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This new meta-analysis examined 10 previously published studies on tart cherries and exercise recovery. The sample sizes ranged from 8-27, and the average ages of study participants ranged from 18.6 to 34.6 years. Most of the participants were endurance-trained individuals, including cyclists, runners and triathletes. The 10 studies totaled 127 males and 20 females. After pooling results from the 10 published studies, the meta-analysis concluded that tart cherry concentrate in juice or powdered form significantly improved endurance exercise performance when consumed for seven days to 1....

In the study, published online in Environmental Health Perspectives on February 21, the scientists examined e-cigarette devices owned by a sample of 56 users. They found that significant numbers of the devices generated aerosols with potentially unsafe levels of lead, chromium, manganese, and/or nickel. Chronic inhalation of these metals has been linked to lung, liver, immune, cardiovascular, and brain damage, and even cancers. The Food and Drug Administration has the authority to regulate e-cigarettes but is still considering how to do so....

Religion influences secondary school students’ understanding and acceptance of evolutionary theory, but social and cultural factors such as nationality, perceptions of science, and household income are more influential, according to a study involving 5,500 Brazilian and Italian students aged 14-16. An article on the study was published in the journal PLOS ONE. The participants were asked to agree or disagree with a number of statements relating to Earth’s age, the significance of fossils and the origin of human beings, among other topics....

The researchers determined that while ending coal production could affect at least 33.5 million people living in mine-town systems, an additional 115.7 million may be impacted by disruptions caused by energy transition metals (ETMs). The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers linked the location and type of resource with human settlements in order to assess interactions, dependencies, and contingencies between resources and populations – a “mine-town systems” approach....

In 1963, Earth-based radar observations penetrated the cloud cover and were able to measure a rotation rate of 243 days; more surprising is that Venus rotates on its axis in the opposite direction from that of most planets, so-called retrograde rotation. Subsequent ground-based radar studies came up with inconsistent values for the length, differing by about 6 minutes. The Magellan spacecraft completed its 487-day orbital mapping program in 1991 and concluded the correct number was slightly different still: 243....

Thermoelectric devices are made from materials that can convert a temperature difference into electricity, without requiring any moving parts — a quality that makes thermoelectrics a potentially appealing source of electricity. The phenomenon is reversible: If electricity is applied to a thermoelectric device, it can produce a temperature difference. Today, thermoelectric devices are used for relatively low-power applications, such as powering small sensors along oil pipelines, backing up batteries on space probes, and cooling minifridges....

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, ultraviolet (UV) radiation became one of the go-to methods for preventing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, along with facemasks, hand sanitizer, and social distancing. One problem: There was little research showing what UV dosage kills the COVID-19 virus. What wavelength? How long? And could UV systems be installed in public places such as airports, bus terminals, train stations, and stores without causing long-term harm to people?...

Meteorite impacts play a role in shaping the surfaces of planets in our solar system, but it is uncommon to have records of high-energy impact signals. On Earth, our atmosphere acts as a shield, causing most meteorites to burn up or explode at high altitudes before they reach the ground. Few other bodies in the solar system are equipped with seismometers to record the impacts. While natural impacts have been recorded on the Moon, it was impossible to link the strongest of them to a crater image, which would have made it possible to determine their precise characteristics....

We have very little idea of what dark matter is, and physicists have yet to detect a dark matter particle. But we do know that the gravity of clumps of dark matter can distort light from distant objects. Chris Fassnacht, a physics professor at UC Davis, and colleagues are using this distortion, called gravitational lensing, to learn more about the properties of dark matter. The standard model for dark matter is that it is ”cold,” meaning that the particles move slowly compared to the speed of light, Fassnacht said....

Researchers have uncovered a mechanism that may explain why certain body parts are so sensitive. Some parts of the body—our hands and lips, for example—are more sensitive than others, making them essential tools in our ability to discern the most intricate details of the world around us. This ability is key to our survival, enabling us to safely navigate our surroundings and quickly understand and respond to new situations. It is perhaps unsurprising that the brain devotes considerable space to these sensitive skin surfaces that are specialized for fine, discriminative touch and continually gather detailed information via the sensory neurons that innervate them....

