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The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. Atoms within superfluids do not experience resistance since they exploit quantum effects to band together. This allows them to perform strange feats, like flowing up the walls of their containers. These atoms should also be able to conduct through a narrow channel, without feeling any resistance caused by the confined space, in the same manner as the electrons in a superconductor move without any electrical resistance....

However, using ALD for depositing layers on larger surfaces has been a struggle, especially when it comes to manufacturing materials that must be kept at low cost, e.g. catalysts and solar devices. “The sticking point is not necessarily making the right material but making it cheaply,” explains Professor Jeremy Luterbacher, head of EPFL’s Laboratory of Sustainable and Catalytic Processing (LPDC). “Coating larger surface areas with gas-phase methods requires long deposition times, and huge excesses of precursor, both of which increase costs,” adds Benjamin Le Monnier, the Ph....

Environmental scientists are often interested in gathering samples at the most interesting locations, or “maxima,” in an environment. One example could be a source of leaking chemicals, where the concentration is the highest and mostly unspoiled by external factors. But a maximum can be any quantifiable value that researchers want to measure, such as water depth or parts of coral reef most exposed to air. Efforts to deploy maximum-seeking robots suffer from efficiency and accuracy issues....

It would seem logical that periods of global warming in Earth’s history started the extinction pulses that defined the geological record. However, that’s not the case as a report that was published this week proves. The warming of the Earth is accompanied by increased biodiversity. That doesn’t mean that the mass extinction pulses won’t take place. The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

It wasn’t any particular dying star so much as the idea of one. In the 1980s, Saul Perlmutter at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and his collaborators realized that they could use data about supernovae to research the history of the universe. Supernovae are extremely bright exploding stars that cast much of their mass out into space before they wink out. Fortunately, Type Ia supernovae’s brightness is very consistent....

Cassini scientists have a bevy of investigations planned for Dione. Gravity-science data from the flyby will improve scientists’ knowledge of the moon’s internal structure and allow comparisons to Saturn’s other moons. Cassini has performed this sort of gravity science investigation with only a handful of Saturn’s 62 known moons. During the flyby, Cassini’s cameras and spectrometers will get a high-resolution peek at Dione’s north pole at a resolution of only a few feet (or meters)....

The comet photos were taken after NEOWISE skimmed closest to the Sun on July 3, 2020, at a distance of 27 million miles (43 million kilometers). Other comets often break apart due to thermal and gravitational stresses at such close encounters, but Hubble’s view shows that apparently NEOWISE’s solid nucleus stayed intact. “Hubble has far better resolution than we can get with any other telescope of this comet,” said lead researcher Qicheng Zhang of Caltech in Pasadena, California....

A study of 232 pregnant women revealed that a small number of non-biological chemicals, commonly found in cosmetics and personal hygiene products, showed a strong correlation with preterm birth. “Our findings suggest that we need to look more closely at whether common environmental exposures are in fact causing preterm births and, if so, where these exposures are coming from,” says study co-leader Tal Korem, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Program for Mathematical Genomics and the Departments of Systems Biology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia....

Now, UCLA chemists have developed a new method to produce nanoribbons of graphene, next-generation structures that many scientists believe will one day power electronic devices. This research is published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The nanoribbons are extremely narrow strips of graphene, the width of just a few carbon atoms. They’re useful because they possess a bandgap, which means that electrons must be “pushed” to flow through them to create electrical current, said Yves Rubin, a professor of chemistry in the UCLA College and the lead author of the research....

“When we look at the totality of evidence for both the primary and secondary cardiovascular endpoints in COSMOS, we see promising signals that a cocoa flavanol supplement may reduce important cardiovascular events, including death from cardiovascular disease,” said Sesso. “These findings merit further investigation to better understand the effects of cocoa flavanols on cardiovascular health.” “Previous studies have suggested health benefits of flavanols — compounds in several plant-based foods including cocoa, tea, grapes, and berries,” said Manson....

Researchers examining 82 mass murders that occurred at least partially in academic settings throughout the world found that most mass murderers and mass shooters did not have severe psychiatric illnesses. The work was done by a research team at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). Led by Ragy R. Girgis, MD, the study found that 100% of the mass killings were initiated by males (mean age 28) of whom 66....

A combination of vaccination and naturally acquired infection appears to boost the production of maximally potent antibodies against the COVID-19 virus, new UCLA research finds. The findings, published on December 7, 20221, in the peer-reviewed journal mBio, raise the possibility that vaccine boosters may be equally effective in improving antibodies’ ability to target multiple variants of the virus, including the delta variant, which is now the predominant strain, and the recently detected omicron variant....

Since time immemorial, people have gazed in wonder at the Moon. Its gentle light suggests romance, its strong embrace powers the tides and it is even sometimes blamed for madness. The Moon was once the domain of the gods; many mythologies feature lunar deities. But humans are explorers, setting sail to discover new worlds and, five decades ago, Earth’s natural satellite received its first visitors. Now as international teams across the world forge plans to revisit the Moon, ESA is elaborating how best to facilitate this exploration....

Herds of wooly mammoths once shook the earth beneath their feet, sending humans scurrying across the landscape of prehistoric Ohio. But then something much larger shook the Earth itself, and at that point these mega mammals’ days were numbered. Something – global-scale combustion caused by a comet scraping our planet’s atmosphere or a meteorite slamming into its surface – scorched the air, melted bedrock, and altered the course of Earth’s history....

Early in the pandemic, worldwide shortages of surgical masks and N95 respirators led many people to make or purchase cloth face masks. Now, with safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines available, mask restrictions are easing in many states. However, face masks will likely still be required in certain settings for a while, especially with possible vaccine-resistant variants emerging. They might also be useful in future pandemics. Face masks help reduce disease spread by blocking tiny, virus-laden droplets expelled through the nose and mouth when a person speaks, coughs or sneezes....

The trial was led by Lisa A. Jackson, M.D., MPH, of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, where the first participant received the candidate vaccine on March 16. This interim report details the initial findings from the first 45 participants ages 18 to 55 years enrolled at the study sites in Seattle and at Emory University in Atlanta. Three groups of 15 participants received two intramuscular injections, 28 days apart, of either 25, 100 or 250 micrograms (mcg) of the investigational vaccine....

The authors call for an international collaborative effort to extensively sample coronaviruses from bats as well as wild and farmed animals to help understand the full “universe” of existing and emerging coronaviruses. Such studies could, they say, provide early warning about coronaviruses poised to cause outbreaks in humans. They write that carefully controlled human challenge trials, in which volunteers are exposed to coronaviruses, could yield a fuller understanding of coronavirus disease processes and inform vaccine design....

“If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “A more radical explanation is that Mars’ ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don’t know how the atmosphere did that.” Why this layered mountain sits in a crater has been a challenging question for researchers....

One uncertainty the rover’s inspection may resolve is the timing of when the crystal-shaped features formed, relative to when layers of sediment accumulated around them. Another is whether the original mineral that crystallized into these shapes remains in them or was subsequently dissolved away and replaced by something else. Answers may point to evidence of a drying lake or to groundwater that flowed through the sediment after it became cemented into rock....

A chemical reaction called ring-opening metathesis polymerization, or ROMP, is handy for building novel polymers for various uses such as nanofabrication, high-performance resins, and delivering drugs or imaging agents. However, one downside to this synthesis method is that the resulting polymers do not naturally break down in natural environments, such as inside the body. The MIT research team has come up with a way to make those polymers more degradable by adding a novel type of building block to the backbone of the polymer....