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A beating heart, a complex organ responsible for pumping blood throughout the body. Not something typically associated with laboratory settings such as a Petri dish. However, this perception may change in the future as research progresses toward the creation of artificial organs, which have the potential to save the lives of those with organ failure. To design artificial organs you first have to understand stem cells and the genetic instructions that govern their remarkable properties....

At 12:40 p.m. EST, December 11, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon. Orion will be recovered by NASA’s Landing and Recovery team, U.S. Navy and Department of Defense partners aboard the USS Portland. Credit: NASA At the direction of the NASA recovery director, Navy divers and other team members in several inflatable boats approached the spacecraft....

“Parker Solar Probe was designed to take care of itself and its precious payload during this close approach, with no control from us on Earth — and now we know it succeeded,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. “Parker is the culmination of six decades of scientific progress. Now, we have realized humanity’s first close visit to our star, which will have implications not just here on Earth, but for a deeper understanding of our universe....

Consumption of chili pepper may reduce the relative risk of cardiovascular disease mortality by 26%, according to an analysis of diet and mortality data from four large, international studies.Chili pepper consumption was associated with a 25% reduction in death from any cause and 23% fewer cancer deaths, compared to people who never or only rarely consumed chili pepper. Individuals who consume chili pepper may live longer and may have a significantly reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2020....

Philip Marcus, from the University of California, Berkeley, will explain why the pictures from astronomers, both professionals and amateur, are not telling the whole story about the Great Red Spot. His session, The Shedding of Jupiter’s Red Flakes Does Not Mean It Is Dying, took place at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics 72nd Annual Meeting on November 25, 2019, at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle....

One of the fundamental ideas of quantum theory is that quantum objects can exist both as a wave and as a particle, and that they don’t exist as one or the other until they are measured. This is the premise that Erwin Schrödinger was illustrating with his famous thought experiment involving a dead-or-maybe-not-dead cat in a box. “This premise, commonly referred to as the wave function, has been used more as a mathematical tool than a representation of actual quantum particles,” said David Arvidsson-Shukur, a Ph....

Researchers at the University of Chicago have created the first usable computational model of the entire virus responsible for COVID-19—and they are making this model widely available to help advance research during the pandemic. “If you can understand how a virus works, that’s the first step towards stopping it,” said Prof. Gregory Voth, whose team created the model published in Biophysical Journal. “Each thing you know about the virus’s life cycle and composition is a vulnerability point where you can hit it....

A new global assessment shows that human impacts have greatly reduced plant-fungus symbioses, which play a key role in sequestering carbon in soils. Restoring these ecosystems could be one strategy to slow climate change. Human-induced transformations of Earth’s ecosystems have strongly affected the distribution patterns of plant-fungus symbioses known as mycorrhiza. These changes have greatly reduced vegetation featuring a particular variety of mycorrhiza—ectomycorrhiza—a type of plant-fungal symbiosis crucially important for soil carbon storage....

Bañados’ discovery was followed up by Emmanuel Momjian of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which allowed the team to see with unprecedented detail the jet shooting out of a quasar that formed within the universe’s first billion years of existence. The findings, published in two papers in The Astrophysical Journal, will allow astronomers to better probe the universe’s youth during an important period of transition to its current state. Quasars are comprised of enormous black holes accreting matter at the centers of massive galaxies....

How the police use extra powers they have received during COVID-19 will have a long-lasting effect on their relationship with the public, argues a university researcher who is also a senior police officer. In a recent article, Dan Jones – an Inspector with the Edmonton Police Service in Canada who is completing a PhD at the University of Huddersfield in the UK – warns against police forces adopting an authoritarian or militarized approach....

Researchers from The University of Queensland and University of Sydney have filed a patent application for the potential drug, which is a modified version of a molecule found in a Penicillium fungus, and published their results in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Professor Rob Capon, from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, said he and his team were investigating the chemistry of marine fungi, including a sample collected next to a boat ramp in Tasmania....

Rates of psychological distress, including depression and anxiety symptoms, were found among Australian adults during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia, according to a new study published July 28, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jill Newby of the University of New South Wales at the Black Dog Institute, Sydney, Australia, and colleagues. The acute and long-term mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are largely unknown....

New tech­nolo­gies that exploit quan­tum behav­ior for com­put­ing and other appli­ca­tions are closer than ever to being real­ized due to recent advances, accord­ing to a review arti­cle pub­lished this week in the jour­nal Sci­ence. These advances could enable the cre­ation of immensely pow­er­ful com­put­ers as well as other appli­ca­tions, such as highly sen­si­tive detec­tors capa­ble of prob­ing bio­log­i­cal sys­tems. “We are really excited about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of new semi­con­duc­tor mate­ri­als and new exper­i­men­tal sys­tems that have become avail­able in the last decade,” said Jason Petta, one of the authors of the report and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of physics at Prince­ton University....

Quantum to classical? The superposition principle is a hallmark of quantum theory which emerges from one of the most fundamental equations of quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation. It describes particles in the framework of wave functions, which, much like water waves on the surface of a pond, can exhibit interference effects. But in contrast to water waves, which are a collective behavior of many interacting water molecules, quantum waves can also be associated with isolated single particles....

On behalf of the international team of 60 investigators, the work was presented by researcher Veselin Kostov at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu. The new planet, called TOI-1338 b, is about 6.9 times larger than Earth. It orbits its pair of host stars every 95 days. One of the stars is more massive and much brighter than the other, and as the planet orbits around it blocks some of the light from the brighter star....

Mission Control, we have a problem In summer 2020, while the Integral Flight Control Team in Germany were getting used to a very different working environment – learning to fly their mission from home while dealing with the uncertainty the COVID-19 pandemic created – the spacecraft decided to throw another spanner into the works. One day, Integral went into “Safe Mode” – when instruments are turned off and a spacecraft runs just its most basic functions, while facing the Sun to ensure it receives full power – alerting its control team to a problem....

Raising hopes for cell-based therapies, University of California, San Francisco researchers have created the first functioning human thymus tissue from embryonic stem cells in the laboratory. The researchers showed that, in mice, the tissue can be used to foster the development of white blood cells the body needs to mount healthy immune responses and to prevent harmful autoimmune reactions. The scientists who developed the thymus cells — which caused the proliferation and maturation of functioning immune cells when transplanted — said the achievement marks a significant step toward potential new treatments based on stem-cell and organ transplantation, as well as new therapies for type-1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, and for immunodeficiency diseases....

New research published in the Journal of Dental Research describes an advance in efforts to develop a method to replace missing teeth with new bioengineered teeth generated from a person’s own gum cells. The research is led by Professor Paul Sharpe, an expert in craniofacial development and stem cell biology at King’s College London’s Dental Institute, and was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Center at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London, UK....

“We think this could be one way cancer cells actually migrate from one place to another to induce metastasis,” says Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D., senior author for this study, director of the Developmental Cancer Therapeutics Program at the Hollings Cancer Center and professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at MUSC. The Ogretmen laboratory studies the signaling lipid ceramide and its role in many biological pathways, including cancer biology. Ceramides are made in cells by a family of six ceramide synthase enzymes....

As they age, physical or cognitive decline can make it difficult for some older adults to navigate their community, affecting their quality of life and becoming a burden on society. However, a recent study by researchers at the University of Tsukuba demonstrates that a willingness to travel longer distances by walking or cycling may help reduce the risk of early functional disability and mortality. A recent study published in Health and Place presents a model linking death and functional disability rates in older adults to the distances they are willing to travel on foot or bicycle for common community trips....