About 7500 light-years away, in the constellation of Carina, lies a nebula within which stars form and perish side-by-side. Shaped by these dramatic events, the Carina Nebula is a dynamic, evolving cloud of thinly spread interstellar gas and dust. The massive stars in the interior of this cosmic bubble emit intense radiation that causes the surrounding gas to glow. By contrast, other regions of the nebula contain dark pillars of dust cloaking newborn stars....

These observations of the red giant star L2 Puppis, from the ZIMPOL mode of the newly installed SPHERE instrument, also clearly showed a close companion. The dying stages of stars continue to pose astronomers with many riddles, and the origin of such bipolar nebulae, with their complex and alluring hourglass figures, doubly so. This new imaging mode means that the VLT is currently the sharpest astronomical direct imaging instrument in existence....

The labs of Yale’s Pietro De Camilli and Karin Reinisch investigated the role of VPS13 proteins whose dysfunction play a role in a variety of neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s. They found that VPS13 proteins can extract lipids from cellular membranes, harbor them in a waterproof cavity, and transfer them to adjacent membranes. VPS13 family members are localized at sites within the cell where organelles are in close proximity to each other — so-called contact sites — and function as tethers between them making lipid transfer more efficient....

When Ross Maguire was a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University (MSU), he wanted to study the volume and distribution of molten magma underneath the Yellowstone volcano. Maguire used a technique called seismic tomography, which uses ground vibrations known as seismic waves to create a 3D image of what is happening below Earth’s surface. Using this method, Maguire was able to create an image of the magma chamber framework showing where the magma was located....

Video Transcript: Electric vehicles don’t catch fire often, but when they do, things get spicy. (funky music) (reporter speaking in a foreign language) This fire took 6,000 gallons of water to put out. And this one took almost 20,000. So, how do these fires start and why are they so hard to put out? To understand that, we can start by looking inside this nine-volt battery. Turns out a nine-volt isn’t one battery....

Formulas show that baby universes pop in and out of the main universe. However, we don’t realize or experience this as humans. To calculate how this scales, theoretical physicists devised the so-called JT gravity, which turns the universe into a toy-like model with only one dimension of time or space. These restricted parameters allow for a model in which scientists can test their theories. Building on the work of others, Professor Kazumi Okuyama of Shinshu University and Kazuhiro Sakai of Meiji Gakuin University set out to show how JT gravity, KdV equation, and the macroscopic loop are related, thus pointing to the fact that gravity and quantum mechanics are unified....

The discovery could be a “game-changer” for contraception, according to the study’s co-senior authors Dr. Jochen Buck and Dr. Lonny Levin, who are professors of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Drs. Buck and Levin noted that condoms, which have existed for about 2000 years, and vasectomies have been men’s only options to date. Research on male oral contraceptives has stalled, partly because potential contraceptives for men must clear a much higher bar for safety and side effects, Dr....

Astronomers have discovered a veritable rogues’ gallery of odd exoplanets — from scorching hot worlds with molten surfaces to frigid ice balls. And while the hunt continues for the elusive “blue dot” — a planet with roughly the same characteristics as Earth — new research reveals that life might actually be able to survive on some of the many exoplanetary oddballs that exist. “When we’re talking about a habitable planet, we’re talking about a world where liquid water can exist,” said Stephen Kane, a scientist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena....

Over the course of three Mars years (or nearly six Earth years) an instrument in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) portable chemistry lab inside the belly of NASA’s Curiosity rover inhaled the air of Gale Crater and analyzed its composition. The results SAM spit out confirmed the makeup of the Martian atmosphere at the surface: 95% by volume of carbon dioxide (CO2), 2.6% molecular nitrogen (N2), 1.9% argon (Ar), 0....

The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowing metal back into electricity when it’s needed. The researchers estimate that such a system would be vastly more affordable than lithium-ion batteries, which have been proposed as a viable, though expensive, method to store renewable energy. They also estimate that the system would cost about half as much as pumped hydroelectric storage — the cheapest form of grid-scale energy storage to date....