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Researchers routinely use 2D experiments and simulations to represent 3D liquids, simply because studies in 2D are easier to do. With these studies, physicists aim at rationalizing familiar macroscopic fluid properties, such as the viscosity, in terms of the microscopic motion of the particles, which in 2D can be directly visualized. The team led by Associate Professor Massimo Pica Ciamarra at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) set out to understand the ‘thermal motion’ of atoms in 2D and 3D liquids....

A modified ketogenic diet may be worth exploring for people with brain tumors, according to a new study published in the July 7, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The diet is high in fat and low in carbohydrates. The small study found that the diet was safe and feasible for people with brain tumors called astrocytomas. All of the people had completed radiation treatment and chemotherapy....

Even modern high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce significant amounts of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy levels of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and methane. These emissions are typically vented into the atmosphere and end up polluting our soil, water, and air. Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed an affordable add-on technology that removes more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions to produce an ultraclean natural gas furnace....

African spiny mice, specifically the species Acomys kempi and Acomys percivali, have skin that is brittle and can be easily torn. This evolutionary adaptation allows them to escape predators by jettisoning whole patches of skin when caught or bitten. The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. The tiny mammals are the first that can completely regenerate damaged tissue. This could potentially help with healing in humans. The mice can regrow complete suites of hair follicles, skin, sweat glands, fur and even cartilage....

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning algorithms are routinely used to predict our purchasing behavior and to recognize our faces or handwriting. In scientific research, Artificial Intelligence is establishing itself as a crucial tool for scientific discovery. In Chemistry, AI has become instrumental in predicting the outcomes of experiments or simulations of quantum systems. To achieve this, AI needs to be able to systematically incorporate the fundamental laws of physics. An interdisciplinary team of chemists, physicists, and computer scientists led by the University of Warwick, and including the Technical University of Berlin, and the University of Luxembourg have developed a deep machine learning algorithm that can predict the quantum states of molecules, so-called wave functions, which determine all properties of molecules....

The scientists tracked the event with radio and infrared telescopes, including the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299. The galaxies are nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. At the core of one of the galaxies, a black hole 20 million times more massive than the Sun shredded a star more than twice the Sun’s mass, setting off a chain of events that revealed important details of the violent encounter....

The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past and determined its exact distance from Earth using the combined data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and the Keck I 10-meter telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. These observations confirmed it to be the most distant galaxy currently measured, setting a new record. The galaxy existed so long ago, it appears to be only about 100 million years old....

The international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and from the University of Arizona announce their findings in the scientific journal Nature on Thursday. The discovery of this quasar, named SDSS J0100+2802, marks an important step in understanding how quasars, the most powerful objects in the universe, have evolved from the earliest epoch, only 900 million years after the Big Bang, which is thought to have happened 13....

“Super-Earths” and Neptune-sized planets could be forming around young stars in much greater numbers than scientists thought, new research by an international team of astronomers suggests. Observing a sampling of young stars in a star-forming region in the constellation Taurus, researchers found many of them to be surrounded by structures that can best be explained as traces created by invisible, young planets in the making. The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal, helps scientists better understand how our own solar system came to be....

Galaxies have a voracious appetite for fuel — in this case, fresh gas — but astronomers have had difficulty finding the pristine gas that should be falling onto galaxies. Now, scientists have provided direct empirical evidence for these gas flows using new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The team led by Nicolas Lehner, research associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, is presenting its work today at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California....

The paper, published January 24 in Science Advances, offers a new recipe for providing evidence that a distant planet harbors life. “This idea of looking for atmospheric oxygen as a biosignature has been around for a long time. And it’s a good strategy — it’s very hard to make much oxygen without life,” said corresponding author Joshua Krissansen-Totton, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. “But we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket....

Quasars are among the brightest, oldest, most distant, and most powerful objects in the universe. Powered by massive black holes at the center of most known galaxies, quasars can emit enormous amounts of energy, up to a thousand times the total output of the hundreds of billions of stars in our entire Milky Way. Dartmouth astrophysicists Ryan Hickox and Kevin Hainline and colleagues have a paper scheduled for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, detailing discoveries based upon observations of 10 quasars....

Working as a collaborative research team, Tatsuo Kaneyasu (SAGA Light Source/Institute for Molecular Science), Yasumasa Hikosaka (University of Toyama), Masahiro Katoh (Hiroshima University/Institute for Molecular Science) and co-workers have invented a way to manipulate the shape of an electron cloud in an atom using the coherent control technique with synchrotron radiation. The work, which has been published in Physical Review Letters, paves the way towards the ultrafast control of electronic systems using synchrotron radiation....

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new system that puts the design of microstructures on a much more secure empirical footing. With their system, designers numerically specify the properties they want their materials to have, and the system generates a microstructure that matches the specification. The researchers have reported their results in Science Advances. In their paper, they describe using the system to produce microstructures with optimal trade-offs between three different mechanical properties....

These chemicals, commonly called PFAS — a shortening of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, were used for some 60 years as coatings for nonstick pans and waterproof clothing and in fire-fighting foams. In the last two decades concerns about health risks associated with exposure to PFAS — from cancer and thyroid problems to low birthweights and high blood pressure — have led to federal bans, monitoring mandates, and massive remediation efforts....

The study, which began in June of 2020, took place at 14 hospitals in the UK, where participants were randomized to receive 25 mg daily of brensocatib or a placebo for 28 days. One-hundred ninety patients received brensocatib, while 214 received a placebo. All patients in the study had confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and at least one risk factor for severe COVID-19, such as requiring supplemental oxygen. Individuals on mechanical ventilation were excluded from the study....

In real-life environments, fluids often contain particles that move by themselves, such as tiny swimming microorganisms. These self-propelled swimmers can cause movement or stirring in the fluid, which drives it away from equilibrium. Experiments have shown that non-moving ‘passive’ particles can exhibit strange, loopy motions when interacting with ‘active’ fluids containing swimmers. Such movements do not fit with the conventional particle behaviors described by Brownian motion and so far, scientists have struggled to explain how such large-scale chaotic movements result from microscopic interactions between individual particles....

In January, the MAGIC telescopes on the Canary Islands observed light at this energy level for the first time. The theories predicting how such light would be produced, are now validated. Burst mechanics When a star dies, its core collapses. While it collapses, the core shoots out hot plasma material at nearly the speed of light. Intense flashes of light called gamma-ray bursts result from these hot plasma jets. When telescopes on satellites observe an area of the night sky, they use two ways to recognize the bursts coming from dying stars....

Quasars are galaxies with massive black holes at their cores. So much energy is being radiated from near the nucleus of a quasar that it is much brighter than the rest of the entire galaxy. Much of that radiation is at radio wavelengths, produced by electrons ejected from the core at speeds very close to that of light, often in narrow, bipolar jets that are hundreds of thousands of light-years long....

New work from a team of scientists including Carnegie’s Josh Simon analyzed the chemical elements in the faintest known galaxy, called Segue 1, and determined that it is effectively a fossil galaxy left over from the early universe. Astronomers hoping to learn about the first stages of galaxy formation after the Big Bang use the chemical composition of stars to help them unravel the histories of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies....