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Such signals were first identified during the fadeout of rare giant flares produced by magnetars. Over the past 40 years, giant flares have been observed just three times – in 1979, 1998 and 2004 – and signals related to starquakes, which set the neutron stars ringing like a bell, were identified only in the two most recent events. “Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) has captured the same evidence from smaller and much more frequent eruptions called bursts, opening up the potential for a wealth of new data to help us understand how neutron stars are put together,” said Anna Watts, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and co-author of a new study about the burst storm....

New research merging Fermi data with information from ground-based radar and lightning networks shows that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes arise from an unexpected diversity of storms and may be more common than currently thought. Each day, thunderstorms around the world produce about a thousand quick bursts of gamma rays, some of the highest-energy light naturally found on Earth. By merging records of events seen by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope with data from ground-based radar and lightning detectors, scientists have completed the most detailed analysis to date of the types of thunderstorms involved....

The Warwick researchers looked at the physical constraints on the current design of most commercial solar cells which place an absolute limit on their efficiency. Most commercial solar cells are formed of two layers creating at their boundary a junction between two kinds of semiconductors, p-type with positive charge carriers (holes which can be filled by electrons) and n-type with negative charge carriers (electrons). When light is absorbed, the junction of the two semiconductors sustains an internal field splitting the photo-excited carriers in opposite directions, generating a current and voltage across the junction....

Drinking small amounts of alcohol frequently is linked with a higher likelihood of atrial fibrillation than binge drinking, according to research published today in EP Europace, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 ‘Recommendations about alcohol consumption have focused on reducing the absolute amount rather than the frequency,’ said study author Dr. Jong-Il Choi, of Korea University College of Medicine and Korea University Anam Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea....

In a new study, published this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, scientists in the Department of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt report definitive evidence of a specific mechanism within ants that is responsible for unlocking aggressive behaviors toward other ants. The research — the first to pinpoint this mechanism and its precise role in ant biology — reports a social characteristic that could help account for their evolutionary success....

The recent research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, offers new infrared measurements of NGC 1566, one of the brightest galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood also known as the Spanish Dancer. Located approximately 40 million light years from Earth, the galaxy’s highly active center has made it a popular subject among scientists seeking to understand the formation and evolution of star-forming nebulae. In this case, scientists were able to survey a Type 1a supernova – the explosion of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf star, which Michael Tucker, a fellow at the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at The Ohio State University and a co-author of the study, said researchers caught by mere chance while studying NGC 1566....

An international consortium led by Professors Volker Heussler from the Institute of Cell Biology (ICB) at the University of Bern and Oliver Billker from the Umeå University in Sweden and formerly at the Sanger Institute in Great Britain has taken advantage of this fact. The researchers have carried out a genome-wide gene deletion study on malaria parasites: They specifically removed over 1300 individual genes, observed the effects during the entire life cycle of the parasite and were thus able to identify many new targets in the pathogen....

Planets form as small dust grains stick together and agglomerate with other grains, leading to bigger bodies termed “planetesimals.” These planetesimals continue to collide with each other and are either ejected from the Solar System, gobbled up by the Sun, or form a planet. This is not the end of the story, as planets continue to accrete material well after they have formed. This process is known as late accretion, and it occurs as leftover fragments of planet formation rain down on the young planets....

This conclusion was reached by the researchers after conducting a two-week survey study of 135 American workers. The participants recorded their current mood, how well they had rested, and later in the day, how they felt about aiming for increased status and responsibility at work. “When women are getting a good night’s sleep and their mood is boosted, they are more likely to be oriented in their daily intentions toward achieving status and responsibility at work,” said lead author Leah Sheppard, an associate professor in WSU’s Carson College of Business....

Knowing the precise value for how fast the universe expands is important for determining the age, size, and fate of the cosmos. Unraveling this mystery has been one of the greatest challenges in astrophysics in recent years. Members of the H0LiCOW (H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL’s Wellspring) team used Hubble and a technique that is completely independent of any previous method to measure the universe’s expansion, a value called the Hubble constant....

