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Researchers at Purdue University have engineered ceramic “nanotubes” that behave as thermal antennas, offering control over the spectrum and direction of high-temperature heat radiation. The work is published in Nano Letters, a journal by the American Chemical Society. An illustration of the ceramic nanotubes will be featured as the journal’s supplementary cover in a forthcoming issue. “By controlling radiation at these high temperatures, we can increase the lifetime of the coating....

A study led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found a significant association between cholesterol-lowering drugs commonly known as statins and survival rates of triple-negative breast cancer patients. Since statins are low in cost, easy to access, and produce minimal side effects, this could have an important impact on outcomes for this aggressive disease. The study, led by Kevin Nead, M.D., assistant professor of Epidemiology, was published today (August 3, 2021) in the journal Cancer....

Some physicists propose dark energy is a ‘fifth’ force that acts on matter, beyond the four already known – gravitational, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. However, researchers think this fifth force may be ‘screened’ or ‘hidden’ for large objects like planets or weights on Earth, making it difficult to detect. Now, researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham have tested the possibility that this fifth force is acting on single atoms, and found no evidence for it in their most recent experiment....

Purslane, also known as Portulaca oleracea, combines two different metabolic pathways to produce a unique sort of photosynthesis that allows the plant to withstand drought while remaining extremely productive, according to Yale University scientists. The researchers recently published their findings in the journal Science Advances. “This is a very rare combination of traits and has created a kind of ‘super plant’ — one that could be potentially useful in endeavors such as crop engineering,” said Yale’s Erika Edwards, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author of the paper....

A recent study conducted by physicists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) could finally provide a solution to this challenge, which could be a significant step towards protecting humans and equipment during space missions and maintaining the proper functioning of satellites. The researchers’ findings were recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The UCLA researchers effectively reproduced the type of gravity that exists on or near stars and other planets inside of a glass sphere measuring 3 centimeters in diameter (about 1....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. They were able to summon gobies within minutes of the contact of seaweed. The researchers observed that corals with resident gobies saw a 30% decline in seaweed abundance after three days, whereas no change was seen in control corals. One species, Gobiodon histrio ate the seaweed, while Paragobiodon echinocephalus trimmed it back. G. histrio also gained the benefit of becoming more toxic to predators which ate them in turn....

Climate change is increasing the temperatures of the oceans, which disrupts the relationship between corals and their symbiotic photosynthetic algae and causes corals to bleach, in some cases eventually leading to their death. KAUST researchers have proposed that manipulating the coral microbiome might enhance their stress tolerance by using beneficial microorganisms for corals, or BMC. To test this, the team selected six beneficial bacterial strains isolated from the coral Mussismilia hispida and used them to inoculate experimental cultures of M....

Cosmic physics mimicked on table-top as graphene enables Schwinger effect. Researchers at The University of Manchester have succeeded in observing the so-called Schwinger effect, an elusive process that normally occurs only in cosmic events. By applying high currents through specially designed graphene-based devices, the team — based at the National Graphene Institute — succeeded in producing particle-antiparticle pairs from a vacuum. A vacuum is assumed to be completely empty space, without any matter or elementary particles....

The first two cases were confirmed in December 2020 at a hospital in Salvador (state of Bahia, Northeast Brazil), and are described in the Journal of Fungi by a group of researchers led by Arnaldo Colombo, head of the Special Mycology Laboratory at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). The study was supported by FAPESP. “Nine other C. auris patients have since been diagnosed at the same hospital, some colonized [with the fungus in their organism but not doing harm] and others infected,” Colombo told Agência FAPESP....

COVID-19 has led to psychological distress among one in three adults, large-scale meta-analysis reveals. One in three adults, particularly women, younger adults, and those of lower socioeconomic status, are experiencing psychological distress related to COVID-19, researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, reported in the journal PLOS ONE. COVID-19 continues to pose serious threats to public health across the globe, and interventions such as lockdowns, quarantine and social distancing are having an adverse impact on the mental well-being of populations....

