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Quarks, the smallest building blocks of matter, never appear alone in nature. They are always tightly bound inside the protons and neutrons. However, neutron stars, weighing as much as the Sun, but being just the size of a city like Frankfurt, possess a core so dense that a transition from neutron matter to quark matter may occur. Physicists refer to this process as a phase transition, similar to the liquid-vapor transition in water....

Meteors that have crashed to Earth have long been regarded as relics of the early solar system. These craggy chunks of metal and rock are studded with chondrules — tiny, glassy, spherical grains that were once molten droplets. Scientists have thought that chondrules represent early kernels of terrestrial planets: As the solar system started to coalesce, these molten droplets collided with bits of gas and dust to form larger planetary precursors....

Modeling web traffic could aid cybersecurity, computing infrastructure design, Internet policy, and more. Using a supercomputing system, MIT researchers have developed a model that captures what web traffic looks like around the world on a given day, which can be used as a measurement tool for internet research and many other applications. Understanding web traffic patterns at such a large scale, the researchers say, is useful for informing internet policy, identifying and preventing outages, defending against cyberattacks, and designing more efficient computing infrastructure....

Now, a team at MIT has come up with a promising solution: a coating that not only adds water-repellency to natural fabrics such as cotton and silk, but is also more effective than the existing coatings. The new findings are described in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, in a paper by MIT professors Kripa Varanasi and Karen Gleason, former MIT postdoc Dan Soto, and two others. “The challenge has been driven by the environmental regulators” because of the phaseout of the existing waterproofing chemicals, Varanasi explains....

It’s a classic visual illusion: Two gray dots appear on a background that consists of a gradient from light gray to black. Although the two dots are identical, they appear very different based on where they are placed against the background. Scientists who study the brain have been trying to figure out the mechanism behind this illusion, known as simultaneous brightness contrast, for more than 100 years. An MIT-led study now suggests that this phenomenon relies on brightness estimation that takes place before visual information reaches the brain’s visual cortex, possibly within the retina....

Cambridge researchers have discovered how T cells – an important component of our immune system – are able keep on killing as they hunt down and kill cancer cells, repeatedly reloading their toxic weapons. Cytotoxic T cells are specialist white blood cells that are trained by our immune system to recognize and eliminate threats – including tumor cells and cells infected with invading viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19....

In Canada, alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cases of cancer in 2020, including 24 percent of breast cancer cases, 20 percent of colon cancers, 15 percent of rectal cancers, and 13 percent of oral and liver cancers. “All drinking involves risk,” said study co-author Dr. Jürgen Rehm, Senior Scientist, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH. “And with alcohol-related cancers, all levels of consumption are associated with some risk....

What is monkeypox?Where did it come from?How is it transmitted?What are the symptoms?What are the public health recommendations?Does the smallpox vaccine offer protection?Is it the next viral pandemic? With cases reported in a number of countries, human monkeypox infection is generating global interest and concern as an emerging infectious disease threat even in the midst of a slowly relenting COVID-19 pandemic. What is monkeypox virus? Monkeypox is a member of a closely related group of viruses in the Orthopoxvirus genus that includes smallpox, cowpox, and camelpox....

A global inventory has revealed that CO2 emissions from oil refineries were 1.3 Gigatonnes (Gt) in 2018 and could be as large as 16.5 Gt from 2020 to 2030. Based on the results, the researchers recommend distinct mitigation strategies for refineries in different regions and age groups. The findings appear today (August 20, 2021) in the journal One Earth. “This study provides a detailed picture of oil refining capacity and CO2 emissions worldwide,” says Dabo Guan of Tsinghua University....

Carbon 60, or C60 for short, whose official name is Buckminsterfullerene, comes in spherical molecules consisting of 60 carbon atoms organized in five-membered and six-membered rings. The name “buckyball” derives from their resemblance to the architectural work of Richard Buckminster Fuller, who designed many dome structures that look similar to C60. Their formation was thought to only be possible in lab settings until their detection in space challenged this assumption....

The scientists presented their film at a meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in Boston, Massachusetts last week. Lutz Mädler, a process engineer at the University of Bremen in Germany, wants to find cheaper ways to make these fragments of matter, which could be used as catalysts, medical imaging probes, and more. This was the first MRS session dedicated to the combustion synthesis of nanoparticles. The hope is that this technique will improve the production process of nanoparticles, which usually require multiple, complex steps from expensive precursors....

Using nanoparticles to deliver a nucleic acid (siRNA) into tumor cells in mouse models, scientists from UCLA and City of Hope have become the first to inhibit the mechanism that drives cancer growth. When scientists develop cancer therapies, they target the features that make the disease deadly: tumor growth, metastasis, recurrence and drug resistance. In epithelial cancers — cancers of the breast, ovaries, prostate, skin and bladder, which begin in the organs’ lining — these processes are controlled by a genetic program called epithelial–mesenchymal transition....

NASA is currently basking in the success of their Curiosity mission to Mars, but if the space agency hopes to continue to lead the charge in space exploration, it needs to find new ways of doing old things. NASA’s PhoneSat project aims to launch low-cost satellites, easily assembled, and place them into orbit. Engineers have been tasked by using consumer off-the-shelf components to create their PhoneSats. The innards contain a Google Nexus smartphone and the whole satellite is powered by Android....

“Most of Earth is shielded from the solar wind,” said Mark Conde, space physicist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “But right near the poles, in the midday sector, our magnetic field becomes a funnel where the solar wind can get all the way down to the atmosphere.” These funnels, known as the polar cusps, can cause some trouble. The influx of solar wind disturbs the atmosphere, disrupting satellites and radio and GPS signals....

When NASA’s Curiosity rover arrived at the “sulfate-bearing unit” last fall, scientists thought they’d seen the last evidence that lakes once covered this region of Mars. That’s because the rock layers here formed in drier settings than regions explored earlier in the mission. The area’s sulfates – salty minerals – are thought to have been left behind when water was drying to a trickle. So Curiosity’s team was surprised to discover the mission’s clearest evidence yet of ancient water ripples that formed within lakes....

The team of scientists and engineers behind NASA’s Curiosity rover named a hill along the rover’s path on Mars in honor of a recently deceased mission scientist. A craggy hump that stretches 450 feet (120 meters) tall, “Rafael Navarro Mountain” is located on Mount Sharp in northwest Gale Crater. The inspiration for the name is award-winning scientist Rafael Navarro-González; he died on January 28, 2021, from complications related to COVID-19....

A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event. “We have waited a long time for a gamma-ray burst this shockingly, eye-wateringly bright,” said Julie McEnery, project scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland....

Originally, Geotail was equipped with two data recorders to collect the mission’s scientific data. In 2012, one data recorder failed after the mission had already spent 20 years of gathering information about the plasma environment around Earth. The remaining data recorder continued collecting data for an additional 10 years until it experienced an anomaly on June 28, 2022. The team at JAXA discovered the error with the recorder. They have been performing tests to investigate the cause and extent of the damage....

The region located between the surface of the sun and its atmosphere has been revealed as a more violent place than previously understood, according to images and data from NASA’s newest solar observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS. Solar observatories look at the sun in layers. By capturing light emitted by atoms of different temperatures, they can focus in on different heights above the sun’s surface extending well out into the solar atmosphere, the corona....

“One of the most basic questions about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is: how deep are the roots?” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Juno data indicate that the solar system’s most famous storm is almost one-and-a-half Earths wide, and has roots that penetrate about 200 miles (300 kilometers) into the planet’s atmosphere.” This animation takes the viewer on a simulated flight into, and then out of, Jupiter’s upper atmosphere at the location of the Great Red Spot....