While observing the young star, astronomers led by Dr. John Ilee from the University of Leeds discovered it was not in fact one star, but two. The main object, referred to as MM 1a, is a young massive star surrounded by a rotating disc of gas and dust that was the focus of the scientists’ original investigation. A faint object, MM 1b, was detected just beyond the disc in orbit around MM 1a....
Quasars are very bright objects that lie at the center of some galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes. As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, energy is released, allowing astronomers to spot them even when they are very far away. The newly discovered quasar, nicknamed P172+18, is so distant that light from it has traveled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just around 780 million years old....
Scientists have known for almost a century that the universe is expanding, meaning the distance between galaxies across the universe is becoming ever more vast every second. But exactly how fast space is stretching, a value known as the Hubble constant, has remained stubbornly elusive. Now, University of Chicago professor Wendy Freedman and colleagues have a new measurement for the rate of expansion in the modern universe, suggesting the space between galaxies is stretching faster than scientists would expect....
The scientists published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE. Ancient dentists treated toothaches with beeswax. Experts in Italy, who have been studying the 6,500-year-old jaw and tooth, which was found more than 100 years ago in Slovenia, think that beeswax was applied around the time of the person’s death, but cannot confirm whether it was before or after their death. If it turns out to have been applied before death, it was probably done to reduce pain and sensitivity from a vertical crack in the enamel and dentin layers of the tooth....
There is growing evidence that electronic cigarettes have adverse effects on the cardiovascular system, reports a paper published November 7, 2019, in Cardiovascular Research, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).[1] “E-cigarettes contain nicotine, particulate matter, metals, and flavorings, not just harmless water vapor,” said senior author Professor Loren Wold, of The Ohio State University, Columbus, US. “We know from air pollution studies that fine particles (less than 2....
The researchers, who published their findings in the Journal of Biological Chemistry included Yale’s Benjamin Silliman Professor of Chemistry Gary Brudvig and graduate students Gourab Banerjee and Ipsita Ghosh. The team explained the one significant difference in the amino acids surrounding the active site for water oxidation between cyanobacteria and green plants such as spinach. The high conservation occurs despite the fact that, in evolutionary terms, green plants and cyanobacteria diverged roughly one billion years ago....
“These objects look like gas and behave like stars,” said co-author Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group. The new objects look compact most of the time and stretch out when their orbits bring them closest to the black hole. Their orbits range from about 100 to 1,000 years, said lead author Anna Ciurlo, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher....
Abnormal crosstalk between blood platelets and cells lining blood vessels is one cause of deadly organ damage in patients with severe COVID-19, a new study finds. Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study revealed the protein signals given off by platelets, cell fragments that contribute to blood clotting, create inflammation, abnormal clotting, and damage to vessels when exposed to the pandemic virus. Published online September 8 in the journal Science Advances, the work identified two related genes, S1000A8 and S1000A9, which are turned up in the platelets of COVID-19 patients, causing them to make more of myeloid-related proteins (MRP) 8 and 14....
A new study from the University of Ottawa found that in the course of a single human generation, the likelihood of a bumble bee population surviving in a given place has declined by an average of over 30%. Peter Soroye, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa, Jeremy Kerr, professor at the University of Ottawa and head of the lab group Peter is in, along with Tim Newbold, research fellow at UCL (University College London), linked the alarming idea of ”climate chaos” to extinctions, and showed that those extinctions began decades ago....
The organoids, which are described in a study recently published in the journal Cancer Discovery, closely mimic the cellular, molecular, and architectural features of myelopoietic (blood cell-producing) bone marrow. The research also showed that the organoids provide a micro-environment that can accept and support the survival of cells from patients with blood malignancies, including multiple myeloma cells, which are notoriously difficult to maintain outside the human body. Dr. Abdullah Khan, a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and the first author of the study, said: “Remarkably, we found that the cells in their bone marrow organoids resemble real bone marrow cells not just in terms of their activity and function, but also in their architectural relationships – the cell types ‘self-organize’ and arrange themselves within the organoids just like they do in human bone marrow in the body....
Specifically, Rounce and his team found that in a future scenario with continued investment in fossil fuels, over 40 percent of the glacial mass will be gone within the century, and over 80 percent of glaciers by number could well disappear. Even in a best-case, low-emissions scenario, where the increase in global mean temperature is limited to +1.5° C relative to pre-industrial levels, over 25 percent of glacial mass will be gone and nearly 50 percent of glaciers by number are projected to disappear....
On November 19, CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., M.P.H., endorsed the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) expanded recommendations for booster shots to include all adults ages 18 years and older who received a Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least six months after their second dose. The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authorization and CDC’s recommendation for use are critical next steps forward in our country’s booster program – a program which will help provide increased protection against COVID-19 disease and death....
Researchers from Dartmouth College combined newly available, comprehensive economic data for regions all around the globe with the average temperature for the hottest five days of the year for each region. They discovered that from 1992 to 2013, heat waves statistically correlated with changes in economic growth and that the negative effects of extreme heat on human health, productivity, and agricultural production cost an estimated $16 trillion. The researchers note that the findings highlight the urgent need for policies and technologies that protect people during the hottest days of the year, especially in the world’s hottest and most economically vulnerable countries....
There are a lot of potentially useful raw materials bound up in used face masks, grocery bags, and food wrap. But it has been much cheaper to keep making more of these single-use plastics than to recover and recycle them. Now, an international research team led by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has cracked the code that stymied previous attempts to break down these persistent plastics. They reported their discovery in today’s issue (February 23, 2023) of the journal Science....
The conquerors needed copper for their artillery, as well as for coins, kettles, and pans, but they lacked the knowledge and skills to produce the metal. Even Spain at that time had not produced the metal domestically for centuries, relying on imports from central Europe. In Mesoamerica, they had to depend on local smelters, furnace builders, and miners to produce the essential material. Those skilled workers, in turn, were able to bargain for exemption from the taxes levied on the other indigenous people....
So how do they keep missions flying when a viral pandemic puts the people of the Agency at risk? The first priority is the health and well-being of the workforce across the Agency, while those working at ESA’s mission control center, in Darmstadt, Germany, have the unique challenge of maintaining missions in orbit and ensuring critical ground infrastructure functions as it should, including seven ground stations located on three continents....
Due to their excellent genomic surveillance system, the South African health authorities reported the cases of this variant very quickly. Unlike other variants, Omicron can be detected using a reliable PCR test without requiring whole-genome sequencing, which has allowed rapid monitoring of its spread. By November 23, 1,100 cases of the variant (73 percent of all the positive cases) had been detected in the Gauteng province of South Africa, up from 10 recorded in early November....
Now, in a new study of nearly 136,000 patients from Intermountain Health in Salt Lake City, researchers found that depressive symptoms and severity of depression was significant among all patients in the study, regardless of whether they were infected with COVID-19 or not. In the study, results of which were presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 2023 scientific session in New Orleans on March 4, Intermountain researchers found that depression symptoms rose significantly during the pandemic, with more than half of all patients reporting some degree of clinically-relevant depressive symptoms....
The World Health Organization (WHO) has added another coronavirus variant to its list to monitor. It’s called the mu variant and has been designated a variant of interest (VOI). What this means is that mu has genetic differences to the other known variants and is causing infections in multiple countries, so therefore might present a particular threat to public health. It’s possible that mu’s genetic changes might make it more transmissible, allow it to cause more severe disease and render it more able to escape the immune response driven by vaccines or infection with previous variants....
A new report tracks the evolution of a variant lineage of SARS-CoV-2 associated with rapid transmission in Manaus, Brazil, that evolved in November 2020. The study’s authors suggest this variant, “P.1,” may be more transmissible and more likely to evade protective immunity elicited by previous infection with non-P.1 lineages. Manaus, Brazil, reached unprecedented levels of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in mid-2020. And after a momentary respite, COVID-19 cases surged with fatal consequences....