The research letter, “Impact of Vaccination on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Patients with COVID-19 Infection,” was published on February 20 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In addition, the research will be presented in a poster session in New Orleans, LA, at the American College of Cardiology’s 72nd Annual Scientific Session Together With World Heart Federation’s World Congress of Cardiology. It is the first study to examine both full and partial vaccination and the link to major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in the United States, confirming similar analyses performed previously using the Korean COVID-19 registry....

Study of 621 people in the UK with mild COVID-19 infections found that people who received two vaccine doses could still pass the infection on to vaccinated and unvaccinated household members.The analysis found that 25% of vaccinated household contacts tested positive for COVID-19 compared with 38% of unvaccinated household contacts. The infectiousness of vaccinated cases with breakthrough infections was similar to unvaccinated cases.Infections in vaccinated people cleared more quickly than those in unvaccinated people, but resulted in a similar peak viral load – when people are most infectious – probably explaining why the delta variant remains able to spread despite vaccination....

Researchers at the University of Chicago have designed a completely novel potential treatment for COVID-19: nanoparticles that capture SARS-CoV-2 viruses within the body and then use the body’s own immune system to destroy them. These “nanotraps” attract the virus by mimicking the target cells the virus infects. When the virus binds to the nanotraps, the traps then sequester the virus from other cells and target it for destruction by the immune system....

Findings published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) show that across the tropics, tree lifespans decrease for temperatures above 25°C. Although tropical rainforests account for only 7% of all land, they are home to about 50% of all animal and plant species, and approximately 50% of forest carbon stocks on Earth. Thus small changes in the functioning of tropical forests can significantly change the atmospheric levels of CO2 – the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas....

Pasadena, California – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has used autonomous navigation for the first time, a capability that lets the rover decide for itself how to drive safely on Mars. This latest addition to Curiosity’s array of capabilities will help the rover cover the remaining ground en route to Mount Sharp, where geological layers hold information about environmental changes on ancient Mars. The capability uses software that engineers adapted to this larger and more complex vehicle from a similar capability used by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which is also currently active on Mars....

Scientists have used cutting-edge research in quantum computation and quantum technology to pioneer a radical new approach to determining how our Universe works at its most fundamental level. An international team of experts, led by the University of Nottingham, have demonstrated that only quantum and not classical gravity could be used to create a certain informatic ingredient that is needed for quantum computation. Their research “Non-Gaussianity as a signature of a quantum theory of gravity” was been published on February 17, 2021, in PRX Quantum....

Astronomers have barely scratched the surface of mapping the nearly endless stars and galaxies of the heavens. Using supercomputers and the help of thousands of citizen scientists around the world, researchers with The University of Texas at Austin have now revealed the locations of more than 200,000 new astronomical objects. Their goal is to map even more and use that knowledge to predict the ultimate fate of the universe. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) has scanned the dark skies of the Davis Mountains in West Texas since 2017 with a keen eye toward capturing spectroscopic data on Lyman-alpha frequency light from neutral hydrogen emission in galaxies over 10 billion light years away....

Waste clearance is crucial for brain health, preventing neurodegenerative disease. A new Northwestern University study reaffirms the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. By examining fruit flies’ brain activity and behavior, the researchers found that deep sleep has an ancient, restorative power to clear waste from the brain. This waste potentially includes toxic proteins that may lead to neurodegenerative disease. “Waste clearance could be important, in general, for maintaining brain health or for preventing neurogenerative disease,” said Dr....

This Delta IV Heavy Rocket Launch Image Gallery shows 17 pictures of the Delta IV Heavy rocket in preparation for launch and after lift-off.

Psyche, the NASA mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid of the same name, recently passed a crucial milestone that brings it closer to its August 2022 launch date. Now the mission is moving from planning and designing to high-gear manufacturing of the spacecraft hardware that will fly to its target in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Like all NASA missions, early work on Psyche started with drawing up digital blueprints....