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The new results are from the National Science Foundation’s LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and the European-based VIRGO gravitational-wave detector. The results were announced at the Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy Workshop in College Park, Maryland, USA. Three years ago LIGO made the first observation of a binary black hole merger. Today, there have been observations of 11 gravitational-wave signals (10 stellar-mass binary black hole mergers and one merger of two neutron stars, which are the dense, spherical remains of stellar explosions)....

Alarmingly, this study also shows that the decline in sperm counts in North America, Europe, and Australia—reported by this team in 2017—has continued and even accelerated in the 21st century. Sperm count is not just an indicator of human fertility either, it is also an indicator of men’s health overall. In fact, low levels are associated with an increased risk of chronic disease, testicular cancer, and a decreased lifespan. The decline reflects a global crisis related to our modern environment and lifestyle, with broad implications for the survival of the human species, according to the authors....

Using the results of that project, researchers at MIT have now trained a machine-learning system to search for debris disks itself. The scale of the search demands automation: There are nearly 750 million possible light sources in the data accumulated through NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission alone. In tests, the machine-learning system agreed with human identifications of debris disks 97 percent of the time. The researchers also trained their system to rate debris disks according to their likelihood of containing detectable exoplanets....

This video zooms through the nighttime sky into the constellation Corvus, then deeper into Hubble’s view of the Antennae galaxies. Brilliant blue star clusters, born in the collision, pepper the galaxies. Pinkish, glowing hydrogen gas surround star-birth regions glowing under the intense energy from newborn stars. Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI); Acknowledgment: NASA, ESA, A. Fujii, Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, UKSTU/AAO, B. Twardy/A. Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF, M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble), B....

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health have discovered a mathematical relationship that sheds new light on the rate at which cancer cells mutate and why some survive and rapidly multiply, yet others do not. The discovery by members of the laboratory of Jeffrey Townsend, Ph.D., the Elihu Professor of Biostatistics and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, will allow essential calculations to be performed that determine the likely scope of cancerous cells as they develop....

It’s long been known by materials scientists that metals get stronger as the size of the grains making up the metal gets smaller – up to a point. If the grains are smaller than 10 nanometers in diameter the materials are weaker because, it was thought, they slide past each other like sand sliding down a dune. The strength of metals had a limit. But experiments led by the former University of Utah postdoctoral scholar Xiaoling Zhou, now at Princeton University, associate professor of geology Lowell Miyagi, and Bin Chen at the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Shanghai, China, show that that’s not always the case – in samples of nickel with grain diameters as small as 3 nanometers, and under high pressures, the strength of the samples continued to increase with smaller grain sizes....

The global burden of sepsis is estimated at up to 19 million cases annually killing 5 million mainly in low-income countries. The infection affects 1.7 million Americans a year and kills more than 250,000, making it one of the top 10 causes of death. In Australia, more than 5,000 die from sepsis each year and it contributes to up to half of all hospital deaths. A paper published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Monash researchers comprehensively quashes the idea that the vitamin C-based cocktail has any positive impact on patients with sepsis....

In early 2020, a few months after the COVID-19 pandemic began, scientists were able to sequence the full genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 infection. While many of its genes were already known at that point, the full complement of protein-coding genes was unresolved. Now, after performing an extensive comparative genomics study, MIT researchers have generated what they describe as the most accurate and complete gene annotation of the SARS-CoV-2 genome....

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope was able to map the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies in unprecedented detail as they orbit around the Milky Way. By observing the sky at very low frequencies, astronomers detected cosmic rays and hot gas in the two galaxies and identified patches where new stars are born and remnants from stellar explosions can be found. The research was published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, one of the world’s leading astronomy journals....

Under a Funded Space Act Agreement, Boeing will work with NASA to build, test, and fly a full-scale demonstrator aircraft and validate technologies aimed at lowering emissions. Over seven years, NASA will invest $425 million, while the company and its partners will contribute the remainder of the agreement funding, estimated at about $725 million. As part of the agreement, the agency also will contribute technical expertise and facilities. “Since the beginning, NASA has been with you when you fly....