Now, science is opening the door to the development of new materials with these seductive qualities. Researchers have used computational techniques to identify 43 previously unknown forms of carbon that are thought to be stable and superhard — including several predicted to be slightly harder than or nearly as hard as diamonds. Each new carbon variety consists of carbon atoms arranged in a distinct pattern in a crystal lattice. The study — published on September 3 in the journal npj Computational Materials — combines computational predictions of crystal structures with machine learning to hunt for novel materials....

Osmotic energy generators vary less from one day to the next than solar and wind energy farms, making them more reliable than these green energy staples. However, the clay, graphene oxide, MXene, and molybdenum disulfide nanomaterials commonly used in membranes tend to collapse and disintegrate in water. While nanosheets made from boron nitride have recently shown promise, remaining stable as temperatures rise and not easily reacting with other substances, membranes made from boron nitride alone are not hardy enough to withstand water for a long time either, rapidly beginning to leak ions as they develop microscopic cracks....

In this sonification, the image is scanned clockwise like a radar. The radius is mapped to pitch, so light farther from the center is higher pitched. The outline of the nebula’s shell can be heard in the rising and falling of pitch, punctuated by its spokes. Brightness controls the volume. Sonification credit: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) NGC 2392, known as the Eskimo Nebula, Clown-faced Nebula, Lion Nebula, or Caldwell 39, is a double-shelled planetary nebula, with the more distant gas having composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star only 10,000 years ago....

It seems like something straightforward in essence, but apparently being a heavy cannabis smoker as a teenager results in a significant cognitive decline in adulthood, something that is not seen comparably in adult users of the drug. Clinical psychologist Madeline Meier at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and her colleagues published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research group used data from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which is an ongoing multi-factor survey involving 1,037 New Zealanders that were followed from birth....

MIT PhD student Rachel Bielajew is taking on plasma turbulence, and helping make a better world — through science and community action. Up until she served in the Peace Corps in Malawi, Rachel Bielajew was open to a career reboot. Having studied nuclear engineering as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, graduate school had been on her mind. But seeing the drastic impacts of climate change play out in real-time in Malawi — the lives of the country’s subsistence farmers swing wildly, depending on the rains — convinced Bielajew of the importance of nuclear engineering....

A vital ingredient in mince pies, biscuits and stuffing — and of course a large amount fed to turkeys, the future of Christmas dinners containing wheat could be at risk, with the persistent weed making its way across British fields. Black-grass (Alopecurus myosuroides) is a native annual weed which although natural, large infestations in farmers’ fields can force them to abandon their winter wheat — the UK’s main cereal crop....

The results are published in the 1st May 2013 edition of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The study draws on the star survey work of the HerMES project led by Professor Seb Oliver at the University of Sussex and indicates that early galaxies were more bloated, contained more dust and were distributed over larger regions than previously thought. Around a thousand galaxies were studied, chosen because they are very distant and forming stars at very high rates....

Childhood obesity also more prevalent among U.S. households with low socioeconomic status. Nearly one in five U.S. children and teenagers has obesity, and statistics show a higher prevalence of obesity in certain ethnicities, such as Hispanics and Blacks. Now results of a study being presented at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, suggest that Spanish as a family’s primary language is a predictor of childhood obesity, regardless of ethnicity....

Although the rocks that record the earliest parts of Earth’s history have been destroyed or deformed by more than four billion years of geology, scientists can use modern rocks, moon samples, and meteorites to figure out when and how the Earth and moon formed, and what they might once have looked like. How did the Earth and moon form? The Earth, like all the other planets in the solar system, started out its life as a disc of dust and gas orbiting the young Sun....

A new study of vampire bats living in captivity with strangers supports the “raising-the-stakes” model of the development of cooperative relationships, which suggests that trust builds over time through the gradual acceleration of smaller mutual investments in each other’s well-being. Researchers studied vampire bats in captivity over 15 months that were brought together from two geographically separate roosts. They considered a cooperative relationship to be formed when the previously unfamiliar bats shared food with each other, and found that any relationships that reached that point began with increases in grooming, a lower-cost behavior....