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Wide Area Networks (WANs), the global backbones and workhorses of today’s internet that connect billions of computers over continents and oceans, are the foundation of modern online services. As COVID-19 has placed a vital reliance on online services, today’s networks are struggling to deliver high bandwidth and availability imposed by emerging workloads related to machine learning, video calls, and health care. To connect WANs over hundreds of miles, fiber optic cables that transmit data using light are threaded throughout our neighborhoods, made of incredibly thin strands of glass or plastic known as optical fibers....

Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun’s protoplanetary disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet....

This will be Watkins’ first trip to space following her selection as an astronaut in 2017. Watkins joins NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, as a crew member for the Crew-4 mission. NASA previously announced the assignments of Lindgren and Hines as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively, in February, and ESA announced Cristoforetti as a mission specialist for the mission in May....

Around 12 billion years ago, the universe emerged from a great cosmic dark age as the first stars and galaxies lit up. With a new analysis of data collected by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope, scientists are now closer than ever to detecting the ultra-faint signature of this turning point in cosmic history. In a paper on the preprint site ArXiv and soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers present the first analysis of data from a new configuration of the MWA designed specifically to look for the signal of neutral hydrogen, the gas that dominated the universe during the cosmic dark age....

“You have this enormous reserve of star formation fuel sitting there ready to be stripped by another system,” says study coauthor Mary Putman, an astronomer at Columbia University. Home to millions of stars, dwarf galaxies are outshined by bigger galaxies like the Milky Way with hundreds to thousands of times more stars. But what dwarf galaxies lack in brightness, they make up for in their sheer abundance of star-making fuel....

A recent Tel Aviv University study found that pressure chamber therapy greatly improved social skills and the condition of the autistic brain. The research was carried out on autism animal models. The researchers discovered changes in the brain, including a decrease in neuroinflammation, which has been linked to autism. Furthermore, the social functioning of the animal models treated in the pressure chamber improved significantly. The success of the research has significant implications for the applicability and understanding of pressure chamber therapy as a treatment for autism....

Swimming bacteria look for regions of high nutrient concentration by integrating chemical sensors and molecular motors, much like a self-driving car that uses information from cameras and other sensors to select an appropriate action to reach its destination. Researchers have tried to mimic these behaviors by using small particles propelled by chemical fuels or other energy inputs. While spatial variations in the environment (e.g., in the fuel concentration) can act to physically orient the particle and thereby direct its motion, this type of navigation has limitations....

Researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine and Nemours Children’s Health in Jacksonville collaborated to lead this proof-of-concept pilot study, which is the most thorough investigation to date on the subject. “These results offer hope that harm to the developing brain from Type 1 diabetes might be reversible with rigorous glucose control,” said the paper’s senior author, and co-principal investigator, pediatric endocrinologist Nelly Mauras, MD, of Nemours Children’s Health Jacksonville and professor of pediatrics at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine....

Dr. Kit Prendergast, from the Curtin School of Molecular and Life Sciences, named the new species after her pet dog Zephyr after noticing a protruding part of the insect’s face looked similar to a dog’s snout. The name also acknowledges the role her dog played in providing emotional support during her PhD. Dr. Prendergast is the author of a paper on the discovery that was published on October 31 in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research....

A study published in PLOS ONE shows that the larvae of the Brazilian stingless bee Scaptotrigona depilis depend on interactions between three different species of fungus to complete their development and reach adulthood. The complex process of symbiosis was studied by Brazilian and US researchers as part of a Thematic Project supported by FAPESP and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study was conducted under the auspices of the FAPESP Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use (BIOTA-FAPESP)....

Astronomers have found strong evidence that a massive black hole is being ejected from its host galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour. New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that the black hole collided and merged with another black hole and received a powerful recoil kick from gravitational wave radiation. “It’s hard to believe that a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times the mass of the sun could be moved at all, let alone kicked out of a galaxy at enormous speed,” said Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the new study....

New study proposes light signature for detecting black hole mergers. Gravitational wave detectors are finding black hole mergers in the universe at the rate of one per week. If these mergers occur in empty space, researchers cannot see the associated light that is needed to determine where they happened. However, a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York (CUNY), suggests that researchers might finally be able to see light from black hole mergers if the collisions happen in the presence of gas....

University of California, Berkeley, physicists have dashed those hopes. Based on a statistical analysis of 740 of the brightest supernovae discovered as of 2014, and the fact that none of them appear to be magnified or brightened by hidden black hole “gravitational lenses,” the researchers concluded that primordial black holes can make up no more than about 40 percent of the dark matter in the universe. Primordial black holes could only have been created within the first milliseconds of the Big Bang as regions of the universe with a concentrated mass tens or hundreds of times that of the sun collapsed into objects a hundred kilometers across....

The research, led by Queen Mary University of London and published today (March 7) in PLOS Biology, provides strong evidence that social learning drives the spread of bumblebee behavior – in this case, precisely how they forage for food. A variety of experiments were set up to establish this. The researchers designed a two-option puzzle box that could be opened either by pushing a red tab clockwise or a blue tab counter-clockwise to reveal a 50 percent sucrose solution reward....

One of the materials tested demonstrated some unexpected properties: not only did it repel blood, but it also aided the clotting process. Although this made the material unsuitable for use as a coating for blood pumps and related devices, the researchers quickly realized that it would work ideally as a bandage. Repelling blood and achieving fast clotting are two different properties that are both beneficial in bandages: blood-repellent bandages do not get soaked with blood and do not adhere to the wound, so they can be later removed easily, avoiding secondary bleeding....

The most straightforward way to detect a black hole is to find it in an X-ray binary system. Writing in last week’s issue of the journal, Nature, CfA astronomer Jaesub Hong and five colleagues used the Chandra X-ray Observatory archive to identify a dozen X-ray binaries in a density cusp within three light-years of the Galactic Center. Over the past twelve years, Chandra has observed the region for over 380 hours....

The source of the cosmic squall is a supermassive black hole buried at the center of the galaxy, officially known as SDSS 1430+1339. As matter in the central regions of the galaxy is pulled toward the black hole, it is energized by the strong gravity and magnetic fields near the black hole. The infalling material produces more radiation than all the stars in the host galaxy. This kind of actively growing black hole is known as a quasar....

Social distancing during COVID-19 creates new contexts for drug use. People have traded in nightclubs and dance festivals for virtual raves and Zoom happy hours as a result of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic—yet, many are using drugs in these socially distanced settings, according to a new study by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research at NYU School of Global Public Health....

Researchers at National Jewish Health and the University of Iowa have identified a compound in human breast milk that fights infections by harmful bacteria while allowing beneficial bacteria to thrive. Human breast milk has more than 200 times the amount of glycerol monolaurate (GML) than is found in cows’ milk. Infant formula has none. GML is inexpensive to manufacture. Future research will determine if GML could be a beneficial additive to cow’s milk and infant formula....

Neutron stars are extremely compact objects that can form after the death of a star. They have the mass of our sun or even more, but are incredibly compressed into a sphere with the diameter of a large city. Since their discovery more than 60 years ago, scientists have been trying to decipher their structure. Thus far, however, little is known about the interior of neutron stars. As their extreme properties prevent them from being recreated on Earth in the laboratory, the greatest challenge is to simulate the extreme conditions inside neutron stars....