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A potential direct association between higher artificial sweetener consumption and increased cardiovascular disease risk, including heart attack and stroke has been uncovered by a large study of French adults published on September 7 by The BMJ. These food additives are consumed daily by millions of people and are present in thousands of foods and drinks. The findings indicate that these artificial sweeteners should not be considered a healthy and safe alternative to sugar, in line with the current position of several health agencies....

Through simulations of a dying star, a team of theoretical physics researchers have found the evolutionary origin and the maximum mass of black holes which are discovered by the detection of gravitational waves as shown in Figure 1. The exciting detection of gravitational waves with LIGO (laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory) and VIRGO (Virgo interferometric gravitational-wave antenna) have shown the presence of merging black holes in close binary systems. The masses of the observed black holes before merging have been measured and turned out to have a much larger than previously expected mass of about 10 times the mass of the Sun (solar mass)....

Mars’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos, have puzzled researchers since their discovery in 1877. They are very small: Phobos’s diameter of 22 kilometers is 160 times smaller than that of our Moon, and Deimos is even smaller, with a diameter of only 12 kilometers. “Our moon is essentially spherical, while the moons of Mars are very irregularly shaped – like potatoes,” says Amirhossein Bagheri, a doctoral student at the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich, adding: “Phobos and Deimos look more like asteroids than natural moons....

For the first time, a team of archaeologists from the Universities of Cambridge and Ghent, has succeeded in mapping a complete Roman city, Falerii Novi in Italy, using advanced ground-penetrating radar (GPR). The technology has allowed them to reveal astonishing details while the city remains deep underground. The archaeologists have discovered a bath complex, market, temple, a public monument unlike anything seen before, and even the city’s sprawling network of water pipes....

People who may hear and see things that are not there could have symptoms of psychosis, better known as psychotic disorders. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found neurological markers in the human brain that can be used to detect people at-risk for developing psychotic disorders and to understand when this risk has been successfully treated. “Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are often lifelong and disabling for individuals,” said John Kerns, professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science....

The launch of a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket carrying some of the students’ experiments will be conducted at 8 a.m. EDT, Thursday, June 24, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket launch is expected to be seen from the eastern shore of Virginia and Maryland and southern Delaware. “One of the great attributes of the NASA suborbital flight vehicles is the ability to support educational flight activities,” said Giovanni Rosanova, chief of the NASA Sounding Rockets Program Office at Wallops....

Frank A. Boksa, University of Iowa College of Dentistry, Iowa City, IA, presented “Salivary Immune Signature of SARS-nCoV2 Infection” at the hybrid 51st Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the AADOCR, held in conjunction with the 46th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), online and onsite in Atlanta, GA, on March 26, 2022. With more than 219 million confirmed cases of SARS-nCoV2 infection and 4.55 million deaths, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide....

The Sumatran rhinoceros, the world’s smallest and most ancient rhino species, was once widely distributed throughout East and Southeast Asia. However, poaching and habitat destruction have severely reduced the population, with only a few dozen individuals remaining in the rainforests of Sumatra and the Indonesian portion of Borneo. The rarity of these remaining individuals makes mating encounters increasingly scarce, contributing to the species’ endangered status. The last of their kind in Malaysia The Sumatran rhinoceros, which is the only surviving rhino species with hair, has been considered extinct in Malaysia since 2019 following the death of male Kertam and, just a few months later, female Iman....

A supernova is the colossal explosion of a star. Scientists have identified several types of supernova. One type, called a “core-collapse” supernova, occurs in the last stage in the life of massive stars that are at least eight times larger than our Sun. As these stars burn the fuel in their cores, they produce heat. This heat produces pressure that pushes outward against the forces of gravity that pull inward on the star....

In a paper released on March 2nd in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists announced the discovery of a previously unknown “supercolony” of more than 1,500,000 Adélie Penguins in the Danger Islands, a chain of remote, rocky islands off of the Antarctic Peninsula’s northern tip. “Until recently, the Danger Islands weren’t known to be an important penguin habitat,” says co-PI Heather Lynch, Associate Professor of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University....

