors do — blocking the active site on gamma-secretase itself....

Two Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers — a stem cell biologist and a practicing cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — have identified a protein in the blood of mice and humans that may prove to be the first effective treatment for the form of age-related heart failure that affects millions of Americans. When the protein, called GDF-11, was injected into old mice, which develop thickened heart walls in a manner similar to aging humans, the hearts were reduced in size and thickness, resembling the healthy hearts of younger mice....

Quantum physics has shown time and again that it contradicts our intuition – and this is also true in this case. Under certain conditions, negative energies are allowed, at least in a certain range of space and time. An international research team at the TU Vienna, the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), and the IIT Kanpur (India) have now investigated the extent to which negative energy is possible. It turns out that no matter which quantum theories are considered, no matter what symmetries are assumed to hold in the universe, there are always certain limits to “borrowing” energy....

William Shatner and the Grand Entrance As NASA prepares for Curiosity rover landing on Mars, William Shatner shares this thrilling story of NASA’s hardest planetary science mission to date. The video titled, ‘Grand Entrance,’ guides viewers from entry through descent, and after landing.

In the study, the chest CT examinations of 56 marijuana smokers, 57 non-smokers, and 33 tobacco-only smokers between 2005 and 2020 were analyzed. The investigators determined higher rates of paraseptal emphysema (PSE) and airway inflammatory changes, such as bronchiectasis, bronchial wall thickening, and mucoid impaction, in the marijuana smokers. Giselle Revah is a radiologist and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine who was searching for answers on the effect of marijuana on the lungs and its health implications....