NASA and international researchers have discovered that Earth’s moon has more in common than previously thought with large asteroids roaming our solar system. Scientists from NASA’s Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), Moffett Field, California, discovered that the same population of high-speed projectiles that impacted our lunar neighbor four billion years ago, also hit the asteroid Vesta and perhaps other large asteroids. The research unveils an unexpected link between Vesta and the moon, and provides new means for studying the early bombardment history of terrestrial planets....

Following two Artemis test missions, Artemis III, currently planned for 2025, will mark humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years. NASA will make history by sending the first humans to explore the region near the lunar South Pole. On the way NASA’s Orion spacecraft will be the crew’s ride to and from Earth and into and out of lunar orbit. Orion is the only spacecraft capable of returning crews to Earth at lunar reentry velocities....

Although CDR is often a gate to spacecraft construction, IMAP has already begun building important components such as instrument engineering and flight models as well as parts of the structure. With 10 instruments designed and built globally, the complicated dance of testing, cross-calibrating, and integrating these pieces is carefully choreographed so that the completed observatory will be ready for launch in 2025. IMAP will explore our solar neighborhood, known as the heliosphere, and decode the messages in particles from the Sun and beyond....

During the mission’s approach phase, between mid-August and early December, the spacecraft traveled 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km) on its journey from Earth to arrive at a location 12 miles (19 km) from Bennu on December 3. During this time, the science team on Earth aimed three of the spacecraft’s instruments towards Bennu and began making the mission’s first scientific observations of the asteroid. OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission....

A new study is drawing the most detailed picture yet of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lung, revealing mechanisms that result in lethal COVID-19, and may explain long-term complications and show how COVID-19 differs from other infectious diseases. Led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the study found that in patients who died of the infection, COVID-19 unleashed a detrimental trifecta of runaway inflammation, direct destruction and impaired regeneration of lung cells involved in gas exchange, and accelerated lung scarring....

In a new paper appearing in IEEE Access, members of the Camera Culture group present a new approach to time-of-flight imaging that increases its depth resolution 1,000-fold. That’s the type of resolution that could make self-driving cars practical. The new approach could also enable accurate distance measurements through fog, which has proven to be a major obstacle to the development of self-driving cars. At a range of 2 meters (6....

A key feature of Origolestes is that the bone link between the auditory bones and Meckel’s cartilage has disappeared, showing the separation of the hearing and chewing modules in therian mammalian evolution. Their findings were published in Science on December 5, 2019. The new species was established based on multiple 3D skeletal specimens. The researchers reconstructed 3D skeletal morphologies of the animal using high-resolution microtomography (micro CT). The buried forms of the specimens show that these animals died at rest....

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is part of a collaborative study, offering new insight into the extraterrestrial origins of our lakes, rivers, and oceans. Water makes up 71% of Earth’s surface, but no one knows how or when such massive quantities of water arrived on Earth. A new study published on March 15 in the journal Nature brings scientists one step closer to answering that question. Sune Nielsen, associate scientist, Geology & Geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) co-authored the study, which analyzed melted meteorites that had been floating around in space since the solar system’s formation four and a half billion years ago....

All the elements are there to begin with, so to speak; it’s just a matter of figuring out what they are capable of – alone or together. For Leslie Schoop’s lab, one recent such investigation has uncovered a layered compound with a trio of properties not previously known to exist in one material. With an international interdisciplinary team, Schoop, assistant professor of chemistry, and Postdoctoral Research Associate Shiming Lei, published a paper last week in Science Advances reporting that the van der Waals material gadolinium telluride (GdTe3) displays the highest electronic mobility among all known layered magnetic materials....

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are one of the world’s fastest-growing solar cell technologies. These elements are thin-layered, lightweight, flexible, and are made of low-cost materials. However, this type of solar cell still faces a major issue: quick degradation of perovskite material under environmental conditions. Passivation is a simple but effective way to improve the stability of perovskite solar cells and has been considered as one of the most effective strategies for eliminating the defects of perovskite materials and their negative effects....