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“This was a black box for us,” said Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry at TSRI and senior author of the new study. “But if you focus on the chemistry, the questions of origins of life become less daunting.” For the new study, Krishnamurthy and his coauthors, who are all members of the National Science Foundation/National Aeronautics and Space Administration Center for Chemical Evolution, focused on a series of chemical reactions that make up what researchers refer to as the citric acid cycle....

Well-being can be maintained in a degrowth transition. The first comprehensive comparison of ‘degrowth’ scenarios with established pathways to limit climate change highlights the risk of over-reliance on carbon dioxide removal, renewable energy, and energy efficiency to support continued global growth — which is assumed in established global climate modeling. Degrowth focuses on the global North and is defined as an equitable, democratic reduction in energy and material use while maintaining wellbeing....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Human ancestors managed to get enough energy to grow brains that have three times as many neurons as gorillas, which was only possible with the invention of cooking. There aren’t enough hours in the day to build up enough energy to sustain the building of such a large brain, states Suzana Herculano-Houzel, neuroscientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who co-wrote the report....

New book helps readers better understand the elusive ‘Cheshire cat’ we call the quantum world, and sheds new light on longstanding conceptual problems in quantum theory, such as the ‘Schrodinger’s cat’ paradox. In Adventures in Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality, Dr Ruth Kastner explores the unexpected and deeply puzzling world of the quantum, which gives rise to the concrete world we experience around us with our five senses, but which, for the most part, remains stubbornly hidden from view....

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the U.S. recycling industry. Waste sources, quantities and destinations are all in flux, and shutdowns have devastated an industry that was already struggling. Many items designated as reusable, communal, or secondhand have been temporarily barred to minimize person-to-person exposure. This is producing higher volumes of waste. Grocers, whether by state decree or on their own, have brought back single-use plastic bags. Even IKEA has suspended use of its signature yellow reusable in-store bags....

Pregnant women with COVID-19 appear to be at greater risk for common pregnancy complications — in addition to health risks from the virus — than pregnant women without COVID-19, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The study, which included nearly 2,400 pregnant women infected with SARS-CoV-2, found that those with moderate to severe infection were more likely to have a cesarean delivery, to deliver preterm, to die around the time of birth, or to experience serious illness from hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, postpartum hemorrhage, or from infection other than SARS-CoV-2....

New research suggests that adults (aged 18 or older) with severe obesity generate a significantly weaker immune response to COVID-19 vaccination compared to those with normal weight. The study was conducted by Professor Volkan Demirhan Yumuk from Istanbul University in Turkey and colleagues and was presented at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Maastricht, Netherlands (May 4-7). The study also found that people with severe obesity (BMI of more than 40kg/m2) vaccinated with Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine generated significantly more antibodies than those vaccinated with CoronaVac (inactivated SARS–CoV–2) vaccine, suggesting that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine might be a better choice for this vulnerable population....

Organoids are mini organs that can be grown in the lab. These mini-organs grow from a very small piece of tissue, and this is possible for various organs. The ability to genetically alter these organoids would help a great deal in studying biological processes and modeling diseases. So far, however, the generation of genetically altered human organoids has been proven difficult due to the lack of easy genome engineering methods....

NASA’s Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence — images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels — is the first of its kind. Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream’s flow....

Advancements in telescopes have enabled researchers to study the Universe with greater detail, and to establish a standard cosmological model that explains various observational facts simultaneously. But there are many things researchers still do not understand. Remarkably, the majority of the Universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, of which no one has been able to identify their nature. A promising avenue to solve these mysteries is the structure of the Universe....

MIT researchers have developed a system that can produce images of objects shrouded by fog so thick that human vision can’t penetrate it. It can also gauge the objects’ distance. An inability to handle misty driving conditions has been one of the chief obstacles to the development of autonomous vehicular navigation systems that use visible light, which are preferable to radar-based systems for their high resolution and ability to read road signs and track lane markers....

Iowa State University researchers were part of a team evaluating 17.5 million possible strategies the CDC could have recommended last winter to state, territorial, tribal and local governments for COVID-19 vaccine rollouts. In a newly published paper, the researchers generally validate the CDC’s ultimate recommendation, while the mathematical model the team developed also highlights some minor improvements. The work could help inform the design of future vaccination strategies in the U....

Scientists from the University of Chicago have found that the drug masitinib may be effective in treating COVID-19. The drug, which has undergone several clinical trials for human conditions but has not yet received approval to treat humans, inhibited the replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in human cell cultures and in a mouse model, leading to much lower viral loads. The research team, including scientists from the U....

Astronomers believe that many of the moons we see in the Solar System, especially large moons, formed along with the parent planet. In this scenario, moons form from the gas and dust spinning around the still forming planet. But previous simulations have resulted in either all large moons falling into the planet and being swallowed up or in multiple large moons remaining. The situation we observe around Saturn, with many small moons but only one large moon, does not fit in either of these models....

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed data from more than 200,000 people who participated in three prospective health and nutrition studies; all participants were free of cancer and heart disease when the studies began. After eliminating a number of other factors known to increase heart risk, investigators found: Consuming tofu, which is high in isoflavones, more than once a week was associated with an 18% lower risk of heart disease, compared to those who ate tofu less than once a month; andThe favorable association with eating tofu regularly was found primarily in young women before menopause or postmenopausal women who were not taking hormones....

By carefully controlling the position of an atomic-scale diamond defect within a volume smaller than what some viruses would fill, researchers have cleared a path toward better quantum computers and nanoscale sensors. They describe their technique in a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing. David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues study a technologically useful diamond defect called a nitrogen vacancy center....

Although the chance of an asteroid impacting Earth is small, even a relatively small asteroid of about 500 feet (about 150 meters) across carries enough energy to cause widespread damage around the impact site. NASA leads efforts in the U.S. and worldwide both to detect and track potentially hazardous asteroids and to study technologies to mitigate or avoid impacts on Earth. If an asteroid were discovered and determined to be on a collision course with Earth, one response could be to launch a “kinetic impactor” – a high-velocity spacecraft that would deflect the asteroid by ramming into it, altering the asteroid’s orbit slightly so that it misses Earth....

Giant landslides, lava flows and tectonic forces are behind this dynamic scene captured recently by ESA’s Mars Express of a region scarred by the Solar System’s largest volcano, Olympus Mons. The image was taken on January 23 by the spacecraft’s high-resolution stereo camera, and focuses on a region known as Sulci Gordii, which lies about 200 km east of Olympus Mons. Sulci Gordii is an ‘aureole’ deposit – from the Latin for ‘circle of light’ – and is one of many that form a broken ring around the giant volcano, as hinted at in the context map....

Now a team of researchers at the University of Illinois, led by physicist Vidya Madhavan, in collaboration with researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the University of Maryland, Boston College, and ETH Zurich, have used high-resolution microscopy tools to peer at the inner-workings of an unusual type of superconductor, uranium ditelluride (UTe2). Their measurements reveal strong evidence that this material may be a natural home to an exotic quasiparticle that’s been hiding from physicists for decades....

Mask wearing by the public, particularly outdoors, remains controversial. But should masks be worn outside, in some circumstances, to help reduce COVID-19 virus transmission — or should efforts focus on reducing indoor transmission where risks are greater? Experts debate the issue in The BMJ today. Babak Javid at the University of California San Francisco and colleagues acknowledge that the risk of COVID-19 virus transmission is far greater indoors than outdoors....