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Astronomers have detected cold streams of primordial hydrogen, vestigial matter left over from the Big Bang, fueling a distant star-forming galaxy in the early Universe. Profuse flows of gas onto galaxies are believed to be crucial for explaining an era 10 billion years ago, when galaxies were copiously forming stars. To make this discovery, the astronomers – led by Neil Crighton of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and Swinburne University – made use of a cosmic coincidence: a bright, distant quasar acting as a “cosmic lighthouse” illuminates the gas flow from behind....

This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the NSF’s Very Large Array (pink). This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light-years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy....

By analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32, astronomers at Caltech estimate that there are at least 100 billion planets in our galaxy. Look up at the night sky and you’ll see stars, sure. But you’re also seeing planets—billions and billions of them. At least. That’s the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm....

Dozens of potentially habitable planets have been discovered outside our solar system, and many more are awaiting detection. Is anybody — or anything — there? The hunt for life in these places, which are impossible to visit in person, will begin with a search for biological products in their atmospheres. These atmospheric fingerprints of life, called biosignatures, will be detected using next-generation telescopes that measure the composition of gases surrounding exoplanets that are light years away....

During the past 20 years, insecticides applied to U.S. agricultural landscapes have become significantly more toxic — over 120-fold in some midwestern states — to honey bees when ingested, according to a team of researchers, who identified rising neonicotinoid seed treatments in corn and soy as the primary driver of this change. The study is the first to characterize the geographic patterns of insecticide toxicity to bees and reveal specific areas of the country where mitigation and conservation efforts could be focused....

Despite not participating in the program, these people had lost an average of almost four kilos, two years after their family member started the program. People living with a patient undergoing an intensive weight loss treatment also benefit from this therapy. This has been demonstrated by a team of researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM-Hospital del Mar) along with doctors from Hospital del Mar and the CIBER on the Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERObn), in collaboration with IDIAPJGol, the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV), IDIBELL, IDIBAPS and the Sant Joan de Reus University Hospital....

Supramolecular chemistry, aka chemistry beyond the molecule, in which molecules and molecular complexes are held together by non-covalent bonds, is just beginning to come into its own with the emergence of nanotechnology. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are commanding much of the attention because of their appetite for greenhouse gases, but a new player has joined the field – supramolecular organic frameworks (SOFs). Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have unveiled the first two-dimensional SOFs that self-assemble in solution, an important breakthrough that holds implications for sensing and separation technologies, energy sciences, and, perhaps most importantly, biomimetics....

Why do our oceans contain such a staggering diversity of fish of so many different sizes, shapes, and colors? A UCLA-led team of biologists reports that the answer dates back 66 million years, when a six-mile-wide asteroid crashed to Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs and approximately 75 percent of the world’s animal and plant species. Slightly more than half of today’s fish are “marine fish,” meaning they live in oceans....

The neuroscientists from Emory University published their findings in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience¹. The scientists compared the effects of music on the human brain with the activity of birdsong on the brain of a bird. They discovered that the birds were experiencing distaste and pleasure as a reaction to the sounds. “We found that the same neural reward system is activated in female birds in the breeding state that are listening to male birdsong, and in people listening to music that they like,” said Sarah Earp, who led the study at Emory University....

At some point you may have had a reaction to penicillin and were told you were allergic. And there’s a good chance it has stayed in your chart throughout your childhood and into adulthood. But 9 of 10 Americans who think they have a penicillin allergy have either outgrown it or never had it in the first place. That said, it’s important to get tested by an allergist to know if you have a true penicillin allergy so you know whether to avoid the drug....

Time series data are a familiar part of our daily lives. A gyrating graph might represent the water level of a river, the price of a stock, or the daily high temperature in a city, just to name a few. Advance knowledge of the future movements of a time series could be used to avert or prepare for future undesirable events. However, forecasting is extremely difficult because the underlying dynamics that generate the values are nonlinear (even if assumed to be deterministic) and therefore subject to wild fluctuations....

In findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Saint Louis University researchers and colleagues report that elephants play a key role in creating forests that store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, the rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of its ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming....

Hemp compounds identified by Oregon State University research via a chemical screening technique invented at OSU show the ability to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from entering human cells. Findings of the study led by Richard van Breemen, a researcher with Oregon State’s Global Hemp Innovation Center, College of Pharmacy, and Linus Pauling Institute, were published on January 10, 2022, in the Journal of Natural Products. Hemp, known scientifically as Cannabis sativa, is a source of fiber, food, and animal feed, and multiple hemp extracts and compounds are added to cosmetics, body lotions, dietary supplements, and food, van Breemen said....

In Europe, transport is responsible for nearly 30% of the total CO2 emissions, of which 72% comes from road transportation. While the use of electric vehicles for personal transportation could help lower that number, reducing emissions from commercial transport – such as trucks or buses – is a much greater challenge. Researchers at EPFL have now come up with a novel solution: capturing CO2 directly in the trucks’ exhaust system and liquefying it in a box on the vehicle’s roof....

Large planets similar to Neptune or Jupiter, orbiting 50 times closer to their star than the Earth does from the Sun, are thought to be composed of hydrogen-rich gas at temperatures between one and three thousand degrees Celsius, circulating at enormous speeds of nearly 10,000 kilometers per hour. With these extreme conditions, the interplay of various physical processes, such as vertical transport, circulation, or irradiation, can drive the atmospheres of these hot exoplanets out of chemical equilibrium, resulting in deviations that are difficult to explain through standard astrophysical models and observations....

A chewing gum laced with a plant-grown protein serves as a “trap” for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, reducing viral load in saliva and potentially tamping down transmission, according to a new study. The work, led by Henry Daniell at Penn’s School of Dental Medicine and performed in collaboration with scientists at the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Veterinary Medicine, as well as at The Wistar Institute and Fraunhofer USA, could lead to a low-cost tool in the arsenal against the COVID-19 pandemic....

MIT undergraduates are using labs at MIT.nano to tinker at the nanoscale, exploring spectrometry, nanomaterial synthesis, photovoltaics, sensor fabrication, and other topics. They’re also getting an experience not common at the undergraduate level — gowning up in a bunny suit and performing hands-on research inside a clean room. During the fall 2021 semester, these students were part of 6.S059 (Nanotechnology — Design From Atoms to Everything) and 6.A06 (First.nano! – Fabricate Your Own Solar Cell in MIT....

Whenever bacteria, viruses, and other foreign substances enter the body, our immune systems react by deploying white blood cells and chemical substances to protect us. This reaction, commonly known as inflammation, also occurs whenever we overload tendons and muscles and is characteristic of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Antioxidants known as polyphenols are found in humans, plants, fruits, and vegetables. This group of antioxidants is also used by the food industry to slow the oxidation and deterioration of food quality and thereby avoid off flavors and rancidity....

Scientists have found new evidence for how armored dinosaurs used their iconic tail clubs. The exceptional fossil of the ankylosaur Zuul crurivastator has spikes along its flanks that were broken and re-healed while the dinosaur was alive—injuries that the scientists think were caused by a strike by another Zuul’s massive tail club. This suggests ankylosaurs had complex behavior, possibly battling for social and territorial dominance or even engaging in a “rutting” season for mates....

A material that could enable faster memory chips and more efficient batteries can switch between high and low ionic conductivity states much faster than previously thought, SLAC and Stanford researchers have determined. The key is to use extremely small chunks of it. “Our result is a step toward using this material, copper sulfide, in low-cost solid-state electrical batteries,” said the leader of the research team, Aaron Lindenberg, of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences and the Stanford PULSE Institute....