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The eviction occurred about five million years ago, around the time when our ancestors were just learning to walk upright. Emeritus Professor Gary Da Costa, an astronomer at The Australian National University (ANU), said the star is moving so fast that it will leave the Milky Way in about 100 million years, never to return. “We traced this star’s journey back to the center of our galaxy, which is pretty exciting,” said Professor Da Costa from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics....

But scientists don’t yet understand how much carbon lies deep in the Earth’s water reservoirs — for example, in water that is under extreme pressure in the mantle — because experiments are difficult to conduct under such conditions. Researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago and the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong have created a complex computer simulation that will help scientists determine the concentration of carbon under the conditions of the mantle, which include temperatures of up to 1000K (730C or 1,340F) and pressures of up to 10 GPa, which is 100,000 times greater than on the Earth’s surface....

In regions of high wind, the robot is designed to stay aloft, much like its avian counterpart. Where there are calmer winds, the robot can dip a keel into the water to ride like a highly efficient sailboat instead. The robotic system, which borrows from both nautical and biological designs, can cover a given distance using one-third as much wind as an albatross and traveling 10 times faster than a typical sailboat....

Dr. Rafael Araos of the Institute of Science and Innovation in Medicine, Clinica Alemana, Universidad del Desarrollo, Dr. Alejandro Jara and Dr. Eduardo A Undurraga of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and colleagues from the Chilean Ministry of Health contributed to the study. The study assessed the effectiveness of CoronaVac (Sinovac Biotech), AZD1222 (Oxford-AstraZeneca), or BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine boosters in individuals who had completed a primary two-dose immunization schedule with CoronaVac, an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine which accounts for about half the COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered globally, compared with no vaccination....

The giant squid is one of the most enigmatic animals on the planet. It is extremely rarely seen, except as the remains of animals that have been washed ashore, and placed in the formalin or ethanol collections of museums. But now, researchers at the University of Copenhagen leading an international team, have discovered that no matter where in the world they are found, the fabled animals are so closely related at the genetic level that they represent a single, global population, and thus despite previous statements to the contrary, a single species worldwide....

Found in more than 90 countries around the world, malaria causes 241 million cases and an estimated 627,000 deaths every year. Vaccines are one intervention that could aid in the eradication of this deadly disease, yet a highly effective vaccine remains elusive. Recent technological advances in vaccine development – such as the mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19 – could pave the way for a new generation of malaria vaccines....

The study was conducted with data from two surveys of 319 undergraduate students, a group of people who engage in a lot of media multi-tasking. One survey measured the symptoms of anxiety and depression, and the other measured how the participants engaged in media multitasking. This allowed the researchers to discover if the subjects were low, medium, or high media multi-taskers. The survey measured indicators of depression and anxiety, but didn’t serve as a clinical diagnosis of the ailments....

Many large galaxies have a bright central region called an active galactic nucleus (AGN), powered by matter spiraling into a supermassive black hole. Gas clouds in an area around the AGN known as the “broad-line region” emit light at characteristic wavelengths, but the complexity and variability of these emissions have been a longstanding puzzle for astrophysicists. A new analysis by researchers at UC Santa Cruz, published June 14 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, explains these and other puzzling features of active galactic nuclei as the result of small clouds of dust that can partially obscure the innermost regions of AGNs....

They successfully moved and connected one new, powerful lithium-ion battery and its adapter place to complete the circuit to the new battery and relocated one aging nickel-hydrogen battery to an external platform for future disposal. They also loosened the bolts on nickel-hydrogen batteries that will be replaced to complete the power capability upgrade on the far starboard truss and complete the station’s battery replacement work that began in January 2017 with the first series of power upgrade spacewalks....

The new findings – “tough” organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks near the surface, as well as seasonal variations in the levels of methane in the atmosphere – appear in the June 8 edition of the journal Science. Organic molecules contain carbon and hydrogen, and also may include oxygen, nitrogen and other elements. While commonly associated with life, organic molecules also can be created by non-biological processes and are not necessarily indicators of life....

“The optical and ultraviolet light from stars continues to travel throughout the universe even after the stars cease to shine, and this creates a fossil radiation field we can explore using gamma rays from distant sources,” said lead scientist Marco Ajello, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University in California and the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley....

The scene includes a broad notch in the crest of the crater’s rim, which may have been a spillway where water or ice or wind flowed over the rim and into the crater. Wheel tracks visible in the area of the notch were left by Opportunity as the rover studied the ground there and took images into the valley below for use in planning its route. “It is a tantalizing scene,” said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St....

​OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, survey the surface, collect a sample and deliver it safely back to Earth. The spacecraft has traveled approximately 1.1 billion miles (1.8 billion km) since its September 8, 2016, launch and is scheduled to arrive at Bennu on December 3. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission launched in 2016 and now (August, 2018) is entering its approach phase. OSIRIS-REx will arrive at asteroid Bennu in December, 2018....

Almost 40% of global land plant species are categorized as very rare, and these species are most at risk for extinction as the climate continues to change, according to new University of Arizona-led research. The findings are published in a special issue of Science Advances that coincides with the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP25, in Madrid. The COP25 is convening nations to act on climate change....

To shed light on this question, MIT neuroscientists have performed a comprehensive study of APOE4 and the more common form of the gene, APOE3. Studying brain cells derived from a type of induced human stem cells, the researchers found that APOE4 promotes the accumulation of the beta amyloid proteins that cause the characteristic plaques seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. “APOE4 influences every cell type that we studied, to facilitate the development of Alzheimer’s pathology, especially amyloid accumulation,” says Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the senior author of the study....

Scientists from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research have used computer modeling to show how a hypothesized type of supernova would evolve on the scale of thousands of years, giving researchers a way to look for examples of supernovae of this model, known as “D6.” Supernovae are important for cosmology because one type, Ia, is used as a “standard candle” that allows distance to be measured. In fact, they were used for the measurements that revealed, surprisingly to first observers, that the universe’s expansion is accelerating....

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been severely limited by the ineffective identification of SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, and the high rate of asymptomatic infections (16%–38%) has exacerbated this situation. Thus far, the predominant detection method collects samples by swabbing the nose and throat. However, the application of this method has been limited by its long detection time (4–6 hours), high cost, and requirement for specialized equipment and medical personnel, particularly in resource-limited countries....

No, but Chinese researchers at the Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have designed a promising alternative. Recently, they reported the development of a contact aerial manipulator system that shows high flexibility and strong mission adaptability. They presented their findings at the 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2019), an international conference on robotics and intelligent systems held from November 4-8, 2019, in Macao....

As science enthusiasts around the world bid farewell to legendary cosmologist Stephen Hawking, researchers continue to make important discoveries about the evolution of galaxy clusters that capture the imagination. Now, an international collaboration between Yutaka Fujita at Osaka University and researchers from Taiwan, Italy, Japan, and the United States found a new fundamental law that stipulates the evolution of galaxy clusters. They recently reported the study in The Astrophysical Journal....

Fuel cells and water electrolyzers that are cheap and efficient will form the cornerstone of a hydrogen fuel based economy, which is one of the most promising clean and sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. These devices rely on materials called electrocatalysts to work, so the development of efficient and low-cost catalysts is essential to make hydrogen fuel a viable alternative. Researchers at Aalto University have developed a new catalyst material to improve these technologies....