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Researchers have used biosolids to produce hydrogen from wastewater, in new technology that supports the comprehensive recycling of one of humanity’s unlimited resources — sewage. The innovation focuses on the advanced upcycling of biosolids and biogas, by-products of the wastewater treatment process. Developed by researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, the patented technology uses a special material derived from biosolids to spark chemical reactions for producing hydrogen from biogas....

Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A illustrate the combined imaging power of two of astronomy’s cutting-edge tools, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, and the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico. Some two billion light-years away, the yellowish elliptical galaxy in the center of the image appears quite ordinary as seen by Hubble in visible wavelengths of light....

NGC 1466 certainly is one for extremes. It has a mass equivalent to roughly 140,000 Suns and an age of around 13.1 billion years, making it almost as old as the Universe itself. This fossil-like relic from the early Universe lies some 160,000 light-years away from us. Nestled within this ancient time capsule are 49 known RR Lyrae variable stars, which are indispensable tools for measuring distances in the Universe....

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a beautiful galaxy that, with its reddish and yellow central area, looks rather like an explosion from a Hollywood movie. The galaxy, called NGC 5010, is in a period of transition. The aging galaxy is moving on from life as a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way, to an older, less defined type called an elliptical galaxy. In this in-between phase, astronomers refer to NGC 5010 as a lenticular galaxy, which has features of both spirals and ellipticals....

Stars are born within giant clouds of gas. These massive clouds, or stellar nurseries, grow unstable and begin to collapse under gravity, becoming the seeds that will grow into new stars. By analyzing the luminosity, size, and formation rate of different stellar nurseries, scientists hope to learn more about the processes that can lead to the formation of a newborn star. Studying nurseries within different galaxies will provide information about star formation at different points in time and space throughout the Universe....

This thin, glittering streak of stars is the spiral galaxy ESO 121-6, which lies in the southern constellation of Pictor (The Painter’s Easel). Viewed almost exactly side-on, the intricate structure of the swirling arms is hidden, but the full length of the galaxy can be seen — including the intense glow from the central bulge, a dense region of tightly packed young stars sitting at the center of the spiral arms....

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided us with another outstanding image of a nearby galaxy. This week, we highlight the galaxy NGC 4183, seen here with a beautiful backdrop of distant galaxies and nearby stars. Located about 55 million light-years from the sun and spanning about eighty thousand light-years, NGC 4183 is a little smaller than the Milky Way. This galaxy, which belongs to the Ursa Major Group, lies in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs)....

New research finds that ice-sheet-wide collapse in West Antarctica isn’t inevitable: the pace of ice loss varies according to regional differences in atmosphere and ocean circulation. An international team of researchers has combined satellite imagery and climate and ocean records to obtain the most detailed understanding yet of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 3.3 meters – is responding to climate change....

University of Alberta researchers find SARS-CoV-2 infects immature red blood cells, reducing oxygen in the blood and impairing immune response. A new study published in the journal Stem Cell Reports by University of Alberta researchers is shedding light on why many COVID-19 patients, even those not in the hospital, are suffering from hypoxia—a potentially dangerous condition in which there is decreased oxygenation in the body’s tissues. The study also shows why the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone has been an effective treatment for those with the virus....

In “Persistent Poor Health Post-COVID-19 Is Not Associated With Respiratory Complications or Initial Disease Severity,” Liam Townsend, MD, and co-authors looked at a number of measures of recovery for 153 patients who were followed in an outpatient clinic a median of 75 days after their COVID-19 diagnoses. “We found that fatigue, ill-health and breathlessness were all common following COVID-19,” said Dr. Townsend of the Department of Infectious Diseases, St. James’s Hospital and Department of Clinical Medicine, Trinity Translational Medicine Institute, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland....

NIMS, HUE and HUSM have succeeded in developing a method of easily and cheaply producing an adhesive structure capable of repeated attachment and detachment. The design of this structure was inspired by the adhesive spatula-shaped hairs (setae) found on the footpads of flies, while the method of producing it was hinted at by seta formation in fly pupae. These environmentally sound technologies could potentially contribute to a more sustainable society....

The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there. Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the analysis today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California....

Los Alamos scientists have incorporated meticulously engineered colloidal quantum dots into a new type of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) containing an integrated optical resonator, which allows them to function as lasers. These novel, dual-function devices clear the path toward versatile, manufacturing-friendly laser diodes. The technology can potentially revolutionize numerous fields from photonics and optoelectronics to chemical sensing and medical diagnostics. “This latest breakthrough along with other recent advances in quantum dot chemistry and device engineering that we have achieved suggest that laser diodes assembled from solution may soon become a reality,” said Victor Klimov, head of the quantum dot group at Los Alamos National Laboratory....

It’s located 17.77 miles off the North Foreland on the Kent coast. It will cover 230 square kilometers. The first foundation was installed in March 2011 and phase I is expected to be completed at the end of 2012 at the cost of €2.2 billion. At that time, it will deliver a capacity of 630 MW. The first phase consisted of 175 turbines and two offshore substations, which are being erected on a monopile and will be connected by 210 km of array cables....

But a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that, among men, the opposite may be true: that low testosterone levels in the blood are linked to more severe disease. The study could not prove that low testosterone is a cause of severe COVID-19; low levels could simply serve as a marker of some other causal factors. Still, the researchers urge caution with ongoing clinical trials investigating hormonal therapies that block or lower testosterone or increase estrogen as a treatment for men with COVID-19....

A new understanding of Mars is beginning to emerge, thanks to the first year of NASA’s InSight lander mission. Findings described in a set of six papers published today reveal a planet alive with quakes, dust devils, and strange magnetic pulses. Five of the papers were published in Nature. An additional paper in Nature Geoscience details the InSight spacecraft’s landing site, a shallow crater nicknamed “Homestead hollow” in a region called Elysium Planitia....

The research, led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) planetary scientists and published in two papers in Geophysical Research Letters, could also indicate that alternating layers of volcanic and sedimentary rocks lie beneath the surface. The 4.7 magnitude earthquake, or marsquake, happened in May 2022 and lasted more than four hours, releasing five times more energy than any previously recorded quake. Though moderate by Earth standards, the temblor was nonetheless powerful enough to send seismic surface waves completely around the planet’s circumference, the first time this phenomenon has been observed on Mars....

CfA astronomers Chris Hayward, Matt Ashby and Tony Stark are members of the SPT team that made the discovery and then followed up with the Spitzer Space Telescope, the ALMA array, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Gemini optical/infrared telescope. The scientists were able to determine the cluster’s distance and epoch from the redshift of its spectral features, including a line of ionized carbon, and to characterize the overall emission properties across a wider range of wavelengths....

The world around us has one temporal and three spatial dimensions. Physicists studying condensed matter have long been dealing with systems of lower dimensionality — two-dimensional (2D) quantum wells, one-dimensional (1D) quantum wires and zero-dimensional (0D) quantum dots. 2D systems have found the widest technical applications — it is thanks to the reduced dimensions that efficient LEDs and laser diodes, fast transistors in integrated circuits, and WiFi radio amplifiers operate....

Here’s a simple thought experiment: imagine everyone is now fully vaccinated with COVID vaccines – which are excellent but can’t save all lives. Some people who get infected with COVID will still die. All of these people will be fully vaccinated – 100%. That doesn’t mean vaccines aren’t effective at reducing death. The risk of dying from COVID doubles roughly every seven years older a patient is. The 35-year difference between a 35-year-old and a 70-year-old means the risk of death between the two patients has doubled five times – equivalently it has increased by a factor of 32....