The newly named tyrannosauroid dinosaur – Suskityrannus hazelae – stood roughly 3 feet tall at the hip and was about 9 feet in length, the entire animal only marginally longer than just the skull of a fully grown Tyrannosaurus rex, according to Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor with Department of Geosciences in the Virginia Tech College of Science. In a wild twist to this discovery, Nesbitt found the fossil at age 16 whilst a high school student participating in a dig expedition in New Mexico in 1998, led by Doug Wolfe, an author on the paper....

By analyzing each of the steps, the interdisciplinary research team at the University of Leeds hopes it will lead to the development of a new generation of luxury chocolates that will have the same feel and texture but will be healthier to consume. During the moments it is in the mouth, the chocolate sensation arises from the way the chocolate is lubricated, either from ingredients in the chocolate itself or from saliva or a combination of the two....

The findings could lead to the development of more effective vaccines and antibody treatments for COVID-19 variants. An international team of scientists have identified antibodies that neutralize COVID-19 omicron and other SARS-CoV-2 variants. These antibodies target areas of the virus spike protein that remain essentially unchanged as the viruses mutate. By identifying the targets of these “broadly neutralizing” antibodies on the spike protein, it might be possible to design vaccines and antibody treatments that will be effective against not only the omicron variant but other variants that may emerge in the future, said David Veesler, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle....

Using an instrument on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, called the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, or HMI, scientists have overturned previous notions of how the sun’s writhing insides move from equator to pole and back again, a key part of understanding how the dynamo works. Modeling this system also lies at the heart of improving predictions of the intensity of the next solar cycle. Using SDO, scientists see a performance of explosions and fountains on the solar surface....

Astrobiologist Laurie Barge and her team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are working to recognize life on other planets by studying the origins of life here on Earth. Their research focuses on how the building blocks of life form in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. To re-create hydrothermal vents in the lab, the team made their own miniature seafloors by filling beakers with mixtures that mimic Earth’s primordial ocean....

New observations using state-of-the-art techniques could help to build better electronics in smartphones, GPS and satellites. Scientists from Cardiff University have, for the first time, spotted previously unseen “instabilities” on the surface of a common compound semiconductor material. The findings could potentially have profound consequences for the development of future materials in the electronic devices that power our daily lives. Compound semiconductors are an integral part of electronic devices, from smartphones and GPS to satellites and laptops....

But while they have faces only a biologist could love, horseshoe bats have caught the interest of scientists studying the bat family tree. There are more than 100 recognized species of horseshoe bats, and researchers now believe that number could be still higher. In a study published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, researchers from the Field Museum, National Museums of Kenya, and Maasai Mara University used gene sequencing to identify up to 12 new species of horseshoe bats....

To gain insight into early hair follicle development, the research team combined the study of genetically engineered mouse models with single-cell RNA methods to examine the molecular and cellular events that occur prior to visible evidence of hair follicle formation — a process that was nearly impossible to decode by conventional methods. Using this combined approach, the research team was able to predict and validate key molecular changes that occur within a subpopulation of dermal progenitor cells as they differentiate and mature into cells uniquely capable of inducing hair follicles....

A leading ecologist from the University of St Andrews calls for coordinated action to investigate the environmental impacts of humanity’s emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2020, COVID lockdowns caused an ‘anthropause’ – a drastic global reduction in human mobility. Two years later, as restrictions are gradually being lifted, a surge in travel activity beyond pre-pandemic levels – or ‘anthropulse’ – seems imminent. In an article published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment (Tuesday, March 15, 2022), Professor Christian Rutz, from the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, explains how, under the most tragic circumstances, the COVID-19 pandemic afforded opportunities to study humanity’s impact on the natural world....

The research does not account for a simultaneous increase in human-made sources of air pollution, which has already been predicted by other studies. “We are not looking at human emissions of air pollution, because we can change what we emit,” said James Gomez, UCR doctoral student and lead author of the study. “We can switch to electric cars. But that may not change air pollution from plants or dust.” Details of the degradation in future air quality from these natural sources have now been published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment....