In their interiors, stars are structured in a layered, onion-like fashion. In those with solar-like temperatures, the core is followed by the radiation zone. There, the heat from within is led outwards by means of radiation. As the stellar plasma becomes cooler farther outside, heat transport is dominated by plasma flows: hot plasma from within rises to the surface, cools, and sinks down again. This process is called convection. At the same time, the star’s rotation, which depends on stellar latitude, introduces shear movements....

“We want to know why the eruptions are located at the south pole as opposed to some other place on Enceladus, how these eruptions can be sustained over long periods of time, and finally why these eruptions are emanating from regularly spaced cracks,” said Max Rudolph, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis. Rudolph and colleagues Douglas Hemingway of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington D....

Eleven states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana. A new study funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice sought to determine the effect of this legal change on crime rates. The study, which looked at the legalization and sales of recreational cannabis in Colorado and Washington, found minimal to no effect on rates of violent and property crimes in those states. The study, by researchers at Washington State University, Stockton University, and the University of Utah, appears in Justice Quarterly, a publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences....

“We looked at trends from 1999 to 2021 and we saw this staggering increase in methamphetamine mortality accompanied by a proportional increase in those deaths that also involved heroin or fentanyl,” said Rachel Hoopsick, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of kinesiology and community health who led the research. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded 608 deaths due to methamphetamine use in 1999, however, that number skyrocketed to 52,397 in 2021....

When it comes to investing, conservatives may have a built-in advantage, according to a study by business scholars at Rice University, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), the University of Bath and Southern Methodist University (SMU). A central tenet of long-term investing is to hold riskier investments such as stocks over holding cash or bonds, which are considered less risky....

Previous studies have shown that children’s willingness to investigate adults’ surprising claims varies with age, with six-year-olds being more inclined than four- and five-year-olds to do so. However, little is known about the reasons why children ask questions after hearing something surprising from adults. Researchers from the University of Toronto and Harvard University have just released a new study in the journal Child Development that tries to provide an answer to this question....

Study questions the role of vitamin D2 in human health but its sibling, vitamin D3, could be important for fighting infections. New research has found significant differences between the two types of vitamin D, with vitamin D2 having a questionable impact on human health. However, the study found that vitamin D3 could balance people’s immune systems and help strengthen defenses against viral infections such as COVID-19. In a collaborative study by the Universities of Surrey and Brighton, researchers investigated the impact of vitamin D supplements – D2 and D3 – taken daily over a 12-week period on the activity of genes in people’s blood....

An outbreak of tuberculosis in the skid row area of downtown Los Angeles may have exposed up to 4,500 individuals to the bacterium that causes the deadly disease and has left federal officials scrambling to intervene. The outbreak is occurring during winter, when homeless individuals are driven to crowded shelters, when influenza is peaking and when people’s vitamin D levels, typically boosted by sunlight exposure, are low. A new University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study offers critical insight into how various bacteria may manipulate such factors to their advantage....

A star called KIC 8462852 has been in the news recently for unexplained and bizarre behavior. NASA’s Kepler mission had monitored the star for four years, observing two unusual incidents, in 2011 and 2013, when the star’s light dimmed in dramatic, never-before-seen ways. Something had passed in front of the star and blocked its light, but what? Scientists first reported the findings in September, suggesting a family of comets as the most likely explanation....

Using a larger dataset than all previous studies on the subject combined, researchers found a small but significant connection between brain size and cognitive performance. The English idiom “highbrow,” derived from a physical description of a skull barely able to contain the brain inside of it, comes from a long-held belief in the existence of a link between brain size and intelligence. For more than 200 years, scientists have looked for such an association....

New research by University of Massachusetts Amherst astronomer Daniel Wang reveals, with unprecedented clarity, details of violent phenomena in the center of our galaxy. The images, published recently in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, document an X-ray thread, G0.17-0.41, which hints at a previously unknown interstellar mechanism that may govern the energy flow and potentially the evolution of the Milky Way. “The galaxy is like an ecosystem,” says Wang, a professor in UMass Amherst’s astronomy department, whose findings are a result of more than two decades of research....

Voracious absences at the center of galaxies, black holes shape the growth and death of the stars around them through their powerful gravitational pull and explosive ejections of energy. “Over its lifetime, a black hole can release more energy than all the stars in a galaxy combined,” said Roger Blandford, director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science....

Quantum communication uses light at the single photon level to send encoded quantum information such as encryption keys in quantum key distribution. Because of the laws of physics, data transmitted in this way is guaranteed to remain secure. Sending information at faster speeds requires a single photon detector that can not only detect photons quickly but also precisely measure their arrival times. In Optica, Optica Publishing Group’s journal for high-impact research, researchers led by Matthew D....

How a pair of MIT Sloan Executive Education alumni translated teachings from an MIT course to operations improvements at Heineken México. It’s no secret that a manufacturer’s ability to maintain and ideally increase production capability is the basis for long-run competitive success. But discovering a way to significantly increase production without buying a single piece of new equipment — that may strike you as a bit more surprising. Global beer manufacturer Heineken is the second-largest brewer in the world....

Scientists have discovered, however, that the underlying cause of a catastrophic coral die-off event was an extreme weather event that resulted in rapid sea temperature drops of up to 10 degrees. The extent of the coral reef collapse in Costa Rica’s Eastern Tropical Pacific in 2009 was abnormally high due to widespread increases in harmful algal blooms. The two factors caused some locations’ coral cover to decline by 20% to 100%, and degrees of recovery have varied greatly in the years since....

SAI might make the sky slightly whiter. But this is the least of our concerns. SAI could pose grave dangers, potentially worse than the warming it seeks to remedy. To understand the risks, we’ve undertaken a risk assessment of this controversial technology. A cooler Earth means less water would be evaporating from its surfaces into the atmosphere, changing rainfall patterns. This could produce ripple effects across the world’s ecosystems – but the exact nature of these effects depends on how SAI is used....

Most active volcanoes on Earth are dormant, meaning that they have not erupted for hundreds or even thousands of years, and are normally not considered hazardous by the local population. A team of volcanologists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), working in collaboration with the University of Heidelberg in Germany, has devised a technique that can predict the devastating potential of volcanoes. The scientists used zircon, a tiny crystal contained in volcanic rocks, to estimate the volume of magma that could be erupted once Nevado de Toluca volcano (Mexico) will wake up from its dormancy....

A report recently released by the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Diocese of Ely states that in order to secure their future, churches must be useful to their communities and find ways to maintain financial sustainability. Researchers surveyed all 334 churches in the Diocese of Ely, receiving responses from 73%. They found that churches played a significant role in communities with three-quarters of respondents noting that the closure of their local church would have a “devastating impact”....

You may not be able to travel to Jezero Crater on Mars, but you can visit the next best thing: Lake Salda, Turkey. Though it is located a world away, Lake Salda shares similar minerology and geology as the dry Martian lakebed. Researchers are using their understanding of Lake Salda to help guide the Mars 2020 mission, which will drop the Perseverance rover into the crater to search for signs of ancient life....

“Young men have different testosterone reference ranges than older men,” comments lead author Alex Zhu, DO, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “Our findings suggest we should be using age-specific cutoffs when assessing testosterone levels in younger men.” Different thresholds for low testosterone in younger men Patients suffering from testosterone deficiency have low levels of the male sex hormone testosterone, which causes symptoms such as decreased sex drive and erectile dysfunction....